I went to work for a Sacramento abortion mill in the first week of September 1990. Before then, the word “abortion” had seldom passed through my mind, and I had no concept of what one actually was. I had lived a “dysfunctional” life and the sacredness of human life was not something I thought of much.
My official title at the mill was “health worker.” I did various duties-lab work, leading groups (deceiving women about their abortions), “advocating” (deceiving women during their abortions), and assisting the abortionist, which included helping during the abortion and checking to make sure all the parts of the baby were there in the collection jar afterwards. I will never forget, in the second-trimester abortions, holding those little feet up to a chart on the wall to make sure of the age of the baby.
unborn baby’s foot at 14 weeks
Just like everyone else employed there I laughed at the pro-lifers outside the mill and hardened my heart against the truth. If I thought about what was really happening, it became overwhelming. So, I treated the whole issue as a joke-but somewhere along the line God started working on my heart. I started to read literature left by the pro-lifers, and pro-life books. I began to see what I was doing in a whole new light. I saw these babies for what they were-human beings. It was very hard for my heart and head to accept because I had been leaving both my heart and head at home for so long to work there.
From The Pro-Life Action League’s conference “Abortion: The Inside Story”. Dina Madsen says:
There was no medical background required for the job, you just had to be able to accept abortion. And of all the women I worked with several of those women, at least half of them had had abortions and had repeat abortions. And yet they wouldn’t let any of these guys [abortionists] touch them with a 10 foot pole. Never. And yet every day they told these other women, “they’re wonderful doctors, they won’t hurt you. They’re the best at what they do. He’s really a nice man.” And sometimes the women would ask, “have you ever had an abortion?”And of course they wouldn’t say, “yes but not by him.”
I have to admit though I didn’t really have much sympathy for them.[the women] In my view, well you got yourself into this position, tough it out.
So I was looking at these babies as something to be disposed of. I didn’t see them as important, I didn’t see life as important, I didn’t value my own life, therefore how can I value anyone else’s life. And if these women were stupid enough to get pregnant, then it was their fault. And that’s how I felt. And that was how the majority of the staff felt.
Some of the directors I worked with had eight or nine abortions, and we were the same people who would look down on these women when they came in for repeat abortions. How stupid can you get, you know?
And every time she’d come in for an abortion or a D&E, we’d stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp – some of these charts were filled in on both sides. And the doctor would take a look at them and say, “Gee, if she tries real hard she can come in again before Christmas.” And this is somebody who cares about women? I don’t think so.
I had a couple friends in high school who had had abortions, and I had a pregnancy scare myself when I was an adolescent, that was the first thing that came to my mind. I never thought about having the baby. I just took it as the general consensus, the general population does, that it is a choice, unfortunately it’s often presented as the only choice.
A woman would call, and I’d make her feel that this was her choice and that we were going to support her in this choice. Because the women are looking for someone to support their decision.”
This testimony was originally given at a “Meet the Abortion Providers” workshop sponsored by the Pro-life Action League of Chicago, directed by Joe Scheidler.
“Thank you for inviting me to the Pro-Life Action League’s fifth “Meet the Abortion Providers” conference, I think you will find my story of how I became an abortionist, unfortunately, somewhat typical, and my story of why I stopped, unfortunately, somewhat atypical.
I say “unfortunately” because it seems the majority of physicians who leave training today have been indoctrinated in [and have adopted] a pro-choice viewpoint. Even those of us who are strongly pro-life face tremendous pressures to support a national standard of care which does not honor the sanctity of human life. I will say more about this later.
I am 50 years old. I have been delivering babies in Indianapolis for 26 years; I lost count many years ago of the actual number, but I would estimate the total to be between four and five thousand. My father is also an obstetrician, now retired, who practiced obstetrics in Anderson, Indiana where I grew up. He delivered over 10,000 babies and has a strong pro-life viewpoint even though he is an agnostic.
I did all of my training at the Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis. I rotated back and forth between the private Coleman Hospital for Women and the Marion County General Hospital for the indigent population. My residency was from 1970 – 1973. Since the infamous Roe v. Wade decision came down in January 1973, my career overlaps the years before and after that landmark decision. However, I became all too familiar with abortions from the very beginning of my residency.
