UPDATE: Eight minute video excerpt is available on YouTube.com (Link posted below)
On October 17, 2007, a television show in the United Kingdom called “Dispatches” aired an investigative report on late-term abortions and the movement there to lower the maximum gestational age at which a pre-born baby can be aborted. The program included footage and shocking narration of an actual late-term abortion.
The program touched off a firestorm of debate on the 40th anniversary of abortion liberalization in the UK. Two months after the airing of the show, the station’s discussion board is still active, with 28 pages of messages – several times the number of messages posted to their other discussion topics.
Currently, the upper limit on abortions in the UK is 24 weeks, the landmark age of viability accepted in the medical community worldwide. Efforts have been made to lower the abortion limit to 20 weeks.
Interesting, the Dispatches program interviews women who have had late abortions as well as physicians and abortionists, and nearly all were very uncomfortable with the thought of post-viability abortions. Yet in America, where the survival rate for babies born at 24 weeks is now 85%, with many showing no permanent damage from the prematurity, abortions well past 24 weeks are easily obtained throughout the country in states including California, Colorado, Nebraska, Ohio, Florida, New York, and Kansas, the unlikely but undisputed Late-term Abortion Capital.
It says something about our country when a liberal nation like the United Kingdom has more of a conscience about post-viability child-killing than the more conservative and religious United States where medical advances in neonatology are far superior.
While every abortion is a heinous act, no matter the gestational age of the baby, we think the discussion about abortions past the first trimester can help people to better understand the horrific tragedy of every abortion.
The video footage of this program has been removed from the station’s web site, and to our knowledge it is not now available on the Internet. Thanks to our friend Nedd Kareiva of the Stop the ACLU Coalition (www.stoptheaclu.org), Operation Rescue is making the audio portion of the powerful program available on our web site. Mr. Kareiva will soon be launching a new web site www.closeallabortionclinics.com, and we hope you will check that site for important information when it is available.
The program has been divided into three parts and most of the commercials have been edited out. We hope you will take the time to listen to all of this shocking and thought provoking program, and forward the links to your friends. Until we can face the horrific nature of what abortion does to the most vulnerable among us, we can never hope to abolish it.
Dispatches – “Abortion: what we need to know” (Audio of entire show)
(Republishing of these audio files on other web sites is prohibited without the expressed permission of Nedd Kareiva. To obtain permission, please contact info@stoptheaclu.org.)
Part 1 (18 min. 28 sec.)
Part 2 (18 min. 11 sec.)
Part 3 (13 min. 5 sec.)
8 min. 15 sec. Video excerpt from Dispatches – “Abortion: what we need to know” Warning: Graphic Content