Rick Harris, Alabama Bureau of Health Provider Standards director, discusses the closure of abortion clinics in Alabama:
“This will make three clinics on probation and one that has lost its license. When four out of ten of the industry gets licensing action, that’s a high number. That’s a real high number.We’re doing a lot more enforcement of other facilities, too. You don’t hear about it very much, but it’s going on.”
The Associated Press, Health dept. wants probation for Birmingham abortion clinic, 11/17/2006
According to “Michelle” who owns an abortion clinic:
“I’ve thought through this issue, to do it as long as I have, and I have to sleep well at night… Is it life? Clearly it’s life. Does it deserve protection? My answer is “no.” The bottom line, you have two competing interests: the mother and the baby (or the embryo or the fertilized egg). And sometime during that nine month gestation, a woman’s rights are going to digress. At that point, I guess, rights can be ascribed to the fetus.”
She knows that “it” is life, and she even uses the term “baby.”
James D Slack Abortion, Execution, and the Consequences of Taking Life (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009) 49
In The New Age Journal, Brenda Petersen wrote the following:
“I approach this abortion as a sacred act of compassion and letting go. Many mothers before me, and grief and with wisdom, have made holy the sacrifice.”
Brenda Petersen, “Moon Times: a Meditation for Spiritual Healing from Abortion” The New Age Journal September/October, 1993 page 65 of Rachel M MacNair, PhD. Achieving Peace in the Abortion War (New York: iUniverse, 2009)
Singer Madonna describes seeing her unborn baby on the ultrasound for the first time:
“I was stunned when I saw on the ultrasound a tiny, living creature spinning around in my womb. Tap-dancing, I think. Waving its tiny arms around and trying to suck its thumb. I could have sworn I heard it laughing.”
World Magazine, December 1996
first trimester sonogram
Read about Abby Johnson, the Planned Parenthood clinic director who became pro-life after watching an ultrasound guided abortion.
Jodia Peters was 16 when she had an abortion. Seven years later, she spoke out in support of Amendment 25, a bill that would require abortion clinics to give information about abortion’s risks, the development of the unborn baby, and abortion alternatives. Women would not be forced to view this information, but it would have to be offered to them. Planned Parenthood and other pro-choice groups oppose these informed consent laws.
From the author of the article:
“Peters said she had no idea of the possible medical and emotional risks [Of abortion]. Many came true for her. She became severely depressed and had uterine scarring which, five years later, caused the premature birth of her son, Jereth. Now 3, he’s had seizures and faces possible eyesight complications.
Jodia tells her story:
“I think my life would have been different with more information,” she says. “If I had numbers for adoption agencies, or had 24 hours’ notice, maybe I could’ve gotten away from my (family member). But I didn’t know I had any other kind of support.”
11 week unborn baby
Again from the author:
She also wishes she knew what her unborn child looked like at 11 weeks, but she says the ultrasound presented to her by the abortion practitioner was done too quickly. When a doctor showed her Jereth’s ultrasound at the same stage of pregnancy, she clearly saw fingers and toes.
“If I knew, I think I could have stood up to the pressure.”
Jodia Peters says that after the clinic worker obtained her consent for the abortion, the clinic showed her a video on the procedure:
“It showed the instruments they used. I remember the words, ‘gentle suction’ and ‘slight pressure,’ all these rosy words, everything to make me feel good.”
The author continues:
Any feel-good sense vanished when the abortion practitioner entered the room with a brief hello, and quickly began dilating her cervix without taking any time to visit with her.
Right away, she said, “It hurt so bad I wanted to die. I told him to stop. He looked at me and said, ‘I can’t.’ I kicked, tried to get up. The person in there for support was holding me down. I was screaming, crying, kicking, everything.”
She’s still tormented wondering “whether he could have stopped when I told him to.”
….
