The Center for Bioethical Reform quoted the following students whose minds were changed on abortion after seeing graphic photos of aborted babies on their campus:
“I have just changed my mind!” concluded another student who had begun her conversation by saying abortion might be a viable choice for other women.
A male student said, “I had no idea this is what abortion was – they are so tiny – and that is a hand!”
Another student said, “It’s gruesome. I didn’t know how developed it [the baby’s body] is so early.” She went on to say, “People do need to see this; maybe they will make different decisions.””….
Large numbers of students accepted our literature and dialogued with our team. Many were quite open-minded.
In contrast, a pro-abortion professor came out to scream and profanely vent her anger about GAP’s presence. Police intervened and repeatedly directed her to take her complaint to the administrative office.”
De’Ja CookBrown, a sophomore communication major, “It opened my eyes to the situation. It gave viewers a different way to see it. The pictures were graphic, but sometimes it may take that to get a point across, especially for something as big as life.”
In her book The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories, Abby Johnson compiles the stories of former abortion center workers who have left the abortion industry. Among the compelling and disturbing stories in the book is that of one facility worker who witnessed a third trimester induction abortion and its aftermath.
Third trimester abortions are generally performed by the induction method. In this method of abortion, the doctor first inserts laminaria sticks into the woman’s body. These absorb fluid and expand, slowly opening the cervix and preparing the woman for her abortion. The doctor then injects a substance into the baby or amniotic sac which causes cardiac arrest in the nearly full-term child. This is done on two consecutive days. The third day, labor is induced and the mother essentially “gives birth” to a dead baby.
In Johnson’s story, an abortion clinic worker describes being sent from her own clinic to visit a late-term abortion facility that was very efficient and successful at making money. She was sent to observe the way the facility was run and report back to her employer.
Shortly after the visiting worker arrived at the facility, a woman named Jessica arrived to have an abortion at 28 weeks. Babies delivered at that age routinely survive.
The reason for the abortion was that Jessica’s boyfriend had broken up with her, and in her pain and despair over the breakup, she didn’t think she could handle having a baby without his support. The abortion worker says she wondered if such a reason was valid – Jessica was making a decision in the grip of powerful emotions. Would she regret her choice later?
The baby and mother were perfectly healthy.
Jessica seemed upset when she arrived at the clinic. The doctor injected her baby with digoxin (a heart drug which, when used for abortion, causes cardiac arrest in the preborn child), then sent her to a hotel. This late-term abortion facility regularly sent their patients to a local hotel after injecting digoxin. The patients would stay for two nights, then come back to the abortion center the next day to be induced.
S28 weeks
As the woman was packed off, the visiting worker saw them hand a bag to her as she went out the door. She asked one of the workers what the bag was for. The woman replied:
“Do-it-yourself abortion kit,” an administrative assistant answered as she shuffled papers. “It’s just a biohazard bag and cinch, some gauze, and scissors. You know, just in case they deliver in their rooms.”
The next day, Jessica returned to the facility to have the old laminaria removed and the new laminaria put in. They did an ultrasound, and discovered that the baby was still alive. They figured that the digoxin would just take a little longer to work, and they sent her back to the hotel.
The abortionist showed little sympathy towards Jessica:
The doctor, who rarely made an appearance at the clinic other than on procedure days, was there when I arrived. Initially, I had been eager to meet him, but after a few moments of his company, I’d had my fill. He was somewhat attractive, and I could sense that he was a strong and charismatic leader. It quickly became evident to me that his ego was off the charts, and his anger was thinly veiled. That veil grew thinner still when Jessica didn’t show for her procedure.
Jessica did not return to the facility on time. The workers called her multiple times, but she did not answer. Finally they called the manager of the hotel and demanded they put Jessica on the line. Jessica told the clinic that she had changed her mind about the abortion.
“I need to go to the ER,” she sobbed. “I want to save my baby.”
The abortionist must have heard Jessica’s end of the conversation as well. He snatched the phone from the nurse and demanded that she come in to the clinic immediately to finish the procedure. “The fetus will be dead soon enough from the digoxin,” he insisted. “This is what you wanted.”
“But the baby has been moving around all night,” she cried. “It’s struggling.”
When he realized that he wasn’t getting anywhere with her, he slammed the phone down. He grabbed his keys and ordered his nurse and assistant to follow him.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To the hotel,” he answered. “We are going to convince her to come in.”
The doctor and clinic workers drove to the hotel to force Jessica to come in. They brought her into the clinic through the rear door, “heaving her toward the procedure room.” She arrived heavily drugged by the doctor.
