Emotional Impact on Providers Archives - Page 2 of 15

Doctor explains why he does not do abortions

Dr. Aaron Sacks trained to do abortions, but after residency, decided not to do them. He explains why:

“Since finishing residency, I have never done any abortions. I think it has to do with – as much as I would like to say that it’s only my practice – but if I really look honestly, I would prefer not to do the abortions because somehow it’s difficult for me to draw the line between a child and a fetus and a baby. And all that is semantics to me… It touches me somewhere inside. [During training] I tried not to think [about] what I am doing. I just did it in the best technical manner I could do… And I was just looking at the end of the day to finish and that’s it.”

Lori Freedman Willing and Unable: Doctors’ Constraints in Abortion Care (Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 2010) 44

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Abortion worker has nightmares after counting fetal parts

Former abortion worker Jewels Green describes the nightmare she had while she was working abortion clinic:

“After an abortion, the instrument tray was passed through the window in the wall into the autoclave room. The other thing that passed through was the Jar. It held the precious contents that just moments before had comfortably resided inside the mother’s womb.

It looked like an oversized glass pickle jar. It was emptied next to me on the countertop: teeny tiny hands and feet and arms and legs and a rib cage and a spine and a hollow, flattened, misshapen, torn head.

I saw it all.

I smelled it all.

Every time. Up to 30 times a day, four days a week…..

I started having nightmares, haunted by tiny, limbless phantom babies. I was floating down a narrow stream with miniature body parts strewn on either shore – and then I’d begin to sink. I’d flail and gasp and go under.”

Patrick Madrid Surprised by Life (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 2017) 52

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Doctor weighs pros and cons of D&E procedure

In an article in the Lancet, a doctor explains that a D&E procedure (where the baby is dismembered in utero) is easier for a woman to undergo than an induction abortion, where the woman has to go through labor.

He says:

“The well-being of the woman who has made the painful decision to have her 20 week pregnancy terminated must be at the center of the debate. The procedure must be the physically safest and least distressing possible.…

Dilation and evacuation is distressing for the surgeon and the theater nurses but is much less distressing than medical abortion or ward staff and for other women who are patients in the ward. The distress felt in the theater is acceptable if those involved are convinced that the abortion is necessary for the woman.”

DB Paintin, Lancet, 1989, Vol. 2, P 563

In Jenny Bryan Abortion (East Sussex, England: Wayland Publishers Limited, 1991) 43

Here is a diagram of a D&E procedure.

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Clinic worker finds abortion “draining and exhausting”

One abortion facility worker said:

“I find [providing abortions] 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

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Abortionist experiences feelings of remorse

In a book on abortion counseling, one British abortionist said:

“I occasionally feel pangs of remorse and have to remind myself of the consequences of the woman’s continuing with the pregnancy.”

Joanna Brien, Ida Fairbairn Pregnancy and Abortion Counseling (London: Routledge, 1996) 175

Prebon baby at 10 weeks, legal to abort in both England and the US

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Abortionist had drinking problem

Judy was an abortion clinic worker working for an abortionist who was always drunk. When she got pregnant with a wanted baby, the abortionist promised he would be sober when he delivered her baby. He had no problem being drunk when he did abortions:

“The OB/GYN doctor I worked for said, “Judy, when you have your baby, I promise not to be drunk on that day; I will remain sober for your C-section.” I was happy to know that he didn’t want to make any mistakes concerning me or my baby.

I truly believed that the doctor drank excessively because deep down in his heart, he knew that he was taking lives through abortion, and this must’ve weighed heavily upon his conscience. It was only two years after the birth of my daughter that he died in a horrible automobile accident that had been caused by his drinking. After the birth of my daughter, I never went back to work at that clinic.”

Cheryl Chew Make Me Your Choice (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 2006) 95

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Counselor talks about abortion workers’ trauma doing abortions

Mary Mullany, a British psychologist, describes how emotional problems plagued nurses who work at abortion facilities. The graphic nature of the abortions they witnessed created discouragement and led to a high turnover rate.

“My work as a Psychiatric Clinical Specialist involves direct counseling with women wishing to have an abortion and consultation with nursing and medical staff performing the procedures. What has been the most distressing to me is the discouragement that the nursing staff experience, resulting in a very high attrition rate. The staff perform first trimester as well as prostaglandin abortions weekly. Clearly prostaglandins are the most controversial and stressful for all involved.

Recently, I started working with nurses’ groups to help them to articulate their thoughts, feelings, and concerns about the abortion process and hopefully channel concerns appropriately. There are numerous occasions where the nurses’ own ambivalent feelings interfere with patient care and heighten conflict among staff.

I recognize that there are no easy answers, that abortion is a very complex emotional and ethical decision for all participants. I continue to be impressed with how long the unresolved pain of abortion resides with so many women.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 272

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Woman observing in abortion clinic becomes hardened

Magda Denes, who spent a year watching abortions and interviewing people at an abortion clinic, describes becoming numb to the horror of the procedures and the pain of the women:

“In a month’s time I acquire a sort of wooden torpor to the screams that periodically shatter the humdrum noises of the floor. Tears cease to unsettle me. I am unmoved by wailing. I take it for granted that we are in the business of death here, and the tenor of each day will be heartbreak… I am shellshocked, as it were, stunned by being spoken to. Staggered by these readily revealed dramas, whose plots are loneliness, whose resolutions are defeat.”

Magda Denes In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital (New York: Basic Books, 1976) 126

The abortion facility Magda Denes visited did abortions up to 24 weeks – the age of the baby pictured above.

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Abortionist’s daughter: “he is sadder now”

The daughter of one abortionist said:

“It’s sort of sad, that society has forced him into this. He seems like a sadder person now than when his practice was delivering a lot of babies.”

Tom Junod “THE ABORTIONIST” GQ February 1994

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Abortion worker was “disturbed” by seeing body parts

Abortion clinic worker Ida Dupont:

“The second trimester abortions were hard for me to deal with because they are admittedly a bit gory. …I remember witnessing one of these procedures and being disturbed at the sight of parts of a fetus being removed.”

MINDY BOND & RAPHIE FRANK “Ida Dupont, Professor of Criminal Justice, Women’s Advocate” Gothamist December 1, 2004

Dupont claimed that second trimester abortions are usually done because of a health problem in the mother or baby, but this has been debunked.