“When she came in today for her fifth abortion, a number of staff members were visibly and audibly agitated. They clearly were upset that all of the previous discussions about birth control seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.”
Doctors and other people who work in abortion clinics deal with the reality of abortion every day. They are the ones that see the bodies of the aborted babies and the blood. Therefore, the common pro-choice rhetoric that abortion is a benign procedure that does not kill a baby rings false to them after a while. Why else would they be concerned when women are casual about having abortions?
One feminist was shocked by a woman she encountered in an abortion clinic:
“In the pre-operation room of the clinic, I met a woman who already had 5 children and she was going in to have her 4th or 5th abortion. When my mouth dropped open, she asked me what was wrong. I told her she was an embarrassment to women all together. Making a bad choice & trying to correct it is one thing, but using abortion as your birth control method is a complete different story!”
Feminist Womens Health Center.org “Krystal’s Story” 8. Abortion Clinic Days Blog “Cultural Differences” Tuesday May 3 2005
The pro-choice feminist party line is that abortion is not killing a baby, it’s just a simple medical procedure that makes a woman “unpregnant.”If it’s such a simple procedure, no more morally significant then getting one’s tonsils removed, what’s the problem with using abortion for birth control?
“A lot of people think that you’re mainly helping middle-class girls who’ve gotten in trouble. We see them, and quite a few, but percentage wise, not that many. Unfortunately, you see a lot of people here who use abortion as birth control.”
“Cleveland Doctor Deals with Controversy on a Daily Basis” Daily Kent Stater April 23, 2007
“What makes me angry is people who aren’t being careful about birth control, who don’t make an effort to get a birth control system in place for themselves and have had several abortions. But it’s usually those people who also make me think, “Oh great! They’re not having a child” — even though I think it’s an awful way to do your birth control. I firmly believe that I cannot use my own value judgments in deciding when it’s right for a person to make this decision or not, however. Ultimately it really is the woman’s decision and she is the person who has to carry all the consequences.”
“An Intimate Conversation with a Woman on the Front Lines of America’s Most Emotionally Charged Debate” Salon Magazine June 1997
One has to wonder why this doctor feels angry at women who come in for repeat abortions. If abortion is not killing a baby, but simply the removal of some cells like having one’s tonsils removed, why is it a big deal of a woman uses abortion for her birth-control method? Abortion is a bad thing – the abortionist tacitly admits this – when she reveals her contempt for women who have more than one.
An abortion clinic employee on women who have repeat abortions:
“I had to work through my own issues with women who had multiple abortions. And I did become moralists and judgmental. My first cut off was two. It’s gone up to four. I am going to be honest and say that’s hard for me. I wish I could get past the four…if it was 14, I know I would have a very hard time sitting across from this woman and trying to be as pleasant as possible. I don’t think her problem is pregnancy or her problem is repeat abortions. But she has a problem. This is self-destructive behavior.”
“Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflicts” American Medical News July 12, 1993
If abortion is really a benign medical procedure, similar to having a cyst removed or your tonsils out, why would clinic workers be bent out of shape over women having more than one or two? Could it be because abortion clinic workers and doctors see the remains of aborted babies and realize there is much more to abortion than the simple removal of some cells?
One clinic worker is quoted saying, of a repeat aborter:
“There was a feeling among some of the counselors that we should not continue to see this patient. A feeling that we were in fact reinforcing this behavior.”
“Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflicts” American Medical News July 12, 1993
“If someone came in for a second abortion, the nurse would give her a prostaglandin so that the woman “wouldn’t do it again.” The nurses felt it was up to them to “teach the woman a lesson.” That was a common practice. They would hold women back from having the abortion until they were twelve weeks pregnant and give them a prostaglandin. [a prostaglandin abortion is more difficult and painful because a woman must go through labor] This occurred up until as late as 1984. Their attitude was that the woman has been told about contraception, they’d had an abortion, so they should know better than to get pregnant again by mistake. There was this feeling that there was something wrong with a woman who got pregnant twice or more by mistake.”
