The pro-choice author of one book on abortion stated that clinic workers told her “they never look at the face” when processing ’tissue’ from abortions.
Wendy Simonds. Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic. (Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick) 1996, 86-87
“Like Widdicombe [abortion clinic founder], Isaacson-Jones [clinic director] believes that doing abortions to the exclusion of other medical procedures would be debilitating over time for someone trained to support life, and all their physicians maintain outside gynecological and obstetrical practices. Nurses at the clinic usually do not work exclusively on procedures but are rotated to various functions.”
Marian Faux. Crusaders: Voices from the Abortion Front (New York: Carol Publishing Group) 1990 p 97
“After it [abortion] became legal, I tried performing them for a while. But when I get home. I feel rotten. And yet I absolutely feel it’s a woman’s right. So now is the patient wants one. I refer her to someone else, someone I know is skilled and reasonably priced. Does that make me a hypocrite?”
14 weeks
William P. Given M.D., attending obstetrician gynecologist New York hospital, professor, Cornell Medical School
Louise Howe. Moments on Maple Avenue: the reality of abortion, Warner Books Inc, 1986 p 20
“I have often wakened in the middle of the night wondering how I became so involved in this problem that is basically distasteful and disturbing- the interruption of pregnancy”
Abortion provider
Russell, Keith P. and Edwin W. Jackson November 1969 “Therapeutic Abortions in California: Five Years Experience Under New Legislation” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 105 757-65
Abortionist quoted shortly after abortion laws were repealed in New York:
“I will do abortions. Everybody I know will do abortions. But, while I am intellectually ready, willing, and able, I will still have an emotional reaction. I have been so emotionally attuned to this attitude toward abortion throughout my whole career that it will be difficult. It’s a challenge…[the stigma] will persist until I die.”
Betty Sarvis and Hyman Rodman “The Abortion Controversy” Columbia University Press June 1, 1974 p 50
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist turned pro-life advocate, recalls these incidents from his time as a legal abortionist:
“I also recall being cornered by the wife of one [abortionist] at the cocktail party we gave when the Sixty-Second Street Clinic opened. She drew me aside and talked in a decidedly agitated manner of the increasingly frequent nightmares her husband had been having. He had confessed to her that the dreams were filled with blood and children, and that he had latterly become obsessed with the notion that some terrible justice would soon be inflicted upon his own children in payment for what he was doing.
Another time, the wife of a second doctor, who had done at least 2,000 abortions at the place, phoned to report that her husband had developed a serious drinking problem over the past year that, in her view, was precipitated by the clinic work.
Yet another doctor walked into my office after three weeks on the job and submitted his resignation. He declared that he had absolutely no feelings on the morality of abortion as such, but “when I am up this close to it, it’s just too much for me. Too bloody, too much pressure. You guys are turning out abortions here like it’s an assembly line, and you expect us to work with no feelings at all.”
Bernard N. Nathanson MD “Aborting America” New York: Doubleday Company 1979 p 141
“Any procedure at this stage is pretty gruesome. When I did second-trimester abortions, I did them late in the day, and when I’d get home, my wife would say, ‘You did one today, didn’t you?’ It would be all over my face.”
Portland Press Herald (Maine),Doctors speak bluntly about late-term abortion: 5-23-1997
D&E abortions are generally done in the second trimester, but occasionally are done later. They consist of tearing the unborn baby apart with forceps, pulling out limb after limb, then crushing the skull and counting each body parts afterwards to verify that all the pieces are out. See diagram below:
“[D&E abortions are] far more psychologically traumatizing for the doctors … I can’t do them anymore.”
Head of Obstetrics at a hospital in Philadelphia, quoted in 1993
