Abortionist says he “terminates” babies

Recently, I wrote an article for Live Action according a former abortion doctor who admits that he was “terminating babies”:

“Nobody wants to perform abortions after 10 weeks because by then you see the features of the baby, hands, feet. It’s really barbaric.

Abortions are very draining, exhausting, and heartrending. There are a lot of tears. Some patients turn on you. They say, “Let’s get out of here,” after the abortion, as if you’re some dirty person. It’s vicious. Then you get these teenyboppers in the office who laugh their way through it. It doesn’t mean a thing to them. That bothers me. Then you’ve got the right to lifers calling you on the phone, coming in the office, preaching, threatening to picket your office.

I do them because I take the attitude that women are going to terminate babies and deserve the same kind of treatment as women who carry babies. So I started doing abortions on an altruistic basis. I’ve done a couple thousand, and it turned into a significant financial boon, but I also feel I’ve provided an important service.

The only way I can do an abortion is to consider only the woman as my patient and block out the baby. I’ve delivered enough babies, seen enough divorces, and seen enough abused kids to do abortions with a clear conscience. This may be some kind of mental gymnastics on my part, but I really feel that parenthood is so tough that people shouldn’t back into it.

I don’t feel I’m violating my trust as a doctor by doing abortions, but I don’t want to do them anymore because you can do them to a certain point, and then you get overloaded. I’m at that point.

John Pekkanen M.D.: Doctors Talk about Themselves (New York, New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1988) 93 – 94