Jessica’s long dark hair was matted and glued to the side of her face by tears and saliva. Her face was a maze of red blotches, and her eyes were nearly swollen shut. Obviously drugged, she seemed to be making an effort to raise her foot to take a step on her own, but the nurses were impatient and wouldn’t wait for her to coordinate her steps and dragged her instead.”
They put her on the table where she lay: “moaning and cradling her swollen belly.”
Jessica still insisted she wanted her baby. The doctor sedated her again as she struggled to get away:
As the doctor approached, Jessica lamely attempted to roll off of the table. Whatever they had given her at the hotel, or in route, had sedated her to the point that her efforts were futile. She continued to whimper and squirm and do everything in her power to get off of that table. The nurse grabbed her arm, effortlessly restraining her, and injected an additional dose of sedation into her vein. Within mere seconds, Jessica’s arm went limp and hit the metal table with a thud.
Under ultrasound guidance, the doctor administered another dose of digoxin through Jessica’s abdomen. I had a clear shot of the screen from my seat. I saw the perfect outline of her baby: I witnessed it kick its legs and shift in an attempt to avoid the needle. The commotion was finally over and the room was filled with uncomfortable silence. It took about 30 minutes for the baby to die.
The dead baby was delivered with the facility workers pushing on Jessica’s abdomen, as she was unconscious and unable to push.
28 weeks
The worker said:
It was a boy. I remember being taken aback by how beautiful he was. The doctor snatched him, snipped the cord, wrapped him in blue paper, and tossed him into a red biohazard bag like so much garbage…
She couldn’t help but wonder:
“What would have been wrong with supporting her decision to attempt to save her baby? Was it simply a liability issue? Perhaps they were afraid of whatever complications a non-lethal dose of digoxin would have caused the baby.”’
When Jessica woke up, she was overcome with emotion:
Jessica struggled to sit upright, and began to scream. “Where is he? I need to see him! I need to see him!”
I jumped out of the way as the nurse and assistant raced toward her.
“You need to stop,” the nurse hissed.
Neither the nurse nor the assistant made the slightest effort to mask their annoyance and disgust. When Jessica’s screams persisted, they threatened to call the police. Their cruelty and threats only fueled her panic. The doctor finally burst through the door. He spat curses as he lumbered towards her. Jessica was instantly silenced and physically shrunk from him.
“I just need to hold him,” she begged. “Please.”
He scoffed at her request, and when Jessica resumed her deafening pleas to hold her dead baby, he ordered the assistant to call the police and walked away. The complete lack of empathy on the part of the workers struck me. Instead of doing what they could do calm and console her, they rolled their eyes and exchanged snide comments.
The abortionist called the police on the poor woman to shut her up and force her from the facility. The police forced her to leave.
The worker said:
Her cries could be heard even after the clinic door slammed and the officers escorted her down the sidewalk. She left that day with the knowledge that she was responsible for the death of her child, and with her requests to hold him and beg his forgiveness denied.…
I felt my cheeks flushed with anger when I heard the workers mocking Jessica.
The horrible scene in the facility shows that many abortion providers don’t care about their patients or about doing the right thing by them. The doctor and his abortion workers terrorized a woman and murdered her baby against her will, drugging her and dragging her into the facility. When they were done with her, they treated her like a criminal and called the police. One can only imagine the horrible emotional trauma Jessica had to undergo, and the emotional scars that she now carries.
Source: Abby Johnson The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2016) 60-67
For more compelling stories from former clinic workers, buy The Walls are Talking here.
Gloria Feldt, then president of Planned Parenthood, compares abortion to segregation while taking about a pro-choice litmus test for judicial nominees:
“The Right has long complained that Democrats and pro-choice Republicans have used Roe as a litmus test for court appointments. Well, Roe’s the law of the land, and because it protects a fundamental human and civil right, it should be a litmus test. There is no way it would be acceptable to put someone on the court who said they were fundamentally opposed to Brown vs. Board of Education, the decision that ended segregation in the schools. Why should we allow someone on the court who would take away a woman’s civil right to have control over her own body? No one who opposes a fundamental right and is opposed to a core constitutional holding – privacy – can be impartial and fair-minded on the bench.”
Gloria Feldt The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women’s Rights and How to Fight Back (New York: Bantam Dell, 2004) 118
Is the right to kill this preborn baby really equivalent to the right of African Americans to go to the same schools as white children?
