022693 The baby lived , so will go to jail -Scott McConell

RAY Kerrison is on vacation There is no doubt that the most gentlemanly of Post columnists would handle this topic better than I will Among other things, Ray is pro-life. But, alas, he's not here.

I am pro-choice. I would never wander into the sort of trap that caught Dan Quayle when he was asked how he would advise his daughter if she had an unwanted pregnancy. Have an abortion, I would say without blinking.

Despite the fact that my lovely and talented wife has written an essay reprinted and admired within pro-life circles, my own support of "a woman's right to choose" is the very epitome of Political Correctness.

Moreover, on the various ethical questions involving the sanctity of life in ambiguous circumstances, my views are a model of consistency. I favor the death penalty. I think Dr. Kevorkian is making a contribution I have long believed in the virtues of nuclear deterrence.

I might have to acknowledge to some misgivings about whether It's appropriate for the police to use "pain compliance" techniques against peaceful anti-abortion demonstrators. This is a form of torture, really, brought to bear against individuals using time-honored civil-disobedience tactics. The practice raises nary a peep of protest from the civil-liberties community (the courageous Nat Hentoff being the only exception). But that's a quibble. Nevertheless, during a week in which the lion's share of the energies of the city's tabloid editors and columnists are devoted to demonizing the pathetic Dr. Abu Hayat, the "Butcher of Avenue A," I miss Ray Kerrison As it is, in the great cacophony of voices that make up the diverse and multicultural New York media, no one utters a skeptical word about the Hayat case. K there are writers who might sense a bit of collective evasiveness in the city'$ Dr. Hayat frenzy. they've escaped my notice.

Dr. Hayat is manifestly guilty of medical malpractice - to such an egregious extent he should probably go to prison But why - when there are hundreds of cases of medical malpractice every year - has this particular one stirred such passions?

Well, first there is the obvious point about the case,

which everyone knows but no one wants to remark upon If Hayat hadn't "botched" the abortion of Ana Rosa Rodriguez, he wouldn't have gotten into trouble.

What, then, would have constituted a successful "unbotched" abortion? Well, clearly a procedure that ended in nothing less than the death of little Ana Rosa- Even if the abortion had been illegal in the formal sense, it would have been considered a success by all the adults concerned - and never come to the attention of lawenforcement authorities - if Hayat had managed to tear the girl from her mother's womb and smother her before she drew breath.

So lets be clear. The end result of an 'unbotched" abortion is not a healthy girl with all her limbs. Only after a "botched" abortion is it possible to end up with an adorable-looking one-armed 2-yearold.

Even under the best of circumstances, legal late-term abortions are no piece of cslsb Dr. Hayat did not tear off Ana Rosa Rodriguez's little arm because he's some sort of sadist. Dismembering the fetus and pulling it out of the womb piece by piece >s standard operating procedure in lateterm abortions.

Ln an profile of a prominent New York doctor at work entitled "What a Gynecologist Thinks," the now defunct magazine New York Woman described the performance of a late-term abortion this way: "He doesn't think about what he's doing while he's doing it." Instead "He's thinking: you're taking an airplane apart. With forceps and the strength of his arms he pulls, removing the fetus piece by piece, ticking them off to himself as he goes, the lungs, the bowels, the limbs, this is an airplane and you're a mechanic, his hands tired from squeezing and pulling, now just the big one, the head, he's got it, he expels his breath hi one loud sigh, it's almost over. . ."

We11, Dr. Hayat never got that far before his patient bolted and ended up going to e hospital to deliver a baby alrL Aa a result, Hayat is bound for prison and has emerged as the city's Public Enemy Number One - a personage more reviled even than the benighted folks from Operation Rescue.

This is no brief for Dr. Hayat. He conducted his medical practice in a reckless and lawless fashion, and exploited poor women when they were in highly vulnerable state.

But that's not the reason Dr. Hayat's case has been plucked from the swamp of the city's malpractice cases and made the stuff of social history. Hayat's great transgre.9sion, the reason he is viewed as truly beyond redemption, is that he pushed the reality of abortion right in front of our faces. And despite the vast majorities in the city that favor abortion rights, the fact that every fetus is a potential child is one we'd prefer to hide from ourselves.