Editorial writers at the Philadelphia Daily News say slain abortion provider George Tiller provided a vital service to women for whom late term abortion is a “life-affirming, necessary medical service.”

These were women, the newspaper says, who came to Tiller’s clinic with “heartbreaking stories” of pregnancies in which prenatal testing revealed “undeveloped hearts or brains or other organs and a diagnosis that the child could not survive much past birth — or, if it did, would never know anything but pain.”

The writers say it is a “national disgrace” that state laws largely prevent doctors from performing late-term abortions, so that women who receive prenatal diagnoses “were forced” to travel long distances to clinics like Tiller’s. An excerpt:

We wish President Obama success on his quest for “common ground” in the abortion debate, but that won’t eliminate circumstances that lead to late-term abortions. State legislatures must make laws that reflect reality. Medical schools, many of which have stopped providing training, need to start, so a new generation of doctors may provide late-term legal abortions, and not fear harm for serving patients.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 10:26 am and is filed under abortion, commentary, genetics, prenatal diagnosis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.