They said it.
James Tunstead Burtechaell quotes a Planned Parenthood worker:
“For women who have completed their ideal family size, the decision to abort can be excruciating. It’s a lifestyle choice, and we are not taught to think in such a self-centered way.”
James Tunstead Burtechaell, C.S.C. Rachel Weeping: the Case against Abortion (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row Publishers, 1982) 92 to 93
Share on FacebookFrom one woman who had an abortion:
“You could hear crying in the holding room… crying of women who already had the abortion. I remember the sounds, the smells, the suction… You could hear the sound of the motor of the pump, the suction when the baby was being withdrawn, the clinking of the utensils.… [She recalls] this hurts so bad [and then thought] this is what I get, of course it’s going to hurt… Look what I’m doing… I just remember the crying… So many people crying.”
Only her husband and eldest son know about her two abortions which he had in high school. At the time of the quote, she was 35.
James D Slack Abortion, Execution, and the Consequences of Taking Life (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009) 67
Share on Facebook“It isn’t unusual for women to come in for a second or third abortion. Even a sixth abortion, while unusual, isn’t unheard of.”
Suzanne T. Poppema, M.D., “Why I Am An Abortion Doctor,” Prometheus Books, 1996, p. 134.
Read about repeat abortions here.
And read what abortion providers have to say about them here.
Share on FacebookFormer abortionist Professor Stuart Campbell on how parents react when they see the high quality ultrasounds which he pioneered:
“They are overwhelmed. Husbands kiss their wives’ abdomens. They actually start talking to the baby for the first time. They can recognize the features, see who the baby looks like, but it’s not just that, it’s also the baby’s behaviour: you see eyelids opening, opening its mouth, sucking its thumb, doing baby-like things.?… Parents come to me and they are so astonished by what they see…Most of them have no idea about the life inside the uterus, what the placenta does, what the yolk sac is for, about the growth and development of the baby. When you look at the pregnancy books, they tell you about lifestyle, smoking, what to eat, what not to eat, sex, all that stuff, but not so much about the foetus. In this book I’ve tried to be realistic about that.”
The ultrasound technology was instrumental in Campbell’s decision to quit doing abortions. He remains pro-choice for early abortions, but opposes them after 20 weeks.
Magda Denes, who observed at an abortion clinic and wrote a book about it, on how she became hardened to the abortions and the death of the babies:
“Sensibility is blunted through exposure. After weeks of trailing Holzman from from OR 1 to OR 2, my sense of meaning dulls. I begin to see “cases,” “cervical apertures,” “fetal tissue.”… I worry about snags in tempo during operations, but no differently from the way I worry about an unfamiliar noise in the motor of my car. One time the circulating nurse loses her wedding ring during surgery. She discovers the loss at the end of the operation as the orderly is about the fold the bloodied sheets on the floor. She takes the filled plastic bag from the wastebasket and empties it into the middle of the sheets. Both kneel and with their bare hands rummage frantically in the pile of placental tissue and blood and
chopped up fetal body parts. “It has to be here,” she says nearly in tears. “We’ll find it,” he reassures her. I am all for them. Is frightful to lose one’s wedding ring.… Hours later, when the scene reasserts itself in my mind, I do not recognize myself. Is inhumanity a habit? Is indifference the result of the attrition of meaning? If so, one must watch the self like an enemy.”
Magda Denes, PhD. In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital (New York: Basic Books inc 1976) 239 to 240
Share on FacebookLinda Couri worked for Planned Parenthood first as a volunteer and then as an employee. she had an abortion herself before working at Planned Parenthood. An article (TIM GRAVES “From Planned Parenthood to Pro-Life” National Catholic Register Aug 24, 2011) says the following:
For Couri, her abortion at the Planned Parenthood business revealed that “there is nothing joyful about abortion. Some women are complacent, but most just bare-knuckle their way through it.”
….
“Throughout the next decade, she thought little about the abortion and her complicity in ending the life of her unborn child, “tucking it away in a comfortable, intellectual place.” Like many post-abortive women, the experience led her to get involved in pro-abortion political activism. Indeed, Couri contends that the movement to defend legal abortion is fueled by post-abortive women.
Couri became a volunteer, and later an employee, of Planned Parenthood. She worked in Champaign, Ill., about a three-hour drive from Chicago, and she presented sex-education classes in schools.
As the only mental-health professional on staff, she also counseled girls seeking abortions. But, according to Couri, she actually focused on preparing these young women for their abortions by reviewing the steps of the procedure. The counseling part of the interview mostly consisted of her asking patients: “Do you know what you’re doing?” “Is this what you want to do?”
Memories culled from those “counseling” sessions still haunt Couri. One woman, a married university professor with three children, was clearly struggling with the decision. She could have gone either way. In the end, she had the abortion, and Couri never saw her again.
