Jay Severin is getting very creative in his efforts to attack the Obama administration and is playing pretty loose with the facts. Today his target was HHS-nominee Kathleen Sebelius, whom he frequently referred to as the “former governor” of Kansas. (In fact, as of this writing, she is still the governor and she plans to remain so until her confirmation.) Severin decided to attack Sebelius because of her support for “partial birth abortion,” which is known in the medical community as intact dilation and extraction (or evacuation), or D&X. Severin described partial birth abortion as a procedure that was performed “days or weeks” before a viable fetus would otherwise be born “naturally,” by which I assume he means at or close to full term.
Unless by “days or weeks” Jay Severin means 98 days or 14 weeks, he is either ignorant or lying.
A full-term pregnancy lasts about 38-40 weeks, depending on when you start counting. The abortion debate often divides the pregnancy into trimesters: up to about 13 weeks, between 13 and 26 weeks, and beyond 26 weeks. There is no specific definition of viability, but doctors seem to agree that it occurs no earlier than 24 weeks. (At the time of Roe v. Wade, in 1973, viability was generally considered to coincide with the end of the second trimester, which made the viability/trimester conversation much easier.)
Abortions after the 24th week are extremely uncommon. Only eight percent of abortion providers will offer an abortion at 24 weeks, much less later in the pregnancy. And the D&X procedure accounted for only 0.17% of abortions in 2000, which was before the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was signed by President Bush and later upheld by the Supreme Court.
For Jay Severin to suggest that Kathleen Sebelius or any other abortion rights supporter would be in favor of any abortion procedure in the eighth or ninth month is outrageous. Unfortunately, that’s just Jay being Jay.
3 Comments
Kathleen Sebelius — not Sibelius.
Is she related to Jean? Unclear.
Thanks for the correction, Mike. I’ve fixed the post.
Any time Mr. Severin Opens his mouth, it’s a lie. He critisizes Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson as race baiters, and he is the biggest race baiter on radio. This us against them crap. The only people qualified to be doctors, pilots, and soldiers according to Jay are white. The rest only got there through Affirmitive Action. The only Illegal Aliens are Mexican. The only tax payers talk english and are white, and the blacks and hispanics are on welfare. He always forget to mention that there are more whites on welfare nation wide than any ethnic group in the country.