Of course, I saw women whose social circumstances seemed desperate who asked to be referred for illegal abortions. Once, I asked an attending staff physician about such a referral, and rather than condemn it, he said he knew of a general practitioner who had the reputation of doing abortions. In retrospect, I asked the wrong doctor that question, but at that point in my life, I respected the opinion of all of my mentors.
About 1970 the state of New York passed legislation allowing abortions to be performed legally. This was not necessarily a popular choice. Referendums to legalize abortions in Michigan and North Dakota were defeated by 3:1 and 4:1 margins.
A few months into my residency, I came face to face with the issue of abortion for the first time. An 18-year-old Indiana University coed came into Coleman Hospital with lower abdominal pain. She related to me that she had been to New York City earlier that day to have a legal abortion performed at a clinic there. She had gotten on a plane at 8am at Indianapolis International Airport and flown to New York. She was taken to a legitimate clinic by a cab driver. She had believed she was two and a half months pregnant, but after the doctor had unsuccessfully attempted to abort the pregnancy, he told her she wasn’t really pregnant after all and sent her home. She returned to Indiana on the 4pm flight as planned.
When she returned home in terrible pain, she realized she was in trouble and for the first time, told her mother what had happened to her. Her mother contacted her own gynecologist, who in turn referred the patient to Coleman Hospital to be evaluated by the resident on call–me.
Even though I was still wet behind the ears, I know that this pale, frightened little girl was still 10 weeks pregnant and her blood count was only half of what it should be. The private, attending doctor came in and took the patient to surgery immediately that night, where he repaired the hole that had been torn in the back of her uterus, which had caused her massive internal hemorrhage.
Over the course of the next few days, infection set in which did not respond to antibiotics, and we made the painful decision to perform a hysterectomy. Tragically, the shock from the infection severely damaged her lungs and her course was steadily downhill. As I helplessly watched, she slipped into unconsciousness and a few days later she died.
I had difficulty putting the whole thing into perspective. Unfortunately, my conclusion was that there had to be a better way to perform abortions than to send patients off to a clinic in New York.
There was another kind of abortion being done at that time right in Coleman Hospital. These were so called “second trimester abortions” being done for “psychiatric” reasons. Although my textbook stated that true psychiatric indications for abortion were extremely rare, in practice it was relatively easy for a woman to get two psychiatrists to rubber stamp her abortion request for the price of a consultation visit. By the time all the paperwork was done, these pregnancies were more advanced and were classified as second trimester. Technically, these could be between 14 and 27 weeks, but usually they were 18 – 20 weeks along.
This type of abortion was then done by hypertonic saline injection. In laymen’s terms this meant injecting a very caustic salt solution into the amniotic sac which the baby swallows, causing his death. Labor begins 12 – 36 hours later, A well liked member of the teaching faculty would inject the solution and the patient was admitted to the gynecology ward to await delivery.
It was my job to go to the ward and pick up the dead baby from the labor bed and make sure the placenta had all come out. This was my least favorite duty as a resident, and again I concluded there had to be a better way.
Since hypertonic saline was so toxic if it was injected into the uterine wall instead of the amniotic sac; there was a constant search for the ideal drug. Prostaglandin has now become the drug of choice, but one of the early experiments was with hypertonic urea. The major disadvantage in using it, was the problem of live births. I remember using it on a patient that the psychiatric residents brought to us from their clinic from an institutionalized patient who really was crazy. I’ll never forget delivering her nearly two pound baby, and hearing her screams, “My baby’s alive, my baby’s alive.” It lived several days.
Later, I was taught by my chief resident that if I was delivering a defective baby, such as an anencephalic, I should place it in the bucket of water at my side and declare it a stillborn. I never did that, but I’ll always remember it.
The problem of live birth in second and third trimester abortions has been solved by the dilation and evacuation procedure, or D & E. The cervix is dilated with laminaria, which are pieces of dried seaweed which absorb water over a 12 hour period and stretch to 4 times their original size. The baby is then delivered piecemeal.
diagram of a D&E
When I rotated over to the county hospital, I became familiar with illegal abortions and their aftermath. Every woman who came in with even a routine miscarriage was suspected of having had a criminal abortion. We were trained to be suspicious because of the consequences of missing the diagnosis of a perforated uterus.
