An author who interviewed abortionists and nurses who assisted in abortions says:
“Abortion work is not easy. Late-term abortions are horrific. Nurses doing abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy either seem rather distressed by what is going on, or appear rather as cynical and hard. When they are distressed it may be that their caring role and training is still fundamentally at odds with the termination of pregnancy.”
Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 272 – 273
These nurses had to see aborted children on a daily basis.
In an article, in the IrishIndependent, Dr Susan Robinson, who does abortions in the third trimester, comments on how in the state of New Mexico (where she works) there are no restrictions on late term abortions. There are no legal limits on how late in pregnancy they can be done. She can commit abortions all the way up until birth.
She says:
“So there is nothing legal to stop me from doing any abortion that I think is appropriate.”
The article describes how Robinson uses ultrasound to date the ages of babies in the third trimester. However, this is unreliable:
“For pregnancies above 30 weeks Robinson relies on an ultrasound to check the age of the fetus but admits that this notoriously inaccurate method, combined with the often hazy conception dates provided by the women, can produce a window of error of plus or minus three weeks.”
Robinson gives an example:
“Let’s say the woman is at 31 weeks, well, given the inaccuracy of the ultrasound she could perfectly be 34 weeks. How would I feel if that happened?”
She gives an example where this happened:
“Robinson still recalls the shock she felt when she terminated the pregnancy of a fetus she thought was approximately 32 weeks. But when she saw the aborted body she realised that it was more like 37 weeks. She was devastated. “It was quite a moment,” she remembers”
Although the author of the article claims Robinson was shocked at seeing the 37 week old (full term) baby, there is not much difference between a 32 week baby and a 37 week one. Both are well beyond viability- the age when a baby can survive outside her mother’s womb. Premature babies as young as 22 weeks have survived being born prematurely.
Kim is a woman about to have an abortion and her doula’s name is Kat. Kat struggles to answer Kim’s question about how painful her abortion will be.
“Kim exhales, looks up at the ceiling then back at Kat [the doula]. “Is it gonna hurt?”
Kat pauses. This is one of the most common questions a doula gets asked before a procedure. It’s covered extensively in training, and while every doula has a slightly different turn of phrase, there is a standard approach that the Doula Project and the clinics we work with use. “Do you get cramps with your period?”….
Kim then says:
“You will feel something,” Kat explains, carefully choosing her words. “Everyone has a different reaction but for a few minutes it will feel like very strong period cramps.”
Mary Mahoney and Lauren Mitchell The Doulas: Radical Care for Pregnant People (New York: Feminist Press, 2016) 86-87
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an article about a case where an abortionist nearly killed a woman. This was not the only operation Dr. Scott R Barrett botched. He also killed at least one other woman:
“The degree of damage that Barrett caused to B.J. was almost unheard of. Barrett was utterly oblivious to the fact that he was suctioning B.J.’s abdominal organs out of her body. Then, having nearly eviscerated his patient and with her clearly in critical condition, he sent her to the hospital in a private car during rush hour. By the time she reached the operating table, she was moments away from bleeding to death. A more egregious example of incompetence and gross negligence is difficult to imagine.”
“An abortionist’s trial of tragedy records detail botched operations that; finally brought state action” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 08/02/92
Aletheia Meloncon, mother of Edrica Goode, who died from an abortion at Planned Parenthood in 2007.
“My daughter made a choice, but she didn’t choose to die. A lost dog gets more attention than my daughter did. This has really torn at my family.”
Edrica Goode was 21 when went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Riverside for an abortion that killed her. Her mother says that Edrica had not told her she was having an abortion.
Jonathan Abrams “Abortion procedure caused death of Riverside woman, lawsuit alleges” . Los Angeles Times. Jun 21, 2007. pg. B.4
Pro-Choice author Rosalind Petchesky, in Abortion and Woman’s Choice, says:
“Rather than apologize for abortion, feminists must proclaim loudly—as they did in the late 1960s and the early 1970s—that access to safe, funded abortion is a positive social need of all women of childbearing age.”
Rosalind Petchesky Abortion and Woman’s Choice: The State, Sexuality & Reproductive Freedom (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990)
Quoted in Camille S. Williams “Abortion and the Actualized Self” First Things November 1991
Abortion is not a “positive social need” for the babies it kills.
The night after her abortion, then high school student Shelley Goodell got out of bed in the middle of the night and ran to her boyfriend’s house. She had had an abortion to continue her schooling, without telling her parents.
“That night I tried to sleep but didn’t rest. My dreams were full of agitation. In the middle of the night, I sneaked out of my house and ran. Don’t do anything physical for a few days until the risk of hemorrhage is past, echoed the nurse’s voice in my mind. I didn’t care. I couldn’t hold the emotional explosion inside of me that I wasn’t supposed to be having. I arrived at my boyfriend’s, sneaked up to his room, and woke him up. We both cried. I told him I thought we had done the wrong thing, and he agreed. I asked him why he didn’t say so before. He said he was afraid I would be mad because I was the one who had to carry the baby.
The baby – not a procedure or tissue or trash – the baby, our baby…All we could do was cry and realize the awful truth.
I skipped school for the next month. All those things I wanted to protect were meaningless to me.…. I sank into deep depression.”
Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) 129 – 131
In an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about babies born alive after abortions, journalists Liz Jeffries and Rick Edmonds wrote of a doctor who did late term abortions. The article says:
“The psychological wear-and-tear from doing late abortions is obvious. Philadelphia’s Dr. Bolognese, who seven years ago was recommending wrapping abortion live-borns in a towel, has stopped doing late abortions.”
Dr. Bologneseis quoted saying:
”You get burned out…It seemed kind of schizophrenic, to be doing that on the one hand [helping women with problem pregnancies to have babies] and do abortions.”
by Liz Jeffries and Rick Edmonds “Abortion: The Dreaded Complication” Philadelphia Inquirer Aug 2, 1982
20 weeks. The doctor did abortions at this stage and later.Share on Facebook
B. R. Arnowitz interviewed abortion clinic workers, asking them about women’s emotions during abortions. In the article “Abortion and the Actualized Self”, writer Camille S. Williams explains what clinic workers told Arnowitz :
“Anesthesia pops the lid off the id,” clinic workers tell Arnowitz. Under anesthesia, women vocalize their conflicted states: “I had to do this. I didn’t want to kill this baby. My husband didn’t want it. My poor baby. I hate him.” Religious and superstitious women appear to have the worst experiences, “apparently due to their guilt and consequent conflict.”
This quote is in the article Camille S. Williams “Abortion and the Actualized Self” First Things November 1991.
It is referring to B. R. Arnowitz’s essay called “The Psychodynamics of Abortion” (included in a volume titled Critical Psychophysical Passages in the Life of A Woman, edited by Joan Offerman-Zuckerberg).
