Pro-life activist William Brennan describes a study that took place in the 1970s:
In an experiment on human sexual development in Canada, during the 1970s, aborted babies were dissected of their testes, ovaries and adrenals. 54 babies were involved – 33 males and 21 females ranging in age from 10 to 25 weeks gestation. The organs were “minced, homogenized, and subjected to histochemical analysis.” It was meant to learn about “the onset of sexual differentiation by comparing concentration of sex steroids in fetal testes with those in the ovaries and adrenals.”
William Brennan The Abortion Holocaust: Today’s Final Solution (St. Louis, Missouri, 1983) 61
The study referred to was:
FI Reyes JSD Winter and C Fairman “Studies on Human Sexual Development I Fetal Gonadal and Adrenal Sex Steroids” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 37 (July 1973): 74-78
An article from The New York Times described abortion mills in New York City:
“It is a shadowy business, the unregulated world of abortion mills, shabby clinics operating behind the facades of doctors’ offices, often in poor neighborhoods. Its victims are women who know little about legal rights or medical options, who have seen an ad or heard a tip and come to this … to risk butchery on a table….No one knows how many such fly-by-night surgeries there are in New York City or how many abortions they produce. But law-enforcement officials and medical experts say dozens of these clinics are believed to be tucked away behind storefronts and in more ordinary-looking doctors’ offices and they are believed responsible for scores or even hundreds of illegal or incompetent abortions annually.”
The article refers to:
“chilling secrets of sleazy abortion mills — most of them run by licensed doctors who use their offices as abortion “clinics,” but are not licensed as full-fledged abortion clinics and are thus not subject to rigorous state standards and periodic inspections.”
After giving several examples of abortion malpractice, the Times points out that despite multiple botched abortions causing injuries, only one New York doctor lost his licence.
“Only one doctor in 1989 had a license summarily suspended for gross misconduct in an abortion….there have been only four other summary suspensions — emergency actions invoked before hearings on charges — related to abortions in the last six years — one in 1985, one in 1990 and two this year.
While the state regulates and inspects the legitimate clinics, it lacks the authority and staff to regulate and inspect doctors’ offices, and can only challenge a doctor’s license after a complaint and an investigation. And many clients, even if dissatisfied, are reluctant to file a complaint.”
This is a rare candid article from a newspaper that usually stays firmly pro-choice and, in future years, would argue against any kind of health regulations on abortion facilities.
Two abortion doulas who provided comfort f0r women having abortions claimed that people in the mainstream pro-choice didn’t want to acknowledge that abortion was often painful to women, not “empowering.”
In their book about being abortion doulas, the authors say:
“There were more traditional pro-choice groups and activists who would express concern about our acknowledgement of the emotion that accompanies an abortion. We had been fed narratives through our activist work that many people felt “empowered” by their abortions. But our very presence in the procedure room undermined that message by hinting that abortion might be physically painful or people might have complicated feelings about it. Mostly, what we saw from people having abortions was a nuanced mix of mourning and relief. We would rarely hear that our clients regretted their procedures, nor would be hear them speak of it in empowering terms. But when we talked about all of this, it often wasn’t received by the pro-choice community the way we expected it to be.”
Mary Mahoney and Lauren Mitchell The Doulas: Radical Care for Pregnant People (New York: Feminist Press, 2016) 18
A woman who had abortions recalled that the clinic worker doing the group counseling session said she had had 8 abortions herself.
“When I went in, went in to get, it was at the University Hospital, and they had a consultation you had to go to. There were couples there, and the girl that was doing the group had said she had had, like, eight abortions. It made me feel really kind of dirty and sick because I didn’t want to ever say that.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 69
Mary Mullany, a British psychologist, describes how emotional problems plagued nurses who work at abortion facilities. The graphic nature of the abortions they witnessed created discouragement and led to a high turnover rate.
“My work as a Psychiatric Clinical Specialist involves direct counseling with women wishing to have an abortion and consultation with nursing and medical staff performing the procedures. What has been the most distressing to me is the discouragement that the nursing staff experience, resulting in a very high attrition rate. The staff perform first trimester as well as prostaglandin abortions weekly. Clearly prostaglandins are the most controversial and stressful for all involved.
Recently, I started working with nurses’ groups to help them to articulate their thoughts, feelings, and concerns about the abortion process and hopefully channel concerns appropriately. There are numerous occasions where the nurses’ own ambivalent feelings interfere with patient care and heighten conflict among staff.
I recognize that there are no easy answers, that abortion is a very complex emotional and ethical decision for all participants. I continue to be impressed with how long the unresolved pain of abortion resides with so many women.”
Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 272
Magda Denes, who spent a year watching abortions and interviewing people at an abortion clinic, describes becoming numb to the horror of the procedures and the pain of the women:
“In a month’s time I acquire a sort of wooden torpor to the screams that periodically shatter the humdrum noises of the floor. Tears cease to unsettle me. I am unmoved by wailing. I take it for granted that we are in the business of death here, and the tenor of each day will be heartbreak… I am shellshocked, as it were, stunned by being spoken to. Staggered by these readily revealed dramas, whose plots are loneliness, whose resolutions are defeat.”
Magda Denes In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital (New York: Basic Books, 1976) 126
The abortion facility Magda Denes visited did abortions up to 24 weeks – the age of the baby pictured above.
“Research commissioned by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops studied a four year period from 1992-1995. Three shooting incidents by anti-abortionists drew 1,110 stories in seven national print and network outlets. Yet, thirteen documented cases of pro-abortionist violent incidents attracted only 59 stories in the same news outlets.
Only four stories covered how Daniel Mahoney became the first pro-abortionist to be indicted for threatening to kill workers at a crisis pregnancy center under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.”
Troy Clark, Ph.D. Abortion Every 90 Seconds: The Whole Story (Kindle, 2015)
A woman had a D&E abortion because her child had severe kidney problems and would’ve needed dialysis or a transplant. However, she feels the aborted baby was her son and gets angry when pro-choice friends have trouble with that term:
“Opponents of abortion may argue that terminating my pregnancy violated our baby’s human rights …
The more surprising and hurtful responses, however, have been from people like my staunchly pro-choice friend who told me that she was jarred by my use of the word son to describe our fetus, as though the moral basis for abortion depends on denying the fetus any semblance of humanity, no matter how close it is to the point of viability, no matter how the woman herself chooses to define her relationship to the fetus.”
Frederica Mathewes-Green sat with groups of women and listened to their abortion stories. She recalls one story:
“She voices the secret hope many aborting women harbor: “When I was at the clinic waiting for the abortion, I kept hoping my husband would show up. I kept hoping he would come in and say, “Don’t do this! I changed my mind!” but he didn’t show up. The marriage grew tense and they divorced a few months later.”
Frederica Mathewes-Green Real Choices: Listening to Women, Looking for Alternatives to Abortion (Felicity Press; 3 edition, April 16, 2013) Kindle version
An abortion doula helping at an abortion clinic in Manhatten recalls that one woman was trying to sell Zales jewelry to the workers at the clinic while they were doing her abortion:
“A Zales representative tries to sell me on their various collections [during her abortion.] She doesn’t wince at all during the abortion. When it’s over, she thanks everyone, tells us which store she works in, and offers us all a discount. “