We were all indoctrinated with the almost legendary story of how one of our preceding residents, Dr. James Brillhart, had gone out of the hospital and tracked down an old, dying abortionist who had been responsible for the deaths of several patients. Ironically, Dr. Brillhart has been one of the leading abortionists in Indianapolis from Roe v. Wade to the present day. The actual number of criminal abortions was small and although I saw some patients who were pretty sick, I don’t recall any patients during my three years who died from a criminal abortion.
At the county hospital, we received patients from the other two private hospital residency programs when they didn’t want to take care of a particular patient. Consequently, we looked down on those residents and developed the mind set that we were to take care of every problem we encountered. We would not “dump” problems on others.
When I finished my residency, I covered my father’s practice for 6 months before beginning a teaching position at Indiana University. I recall asking my department chairman what I should do about abortions, since my father was pro-life. His wise advice was not to perform them in Anderson.
However, when I returned to the medical center, I was placed in charge of the outpatient OB/GYN clinics at the county hospital, now called Wishard Hospital. Since Roe v Wade was now the law of the land, Drs. Joe Thompson and Bob Munsick were both performing abortions at Wishard. I greatly respected both men. I was faced with the direct question, “Would I also perform abortions at Wishard?”
I had already bought the big lies that “Abortion is a logical extension of family planning services” and that “All people needed to prevent unwanted pregnancies is more information and better access to contraception.”
I might add at this point that I was not encumbered by any personal religious beliefs at that time. As a teenager, I had expressed to my future wife, that I had a desire to know God and had joined her church, but I didn’t have any conviction of sin and I didn’t come to a saving faith at that time.
After studying science, I had come to an agnostic position with respect to God. Without a foundation of absolute truth, and under the influence of my peers, and based on my own experiences, I decided to do what was right in my own eyes and perform first trimester abortions for poor women at Wishard. I would be a good soldier and do my duty. A doctor’s duty, I believed, was to do everything in his power to fix what was wrong with his patient.
I believed in applying this medical solution of abortion to a societal problem of unwanted pregnancy. I believed that if these women were unencumbered by unwanted children that they could rise above their poverty.
I still believe that I was not in it for the money. In my teaching contract, I only got to keep 25% of anything I earned in private practice. At age 28, I was idealistic, immature, and too inexperienced in the way of the world.
In making the decision to do abortions, I went against God’s Word, the beliefs of my father and violated my Hippocratic Oath.
Incidentally, the section of the oath stating “I will not give a woman a pessary to induce abortion” has been deleted from the oath when it is used by new physicians today. I’m not sure Hippocrates would understand,
Between January and May of 1974, I performed 23 “pregnancy terminations” at Wishard. That is a euphemistic way of saying that I killed 23 children. One definition of a euphemism is a figure of speech where a less disagreeable word or phrase is substituted for a more accurate but more offensive one.
The deception in the language of abortion is achieved through the use of euphemisms. “Pregnancy termination” rather than abortion. “Menstrual extraction” rather than early abortion. “Products of conception” rather than baby and placenta. “Tissues” rather than flesh and bones. It makes it sound more like a Kleenex than a baby. Even “fetus” and “embryo” are Greek and Latin words for Baby. “Chorionic Villus Sampling” rather than placental biopsy. “Selective Multi Fetal Reduction” rather than random killing of several babies in an attempt to save the remainder of the lucky ones.
All of these terms dehumanize what is being destroyed so that we deceive others — and ourselves.
One of my idealistic bubbles burst in about April of 74, when a patient whom I had aborted in January, returned to me for another abortion. She was using abortion for birth control.
In order to tell you why I finally stopped, I need to explain a little about the technique of suction curettage abortion. Incidentally, I did them under general anesthesia in surgery. Today, most are done under local anesthesia in a clinic.
