ClinicQuotes

Postabortion father: I think about the baby every day

A man named Matthew told the following story:

“In early 1975, when I was 20, I fell in love with a girl who was two years my senior. …. I had had relationships with girls before… but this was the first time I had been in love and it hit me like a mallet… In July 1975 we found out that she was pregnant. I was happy about it and thought with love and the support of our parents, which I was sure we’d get, we would be able to cope…

After a short amount of deliberation, she decided to have an abortion. It was she who was pregnant, it was her body, and she didn’t want to sacrifice her career for the sake of bringing up a baby that would have a poor start in life.”

The interviewer says:

Matthew argued that they could manage but his girlfriend was adamant. … Matthew started drinking afterwards. After the abortion, the relationship deteriorated…. By the New Year, they had split up.

Matthew met someone else; his former girlfriend pursued her career as a social worker, never married or had children. Matthew did marry and had three children. He sobered up and became a very devoted father. But he never quite got over the abortion.

“I still think of that abortion – nearly every day – and will do until the day I die. I have lit a candle in the church and prayed for the soul of my child and for forgiveness in consenting to its murder. This has brought me some peace. Hardly any attention has been paid to men who suffer as a result of abortion.… It is a real feeling that we have done wrong.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 76 – 77

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Teen has abortion due to lack of support from mother

A teenager who became pregnant got no support from her mother, who threatened her with homelessness. She ended up having an abortion:

“I was in love with a man who abused me emotionally. I didn’t recognize the relationship as abusive because of my own insecurities and need for attention.

When I became pregnant, the relationship ended. I pleaded with my boyfriend to stand by me through the pregnancy because I did not believe in abortion. He told me to have an abortion because no one would marry me with someone else’s child. I was devastated, desperate, and alone…

I turned to my close friends, and they only had mixed answers. I knew I would have to tell my parents eventually because I lived under their roof. I could not make it alone in Hawaii, considering the high cost of living….

The response I got was devastating, especially from a Christian. My mother told me I would be homeless, and they would not help me through this terrible sin I committed. I said, “Then I’ll have an abortion…” She didn’t respond or try to stop me. I felt that this was the last straw, and I would have to go through with it. I wished she had encouraged me to keep the child and assured me that I would not be alone…

During the whole procedure, I wailed in agony and despair.”

Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) 28 – 29

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Doctor discusses the fetus as patient

Dr. Alan Fleishmann, New York specialist in the care of newborns, told London Standard correspondent Jeremy Campbell:

“The fetus is being looked upon as a patient now. This is a big difference and it has come about suddenly… This has increased the moral standing of the unborn. It has changed the way we think about abortion. People will decide that the fetus has a moral status as early the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. That is when we can do a biopsy, screen for genetic defects. Irregular heartbeats and vitamins deficiencies can be corrected at 15 weeks.

Legs of preborn baby at 14 weeks

The question now is, if some fetuses have the same rights as a patient, shouldn’t all fetuses have those rights?”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 295

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Abortion patient: women in Moscow have multiple abortions

Lydia, who was having her fourth abortion, to author Mary Kenny :

“You think I’m bad to have three – I know women in Moscow who’ve had 33.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 173

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Abortion “poisoned marriage” and led to divorce

From one woman who had an abortion:

“I sit alone in my rented flat, work full time to keep myself occupied, and think of the child who would be 7 ½ now if we had allowed it to live,” recalls a divorced woman in her 40s. Her husband had been “horrified” when she discovered she was pregnant, and he told her it would make him unhappy for the rest of his life. Reluctantly, she had the abortion under pressure from her husband, but it poisoned the marriage and they subsequently got divorced. “The worst aspect of the whole business is that he now says he regrets terribly “the baby business”. He realizes that he was quite wrong. But nothing can heal the divisions of the past. We are both to bitter.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 69 – 70

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Birthmother on adoption and abortion

One woman told her story. She had an unplanned pregnancy, and the doctor was pressuring her to have an abortion:

“I was single and hadn’t planned to get pregnant – but I wasn’t showing any signs of distress. On subsequent visits to the hospital, the same doctor ridiculed me for not having an abortion. I think the idea that anybody could actually have an unwanted child, and go ahead and put it up for adoption is by some people considered inhuman – whereas abortion would have been acceptable. But abortion didn’t enter my head; whatever my predicament, the baby has rights too…

I imagined that because I really disliked the father that the baby would be really ugly and repellent to me. But he wasn’t. He was absolutely beautiful. I was surprised that he was lovely, and he looked so like the other boys [her other children]. I never had the slightest change of mind about the adoption, but still, he was lovely…..

