NEWS FEATURE: Reclusive Ohio doctor’s procedure is a focus in the abortion debate

c. 1997 Religion Service DAYTON, Ohio _ Dr. Martin Haskell, owner of the Women’s Med+ Center in the Dayton suburb of Kettering, is a reclusive abortion doctor _ he hasn’t spoken to reporters in years and remains a mystery even in the abortion rights community. But in the public debate over abortion, he’s a lightning […]

c. 1997 Religion Service

DAYTON, Ohio _ Dr. Martin Haskell, owner of the Women’s Med+ Center in the Dayton suburb of Kettering, is a reclusive abortion doctor _ he hasn’t spoken to reporters in years and remains a mystery even in the abortion rights community. But in the public debate over abortion, he’s a lightning rod.

Haskell’s clinic, said to be equipped with bulletproof glass and bombproof walls, performs abortions through the 24th week of pregnancy, as do many other clinics throughout the country. And like other clinics, his is often a prime target for abortion protests.


At a recent protest, for example, hundreds of abortion opponents, gathered under the banner of Operation Rescue, nodded in solemn agreement as their leaders insisted that at Haskell’s clinic you can find “the gates of Hell.”

Abortion rights backers, fewer in number, also gathered to support the clinic’s owner, holding up a cloth banner with the handpainted message: “Dr. Haskell Is A HERO For Helping Women.”

But Haskell’s central place in the national abortion debate doesn’t come from his running a clinic that performs abortions. Haskell’s leap to notoriety came in 1992 when he delivered a paper at a meeting of the National Abortion Federation.

In that paper, Haskell described an abortion technique he said he had used more than 700 times on women who wanted to abort after the 20th week of pregnancy.

Haskell wrote of guiding a fetus feet-first through the birth canal. With just the head remaining in the uterus, he would pierce the skull and suction out brains and spinal fluid. The collapsed skull could then pass through the woman’s partially dilated cervix.

He referred to the procedure, which he said caused less bleeding and internal trauma to the woman than traditional late-term abortion methods, as “dilation and extraction.” The late Dr. James McMahon, a Los Angeles abortion provider and the person who taught Haskell the technique, called it “intact dilation and evacuation.”

Abortion opponents, however, have coined the term “partial-birth abortion” to describe the procedure and have used its graphic details to recast the public debate on abortion.


“It’s totally changed the momentum,” said Patrick Mahoney, one of Operation Rescue’s founders and now head of the Christian Defense Fund in Washington. “Four years ago, the questions I got from the press were all about clinic violence. Now the questions are about things like viability. That’s a huge turnabout.

“When the child is discussed, we win. When women’s rights are discussed, from a public perception, we lose.”

Abortion rights advocates concede the focus on Haskell’s procedure has hurt them in the court of public opinion.

“We need to let the physicians make the choice about how to do their job,” said Cincinnati attorney Al Gerhardstein, who has represented Haskell and other abortion providers. “Instead we’ve got a bunch of legislators passing stupid laws based on a frenzy of headlines. They’ve targeted a procedure that is horrible and scary and easy to hype.”

Abortion opponents for years heard vague rumors of such a procedure. McMahon had mentioned it in a Los Angeles Times interview. And in 1989, Montgomery County, Ohio, prosecutors investigated Haskell after a student observing his work reported he had delivered a live baby only to let it die 20 minutes later. Haskell maintained a five-month fetus had “popped out” before he’d been able to suction out the brain, but contended the fetus already was dead because the spinal cord had been cut. Authorities did not pursue charges.

Then in early 1993, a copy of Haskell’s paper was mailed to the Washington offices of the National Right to Life Committee. Douglas Johnson, the group’s chief lobbyist, realized his side had been delivered a powerful weapon.


“I remember what struck me when I read the Haskell paper was the explicitness,” Johnson said. “We saw that this could be used to educate people about how violent and abusive abortions are.”

Johnson’s group commissioned a set of sketches based on the paper and used them that year in advertisements against a proposed federal law that would have wiped out most state restrictions on abortion. Some abortion rights groups criticized the drawings as misleading, but in a rare interview with American Medical News, Haskell conceded they were accurate “from a technical point of view.” He took issue only with their inference that the fetus was “aware and resisting.”

In 1995, after the Republicans captured Capitol Hill, a bill to ban what Johnson had dubbed “partial-birth abortion” passed both houses of Congress only to be vetoed by President Clinton. The House voted to override the president; the Senate did not. But the issue’s political power became clear.

Longtime abortion rights allies such as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Rep. Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., and Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan, D-N.Y. _ who declared the procedure akin to “infanticide” _ broke ranks to support the ban. So did the top House Democrat, Richard Gephardt of Missouri. And this year, they were joined by Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

Senate backers of the ban remain three votes shy of enough votes to override Clinton’s promised veto. But Johnson says his side will keep pressing the issue in Washington and in the states, where 15 bans have been passed and signed into law.

Ohio in 1995 passed a law that would ban not only Haskell’s procedure, but any other that uses “brain suction.” It has yet to take effect, pending the outcome of a federal court challenge brought by Haskell.


Gerhardstein, however, says that by outlawing a single procedure, opponents are eroding access to legal abortions. They increase pressure on would-be providers not perform abortions, he said during a recent forum at Wright State University, “so the doctors stretch wrinkles or do other things instead of performing abortions.”

END FROLIK

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!