Category: Emotional Impact on Providers

An article on abortion describes the nightmares staff who assist in abortions have:

“Nursing staff at hospitals in Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Fort Lauderdale and elsewhere have rebelled at late abortions and have stopped their hospitals from performing any abortions later than the midpoint of pregnancy. Some staff members who regularly perform late abortions report having nightmares about fetuses, including recurring dreams in which they frantically seek to hide fetuses from others.”

Liz Jeffries and Rick Edmonds, “Abortion: The Dreaded Complication.” The Philadelphia Inquirer August 2, 1981

Share on Facebook

An article in the Journal of Clinical Nursing says:

“… the New Zealand situation would be common in that nurses are frequently required to clean and dress the fetus, ensure transfer to an appropriate receptacle if the mother wants to see it, all the while supporting the woman as she goes through this process. This often occurs after a lengthy period when the women and nurses have been intimately connected, working through a range of decisions such as whether the mother wants to see, and perhaps name or photograph the fetus. Consequently, although women undergoing mid-trimester termination are `well’, this is a challenging clinical event that requires much from nurses in terms of physiological and psychological skill and expertise.”

ANNETTE D. HUNTINGTON RGON, BN, PhD “Working with women experiencing mid-trimester termination of pregnancy: the integration of nursing and feminist knowledge in the gynaecological setting” Journal of Clinical Nursing, 2002, 11 273-279

Share on Facebook

Joy Davis, a former abortion worker, wrote about her fellow clinic workers:

“We don’t have conversations. Sometimes the employees faint. Sometimes they throw up. Sometimes they have to leave the room. It’s just problems that we deal with, but it’s not talked about… If you really dwell on it, and talk about it all the time, then it gets more personal. It gets more real to you. You just don’t talk about it, try not to think about it… If [the abortionist] ever caught you discussing something like that, he’d fire you.”

Interview of Joy Davis done by Life Dynamics in 1993

Mark Crutcher Lime 5: Exploited by Choice (Denton, Texas: Life Dynamics, Inc., 1996) 187

Share on Facebook

One abortion clinic worker said the following in a book on abortion counseling intended to be read by abortion workers :

“I find [working in the abortion clinic] draining and exhausting, I become tired to the point where I do not want to relate to anyone, especially my family who may be in need of emotional support. I feel I sometimes suffer from burnout.”

Joanna Brien, Ida Fairbairn Pregnancy and Abortion Counseling (London: Routledge, 1996) 169

Share on Facebook

A nurse who assisted in abortions still has nightmares 20 years later:

“I have never had an abortion, but I am an RN who feels as if I have had one… emotionally. I assisted with them for 10 years. After 10 years of emotional “rape,” I finally grew strong enough to stop assisting them in all ways. My depression has gone, and I have adopted a child. I have not assisted with an abortion in 20 years. I prayed for forgiveness and I know I am forgiven, but the nightmares continue.”

Jennifer O’Neill Healing through God’s Grace after Abortion (Deerfield Beach, Florida: Faith Communications, 2005) 46

Share on Facebook

An abortionist describes a problem he has with doing second trimester D&E abortions:

“The only problem is a personnel problem. It’s an unattractive method because you have to morselate [that is, cut into small pieces] the fetus, and then remove it with forceps rather than a nice little suction catheter. The girls in the operating room don’t exactly draw straws to go in with you.”

Jonathan B Imber Abortion and the Private Practice of Medicine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986) 86

Below: Diagram of a D&E

Share on Facebook