I do wish people would stop thinking about adoption as something inhuman. A few of the mothers in the hospital said, “How on earth could you do that? Why didn’t you have an abortion?” They were very judgmental. And I was very upset at the time, but I realize why now. I think they obviously loved their own children and identified with them, but it would be acceptable if I had had a termination because then nothing would be seen. I think they could kid themselves that there was nothing there, but if it’s a real baby you’re dealing with something different. The unborn baby is seen as inhuman; the born baby is seen as a full human being. It is a form of discrimination against human life just because it is not seen… I think people should be helped to go through the pregnancy, and they must reach their own decision. Not alone- they need help.”

Debby Sanders, founder of pro-life group Women for Life, which supports women with unplanned pregnancies.

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 104-105

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Doctor complains about not having access to fetal organs

From one doctor:

“It’s absolutely absurd that I have a legal right to abort that baby out of the mother within a week of delivery and throw it out, but because it’s delivered, I have no access to it [for its organs].

Dr. Leonard Bailey, who gained fame for transplanting a baboon’s heart into a newborn baby.

Quoted in David H. Andrusko. “A Time to Stop.” National Right to Life News, March 10, 1988, pages 2 and 10.

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Abortion activist brags about breaking the law

From a pro-choice activist:

“Abortion activists have a rich history of taking the law — and their lives — into their own hands. When the law doesn’t respect women, women won’t respect the law.”

Ninia Baehr. Abortion Without Apology: A Radical History for the 1990s [Boston: South End Press], 1990, page 30.

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“A fetus becomes a human being when the woman decides it does”

From pro-abortion supporter Joyce Arthur:

“So all in all, a woman’s reasons for having an abortion are ethical. … A fetus becomes a human being when the woman carrying it decides it does. Pro-choice leaders and activists are wrong to encourage debate on the status of the fetus. They are wrong to publicly speculate on its moral value. Their opinion about the fetus is just as irrelevant and just as dangerous as the opinion of the most fanatical anti-choicer. Because when we inject our opinions about the fetus into the public square, it just shows our lack of respect and trust for the moral authority of pregnant women. “

Joyce Arthur. “The Fetus Focus Fallacy.” Pro-Choice Press [Pro-Choice Action Network], March 2005

If a woman decides her five year old is not a human being, does that make him not one?

Is this baby only human if her mother wants her to be?

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Abortionist Willie Parker describes seeing body parts

Abortionist Willie Parker describes seeing the body parts of the babies he aborts. He describes how he commits a first trimester abortion:

… I insert a straw, called a cannula… and attach that to a suction tube which leads to a canister by my feet. I flip a switch on the canister body, which turns on the vacuum, and, with a circular motion, I sweep the walls of the uterus with the tube. Within the space of a couple of minutes, the products of conception are sucked through the tube and into the canister.

I place the small mass of tissue and blood into a fine mesh strainer that looks like something you’d find in an industrial kitchen, and I run the whole thing for a minute under running water. Then I transfer the contents of the strainer into a square Plexiglas dish, which I place on top of a lightbox. And there, I inspect what has just come out of the woman’s body: what I’m looking for is the fetal sac, which, at a later gestational age, becomes the placenta, and, after nine weeks, every one of the fetal parts – head, body, limbs – like a puzzle that has to be put back together…

I make sure I find every part, and I place them together, re-creating the fetus in the pan. I have done this so many times that it is has become routine: no matter what these parts may look like, this is organic matter that does not add up to anything that can live on its own. This phase of the process is crucial as any other.

Abortionist Willie Parker claims to be a devout Christian.

Willie Parker Life’s Work: from the Trenches, A Moral Argument for Choice (New York: 37INK, Atria, 2017) 95 – 96

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