Andrea Butcher, abortion counselor
This practice ended when prostaglandin and saline abortions (in which the woman had to go through labor) were replaced with Dilation and Evacuation (D & E)
Miriam Claire The Abortion Dilemma: Personal Views on a Public Issue. (New York: Insight Books) 1995 p 125
“Although occasionally people do move from a pro-life to pro-choice position, they do so at far lower numbers than the other direction. According to a recent Zogby poll, “22% said they were less in favor of abortion today than they were a decade ago. About half that number said that they were more in favor of it.”
Jerry Zremski, “Attitudes Becoming More Negative on Abortion,” Buffalo News (New York) November 25, 2002 A -1
Quoted in The Cost of Choice: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion by Erika Bachiochi (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2004 pgs 114-115
Relatively few surgical abortions take place before six weeks. Some RU486 abortions do, but most abortions done in the United States are still done through surgical means.
About 60% of all abortions take place between six and eight week or earlier. Rounded: 60% of all abortions adds up to 2,400 abortions at this stage a day
20% of abortions happen in the ninth or 10th week of pregnancy. Rounded: 20% of abortions at 9-10 weeks adds up to 800
abortions a day
3,200 a week
12,800 a month
153,600 a year
The availability of abortion has spawned another business. Mainly, the selling of organs and body parts of aborted babies to research labs.
Technically, it is against the law for any clinic to sell fetal remains for money. The NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 saw to this. The act makes it unlawful “to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce.”
However, many abortion clinics are able to get around this law. In the paper “Arguments Against Fetal Tissue Trafficking” the author explains how clinics circumvent the law.
“. . . The research institutes and the abortion clinics have joined with a third party, the fetal tissue wholesaler. The fetal tissue wholesaler pays the abortion clinics a “site fee” to place employees, known as “procurement agents,” who collect various body parts of the aborted fetuses as soon as the abortion process is finished and ship them to various research institutes. By having free access to all the desirable fetal tissue, these agents take the body parts that are requested to various research laboratories and government agencies.
The wholesaler is technically renting the space to harvest the body parts rather than paying for the tissue itself. The abortionist then “donates” the tissues to the wholesalers. At the other end of the transaction, the wholesaler will “donate” the fetal material to researchers but bill them for the cost of retrieval. Thus the business deal is complete.“
An example of this is found in a book called “Lovejoy: A Year in the Life of an Abortion Clinic.” It is not a pro-life book. Instead, it is intended as a balanced work of reference.
7 week old baby in a petri dish – ready to be dissected for his organs
From Lovejoy: A Year in the Life of an Abortion Clinic (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996) by Peter Korn. (p 236-237) From the author’s observation:
“Although the operation is over, the fetus is still a matter of concern. This patient, like most, has signed an extra consent form allowing the extracted material to be used for medical research. Rhonda, a medical assistant who also works for a biological supply company, takes the surgical tray in another room where she uses a plastic colander to strain out the blood, leaving only the separated parts of the fetus. These she places in a glass dish, taking a moment to measure one of the feet against a transparent plastic ruler to establish exact gestational age. Earlier in the day she received her regular fax detailing what body parts are needed by which researchers around the country. The researchers specify preferences for age and, in some cases, sex. Liver, spleen, pancreas, and brain are the organs most often requested…”
Planned Parenthood also has a reference to donating fetal tissue on their website. Under the heading of “Donating Fetal Tissue for Medical Treatment and Research.”
“Decisions about donating human tissue are never taken lightly or made easily. Most agree that such decisions reflect generosity, courage, and the hope that some humanitarian good may come out of an unintended pregnancy.”
Note that the word “donating” is used. The woman is “donating” the tissue. Planned Parenthood implies that no money will be involved in the “donating” of fetal organs and parts. Yet Planned Parenthood makes money due to the method listed above. This is possible because the NIH Revitalization Act exempts “reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue” allowing a loophole so that everyone can make money -except the woman involved.
One e-mail transmission, made public by American Life League, was intercepted and published:
“Human embryonic and fetal tissues are available from the Central Laboratory for Human Embryology at the University of Washington. The laboratory, which is supported by the National Institutes of Health, can supply tissue from normal of [sic] abnormal embryos and fetuses of desired gestational ages between 40 days and term.
Specimens are obtained within minutes of passage and tissues are aseptically identified, staged and immediately processed according to the requirements of individual investigators.