First, the cervix, or mouth of the womb, is stretched open with pencil shaped dilators, until it is open enough to insert the suction curette, which is a clear plastic straw like tube. A vacuum source is then attached to the curette. After the curette is introduced into the uterus, the water is broken and is seen through the curette, followed by bits of flesh and blood, which is what remains of the baby and placenta. The procedure works well because the baby is small at 10 weeks and is not calcified, so that it fits easily through the narrow tube. All parts become almost indistinguishable in the mesh filter bag in the suction jar.
My 23rd abortion changed my mind about doing abortions forever. This patient was a little overweight and ultimately proved to be a little farther along than anticipated. This was not an uncommon mistake before ultrasound was readily available to confirm the gestational age.
Initially, the abortion proceeded normally. The water broke, but then nothing more would come out. When I withdrew the curette, I saw that it was plugged up with the leg of the baby which had been torn off. I then changed techniques and used ring forceps to dismember the 13 or 14 week size baby. Inside the remains of the rib cage I found a tiny, beating heart. I was finally able to remove the head and looked squarely into the face of a human being — a human being that I had just killed. I turned to the scrub nurse standing next to me and said, “I’m sorry”.
I knew then that abortion was wrong and I couldn’t be a part of it any longer. No one was critical of me for what I had done, nor for having stopped. But I had a lot of guilt about that abortion and had flashbacks to it from time to time. I sometimes dreamed about it. The guilt lasted about four years.”
Dr. Jarrett then discusses his conversion to Christianity and explains how it helped him resolve the guilt that he felt from doing abortions.
Here is Dr. Brewer’s speech given at the Meet the Abortion Providers convention which was sponsored by The Pro-Life Action League in Chicago.
“You know, when Mr. Scheidler came to our room last evening to give us the program for the day, when he walked in I had forgotten how tall he is. It’s really neat to be able to look pretty much right-on into somebody’s eyes instead of looking down. I guess my dear mother and father did real good with the prenatal vitamins and also all those vitamins that were in vogue back in the 1940s when I was growing up.
You know, we all wear different hats and I have a lot of different hats, too. I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m a doctor (OB/GYN), and I’m a concerned citizen about political issues and other issues of our day–and I was an abortionist, and am now known as what we call a cross-over; one who’s made the change. That’s due to my Lord, Jesus Christ, because Christ made a change in my life, and I want to share what that part of my life was like before and then after.
People are not naturally against life. Kids love other kids. Teenage girls (and we have several) like children. Mothers of children like children. There are trying moments, but we love our children. Fathers and mothers love their children. So, you have to be trained to hate children. We have to be trained against life. When we go to church, we don’t hear the pro-abortion story. When we read in the Bible, we don’t hear the pro-abortion story. When we talk with our mother and father about how they feel about us, etc., we don’t hear the pro-abortion story. When I talk with my mother about her and my dad having me, I don’t hear that they considered abortion. So the point is that we have to be trained to hate. We have to be trained to be against life.
Dr. Hill shared a little bit about his experience, and he took some of my lines. But it’s interesting, isn’t it, that two doctors who had done abortions before and went to different medical schools and trained in different areas of the country, and now are living and practicing in different areas of the country, would have a type of common beginning.
It happened after medical school as I began my residency in OB/GYN. You know, we learn on-the-job. A lot of medicine is on the-job training. A lot of medicine, including surgery, has a lot of skill that’s a mechanical, technician-type skill. Working on a car to fix it, putting in wiring in a home, doing plumbing, doing a Caesarean Section, doing a hysterectomy, taking a mole or a lump off, doing a D&C. A D&C is a common procedure that we use often in OB/GYN to get a sample of the lining of the uterus. For example, an older woman who is having trouble with bleeding, or a younger woman who had a problem with hormone balance or is/was having problems with her periods.
And so, as we learn that in residency, there came a time when we went to the clinic to learn about abortion. After all, abortion was just applying the technique of a D&C to a woman who was in a little different state–she was pregnant.
In 1973, when abortion was legalized, Dr. Hill mentioned New York (where I was trained, born and brought up) was one of the first states to go along with that. So I can remember in my training when they used to fly women from Ohio to New York to several of the doctors who worked at the hospital where I was training to have their abortions. Now there wasn’t a big local outcry in the community that I knew of, but I do know that as this doctor built a new house, funded partly by monies from these abortions, that his new home became known around town as “Abortion Manor.” So I began to understand that there was something about abortion that many people did not agree with.
