The abortion industry cannot let the partial birth abortion ban go, for three reasons:

1. They want to reverse the profoundly negative press it brought.

2. They are fed up with busy baby-body pro-lifers telling them how to run their chop shops, this time meddling with the procedure itself.

3. They are lazy and sloppy, and the PBA ban has caused them more work.

So the industry has embarked on an interesting public relations campaign.

Although it maintained for 15 years during PBA ban court battles that the number committed was infinitesimally small, now it says the ban has created havoc in the industry.

And while it has always claimed legalized abortion is the safest surgical procedure in the history of the world, now it says the ban has forced "dangerous" abortions on mothers and abortionists.

(Column continues below)

It launched its PR campaign on July 30 with the help of United Press International, in one of the most egregious displays of journalistic deception I have ever read:

Several U.S. health officials argued that the passage of the Partial Birth Abortion Act is forcing more dangerous procedures to occur.

Health officials through agencies like Michigan's WomanCare have pointed out that since the U.S. Supreme Court passed the act, they have been forced to use medical procedures that make abortions increasingly risky and painful….

WomanCare medical director Alberto Hodari said that health officials are being forced to do additional procedures to ensure they follow the act's strict guidelines. Among these more risky procedures is the use of Digoxin medication that ensures the fetus is not alive at the time of removal, as per the act's guidelines.

Prior to the act's passage, many abortion clinics only used a natural medication known as laminaria to dilate a woman's cervix for the procedure….

"It was much simpler and much less dangerous than what we are doing now," Hodari said. "But this is now the law. It's awful. It's unnecessary. It's dangerous."

While the nondiscerning reader might assume "U.S. health officials" and "agencies" referred to spokesmen for government bureaus or medical groups, the UPI meant late term abortionists and abortion mills. Read it again.

The "medical procedure"? Visualizing a preborn baby's internal organs by ultrasound and injecting the heart medication Digoxin in an FDA-unapproved use through the mother's abdomen and into the heart of her thrashing baby (no one likes needles) to cause an instant, deadly heart attack.

The UPI boiled all that down to say Digoxin guarantees the baby is "not alive," i.e., dead, "at the time of removal," i.e., when the baby is dismembered or lobotomized and tossed in a plastic bucket.

Also noteworthy was that the UPI called laminaria a "natural medication," implying abortion can be environmentally friendly. Laminaria are seaweed sticks the size of matchsticks that expand when moistened. The abortionist forces them into the mother's tightly closed cervix to quite unnaturally stretch it to ensure enough legroom, pardon the pun, to abort her large late-term baby.

Speaking of, and back to Digoxin, its off-label use by some abortionists is not new. Recall in 2005 when Baby Rowan was aborted alive at almost 23 weeks gestation in an Orlando mill and died in his mother's arms when staff refused to intervene. She had been told the abortionist injected Digoxin beforehand, which he did not.

But pay attention. Since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the PBA ban this past April, paranoia has apparently struck the entire late-term abortion industry, forcing these specialized deed-doers out in the open. And there are apparently quite a few, with lots of spectators, despite trade claims that these abortions are nearly as rare as PBAs. Digoxin injections are not necessary or even possible for early term abortions.

At Oregon Health & Science University, "[m]edical students and nursing students are no longer invited to watch later-term abortions, for fear one might misinterpret the procedure and lodge a criminal complaint," reported the Boston Globe.

The San Jose Mercury News reported, "[W]hen you set out to do a legal second trimester abortion, something looking very much like a now-illegal abortion can occur. Once you dilate the cervix… a fetus can start to slip out. If this happens, any witness – a family member, a nurse, anyone in the near vicinity with an ax to grind against a certain physician – can report that the ban has been breached, bringing on stiff fines, jail time and possible civil lawsuits."

Note media spin that an abortionist would never violate the ban but only be "misinterpret[ed]" by people "with an ax to grind."

But despite the media's best help, the pro-PBA campaign is ill-conceived, availing itself to an array of pro-life inquiries and talking points.

Are late-term abortions safe or not? Are late-term abortions rare or not? How exactly is a Digoxin abortion committed? Does a baby squirm when injected? Why? If the abortionist misses the baby's heart, can she kill a mother instead?

Beware of cupids carrying syringes rather than darts.

Related offers:

Whistleblower magazine: "Ending Abortion"

"Struggling for Life: How our Tax Dollars and Twisted Science Target the Unborn"

"Betrayed by the Bench"

SUPREME FRAUD: Unmasking Roe v. Wade, America's most outrageous judicial decision