2003 Phantom Procedure Update
House and Senate Ban
Bill S3

Some think I'm a voice in the wilderness, when I refer to the non existent PBA - the Phantom Procedure. In fact more and more as the various court cases proceeded, the public and the press were finally woken up to the sleight of hand this PBA advertising slogan is and the sneak attack on abortion services generally lying behind it.

You would think that after the years I have asked people to meet the challenge on my PBA page and seeing the same challenge remain unmet, that some would begin to get a clue that this Phantom Procedure is non existent. If it actually existed somebody by now would have come up with answers. Nobody has ever even attempted to answer them. They aren't trick questions.

Justice O'Connor - in the Steinberg v Carhart decision - says:

Nebraska’s statute is unconstitutional on the alternative and independent ground that it imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy before viability. Nebraska’s ban covers not just the dilation and extraction (D&X) procedure, but also the dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure, “the most commonly used method for performing pre viability second trimester abortions.” ... By proscribing the most commonly used method for pre viability second trimester abortions, the statute creates a “substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion,” and therefore imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy prior to viability."

One difference between the current proposed legislation (S3) and the Nebraska variant lies in the wording of the sequence used to perform the Phantom Procedure. In the proposed S3 variant

the person performing the abortion deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus; and `(B) performs the overt act, other than completion of delivery, that kills the partially delivered living fetus.

Now once more if I do any form of pre viability D&E and for example remove one limb of the fetus I have now satisfied B of the prohibition by having a "partially delivered living fetus" and despite the fact that I am working on a non-viable fetus I may not complete any steps that would lead to fetal demise. If I do I am subject to legal and judicial proceedings. It's the old catch 22 situation. I cannot stop because I will endanger my patient and I cannot proceed because I subject myself to judicial action.

Not just one procedure is involved

Furthermore the addition of the reference to "the entire fetal head" being outside of the body clearly shows this bill is aimed at second trimester and especially mid second trimester, pre-viability abortions because there is no physician who would fully remove the fetal head past that gestation point since it would require too much cervical dilation and possibly seriously compromise the future fertility of the woman at least. If the skull is crushed, causing death in utero, then the woman is subjected to an added risk when brain matter is dispensed in the uterus and could possibly enter the woman's circulation - which is usually allayed by applying suction but suction is difficult to accomplish in utero on a mobile fetus. In fact this passage in S3 makes it abundantly clear that the bill is aimed not at D&X or Late Term Abortions but at the most frequently used mid gestation procedure D&E and a few D&Xs would also meet the criteria. Much of the D&E dismembering is performed in the vaginal opening where it can be seen and there is less chance of puncturing a uterus with perhaps a bone shard, so once more this "partially delivered and overt act" condition would be met.

It should also be noted that Dr Haskell in his paper describes the D&X procedure as a "breech" procedure with face toward the spine - not a head first which would be counterproductive for this procedure.

It's been tried before

This is exactly the same ploy that was used some 20 years ago when the effort was to ban the then most common mid term procedure of that time period - Saline Amniocentesis. If you can ban the most commonly used procedure how soon before other procedures are attacked for banning.

So they want to pretend continually they are talking about D&X but the language presented in all of the bills - including the present one - does not clearly show the essential elements of that procedure which has been well outlined for the medical community by Dr. Haskell. D&X is not mentioned anywhere in S3. In fact there have been procedures that were very obviously D&E (the most notorious would be the Biskind case which ended in charges, jail, and licence revoking) which have been called PBA on sites like the Canaday and McKain Senate websites. They, AO, seem to refer to any LTA as a PBA but the D&X procedure is not a LTA (past 26.6 weeks) but a second term procedure. It is almost never used in the late term and could not, because of the fetal size, except where the fetus is small for gestational age. There is only one physician in the world, to my knowledge, who uses the late Dr. Mc Mahon variation of ID&X into the third trimester and that is the Australian, Grundmann.

It is also worth noting that he use of the word "child" in the bill is once more a part of the underpinnings for an attack on Roe v Wade.

Here are a few links to show mine is not a lone voice and this is not a new take on the Phantom Procedure.

I find this presentation well written and much less wordy than my own:

This is an excellent exposition of the background of the Phantom Procedure.
*note* PLEASE don't stop reading after the first paragraph - the full explanation is in the body of the article.

And this, again is my own page on the Phantom Procedure:       With a number of extra reference pieces.