Description of a first trimester abortion procedure

A former abortionist describes a first trimester abortion:

“With suction, a plastic hollow tube (vacurette) is used, with the caliber varying to match the tightness of the cervix. A clear plastic tube leaves from the vacurette to one empty bottle where the bodily remains are trapped in a gauze bag; the blood seeps into the bottle below. A second bottle sets up the suction. With the vacurette, the operator quickly pulls the conceptus from the wall of the uterus. If this is done after about 10 weeks, one can see identifiable parts of the fetus’s body dismembered and trapped in the gauze bag, which caused some reaction from nurses in the early years. The later one gets into the “first trimester” (the first 12 weeks) the more likely the suction must be alternated with the hand-operated forceps to dismember the fetal body in the womb and extract pieces, working blindly in that large, soft chamber.”

Bernard N Nathanson, M.D. with Richard N Ostling. Aborting America (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1979) 73