We went to church as a family. We were taken to church, but we weren’t a Christian family. My parents weren’t Christians at that time; none of us were either. So as I went into residency, I didn’t have the type of moral and ethical background or preparation from the home that many people have. I didn’t have strong standards for myself.
I can remember that day watching the first abortion with the resident doctor sitting down and putting the tube in and removing the contents, and I saw the bloody material coming down the plastic tube and it went into a big jar. The first one. I’d never seen one before. I didn’t know what to expect. Well, it was my job afterwards to go undo the jar and see what was inside. It was kind of neat, learning about a new experience. I wasn’t a Christian; I didn’t have any views on abortion; I was in a training program; this was a brand-new experience. I was going to get to see a new procedure and learn, and that was exciting.
And it got more exciting as I opened the jar and took the little piece of stockinette and opened that little bag, and the resident doctor said, now put it on that blue towel and check it out. We want to make sure that we got it all. I thought, oh, that will be exciting hands-on experience, looking at tissue. And I opened the sock up and I put it on the towel and there were parts in there of a person. I’d taken anatomy; I was a medical student; I knew what I was looking at. There was a little scapula and an arm and I saw some ribs and a chest, and I saw a little tiny head, and I saw a piece of a leg, and I saw a tiny hand, and I saw an arm. You know, it was like somebody put a hot poker into me. I believe that God gives us all a conscience and I wasn’t a Christian, but I had a conscience and that hurt.
I checked it out and there were two arms and two legs and one head, etc., and I turned and said, I guess you got it all. That was a very hard experience for me to go through, emotionally. If I’d been a Christian against abortion it would have been simple–I wouldn’t have been there. And if I’d been excited and wanted to do them and excited about the money that I’d make later in practice, I would have been on the opposite end. But here I was with no real convictions, caught in the middle.
seven weeks
So I did what a lot of us do throughout our life, we don’t do anything. I didn’t talk with anybody about it. I didn’t talk with my folks about it. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t look in the Bible because I wasn’t a Christian, and so I did nothing, and do you know what happened? I got to see another abortion.
You know what? That one hurt, too. But I didn’t do anything again and kept seeing abortions, and do you know what? It hurt a little bit less every time I saw one. Do you know what happened next? I got to sit down and do one, because you see one, you do one, and you teach one, as Dr. Hill mentioned.
The first one that I did was kind of hard. It was like hurting again like a hot poker. But after a while it got to where it didn’t hurt.
I’m reminded of a summer when I was a 15-year-old boy, and, you know, when you’re 15 it’s tough, because you have to be 16 in New York State to get working papers, and so I wasn’t 16 yet and I wanted to earn some money and I couldn’t get working papers. I couldn’t work at a McDonald’s (I don’t even know if we had McDonald’s then!). But I couldn’t get a job and work in a place, so I decided to start my own little business. My dad had a lawn mower and I got a sickle and I had some trimmers, and went out and took care of people’s yards and had a little lawn and garden service. I did pretty well financially that summer. But, you know, the first couple of weeks, my hands hurt and I got big blisters. I was using tools that my hands were used to, all day, every day. That was like my heart when I saw and did abortions. But then you know, after a few weeks, I got calluses on my hands and pretty soon they didn’t look real good, but, boy, my hands could work all day and no blisters and no pain.
That’s what happened to my heart as I saw the abortions and then began doing them. My heart got callused. My heart was callused against the fact that I was a murderer.
That happens to us sometimes in life and it’s a hard thing. But I got so callused that when I was on duty at night some of the doctors who were in partnership with the doctor who lived in Abortion Manor would come in to do their saline abortions. These were women who were farther along, and they would do five in a night…line the women up all in one big room and put the needles in and put the salt solution in, and then there would be five therapeutic miscarriages, right? Five times 500 is 2,500. That’s not bad fifteen years ago for one night’s extra work. You do that a couple of nights a week and that’s a lot of money. But I really had no concept, having been through medical school even, of what was inside because when we got on the OB service we delivered normal, healthy babies most of the time. There weren’t very many miscarriages at four and five months. Once in a while we would see one.
