British abortionist RFR Gardner described doing abortion in the third person, describing what it is like for abortionists:
“It is a lonely operation. Although dilatation of the cervix, the neck of the womb, is an operation he performs many times a week [for D&C’s on nonpregnant women or women whose baby has died in utero], on this occasion it will be different. He takes the first dilator and is tinglingly aware that he is about to seal the fate of a fetus, that he is about to alter history. In other operations the cervix will dilate up readily, but in this operation it will fight, grip the end of the dilator and force it back into his hand. And then at last he will win, and as he does so he will wonder who has lost.”
RFR Gardner Abortion: The Personal Dilemma (Exeter, Great Britain: The Paternoster Press, 1972) 14