From one study that took place right before Roe v. Wade:
“In a series of 73,000 abortions one woman in every 20 had early complications; one in every 200 had major complications.”
These were legal abortions done in California, New York and several other states where abortion was legal before Roe V. Wade, not “back alley” illegal ones.
Christopher Tietze and Sarah Lewitt “Joint Program for the Study of Abortion (JPSA): Early Medical Complications of Legal Abortion” Studies on Family Planning 3, no. 6, June 1972
Former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson talks about the grisly efficiency with which abortions were done in the abortion clinic where he worked:
“From 8 in the morning until midnight, 7 days a week, doctors working in 10 operating rooms performed vacuum aspirations on an endless parade of pregnant wombs. In the peak months more than 3,000….Doctors regularly worked 12-hour shifts.”
Charles Remsberg and Bonnie Remsberg “Second Thoughts on Abortion from the Doctor Who Led the Crusade for It” Good Housekeeping March 1976, p 130
In the 1970s and 1980s, late term abortions were usually done by saline induction. In this type of abortion, a caustic saline solution was injected into the woman’s uterus, poisoning the child.
It was a slow death. One medical study found:
“The time interval between saline instillation and fetal death has varied from as early as 1 hour to as late as 7 hours, with a mean of 4 hours.”
Robert S Galen et al. “Fetal Pathology and Mechanism of Fetal Death in Saline Induced Abortion: A Study of 143 Gestations and Critical Review of the Literature” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 120 (October 1, 1974):353-354
The baby suffered and struggled for life all that time.
Now most late term abortions (except for really late ones, in the third trimester, which are done by induction) are done by D&E, a much quicker process where the baby is dismembered and pulled out with forceps.
Whether a quick, albeit extremely gruesome death is better for the baby could be considered. But late term abortions still destroy a living human being.
The number of abortions has gone down significantly.
There are now 2000 fewer abortions per day then there were in the early 1990s, despite the fact that the population is 20% higher than it was at that time.
Source:
Mark Crutcher Siege: Pro-Life Field Manual (Denton, Texas: Life Dynamics Inc., 2015) 41
From a Muslim woman who regretted her two abortions:
“ I didn’t want to have the abortion. My daughter was now three years old and I felt ready for another child. He was absolutely certain that he didn’t want another child. He had two; that was all he wanted. Our relationship was bad. I didn’t want sex; he wanted it..…
I played courageous and went and had the abortion. I was trying to save my pride and had the abortion in a very angry state. I didn’t have time to dig too deeply into my feelings. Later on I felt that I had been stupid. It was my right to have the baby. It was more part of me than him. If he can make a decision that he doesn’t want a child, than I can make a decision that I do want it.…
Now, eight months after the first abortion in the US I was to have another. My husband did try to be kind, but it didn’t help.… I was deeply scarred from the first abortion and all the conflict over contraception…
Now if the situation were to be mentioned, he would say that it was my decision. He would deny responsibility for the decisions to have the abortions. He might say it was our decision, but more mine – it’s as if he would try to block it from his mind. We have never really talked about it, but I think that’s what he’d say…
As Muslims we had no particular religious conflicts regarding the abortions. I was educated religiously that up until 120 days the fetus has no soul – that you’re not dealing with a human being up to that point.… My conflict about having the abortions stemmed from my feminine, maternal instinct, not from my religion. I felt grief and loss, not guilt.”
Miriam Claire The Abortion Dilemma: Personal Views on a Public Issue (New York: Insight Books, 1995) 117 – 119
“Having read numerous journal articles that made abortion sound is simple and straightforward as a dental procedure, I concluded it would be a quick and efficient way to solve the problem.
I went into the clinic expecting a relatively pain-free experience, but I came out feeling that the authors of these articles had betrayed me. The procedure was agonizing… Still, despite the pain, I did leave the clinic feeling very relieved: my problem was solved, and I could return to life as usual.
No one, however, had prepared me for the flashbacks, which began about a year after the “procedure”… Each time, I would relive the experience: going into the clinic; getting up on the table; experiencing the searing, unbelievable pain; and then lying there, gasping and stunned…
I started having upsetting reactions to babies. I would be walking around in a grocery store, and if I spotted a baby, my eyes would fill with tears and I would walk quickly away. A question started plaguing me: How old would my baby have been now?…
My memories about the abortion continued to haunt me. Even though I remained staunchly pro-choice, I still had to battle a deep and gnawing sense that I had done something terribly wrong.”
Lorraine V Murray Confessions of an Ex-Feminist (San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press, 2008) 99 – 101