16 weeks – at the right age for an early saline abortion
But once they began doing abortions and doing the saline abortions, and I would take my turn with the other residents being on duty, guess who came in at night to take care of the women when they had trouble delivering the babies or had trouble delivering the afterbirths? The doctor who did it and made the money? No. It was me and the other residents. So I would go to a room and a lady would be screaming and crying and walk in, and here was like the “candy apple babies” that you’ve seen all scarred and burned from the salt solution, and the placenta would be stuck and we’d have to work with them, and once in a while we’d have to take them to surgery and do a D&C. Boy, that was grim! That was a lot worse than a little sock, because somebody else had to look through the sock now that I was a big resident and doing abortions and they had to check for me, so I didn’t have to look in the sock anymore.
But one night, a lady delivered and I was called to come and see her because she was uncontrollable. I went in the room and she was going to pieces. She was having a nervous breakdown, screaming and thrashing. The nurses were upset because they couldn’t get any work done and all the other patients were upset because this lady was screaming and I walked in, and here was her little saline abortion baby. It had been born and it was kicking and moving for a little while before it finally died of those terrible burns. Because the salt solution gets into the lungs and burns the lungs too.
Like Dr. Hill, I began thinking and you just think that if you club somebody on the head enough with a big club, they’d wake up, but like him, I had a very thick head, I guess, too. But I saw that more and more. Every time it would begin to eat away, I would thicken that callous a little bit more. I wasn’t making any money because I wasn’t in private practice yet. So it’s not that I was in it for the money. I was just simply uncommitted, and that’s the way a lot of people today are. We’re uncommitted; we’re afraid to stand up; we’re afraid to speak out. Maybe we aren’t afraid; we just don’t have our own convictions settled yet.
20 weeks.
I remember another experience as a resident when I had an opportunity to help one of Abortion Manor’s partners on a hysterotomy. This lady was too far along for a suction D&C; we did not have prostaglandins in those days; we did not do D&Es very often in those days. So since she was in the second trimester and far enough along (four to five months), why she was going to have a hysterotomy. Well, that was kind of exciting to me, to see a Caesarian on a baby that young, so I helped on that surgery. I remember as we made the incision and got in and made the incision in the uterus, to see the baby move underneath the sack of membranes as the Caesarian incision was made before the doctor broke the water. The thought came to me, my God, that’s a person! Then he broke the water, and when he broke the water it was like I had a pain in my heart just like when I saw that first suction abortion. Then he delivered the baby and I couldn’t touch the baby. I wasn’t much of an assistant; I just stood there and the reality of what was going on was finally beginning to seep in to my calloused brain and heart. They simply took that little baby that was making little sounds and moving and kicking over and set it on the table in a cold stainless steel bowl. Every time I would look over while we were repairing the incision in the uterus and finishing the Caesarean, I would see that little person kicking and moving in that bowl. It kicked and moved less and less, of course, as time went on. I can remember going over and looking at that baby when we were done with surgery and the baby was still alive. You could see the chest moving as the heart beat and the baby would try and take a little breath, and it really hurt inside and it began to educate me as to what abortion really was.
What do we do when something gets so close to us that it hurts? We either fight it or we put it away. Either we fight it or we run. If somebody jumps out at me, I’m either going to run or I’m going to fight. I wasn’t equipped to fight, and so I ran. The way we run is by putting up barriers. My barrier was, well, boy, that really hurt; that was a living baby; now this abortion thing, I’ve got to deal with that somehow; I’m going to just have to decide something for myself here. This is not good. So I made a startling decision. I decided that, for me, life began when a baby could survive outside the uterus, and if I was involved in something like that, that would be an abortion. That was a nice smokescreen, wasn’t it? That meant that when I did the suction abortions I wasn’t killing anything. That meant that when I helped out on a saline abortion, and they said, do you want to do one? Sure, I’d like to try and see how the needle works and see how it goes. I wasn’t doing an abortion. That meant that the hysterectomy that I helped on was not an abortion because the baby couldn’t have survived outside. After all, it sat in the dish and died. So, for me, life began after 28 weeks and I continued doing abortions.
