Seminarian Kelli Clement, one of the co-chairs of Seminarians for Choice, part of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a pro-abortion group.
“Choice is what makes us human, The choice to regulate our own family is a way to love. I have never regretted my choice to terminate that pregnancy…. It was the most loving thing I could do.”
Swedish author Vivian Wahlberg as training to become a nurse and was called upon to assist in an abortion done at 22 weeks
22 weeks
Wahlberg describes the abortion:
[T]he operation was performed through an abdominal incision. I vividly remember the moment when the doctor lifted out the whimpering baby and put it into a receptacle, which he then passed to me with instructions to put it on the fridge. Often I would go to the fridge and open the door slightly, full of wonder and feelings of ambivalence towards the tiny baby – who was later collected with the rest of the department’s biological waste.
The very next week after witnessing that child being left to die, Wahlberg was back training in the delivery ward. Her very first patient was giving birth to a disabled baby. The child was expected to be born with a clubfoot. When the baby was born, his deformities were more extensive. Wahlberg says:
[I] was fully prepared for the fact that there would be an abnormality. In fact both feet were deformed and even the child’s head was deformed, and much of the brain was missing.
Despite the baby’s condition, this child was wanted. Doctors and nurses immediately fought to save his life.
My clinical teacher had instructed me to immediately follow all of the resuscitation procedures necessary. A pediatrician was called in, oxygen was connected up, alternating hot and cold baths for the infant were prepared, and so on.
Because one child was wanted by his mother, doctors and nurses fought hard to save his life. The unwanted baby was pulled from his mother’s womb and died with no help from the same medical professionals that fought so valiantly to save the other baby. Wahlberg says:
Once again I felt great ambivalence. How can one make such a distinction between children? The first was taken out far too early – an apparently perfect and clearly viable little human being – and was then ignored. The other, born at full term, had such severe defects that any life–supporting measures were doomed to failure. Despite this, every possible resource was used to save this gravely ill and badly deformed child, but not the other healthy, living fetus.
Ever since that time I have tried to answer the question “What in fact is a human being?
Vivian Wahlberg Memories After Abortion (Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing, 2007) 7
“Our own repeated observation of a large group of fetal infants…left us with no doubt that psychologically they were individuals. Just as no two looked alike, so no two behaved precisely alike… These were genuine individual differences already prophetic of the diversity which distinguishes the human family.”
Arnold Gesell “The Embryology of Behavior” cited by Bart T Heffernan “The Early Biography of Everyman” in W Hilgers and Dennis J Horan, eds. Abortion and Social Justice (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1972) 17, 18
One article on abortion providers said the following:
“Ambivalent periods were characterized by a variety of otherwise uncharacteristic feelings and behavior including withdrawal from colleagues, resistance to going to work, lack of energy, in patients with clients and an overall sense of uneasiness. Nightmares, images that could not be shaken and preoccupation were commonly reported. Also common was the deep and lonely privacy within which practitioners had grappled with their ambivalence.”
Kathleen M Roe “Private Troubles and Public Issues: Providing Abortion and Is Competing Definitions” Social Science and Medicine 29 (1989): 1197
Doctor Paul Ranalli, a neurologist at the University of Toronto, says:
24 weeks
“[C]areful anatomical studies reveal, in fact, that the ascending pain fibers reach the cortex by 20 weeks. They then ‘sit’ briefly, for a few days to a few weeks, before making their final push upward to establish their ultimate connections (synapses) with the surface grey matter neurons that register a conscious awareness of pain. Allowing some room for individual variability, the brain of an unborn child will begin to register pain impulses just after 20 weeks with ever-increasing amounts of pain reception reaching millions of surface cortical neurons between 20 and 24 weeks.”
“The emerging reality of fetal pain in late abortions” National Right to Life News September, 2000, p. 14
Edward Kryn, MD, wrote a letter to Alliance for Life Ontario, November 3, 1995 on whether abortion is ever needed to save a mother’s life
“[I] would like to confirm in writing that today with the advanced state of medicine in Canada, there does not exist a medical reason for an abortion. One must understand that some treatments rarely undertaken to save the life of the mother have the unintentional effect of causing the child in the uterus to die, but these circumstances do not constitute an abortion – medically or morally.”
Quoted in “ABORTION A Briefing Book For Canadian Legislators” Campaign Life Coalition NATIONAL PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE July 2002
“Some women, even those who are very pro-choice, talk about having dilemmas and guilt. I didn’t feel anything. No regrets whatsoever. I don’t mean to sound crass, but frankly, it wasn’t any more psychologically damaging or soul-searching than a dental extraction.”
Trish later was unable to conceive a child. The pro-choice author of the book claims:
“Trish’s fertility problems are not related to her past abortion.”
Anna Runkle In Good Conscience: A Practical, Emotional, and Spiritual Guide to Deciding Whether to Have an Abortion (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass Publishers, 1998) 42
Preborn baby – first trimester.babiy aborted at 10 weeks
Is tearing apart a baby like this no different than having a tooth extracted?
“We didn’t tell my boyfriend’s parents because his sister-in-law had 13 abortions. His parents were going on and on about how you can’t mess with the spirit that many times. We knew they would support us but it was too hot an issue at the time.”
Anna Runkle In Good Conscience: A Practical, Emotional, and Spiritual Guide to Deciding Whether to Have an Abortion (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass Publishers, 1998) 38
9-10 week fetus, preborn babyFrom an abortion at 10 weeksShare on Facebook
One study in The Lancet, a very reputable medical journal, says this:
“There has been almost a conspiracy of silence in declaring [abortion’s] risks. Unfortunately, because of emotional reactions to legal abortion, well documented evidence from countries with a vast experience of it, receives little or no attention in either the medical or lay press. This is medically indefensible when patients suffer as a result…It is significant that some of the more serious complications occurred with the most senior and experienced operators…”
J.A Stallworthy., et al., “Legal Abortion: A Critical Assessment of Risk,” The Lancet, December 4, 1971