Now, Couri expresses “a lot of regret when I think of her. I could have dissuaded her from having an abortion, and I didn’t.”
Truth be told, while working at there, Couri had become conflicted about the morality of abortion: She supported Roe v. Wade, but she also believed the unborn child was a human being and that abortion destroyed the child’s life.
During one counseling session with an unmarried 16-year-old, Couri offered a range of options: Keep the child and rear him herself, put the baby up for adoption, or have an abortion.
Then the girl asked, “If I have an abortion, am I killing my baby?”
Couri responded, “‘Kill’ is a strong word, and so is ‘baby.’ You’re terminating the product of conception.”
Couri was haunted by guilt and was uneasy about the girl’s abortion. Her questions had triggered doubt in Couri’s mind. the article goes on:
Yet, in her heart, Couri knew better, and she later shared her concerns with her supervisor.
Most Planned Parenthood staffers are women, Couri noted, and many, like her, will privately concede that they have mixed feelings about abortion:
“You can’t be a woman and not be conflicted about it.”
Her supervisor suggested that the 16-year-old’s choice for abortion would be the lesser of two evils. For Couri, the telling point was that abortion was acknowledged as an “evil.”
Couri began attending mass. Her pro-abortion friends and coworkers made fun of her. She wore her Planned Parenthood badge to church, and was still working there. When a priest who was counseling her brought up her involvement with PP, she reacted with hostility. But later, at a retreat, she decided to leave PP. Eventually, she began to suffer what she called a “nervous breakdown” and went to the church for help. When she got involved with Project Rachel, she became pro-life and is now a pro-life speaker.
Another thing that made her question her stance and eventually led to her leaving was stated in another article:
She read journals where women recorded their feelings right after abortions and was amazed that many of them were upset and said, “I’ve killed my baby.”
Deborah Donovan “Former Planned Parenthood worker from Libertyville tells anti-abortion journey” Daily Herald Sept 23, 2012
Share on FacebookA pregnant woman tells the following story, which is very revealing of the way Planned Parenthood counselors feel about those who carry their babies to term.
From an abortion provider:
“I think actually performing an abortion is a very refined technical skill; it’s a very delicate skill – particularly the very early procedures. A lot of people will say, you know, “Oh those early procedures are a real piece of cake.” They’re not always a real piece of cake! I think you have to have an enormous amount of respect for the uterus when you begin to do this because every woman is different. They’ll be days or weeks when, you know, everything just goes picture perfectly; you know, you just dilate the cervix and sweep the cannula in and turn on the machine and whoo, you know, it’s over in about 10 seconds. But sometimes it takes a lot of patience. It takes knowing when to stop inserting instruments, knowing how far to push the cannula and no farther.”
Wendy Simonds. Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996) 68
Even first trimester abortions take skill to perform. Some pro-choicer activists seek to make it legal for people who are not doctors to perform them. Many medical professionals believe this is a bad idea.
Share on Facebook“[Society’s] mistake was in… deciding that the fault lay with the woman, that she should be the one to change. We focused on her swelling belly, not the pressures that made her so desperate.”
Frederica Mathewes – Green
Stephen Currie. Opposing Viewpoints Digests: Abortion (San Diego, California: Greenhaven Press, 2000) 54
Another quote from an abortion advocate, in the same book, says:
“For a woman to give birth… can be a severe handicap in the workplace..… Few women who take maternity leaves are paid full wages for the time they missed; many find their jobs are not held open for them, or discover that they have been shunted to a less demanding and lower status “mommy track.”
Men, of course, are rarely treated this way. Men who start families may worry about how to feed and clothe their children, but their employers do not fire them simply for daring to bring babies into the world. Neither did they force male workers to take unwanted or unneeded time off nor demote them to jobs deemed suitable for employees more interested in raising their children than in taking on interesting and exciting projects at work.
Thus, the right to an abortion is basic. A woman who does not want to fall victim to discrimination and patronizing assumptions about her wishes and desires must have the ability to enter pregnancy.”
Rather than coming to the conclusion that women must kill their babies to be free of society’s injustices, why don’t we work to right the injustices so that women do not have to kill their babies?
Two abortionists quoted by Delese Wear “From Pragmatism the Politics: a Qualitative Study of Abortion Providers” Women & Health, volume 36 (4), 2002
“I don’t get to talk shop with my peers… No intelligent conversations with real smart colleagues the way most doctors get to… I don’t feel like I’m part of the medical community. I’m on my own, floating on an iceberg. I miss feeling connected.”
and
“Who would want my life? Very few would be willing to put up with the bullshit I do. It’s low prestige, medically isolated… I have no doctor friends and have very little support from the medical community.”
It is hard to be an abortion provider due to the emotional impact of the job ,. the stigma that many of them face in the medical community, and pro-life activities.
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