The late Dr. William Raushbaum, who performed late-term abortions, describes how, after Roe versus Wade, none of the new abortionists knew much about performing abortions:
“Like the other board-certified doctors who were suddenly doing procedures previously relegated to back alleys, Rashbaum lacked training in the necessary medical techniques. “None of us knew what we were doing,” he says. “The only people who knew how to do abortions were the criminals. Rashbaum and his colleagues practically taught themselves how to perform abortions and were limited by the crude instruments of those days — Dixie cups attached to the suction machine by rubber bands.”
20 weeks – Dr. Raushbaum does abortions at this time and later
An article on late-term abortionist Dr. William Rashbaum described how he dealt with men who came into the clinic and begged their partners not to abort their children. He says that when they came to him:
Husbands or boyfriends have been known to barge into his office and violently insist their baby not be aborted, to which Rashbaum replies with an equally violent, “Fuck you, Charlie, we can abort her.” He won’t talk to them directly because, he explains, “I don’t treat men.”
“For some it is definitely a kind of birth control. These women are on their 6th one. They have a troubled family situation, and you feel it’s in the best interest for the possible future child. In some ways I do feel that – but it doesn’t make it any more pleasant.”
Jack Hitt “Who Will Do Abortions Here” in The Ethics of Abortion, 3rd edition, edited by Robert M Baird and Stuart E Rosenbaum (Amherst, New York: Prometheus books, 2001)
Margaret A. Woodbury, A writer for Salon magazine, describes two abortions that she witnessed in an abortion clinic. The 1st abortion was done on a woman who was 23 weeks pregnant. It was a “partial-birth” abortion, which are now illegal.
“This was the most difficult procedure to watch, mostly because of the pain experienced by the least sedated of the women. As the doctor, with a resident by his side, slid most of his hand deep into the patient’s vagina, she moaned horribly and could not remain still. Only when the anesthesiologist administered a drug to increase her sedation could things proceed.
The doctor, using only his fingers, pulled a foot into view and then another. “OK,” he said, “now I have the sacrum.” Letting the resident take over, the doctor instructed: “Pull down. Down! Not Up! Down! All right, now the shoulder, then twist. Then the other shoulder.”
20 weeks – 3 weeks younger than the baby being aborted in this story
At this point, only a few minutes had passed. The fetus was perfectly limp, its tiny feet and hands flaccid as they immediately darkened from oxygen depletion. In the three intact D&X procedures I witnessed, not once did I see even a glimmer of response from the fetuses — the anesthesia having passed through the placenta into their bloodstreams.
Once the entire fetal body was out of the womb, the doctor quickly made an incision into the base of the skull that remained lodged against the woman’s cervix and inserted a suction catheter into the perforation to drain the brain matter and allow the full removal of the fetus. The placenta came next and the doctors finished suctioning the uterus to drain any remaining blood.
Below: 22-24 weeks
Woodbury then describes one of the D&E abortions that she witnessed. These abortions are still legal in are the most common procedure used in the 2nd trimester:
20 – 22 weeks
“Both D&E procedures I observed started in exactly the same manner as the three abortions earlier in the day, but the doctor in these cases quickly determined that intact extraction would not be possible because neither woman’s cervix was dilated enough. Once that decision was made, the resident inserted a long-handled metal instrument into the woman’s uterus — called a Bierer forcep — and began what the doctor called “blind” pulling. I watched as the doctor instructed the resident to “Stop and feel where you are! Put your hand on the abdomen. No, you’re not getting it! Watch out! Don’t get the cervix.”
24 weeks
Time after time, the resident plunged the Bierer into the woman’s womb, removing a leg, then an arm, then the liver, then the placenta, which the doctor ranted about, because this can make the fetal head extraction more difficult. The last step that I saw was the collapse of the skull and the removal of the brain matter.
….
Back in his office, the doctor demonstrated how powerful a grip can be used with the Bierer forceps. He clamped them down on a surgical scrub gown I held in my hands. “Pull,” he instructed. I pulled. “Really, really pull!” he yelled. I really, really pulled. The only way to break the bond between forceps and cloth was to tear the cloth; I inwardly winced as I realized that in the operating room the cloth could be a uterine wall, and with one misplaced pull by the forceps, a perforation could occur.