Then I saw more babies being born earlier and, you know, with our neonatal intensive care units and all of our modern technology. Back in 1973, we couldn’t do a whole lot other than on an anecdotal basis with babies that were even 28 weeks. But as technology increased, suddenly they were having luck with babies that were 28 weeks old, and then 27 weeks, and then 26 weeks. So I began to drop my smokescreen and I said, well, abortion then is after 27 weeks. Well, no, it’s after 26 weeks. Well, maybe it’s 24 weeks. Then I got to thinking maybe it’s 20 weeks. All I was doing was avoiding the problem.
The next smokescreen was, well, it’s really a baby when it’s all formed, so after 12 weeks it’s a baby so the first trimester abortions aren’t really abortions, and I can handle that. So I lived like that for a while.
I have big feet; I wear a size 14 shoe. All these different shoes I was trying on seemed big enough in the beginning, you know, but they were getting small real fast and they weren’t fitting. The next thing I knew I kept dropping my smokescreen back to where life occurred earlier and earlier.
When I became a Christian I realized that life occurs at conception. And once that startling discovery had been made, it was very simple to stop doing abortions. That decision and Christianity didn’t come during residency, however. After residency I went into the military for two years, and it’s hard for me to say these things because it took ten years for God to work in my life to where I was able to deal with the guilt that I felt for all the abortions that I had done. But when I went into the military, I used to take pride in the fact that if a woman came to me and she was pregnant and wanted the baby, I could take care of her. I had a fine training in OB/GYN. And, if a woman came to me and she did not want the baby, I took pride in the fact that I could take care of her as well by doing an abortion.
So, I was doing abortions in the military and we’d line them up. It was sort of like private practice, and we did a good number of abortions. At that time, my shoes had shrunk down to where now I had to wear the size that included just the first trimester.
What happened next in my life was that a very precious woman, who is now my wife, invited me to go to church. She wasn’t even a Christian at the time. But I went to church and guess what happened to me? What was I going to do with this girl who was coming in for an abortion, and I’ll tell you, that was a tough time for me. Because I had the feeling that if I did just the one more, then I wouldn’t have to do any again. I could just fulfill this commitment and do this last one, and that could be my last one.
But, you know, God reminded me of that calloused heart that I had developed, and that if I did one more, after making the commitment as a Christian, that I would get back into that same old problem again. So, by God’s grace, I told that girl that I couldn’t do it. I wish I had known what happened to her; I never did find out. But that was a turning point in my life and a very special time.
Bob Edwards, the scientist who created Great Britain’s first in vitro fertilization baby gave a speech at a fertility conference where he said:
“Soon it will be a sin if parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children.”
Sunday Times (London) July 4, 1999 as reported in American Feminist, winter 1999 – 2000
Edwards puts forth the argument that couples who discover that their unborn babies have a genetic disorder or disease should not give birth to those children.
From a woman who had prenatal testing which showed that her son had Down Syndrome, yet chose to give birth to him and parent:
“Experiencing this testing sequence firsthand, however, gave me some insights into the potentially pernicious efforts of the prenatal testing process. The tests are all offered in the guise of “reassurance.” They all carry with them the implication that the responsible mother can and should do something constructive with the results: take extra iron if she’s found to be anemic, take AZT if she has HIV, abort the baby if he has Down Syndrome. If you lack the financial or other resources to raise a child with a disability, you could easily be swayed by an argument that the knowledge you now possess about the child gives you the responsibility to do something constructive to solve the problem – by doing away with the child.
Now, this argument could obviously be a powerful incentive for a person to choose an abortion. Going through this process personally made me acutely aware of its power…. What surprised me was that people did not stop making this argument once I had rejected it during the testing phase. When I started telling people that the baby I was expecting would have Down Syndrome, colleagues asked me incredulously, “Why are you having this baby?”… [After the baby was born] I found, to my astonishment, that society still kept asking that question – why did you have this baby? I have seen people react with marked surprise when they hear that I knew Petey would have Down Syndrome before he was born. Though they do not ask aloud, you can see the question in their eyes: “if you knew, why did you have the baby?” What’s buried in that question, deep in their eyes, is the perception of my son as a “choice” – specifically, my choice – rather than a unique human being created in God’s image, a full-fledged member of the human race.”
