(CNSNews.com) - On Dec. 5, 1996, the government relations office of the (
Pro-Abort) American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) privately provided the Clinton White House with the
unreleased draft of a policy statement ACOG was preparing to put out on intact dilatation and extraction (D&X) abortion -- the procedure used in a partial-birth abortion.
Having reviewed the draft of the ACOG statement, then-Associate White House Counsel Elena Kagan wrote an internal White House memo declaring that
the statement would be a “disaster” for the Clinton administration if it were publicly released. This was because the statement as drafted
contradicted the argument President Clinton had been making to defend his opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortion.
Kagan wrote the
memo on Dec. 14, 1996, which was a Saturday. Just the day before, on Friday, Dec. 13, 1996, President Clinton had given a press conference in which he stressed that he opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion unless an exception for the health of the mother was added to it because, he insisted, “a few hundred women every year” who seek abortions would not be able to "preserve the ability to have further children unless the enormity -- the enormous size of the baby’s head is reduced before being extracted from their bodies.” That is, unless they had a partial-birth abortion.
The
draft ACOG statement that Kagan feared would be a "disaster" for the administration said: “[A] select panel convened by
ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure [intact D&X abortion], as defined above, would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.”