Mrs. M.J., a midwife from France, tells the following story of infanticide following abortion:
“It was in 1973, I was beginning my second year at the nursing school and it was my first day of my internship in the maternity department. At 4:30 p.m. a nurse hastily came in the treatment room with a white sheets rolled like a ball, holding it to us and said “check that there are no instruments in it, take the compresses and put the drape in the laundry.” I was with a classmate I did not know because he was not from my school. He seemed older than me. Delicately we opened the sheet, removed all the compresses and discovered a lot of clotted blood: we discovered within the blood, a mass, that was a fetus, and he was still breathing. We were shocked. Another nurse arrived at that moment and we told her that the fetus was breathing. As a response she said: “Well, put it in a basin, and wait!” It all felt so frigid! The nursing student and I talked and agreed to say that he was alive and that we had to do something immediately. So, we wiped and washed the little body and wrapped him in a “cloth diaper.” We delicately placed him on the tray and covered him. I do not know what his gestational age was, but he was a boy and his members were well formed. Another nurse arrived, and she saw us near the fetus. She said we did well and we took this opportunity to question her: – “What happened to the mother? – She did what she had to do to abort and lost a lot of blood by expelling the fetus. She is now in the operating room and it is unclear if she will make it!” My colleague and I stayed near the fetus who was breathing heavily with increasing spaces between each breathe. It felt like time had stopped. We were there to look at him, this little living being, talking to him and stroking his little body through the drape for 45 minutes at least. […] He finally stopped breathing and we left him on his tray. It was the end of the first day of the internship. I must say that the 15 days of internship were difficult. The nurses were running around like “a chicken with its head cut off,” and it was not possible to talk about this event with them,”
Grégor Puppinck PhD (Dir.), Claire de La Hougue PhD, Andreea Popescu, Christophe Foltzenlogel “Late Term Abortion & Neonatal Infanticide in Europe” Petition for the Rights of Newborns Surviving Their Abortion ECLJ (European Centre for Law and Justice) June 2015
Julia Dixon, director of the Anderson Crisis Pregnancy Center, on clients seeing an ultrasound:
“Once the mother sees that heartbeat, they realize there is life at conception. I’m not saying every girl that has an ultrasound places their baby up for adoption but that’s the trend we are seeing here.”
In a take-off of 40 days for life, pro-choice activists have written their own prayer. This actually happened a while ago, but I just found out about it. An abortion clinic worker talked about the 40 days of prayer for choice and reproduced the prayer on her webpage.
I have decided to post it here- and intersperse it with pictures of what they are REALLY praying for.
40 Days of Prayer to Keep Abortion Safe and Legal
Day 1: Today we pray for women for whom pregnancy is not good news, that they know they have choices.
week 12
Day 2: Today we pray for compassionate religious voices to speak out for the dignity and autonomy of women.
Day 3: Today we pray for our daughters and granddaughters, that they will always know the power of making their own good decisions.
Day 4: Today we give thanks for the doctors who provide quality abortion care, and pray that they may be kept safe.
week 10
Day 5: Today we pray for medical students who want to include abortion care in their practice. May they receive good training and find good mentors.
Week 10
Day 6: Today we ask for blessings upon the women who pass through hostile protesters on their way into an abortion clinic. May they be shielded from physical and emotional harm from those who do not know them.
Day 7: Today we pray for the 45 million American women who have had safe, legal abortions. May they stand tall and refuse shame.
Week 7
Day 8: Today we pray for elected officials, that they may always support a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions.
Day 9: Today we pray for women who are afraid of their lovers. May they find the confidence to turn away from abuse and take care of themselves.
2nd trimester
Day 10: Today we pray for women who were joyfully expecting a child, but have learned that the pregnancy is not sustainable.
Day 11: Today we pray for better access to all forms of birth control.
Day 12: Today we pray that women know the power of their own stories. May they find their voices and tell their truths.
Week 11
Day 13: Today we pray for the men in our lives, that they may offer their loving kindness and support for women’s difficult decisions.
Day 14: Today we pray for Christians everywhere to embrace the loving model of Jesus in the way he refused to shame women.
Day 15: Today we pray for parents whose teen daughters are pregnant. May they help their daughters through this difficult time with kindness and openness.
week 11
Day 16: Today we pray for the counselors in abortion clinics that they may listen with their hearts and offer wise guidance.
Day 17: Today we pray for increased financial support for low income women to access contraception, abortion, and childcare.
week 8
Day 18: Today we pray for all the staff at abortion clinics around the nation. May they be daily confirmed in the sacred care that they offer women.
Day 19: Today we pray for all pregnant women. May they be surrounded by loving voices.
week 8
Day 20: Today we pray for the families of yesteryear who still mourn the loss of their mothers, sisters, and aunts due to illegal abortion.
