‘The Eternity Within’--Signed Away by a Pro-Abortion Veto : Abortion: Clinton cynically used five families’ personal tragedies to deflect our revulsion at the partial birth procedure.

On Good Friday, President Clinton visited the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing where so many children were killed one year ago. There, he delivered this message: On Easter, he said, Christians the world over would “bear witness to our faith” that the miracles of Jesus and those of the human spirit seen in Oklahoma City, “only reflect the larger miracle of human nature--that there is something eternal within each of us . . . no bomb can blow away, even from the littlest child, that eternity which is within each of us.”

Five days later and Easter past, the president vetoed a bill that would have protected the tiniest child from being killed in the process of delivery by partial birth abortion.

Surrounding himself with five women who had faced tragedy during their pregnancies, and condemning those who would use them as “political pawns,” the president proceeded to use them as just that. And fraudulently as well.

The president claimed repeatedly that a partial birth abortion is done only to preserve a woman’s life or her future fertility or to end the lives of children so sick that they would likely not live long after being born alive. The president chose to ignore what those who perform partial birth abortions have said again and again: The vast majority of abortions they perform are purely elective. Even those they call “nonelective” would be considered elective by most people. For example, the late Dr. James McMahon called “nonelective” those partial birth abortions that are performed because of the mother’s “youth” or because she was “depressed.”

We cannot fail to note the disturbing implications of using the aborted children of the five women as political pawns in their own right. The disabilities these children had, the short lives they might have had, were held up only as reasons to perform the most brutal procedure the abortion industry has ever invented. The president chose to mourn these dead children only insofar as it was useful for evoking sympathy.

The president also said over and over again that partial birth abortions are needed to protect a mother’s health. The preponderance of medical evidence, supplied by the very people who perform these brutal abortions, says the exact opposite.

So does common sense. It absolutely defies reason to claim that once a child is almost completely delivered vaginally, with only its head remaining inside the mother’s body, that it could possibly be essential to her medical health that the child be stabbed and the contents of its head suctioned out. Once delivery is that far along, delivering the child a few more inches does not imperil a woman’s health. It does, however, produce a dead child, rather than a live child. Even children with hydrocephalus are able to be safely delivered vaginally after excess fluid is removed from their heads with a needle designed for that purpose. Many live long and happy lives.

Dr. Warren Hern, a late-term abortionist and author of the most widely used abortion textbook, said this about partial birth abortions and their safety for women: “I would dispute any statement that this is the safest procedure to use.” Turning the child into the breech position, he explained, is “potentially dangerous . . . You have to be concerned about causing amniotic fluid embolism or placental abruption if you do that.”

Rather than deal with the facts about partial birth abortions, President Clinton chose instead to toe the line drawn by the abortion lobby and to confront the nation with women who had experienced personal tragedies regarding their pregnancies. And in so doing, he dared all of us to judge them. It is not our place to judge them. But, as citizens of the United States, we have every right and every reason to condemn the veto that puts our nation one step closer to legalizing infanticide.

Shame on the president. Congress should vote--overwhelmingly and quickly--to override this inexcusable veto.