Dr. William Rashbaum, now deceased, was profiled in a 2003 article. At the time the article was written, he had performed over 21,000 late-term abortions. The article says of Raushbaum:
TRAINED IN an era when doctors were considered gods, Rashbaum is gruff, confrontational, and downright abrasive. He flaunts medical conventions at will, rankling nurses and orderlies, if it serves his needs. When the orderlies take too long preparing his operating room between procedures, he goes in and embarrasses them into efficiency by helping to clean up. He boasts, “They turn my room over much faster than any other room.” First- and second-year OB/GYN residents dread his cases. “It was always a fight about who had to do them,” says a former intern.
Cases such as his are certainly the most technically difficult of all abortions. As pregnancy moves closer to 24 weeks (the upper legal limit in most states, with rare exceptions made to preserve a woman’s life or health), the risk to the patient increases, even with the preferred method for second-trimester abortions — dilation and evacuation, or D&E for short. During the procedure, in which both vacuum and surgical instruments are used, the fetus is either removed in pieces or delivered more or less intact. In the operating room, Rashbaum readily yells at the top of his lungs at residents working with forceps inside a woman’s uterus, where he can’t see what they’re doing, to make sure they are as nervous as he is. “It’s not the best way to teach,” he admits. “Calm, cool, collected is better, but a tough screaming is not ineffective.”
The article also quotes Raushbaum as saying:
“As long as I can make a contribution, I enjoy what I do.”
The article also says:
He has trained close to 100 doctors to do D&Es, some of whom have gone on to train others
REBECCA PALEY “Cruel to be kind: In the twilight of his career, a late-term-abortion doctor tells all” The Boston Phoenix Dec 2003