Day 21: Today we pray for women in developing nations, that they may know the power of self-determination. May they have access to employment, education, birth control, and abortion.
week 10
Day 22: Today we pray for an end to all violence against abortion providers.
Day 23: Today we give thanks for the strong women in our lives who have given us examples of good decision-making.
Day 24: Today we pray for an end to hateful language that diminishes the dignity of women.
week 10
Day 25: Today we pray for women who have been made afraid of their own power by their religion. May they learn to reject fear and live bravely.
Day 26: Today we give thanks for the intelligence, talent, wit, and wisdom of all the women and girls in our lives.
Day 27: Today we give thanks for abortion providers around the nation whose concern for women is the driving force in their lives.
week 10
Day 28: Today we pray for the women who travel hundreds of miles to get an abortion. May their determination be rewarded with spiritual strength.’
Day 29: Today we pray that all women will know that they are created in the image of God, good and holy, moral and wise.
Day 30: Today we pray for women to throw away their secrets and claim their histories with power and truth.
Day 31: Today we pray for all discrimination against women to cease.
Day 32: Today we pray for an end to the stigma perpetrated against women who have abortions.
15 weeks
Day 33: Today we offer a prayer of remembrance for abortion providers who lost their lives because of their commitment to women.
Day 34: Today we give thanks for abortion escorts who guide women safely through the hostile gauntlets of protesters.
Day 35: Today we pray for girls everywhere, that they may have every opportunity for education, sport, health, art, and vocation.
Day 36: Today we pray for the families we’ve chosen. May they know the blessing of choice.
Day 37: Today we pray for women to claim their equality and demand their rights as citizens.
21 weeks
Day 38: Today we pray for a cloud of gentleness to surround every abortion facility. May everyone feel calm and loving.
Day 39: Today we pray for a contagious love to overflow from our spirits.
Day 40: Today we give thanks and celebrate that abortion is still safe and legal.
“Because the fetus feels no pain, a function of the brain as yet undeveloped, and the woman acts under her own will and conscience, it is still not violence to a human being.…
It is not enough to say that abortion is not violent. Abortion is a positive decision and not a lesser evil. It gives women control over their lives, their fertility, their education, their vocations, and their responsibility to their families, and is therefore profamily and pro-life.”
Pro-choice Methodist pastor John M Swomley
John M Swomley Compulsory Pregnancy: the War against American Women (Amherst, New York: Humanist Press, 1999) 82
Pro-choice activist Ellen Willis, whom the book Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement describes as a “well-known feminist journalist,” was interviewed in 1996. She said that her early abortion rights work was about:
“asserting autonomy and subjecthood; it was about the right to have sex, play God, to bring life into the world.”
Jennifer Nelson Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2003) 3
An abortion doctor named David Peters made the following creepy comment in a 2013 article about clinic regulations:
I can stick needles in babies’ lungs. I can put tubes up penises and into bladders, and do all sorts of crazy stuff in my office with no regulations whatsoever. No government supervision… But for an abortion, I’ve got to have the sterile room–the size of the building matters–so, it just becomes nonsensical.
Terence P. Jeffrey “Virginia Abortion Clinic Owner: ‘I Can Stick Needles in Babies’ Lungs…” Cybercast News Service 4/28/2013
The ACLJ posted this story from a European midwife who talks about babies born alive after abortions at the hospital where she works:
As a midwife for almost 9 years, I can testify that babies born from late abortions (case of abortion on medical grounds (ITG)) without feticide, that is to say usually between 20 and 24 weeks gestation, may be born alive. The medical team is then often uncomfortable and either puts the baby in a tray in a separate room until he stops showing signs of life, or asks a gynecologist, anesthetist or pediatrician for a morphine injection in the cord that some accept … or not. For my part, I have already proposed to concerned couples, if the baby was alive at birth, to lay him on the woman’s stomach for him to die with dignity; two couples agreed. I recently decided not to participate in abortions on demand or abortions on medical grounds and to apply my conscience clause, which I can do because I am incumbent. I will probably leave the relevant services, including the delivery room. Those contractual employees who would apply their conscience clause are threatened with dismissal.
“One study cited the 3 most common reasons why young pregnant women had abortions without telling their parents. They were, in order, “Didn’t want to hurt or disappoint parent,” “Thought parent would be angry at me,” and “Didn’t want parents to know I was having sex.”
Allison Landes et. al, eds., Abortion: an Eternal Social and Moral Issue (Wylie, TX: Information Plus, 1996) 104
Quoted in Stephen Currie Abortion (San Diego, California: Greenhaven Press, 2000)
Pro-choicer’s argue that only children who are abused at home will not tell their parents. That is why they oppose consent laws, they say. These are the true, most common reasons teens have abortions without telling their parents.
