Date: Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Time: 6:15pm
Southern District Court of New York

The testimony of the fetal pain expert was fascinating. Dr. Anand described in detail the reasons that anesthesia was not able to work on the fetus. According to his testimony, at the second trimester and early in the third, the mother metabolizes most of the drug before it can have any effect. There is also a thick placental barrier that any drug administered to the mother would have to cross, and the medication crosses that barrier inefficiently. He testified that in order for the drug to take effect, the amount administered would be lethal to the mother. He further explained that the natural responses to pain the body develops that help us cope with it are not present until later in fetal development than the receptors of pain themselves. Coupling that lack of "inhibitory mechanisms" (defenses) with the thin, nerve-packed skin of the fetuses who are killed, and the intensity of the pain he described was apparent and deeply disturbing.

The afternoon provided the opportunity to listen to a tape that was sold by the National Abortion Federation to its members, in which Dr. Martin Haskell -- the inventor of the partial birth abortion procedure -- described it at a 1992 meeting of the NAF. Dr. Haskell said that he had done the procedure on third trimester babies, and described it in glowing terms. In explaining the reason he created the procedure, he described finding a dismemberment procedure for a late second trimester or third trimester abortion as making him "sweaty and emotionally drained." He continued: "A few procedures later I pierced the membrane and a foot immediately presented through the cervix. I grasped the foot and pulled down gently on the fetus until the head lodged in the cervix. Then I removed the fetal body and compressed the skull and removed it. I felt years younger and asked myself, 'Why can't they all be this easy?' The point of this presentation is that they can be." It was clear from his testimony that this procedure originated not to protect the mother, but in order for the abortion doctor to have an easier time performing later term abortions.