Elizabeth R Schlitz. “Living in the Shadow of Monchberg: Prenatal Testing and Genetic Abortion” in Erika Bachiochi. The Cost of “Choice”: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2004)
Marie Ideson was just over 16 weeks pregnant with a Down Syndrome child.
“I was bullied into going ahead with an abortion,” says Ideson, 46, a GP surgery manager. “I only wish I could turn back the clock. I think of the daughter I never had every day. I’ll always regret it.”
Ideson had an amniocentesis to determine if the baby she was carrying was disabled. She was told it was a routine part of pre-natal care. Four days later, she received a call from the hospital:
“A woman said, ‘I’m sorry to say your baby has Down.’ It was devastating. My first thought was, how will we cope?
“I told Allan I wanted to keep the baby and he agreed.”
Then she went into talk to the doctor, hoping that he would help her in her decision to keep her baby.
“We believed the hospital would be able to offer us reassurance that with the latest medical help, our baby would be OK. But doctors said she could be born needing emergency heart surgery and have bowel and muscle tone problems – and that was if she survived. At no time did anyone suggest we might keep our baby. A termination was presented as the only way forward.”
“A nurse said not aborting my baby would cause it to suffer, and she’d only become a burden on society if I went ahead. She even said, ‘99 per cent of women in your situation wouldn’t want the baby.’ Having it would be a burden on our other children, too, she said, especially if it was likely to need many operations throughout its life.
“Our children were at the hospital with us. I looked at them and thought the medical staff must be right.”
She decided to have the abortion, and took the tablet that would induce a miscarriage.
“I felt numb as I swallowed the tablet. I remember saying to Allan, ‘I just want to keep my baby.’ But he just kept saying, ‘But they must think the baby’s really bad, Marie – it’s for the best.’”
When she actually delivered her child, stillborn, she realized what a terrible mistake she had made.
“She was so small, but otherwise perfect. I started sobbing uncontrollably. What had I done? I realised I’d been bullied into taking that first pill. I felt overwhelmed by anger. I should’ve been sent home to think about all the options. It should’ve been pointed out that having my baby was an option and that, with medical advances, most Down babies go on to live happy lives.”
I felt so guilty and upset. I felt I should have kept her. And if Lillie wasn’t going to survive, I’d have been happier letting nature take its course.”
The abortion became an issue between Ideson and her husband.
“I knew he was devastated, too, but I was angry he’d allowed staff to rush me into getting rid of her. The feeling he didn’t support me when I needed him most festered between us.”
“The final straw came when I was in labour with Reuben [her next baby]. We were at home and the midwives wanted me to go to the hospital, but I told them I couldn’t go back to where I’d terminated Lillie. Allan tried to persuade me to go and, in the end, I had no choice. I felt, again, Allan hadn’t spoken up for me when I was at my most vulnerable. I couldn’t find it in my heart to forgive him.”
Like many couples after abortion, they split up.
“My eldest sons are 25 now. When I was pregnant with them, I knew of women who had babies with Down syndrome. Today, I never see mums with Down babies. I can’t believe that everyone who finds out their baby has Down syndrome willingly chooses to abort it. I can’t help feeling that other women must be having abortions they don’t want.”
In a blog about a woman who was pregnant and working in an abortion clinic, an abortion provider said the following:
“We are not baby haters. Most of us adore babies and children. Some of us have even worked in child education. Many of us are mothers. We love babies. And we also honor your choice.”
The Abortioneers “Pregnant Abortioneers: We Still Love Babies” September 26, 2011
Merle Hoffman, who founded Choices, an abortion clinic in Queens, on her abortion:
“With my choice I was fighting for the right of all women to define abortion as an act of love: love for the family one already has, and just as important, love for oneself. I was fighting to reclaim abortion as a mother’s act. It was an act of solidarity as significant as any other I had committed.”
