From Merle Hoffman, the founder and owner of an abortion clinic, on witnessing her first few abortions:
“What I saw a running through those vacuum tubes when I first started my work was only blood and tissue, unformed and messy. It was easy to imagine the fetus as a bunch of cells that one could define as one wished. But even in the beginning I had an inkling that this mentality was the easy way out, that it didn’t go far enough to do justice to the experience of abortion.”
Merle Hoffman Intimate Wars: the Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Board Room (New York: Feminist Press, 2012) 107
At just seven weeks, the baby has arms and legs, fingers and toes. (see aborted babies at 7 weeks here) At this stage the baby is delicate and may be torn apart completely in an abortion. Abortions done before the baby is formed are still killing a life.
