Australian Christian Lobby Managing Director Jim Wallace said Dr David Grundmann’s entry into the abortion debate praising Queensland Premier Anna Bligh yesterday for “letting sleeping dogs lie” (Weekend Australian, 5/6 Sept) should send a shiver up the spines of civilised people everywhere.
“Dr Grundmann wants to ‘let sleeping dogs lie’, but the most vicious sleeping dog in this debate, the practice of partial-birth abortion, still needs to be destroyed”, Mr Wallace said.
Dr Grundmann is Australia’s most prominent advocate of “partial-birth abortion”, a technique developed in the US but banned in 2003 by the United States Congress as “a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary.” The method involves half-delivering the baby – often older than those in our hospital nurseries – before piercing its head and crushing the skull. The baby is given no pain relief. The US Supreme Court, which contains a majority of pro-abortion judges, upheld the ban in 2007 – but there is no ban on Dr Grundmann practising this “gruesome and inhumane procedure” in Australia.
Asked on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes on April 17, 2005, “Do you pierce the baby’s head with a sharp instrument?” he replied, “I’m not going to discuss details of specifics about procedures because I don’t think that you or the public needs to know.”
In November 2005 Dr Grundmann was confronted again on the SBS’s Insight program. “I’m not sure that the debate would in any way be enhanced by descriptions of fairly explicit surgical and destructive procedures,” he said.
Mr Wallace said, “Dr Grundmann clearly does not want his practices exposed to the light of media investigation or parliamentary scrutiny, because he knows the only response of civilised and compassionate parliamentarians would be to impose appropriate regulations.”
Mr Wallace challenged the Health Minsters of Queensland and Victoria – where Dr Grundmann has clinics – to act without delay.
“The Health Ministers have authority to stop this gruesome and unjustified practice immediately, without needing another Parliamentary debate, by making it a condition of licensing for private clinics that they cannot perform partial-birth abortion”, Mr Wallace said.
“This is unfinished business, a ‘sleeping dog’, more important that the small legal technicality dealt with by the Queensland Parliament last week. The practice publicised and practised by Dr Grundmann is ‘gruesome, inhumane and never medically indicated’ and no Government can allow another baby to be mauled to death by this ‘sleeping dog’ of partial-birth abortion”, Mr Wallace said.
Society
Dr Grundmann’s ‘sleeping dog’ of partial-birth abortion: – do the public and the media have no right to know?
Monday, 7 September 2009, 13:57 (EST)
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Added: Friday, 11 September 2009, 1:24 (EST)
I am appalled that doctors can carry out partial-birth abortions which are murders, and live with their consciences. I was under the impression that doctors were sworn to protect life and bring healing to people. How wrong could I be? They will one day answer to God for these murders - whether they believe in Him now or not.
Judy Walkenhorst, Australia
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