Presently, processing methods include immediate fixation, snap fixation, snap freezing in liquid nitrogen, and placement in balanced salt solutions or media designated and/or supplied by investigators. Specimens are shipped by overnight express, arriving the day following procurement. The laboratory can also supply serial sections of human embryos that have been preserved in methyl Carnoy’s fixative, embedded in paraffin and sectioned at 5 microns. Inquiries are directed to Alan G. Fantel, Ph.D., Department of Pediatrics RD-20, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195.”
The former was a copy of e-mail transmission as printed out and mailed to A.L.L. J. Brown, Communique, May 13, 1994, p. 3
The following brochure was obtained from a fetal tissue wholesaler called Opening Lines is presented here.
This is a price list brochure of how much each piece of an aborted baby is worth. This is a real price list obtained directly from Opening Lines.
On an ironic note, many pro-choicers state that fetuses are not human beings or are merely blobs (or as one pro-choicer of my acquaintance said “A smear on a test tube.”) So how is it that laboratories can market organs from aborted babies and experiment on them precisely because they are human? If a fetus is nothing, a product of conception, or cluster of cells, how can scientists obtain human organs from them?
Pro-lifers have also unearthed order forms sent to abortion clinics. One such form quoted British Columbia’s Dr. Vanugram Venkatesh asking for an international Fed-Ex shipment of:
“16-24 week lungs (trachea not required)” to study “molecular mechanisms of fluid reabsorption in human fetal lung.”
The order also said simply, “Bill our account.”
Here is a copied order that one Planned Parenthood clinic received.
Here is an excerpt from an advertisement in the March 1994 NIH Guide. (The National Institutes for Health operate a Laboratory for Embryology at the University of Washington in Seattle that runs a 24- hour collection service at abortion clinics.)
“Department of Pediatrics, RD-20
“Seattle, WA 98195.”
This is an opportunity to make a difference . . . and it can be beneficial to your clinic. . . .
“1) Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology will lease space from your facility to perform the harvesting and distribution of tissue. The revenue generated from the lease can be used to offset your clinic’s overhead.
“2) Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology can train your staff to harvest and process fetal tissue. Based on your volume we will reimburse part or all of your employee’s salary, thereby reducing your overhead.”
The following incident was reported in “When Abortion Fails: The Unborn’s Uncertain Destiny” by Nick Thimmesch (Life Cycle Books)
Dr. Sophie Perry, director of the Department of Pathology at the District of Columbia General Hospital revealed to the press that the staff employees of that department had collected more than $68,000 dollars from commercial firms for the organs of stillborns and dead premature babies, some from “late term elective abortions.” A hospital official later admitted that the earnings were used to buy a television set for the lounge, to cover expenses for physicians attending conventions, and for soft drinks and cookies for visiting professors.”
******
An article on abortion recounts the following:
“Fetal skin specimens were used by Dr. Karen Holbrook of the University of Washington, Seattle, and her study of “Fetal Skin Biology” for her work she was granted $239,740 in 1984 to 1985. 60 human fetuses or embryos.”
When asked about how the babies were obtained for research, Dr. Holbrook said:
“Hopefully they are not born alive. It’s better to avoid that. The skin is taken after fetal demise.”
Olga Fairfax, “101 Uses for a Dead (or Alive) Baby” ALL About Issues 1984, 6 – 7
******
20/20 did a investigation of Dr. Miles Jones, Missouri pathologist whose company, Opening Lines, procures fetal tissue from clinics and ships it to research labs. The producer went undercover.
“It’s market force. It’s what you can sell it for. If you control the flow, it’s probably the equivalent the invention of the assembly line.”
Says Dr. Miles Jones, Missouri pathologist who wants to open an abortion clinic in Mexico so he can get a greater supply fetal tissue
“While ABC’s program was an eye-opener for many, it failed to air [the investigator]’s eyewitness accounts of babies who were dissected and their organs harvested while still functioning.. In these cases, according to the eyewitnesses, abortions were not performed – instead, babies were born alive in order to procure undamaged fetal specimens.”
“ABC Airs Bogus Report on Fetal Tissue Marketing” Washington: American Life League press release,, March 9, 2000
Quoted in Randy Alcorn “Pro-life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments” (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2000) 34-35
******
With no change in the laws, no media coverage, and no public outcry, such practices go on today.