“This is why I hate overuse of forceps,” the doctor commented. “Things tear.” Rubbing a hand across his forehead, the doctor looked straight at me: “There are only two kinds of doctors who have never perforated a uterus,” he added, “those that lie and those who don’t do abortions.”’
At first, Woodberry denies that she was emotionally affected by witnessing the abortions:
“… even as one foot was pulled off, I could see no response, no reflexive spasm, nothing. …There was no discernable response by the fetus. And in the operating room there was no emotional one from me.”
The reason that there was no reaction from the baby may have been because some abortionists inject poison into the womb (usually digoxin) to kill the baby prior to dismemberment. Unfortunately, most abortionists do not bother to do this extra step, and most babies were killed by this method are dismembered alive.
Later, Woodbury says:
Seeing a potential human collapsed and torn in a dish was disturbing; watching a very human woman, knowing she would be the one to carry the wounds, hurt too”
Margaret A. Woodbury “A doctor’s right to choose” Salon WEDNESDAY, JUL 24, 2002
Diagram of the D&E procedure
Remains of the baby aborted by this method at 20 weeks:
Rebekah Nancarrow has an ultrasound at Planned Parenthood (for which she paid $80), but wasn’t allowed to see the results because “that will only make it harder on you.”
12 week sonogram
She went to a Pregnancy Resource Center and was given a free ultrasound and allowed to view it. She said:
“Had I not had the sonogram, I would have had the abortion. But that sonogram just confirmed 100% to me that this was a life within me, not a tissue or glob.”
Mark O’Keefe, “Activists Tout Ultrasound Images to Discourage Abortion” Newhouse News Service, 2003 Quoted in Randy Alcorn Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and Their Mothers (Hendrickson Publishers, 2011)
In a pro-choice article, feminist Suzanne V Paczensky mocks unborn babies by saying:
“Some pro-choice advocates consider the emphasis on the humanity of the unborn misleading or deceptive, betraying “ignorance and contemptuous attitudes to women” by diverting attention from the woman carrying the child representations of the unborn in “tearjerking pictures of the sweet little pink embryo with it sad eyes staring out of its plastic bag, pleading: me live!”
Suzanne V Paczensky “In a Semantic Fog: How to Confront the Accusation That Abortion Equals Killing” Women’s Studies International Forum 13 no 3 1990 180 – 181
8 weeks. Paczensky is mocking and trivializing the lives of children like this oneRemains of a baby aborted at 8 weeksShare on Facebook
“The fetus has a right to life. But only the mother can protect that right.”
Abortionist Peter Huntingford, once an evangelical Christian converted by Billy Graham, now a doctor who has said publicly that “he would perform an abortion on any woman at any point in the pregnancy and for any reason.”
Quoted by Mary Kenny in Abortion: Whose Right? Institute of ideas (Hodder & Stoughton, 2002) 65 – 66
In a sense, this statement is true – only the mother can really protect her child. But If the child has a right to life, how can that right be conditional to the whim or choice of another person? It seems that this abortionist is moving the responsibility completely onto the mother shoulders, without acknowledging that he is the one doing the killing. Also, by using the term “mother” he seems to be admitting that the fetus is in fact a baby – you can’t be the “mother” to an undifferentiated clump of cells, you are a “mother” to a person, a child.
One doctor who performed “a small number” of abortions said the following:
“Strange as it may seem, I routinely murmur “excuse me” before I swat a fly. I can’t butcher a chicken without apologizing first. I have grieved for the cat that died beneath the wheels of my car.
Yes, I hold life sacred. But I’m also a pragmatist. I believe that the necessity of making choices forces us to view the sacredness of life as relative. That’s why I performed a small number of abortions when I was in family practice. I never did them without exploring all available options – for both the patient and myself. I also referred a few patients elsewhere for abortions I couldn’t do in good conscience.
Yet I am not pro-abortion. Nor am I against it. Anyone who is convinced of the absolute rightness of either position doesn’t fully understand the situation.”
Ted Merrill “Abortion: Extreme Views Ignore Reality” Medical Economics, July 15, 1996
Below are some pictures of abortions. Is it the pro-lifers who do not understand the situation, when they say that abortion is wrong?
