Category: Emotional Impact on Providers

“Soon after voluntary abortion became a legal reality, some authorities observed an unanticipated, strong emotional reaction by the staff. … Nurses found physical contact with the fetus particularly difficult; it reminded them of the ‘preemies’ just down the hall and made them uncomfortable as they thought about their own potential future pregnancies.”

Second Trimester Abortion: Perspectives After a Decade of Experience (Berger, Brenner, Keith, eds, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1981), in the chapter “Psychological Impact on Patients and Staff,” p. 242, 245.

One nurse said,

‘I dream about it…the abortions affect me personally. I know some day I will deliver and think of that. It’s changed my ideas.’

Second Trimester Abortion: Perspectives After a Decade of Experience (Berger, Brenner, Keith, eds, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1981), in the chapter “Psychological Impact on Patients and Staff,” p. 245.

Abortion clinic worker “Toby” who was adopted talks about handling the bodies of aborted babies:

“… I think also just that the more you think about what it looks like… It looks like a baby. And you know that sometimes… We go farther than we intend to, then that’s really, really hard too because I was premature, and looking at this thing that could’ve been me, you know? And I try not to personalize it that much because it could’ve been me, and I would never know because I wouldn’t be here, but it’s still hard to do…I think I probably cope with it better than some other people who work here who talk about having nightmares and stuff…In the first couple of months [when] I started working here, I’d have images of, like, the face, you know , when it comes into sterile room.  And I always turn it over. But I don’t dream about it. I dont’ know if that makes me more repressed or better able to cope. [Laughing].”

abortion at 20 weeks

Wendy Simonds. Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996)84

The clinic this person works at does abortions up to 26 weeks.

From a survey of abortion providers:

“One respondent expressed increasing resentment of the casual attitudes of some patients considering the emotional cost to those performing the service.”

Warren M Hern and Billie Corrigan “What about Us? Staff Reactions to the D&E Procedure” Boulder Abortion Clinic, Advances in Planned Parenthood 15 (1): 3 – 8, 1980

Rachel M MacNair, PhD. Achieving Peace in the Abortion War (New York: iUniverse, 2009) 124

Dr. Warren Hern looking at emotional reactions of his own staff

“Six respondents denied any preoccupation… outside the clinic. Several others felt that the emotional strain affected interpersonal relationship significantly or resulted in other behavior such as an excessive need to talk about the experience.”

Warren M Hern and Billie Corrigan “What about Us? Staff Reactions to the D&E Procedure” Boulder Abortion Clinic. Advances in Planned Parenthood 15 (1): 3\ – 80, 1980  Quoted in Rachel M MacNair, PhD. Achieving Peace in the Abortion War (New York: iUniverse, 2009)11

A study published in 1974:

noted that “obsessional thinking about abortion, depression, fatigue, anger, lowered self-esteem, and identity conflicts were prominent. The symptom complex was considered a “transient reactive disorder,” similar to “combat fatigue.”

Marianne Such–Baer, “Professional Staff Reaction to Abortion Work,” Social Casework, July 1974 Quoted in Rachel M MacNair, PhD. Achieving Peace in the Abortion War (New York: iUniverse, 2009) 9

Although this study was old, it reveals how abortionists and clinic workers struggle to cope with seeing the dead bodies of aborted babies and performing abortions on a daily basis. There have been more recent studies that show this. Also, many former clinic workers and doctors discuss the emotional trauma of performing abortions. You can read some of their stories in the former abortionist and former clinic workers categories.

A 1977 paper presented to the annual meeting of Planned Parenthood physicians said the following about their abortionists:

“As the doctor tends to take responsibility and assume guilt for the procedure, she or he may have disturbing undercurrent ruminations or dreams.”

Nancy B Kaltreider , M.D., Sadja Goldsmith, M.D., MPH, and Alan J Margolis, M.D. “Second Trimester Abortion by Dilation and Extraction (D&E) Surgical Technique and Psychological Reactions,” unpublished paper, P6

Rachel M MacNair, PhD. Achieving Peace in the Abortion War (New York: iUniverse, 2009) 13

Many former (and some current) abortion providers have spoken about horrible nightmares of aborted babies. Read more about the traumatic effects of abortion on providers here. 

Magda Denes, who observed at an abortion clinic and wrote a book about it, on how she became hardened to the abortions and the death of the babies:

“Sensibility is blunted through exposure. After weeks of trailing Holzman from from OR 1 to OR 2, my sense of meaning dulls. I begin to see “cases,” “cervical apertures,” “fetal tissue.”… I worry about snags in tempo during operations, but no differently from the way I worry about an unfamiliar noise in the motor of my car. One time the circulating nurse loses her wedding ring during surgery. She discovers the loss at the end of the operation as the orderly is about the fold the bloodied sheets on the floor. She takes the filled plastic bag from the wastebasket and empties it into the middle of the sheets. Both kneel and with their bare hands rummage frantically in the pile of placental tissue and blood and chopped up fetal body parts. “It has to be here,” she says nearly in tears. “We’ll find it,” he reassures her. I am all for them. Is frightful to lose one’s wedding ring.… Hours later, when the scene reasserts itself in my mind, I do not recognize myself. Is inhumanity a habit? Is indifference the result of the attrition of meaning? If so, one must watch the self like an enemy.”

Magda Denes, PhD. In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital (New York: Basic Books inc 1976) 239 to 240