Biden Nominee Cites “Grossness” As A Bad Reason To Ban Partial-Birth Abortions

President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead global health development at the U.S. Agency for International Development argues that brutal partial-birth abortion techniques should not be considered to be worse than other more humane abortion procedures just because it’s “gross.”

“Grossness is not a good objection,” wrote Atul Gawande in a 1998 Slate op-ed. “Lots of operations are gross–leg amputations, burn surgery, removal of facial tumors, etc. But that does not make them wrong.”

In a partial-birth abortion, an abortionist delivers the baby alive, up until the baby’s head is outside the mother’s body, then the abortionist punctures the back of the baby’s head, “removing the baby’s brains,” according to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Biden’s Health and Human Services Director Xavier Becerra fails to recognize the procedure as illegal, though the controversial legislation passed Congress in 2003, was signed by former President George W. Bush, and was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court as constitutional in 2007.

Gawande describes a partial-birth abortion in gruesome detail in his 1998 op-ed, acknowledging that late-term abortions are “disturbing” because the unborn baby is “big now–like a fully formed child.”

“Partial-birth abortion is, if anything, less grotesque,” he wrote, comparing partial-birth abortion to Dilation and Evacuation procedures. “The fetus is delivered feet first. To get the large head out, the doctor cuts open a hole at the base of the fetus’s skull and inserts tubing to suck out the brain, which collapses the skull.”

The Biden nominee’s callous language concerning the subject echos the past in the fight over abortion — advocates of recent years are less likely to discuss abortion techniques with such candor.

Gawande indicated that if the procedure is “too gruesome to allow,” perhaps dilation and evacuation abortions are too gruesome as well.

“And that’s the inevitable next target for pro-life advocates,” he wrote.

“Two of my obstetrician friends, both strongly pro-choice, told me that, even when it is a mother’s life at stake and abortion is absolutely necessary, doing the D and E feels ‘horrible,’” the Biden nominee wrote. “We imagine, as we look in the fetus’s eyes, that there is someone in there. And if there were any elective late abortion–even by induction–would be wrong, though D and E and partial-birth abortion would seem especially cruel.”

Gawande questioned whether there is “someone in there,” noting that Roe v. Wade led advocates and activists to “focus on whether the fetus is viable.” He argued that a breathing patient on life support is not necessarily a “living person anymore,” adding that what matters is whether the patient’s brain is functioning.