Not until after the abortion was she given a small booklet called “Facts for Abortion Patients.” She recalls reading for the first time about excessive bleeding, possible infection and other dangers and risks associated with abortion. Only then, after reading the book following the abortion, did she learn the name of the abortion practitioner.
“Colorado Woman Recalls Her Abortion Tragedy” Denver Rocky Mountain News; October 23, 2000
“I am a vegetarian. The killing of sentient, biologically autonomous birds or mammals who have done nothing to me, solely to satisfy a completely unnecessary (and unhealthy) lust for artery-clogging animal fat, is something that I personally consider to be immoral and unethical… even if the embryo is human, it still would not have the right to force the mother to use her body to keep it alive against her will. If the decision to give birth is what she wants, then “life” is a “beautiful choice.” But it is her choice; she cannot legally be forced into it….” [Emphasis in original]
TF Barans “Women’s Reproductive Self-Determination: Pro-Choice Right to Abortion” copyright 1999-2007
Dr. Sidney Laughlin got into trouble for performing abortions in his home and sterilizing his equipment in the dishwasher. Nurse Gayla Ennis, who claimed that she had helped him perform”four or five”abortions, notified authorities who staked out his house, which was across the street from an elementary school.
16 weeks
They found the remains of what officials thought to be a 16 week old aborted baby in his trash. The results of the autopsy on the aborted baby:
“Definitely identifiable human tissue consists of a right and left arm, both of which have been dismembered at the shoulder joint…a portion of the mid body is seen …consisting of the back and buttocks. This specimen contains a definitely identifiable spinal cord with numerous organs of which a kidney is observed. Also present are right and left leg and foot, all having definitively identifiable digits as do the hands.There is a head portion also present which has been macerated and opened and shows no definitive brain, but fragments of what appear to be brain tissue are observed with the remains. … The head has also been dismembered from the remaining portion of the body.”
16 weeks
The nurse claimed that she stopped working with Laughlin after he allegedly aborted a baby at his home that according to her, “looked about 28 weeks”
She told reporters,
“I was shocked and after that one didn’t help him anymore with anything. Sid had a few special instruments that he had special ordered, they were 12 to 14 inches long, had a 1 to 2 inch headwith sharp teeth on the forceps part that he used to break up body parts.”
“Doctor Investigated In Abortion Allegations” Daily Oklahoman 7/15/1992
The state of Minnesota had a parental notification law which was in place in 1981, challenged in 1986, suspended, and then reinstituted.
The number of abortions dropped 34% while the law was in place, the number of pregnancies in the age group dropped 27%
“Impact of MN Parental Notification Law on Abortion and Birth” J. Rogers, et al., American Journal of Public health, March 1991, volume 81, number 3, P294
Perhaps when teenagers realize that abortion is not such an easy option, they are more diligent at using contraception are practicing abstinence. The fact that both the abortion rate and the pregnancy rate went down seems to indicate that when parental consent laws are in place, teens will do more to avoid pregnancy.
Many women who go to crisis pregnancy centers change their minds about having abortions when they see their baby on the ultrasound screen. Some estimates say that up to 80% of women who see their baby moving on the ultrasound screen choose to give birth rather than have abortions. For this reason, abortion clinics routinely turn the ultrasound machine away from women.
Planned Parenthood another pro-choice organizations vehemently fight laws that would require a woman to see the ultrasound of her baby before an abortion, and even fight laws that would simply give her the option to do so without requiring it.
One pro-choice author, commenting on a proposed law in Louisiana which required a woman to see an ultrasound image of her baby before aborting it, called the ultrasound a “torture weapon.”
12 weeks
Is it really best for women to be kept in the dark about their pregnancies? Any pro-lifer who has listened to postabortion women talk has realized that many of them are traumatized when they are told by clinic workers that their unborn babies are simply collections of cells and then later see a baby on the ultrasound screen, perhaps a subsequent pregnancy. Is it better to keep women in the dark to “protect” them, or to give them all the information about what is going on in their own bodies?
