Category: Quotes

From an interview with late term abortionist Dr. Susan Robinson on what she does with the babies she aborts in the third trimester:

Robinson:

“With fetal anomaly patients,[who are aborting because the baby is handicapped] we ask them right up front if they plan to hold their baby after it’s born. These patients, their emotional needs are so different from the ones who are looking at their pregnancy as an absolute disaster, who are just thinking, “Get it out of me, please, please, please.” Those patients—the maternal indications patients—they are not relating to their fetus as a baby, they’re relating to it as a problem.

But with a fetal indications patient—if she refers to it as her baby, I’ll refer to it as her baby. If she’s named the baby, I’ll use the baby’s name too. I would say that most of these patients do decide to see and hold their baby, although many of them have a hard time dealing with the idea at first. We’ll take remembrance photographs, we’ll give them a teddy bear, the footprints… I don’t want them to go home from the procedure with absolutely nothing to remember and honor the baby, and its birth.”

Interviewer:

Wow. You’ll say “birth”?

Robinson:

Yes. I try to mirror what will be the most consoling to the patient. In general, these patients—fetal indications—do talk about giving birth, so I’ll say that as well.

Interviewer:

To simultaneously sustain these ideas—that you desperately loved and wanted this baby that’s here in your arms, and also that you just committed yourself to ending its life—it’s one of the most complicated emotional situations I can imagine. In these cases—I am sorry for this macabre question—the baby is dead, right? They never meet their baby alive?

Robinson says that yes, indeed, the baby is dead.

Jia Tolentino “Interview with Dr. Susan Robinson, One of the Last Four Doctors in America to Openly Provide Third-Trimester Abortions” The Hairpin Sept 20, 2013