Author: Sarah

Sarah Terzo is a pro-life writer and blogger. She is on the board of The Consistent Life Network and PLAGAL +

Studies Indicate Problems with Abortion Counseling

Several empirical studies in the U.S. have indicated the deficiencies of current abortion counseling practices with the majority of respondents reporting insufficient information provided by the abortion counselor; insensitive, unhelpful abortion clinic personnel, with respect to providing assistance in decision-making, and the provision of misinformation, thereby contributing to increased anxiety, confusion and levels of post-abortion depression and hostility

Barnard, C. (1990), The Long Term Psychological Effects of Abortion, Portsmouth, NH: Institute for Pregnancy Loss; and Vaughan, H. (1990), Canonical Variates of Post-Abortion Syndrome, Portsmouth, NH: Institute for Pregnancy Loss.

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Dr. Bernard Nathanson On Abortion

Dr. Bernard Nathanson helped legalize abortion, then came to regret having performed abortions

“I ran the largest abortion clinic in the world for 2 years. I had no conflicts whatsoever at the time I was doing the abortions. I changed my mind because the new scientific data which we were getting from advanced technology persuaded me that we could not indiscriminately continue to slaughter what was demonstrably a human being. “

Interview with Bernard Nathanson, M.D., 1986.

Miriam Claire Abortion Dilemma: Personal Views on a Public Issue (New York: : Insight Books, 1995) 127

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Abortionist “Wouldn’t Miss” Doing Abortions

Dr. Ken Gordon

“If I never had to do another abortion again, I wouldn’t miss it… [Performing abortions] gives me no pleasure.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 173

eight week-old unborn baby, typical age for an abortion
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Well-Publicized Pickets in Front of Abortion Clinics Are Counterproductive for Pro-Lifers

One abortionist talks about how antiabortion protest that his clinic actually led to an increase in business:

“They would stage a picket at the office and would at the same time make it a media event. They would call the press, they would all arrive, and the next day I would get twice as many phone calls because people would know I was doing the abortions – so, in fact, they made my name known.”

This indicates that large media events in front of clinics, as opposed to peaceful sidewalk counseling, often work against the pro-life movement and, in fact, lead to more abortions.

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 165

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Violence Is Not the Reason for Lack of Abortion Providers, Says Pro-Choice Author

Pro-Choice author Carole Joffe reveals that the main reason for the abortion provider shortage is lack of support within the medical community, not the actions of  violent antiabortion activists:

“While the dramatic, violent assaults on clinic facilities and abortion providers by antiabortionists have dominated headlines as the late 1980s and are commonly viewed as the chief reason for physicians’ withdrawal from abortion, in fact much of the medical establishment had already distanced itself from abortion services in the years before antiabortion violence began to escalate – mainly by supporting legal abortion in principle, while refusing to take part in the practice of abortion.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 161

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Abortionists Supported by “Few” in Medical Community

“These providers [abortionists]  are strongly opposed by a highly energized minority within medicine, rather passively tolerated by the majority; and actively supported only by a relative few.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 160

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Nurses React to Handling Aborted Babies

20 weeks

“Abortion in these cases were procured by injecting saline into the uterus causing causing labor and subsequent expulsion of the fetus twelve to twenty-four hours later. Nurses working with patients having this type of abortion found it most disturbing to ‘hold a well-formed aborted fetus with movement and with its eyes ‘still alive.’…Holding a fetus, feeling it move, hearing it try to ‘cry’,  (something that happens only with older fetuses, those of around twenty weeks gestation or more) smelling its death, and the like, are not trivial experiences; nor are they pleasant ones.”

Megan-Jane Johnstone. Bioethics: A Nursing Perspective (Sydney, N.S.W. Harcourt Saunders) 1999 p 286

Abortions this late are seldom done by saline injection anymore, but usually by poison injected into the amniotic fluid, which kills the baby over the course of 24 to 48 hours. Then the baby is extracted piecemeal with forceps. Live birth is not a possibility in this method.

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No Plaques for Abortionists

“They’re not going to put up any plaques for the abortionist in the medical society or the hospital.”

Abortionist David Bennett

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 159

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Doctors and Nurses Don’t Want to Do Abortions

Victor Black, operator of a free standing abortion clinic

“I’m sure there are some gynecologists in the area who would say, “That guy doesn’t do anything but abortions.” On the other hand, I have many gynecologists who refer to me – they’re very fine gynecologists – but they don’t want to do abortions themselves, largely because of their staff. Some nursing staffs don’t want to do abortions….They just don’t want to do it.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 158

This quote gives further indication that the reason there is such a shortage of abortion providers is not pro-life intimidation, but the fact that so many abortionists find the work distasteful.

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Abortion Doctors Fly In To Do Abortions, Then Leave

“The bulk of our doctors come from out of state. They fly in, they fly out.”

Betty Thompson, Jackson Women’s Health org, abortion clinic chain, PBS, The Last Abortion Clinic

Quoted by Life Dynamics

The number of abortion providers is small – with only a few abortionists doing the vast majority of abortions. It also should be noted that the doctor who leaves the abortion clinic as soon as he’s done operating is not very days a complication occurs. This puts women at risk.

 

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