One author who observed in an abortion clinic for one year describes an abortion:
“Still holding the forceps, Lane begins pulling, tearing apart the fetus. His first three tugs yield indistinguishable tissue. The fourth brings out more solid mass, which Anneke, from her position in the back of the small room, immediately recognizes as the trunk of a fetus…. Tiny hands and feet, extracted next, are the most recognizable. The head is less so. The pieces of the fetus and the placenta are placed by Lane on a surgical tray at his side.”
Peter Korn Lovejoy: A Year in the Life of an Abortion Clinic (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996) pgs 235-236
Author Magda Denes witnessed abortions for her book In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death Inside an Abortion Hospital:
“I am drawn to the unit, irresistable, by my reactions of disbelief, sorrow, horror, compassion, guilt. The place depresses me, yet I hang around after working hours. When I leave, I behave outside with the expansiveness of one who has just escaped a disaster. I have bad dreams. My sense of complicity in something nameless grows and festers. I consider giving up the research…
I remove with one hand the lid of a bucket…I look inside the bucket in front of me. There is a small naked person there floating in a bloody liquid- plainly the tragic victim of a drowning accident. But then perhaps this was no accident, because the body is purple with bruises and the face has the agonized tautness of one forced to die too soon. Death overtakes me in a rush of madness…I have seen this before. The face of a Russian soldier, lying on a frozen snow covered hill, stiff with death and cold….A death factory is the same anywhere, and the agony of early death is the same anywhere. I take the lid off all the buckets. All of them. I reach up to the shelf above this bucket and graveyard tabletop and take down a pair of forceps….With the forceps I lift the fetuses, one by one.
I lift them by an arm or a leg…Finally, I lift a very large fetus…I look at the label. Mother’s name: Catherine Atkins; Doctor’s name: Saul Marcus. Sex of item: Male. Time of Gestation: Twenty-four weeks. I remember Catherine. She is seventeen, a very pretty blond girl…This is Master Atkins- to be burned tomorrow- who died like a hero….Might he have been the only one to truly love her?”
24 week-old unborn baby
.Magda Denes In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital(New York: Basic Books Inc. 1976) 50, 58-61
Magda Denes interviewed Andre Winston, who delivered the aborted babies to the incinerator to be burned:
“In the ones where you could see the babies with the hands and the feet and the heads and everything, and you can tell what sex, a boy are girl. Really sometimes it gets nasty. They are so big sometimes. Some are small and still have hands. It’s just too bad the baby had to go that far and end up here…Seeing what I’ve seen and everything- and I’ve worked around here and seen these dead fetuses. I wouldn’t want to have to come here, or have my girlfriend come here, and have an abortion, and I end up seeing the kid that was almost mine, look where it ended up at.”
.Magda Denes In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital(New York: Basic Books Inc. 1976) p 87
“Earlier this year, I began an abortion on a young woman who was 17 weeks pregnant. Because of the two days of prior treatment, the amniotic membranes were visible and bulging. I ruptured the membranes and released the fluid to reduce the risk of amniotic fluid embolism. Then I inserted my forceps into the uterus and applied them to the head of the fetus, which was still alive, since fetal injection is not done at that stage of pregnancy. I closed the forceps, crushing the skull of the fetus, and withdrew the forceps. The fetus, now dead, slid out more or less intact. With the next pass of the forceps, I grasped the placenta, and it came out in one piece. Within a few seconds, I had completed my routine exploration of the uterus and sharp curettage.”
Dr. Warren Hern, who performs abortions up until the 34th week in his Boulder abortion clinic
Warren M. Hern “A Doctor Ponders a New Era of Prosecution: Did I Violate the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban” Slate Oct 22, 2003.
“I evacuate the fetus, I insert the forceps, and grasp the fetus, and pull, and sometimes the fetus comes out in pieces, and I make instrument passes until the entire fetus is evacuated, and sometimes the whole fetus will come down into the vagina, at least as far as the head.”
Abortionist Maureen Paul
Harper’s Magazine “Gambling with Abortion: Why Both Sides Think They Have Everything to Lose” by Cynthia Gorney 1/27/2005 also in Testimony by Abortion Providers re Partial Birth Abortion 2/2/2004 Physicians for Life
“Sometimes during the D&E (dilation and evacuation) procedure, a part of the fetus protrudes from, or is pulled through the cervical os before the fetus is fully removed. Although in the vast majority of cases, there is fetal demise before this occurs, from the disruption occasioned by the suction and/or forceps, there could be rare instances where the fetus is ‘living’ within the meaning of the Act – whatever that meaning is – when part of the fetus is within the uterus and part is outside. …”
(comments from a court deposition)
Dr. Curtis Stover, abortionist, Little Rock, Arkansas
“In a standard D&E, the fetus generally doesn’t come out intact, but you might very well bring down a leg at the start of the procedure, and if the definition is a beating heart, potentially any second-trimester abortion could fit this bill…”
The heart actually start beating at 18 –21 days after conception
Allan Rosenfield, professor of obstetrics, University School of Public Health.Times
“Wider Impact is Foreseen for Bill to Ban Type of Abortions.”
“cited instances when 9- or 10-week-old fetuses are unintentionally suctioned intact into the suction bottle. Sometimes, they’re still alive, with their hearts visibly beating.”
10 week-old unborn baby
Dr. Crist is Planned Parenthood’s chief abortion physician in Missouri.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Court Hearing on Abortion Law Focuses on when a Fetus Dies; Some Aborted Fetuses Still Have Beating Hearts, Doctor Testifies: St. Louis. May 26, 2000 Quoted by deathroe
