ClinicQuotes

One Woman’s Story of a Medical Abortion

In June of 2002 I discovered I was pregnant. The day I found out I was scared, excited and sad. You see, I knew that my boyfriend was unemployed and I was looking for a new place to live. While I have a good job, I also go to college full-time and have a lot of commitments in my life. I also knew that without a stable partner, there was no way I could raise a child in any fashion that would provide a loving and secure future for my baby. I realized that I could not keep this child, no matter how much I wanted to.

When I told my boyfriend of one year at that time, he immediately said that he wanted an abortion, but supported my choice either way. Once your boyfriend says he wants an abortion, nothing he says after that really matters, you know if you have the baby, he’ll hate you for it. We decided to make an appointment to go to a clinic.

It was a week later before my appointment. When I arrived I was scared and wanted to run out of there without looking back. The facility was not all that clean, and the people weren’t very knowledgeable. There was only one doctor, he was old and had arthritis in his hands so bad he could barely move his fingers. They took me back to an exam room for the sonogram. The technician was incompetent to put it nicely. They couldn’t get an external picture, so they had to use an attachment that went inside via the vagina. This was uncomfortable and painful as she prodded and poked around my cervix. The tech than informed me that I was 6 and one-half weeks pregnant. I was later informed that I was a candidate for RU-486, being less than 9 weeks pregnant. I breathed a sigh of relief as I did not have to endure the surgical abortion. I would later be VERY SORRY.

The initial injection made me very ill, I thought I was going to “get sick” all night, and that was just the beginning of the hellish torture I was about to endure over the next three weeks. There are several pills you need to take on different days to finish aborting the pregnancy. After the injection the doctor tells you that if you don’t finish your baby will be born without arms and legs. He also says the last set of pills is designed to make you actually “pass” the “tissue”. Or in a mother’s English miscarry the baby. In order to miscarry you must experience contractions. The doctor gives you 2 days of pills that will make you go into contraction. The doctor gave me 6 Percoset to help ease the pain. Sounds easy enough, right? WRONG!!!! I was in agony for 6 hours for 2 consecutive nights. The pain made me scream in tortuous wails. I lay on my boyfriend’s couch, the first night alone, and writhed, twisted and contorted my body praying that either I would die or the pain would stop. I called the emergency number they gave me and told them that the pain killers were not working. They said very callously that there was nothing more they could do for me, informing me that this is normal and to just wait it out. After two nights of what I thought would end this nightmare I began to bleed, a little. On the third day after the contractions I passed the first “tissue” mass. I thought, that’s it, it’s over, now I can begin to heal, right? WRONG!!!!!!

About one and a half weeks later while watching TV I began to feel very ill, and began to cramp up again. Thinking this must be normal (yeah right), at first I thought nothing of it. Within two hours I began to bleed very heavily. The bleeding became increasing worse; eventually I couldn’t get off the toilet. I began to pass blood clots the size of golf balls, and yet another fleshy mass. The cramps became contraction and the bleeding became uncontrollable, I went through a pack of maximum strength maxi pads inside of 12 hours. While sleeping the first night I ruined three pairs of P.J. pants. I again called the emergency number the clinic provided me with and they said it was normal and to just wait it out.

The next day the bleeding was still relentless and the pain only bearable because I was still breathing. I called the clinic, again, and they told me that the doctor said it was a “delayed abortion”. There was still nothing they could do and it was normal. I lay all day bleeding, crying and thinking I must be crazy. As the day progressed it became increasingly hard for me to get up and walk to the bathroom. I began to pass out if I stood up. It finally got to the point that my boyfriend had to carry me to the bathroom, because I could no longer stand. Again we called the emergency number and they said if it was that bad I needed to come in. I asked them how they propose I do that since I cannot be more than 5 minutes away from a bathroom, and when I stand up I pass out. At this point I was distressed and angry that I had to endure such suffering, but at the same time I thought maybe I deserved it. After all, it was my fault and my choice not to keep this baby. I knew it was God punishing me for killing one of his children. Even though my boyfriend, Tom, didn’t want the baby, it was my body, my choice, my suffering, and my consequences.

I called my regular GYN and described the situation to him, he said I needed to go to the emergency room immediately. Upon arrival at the ER they put me in a wheel chair and I waited no more than 10 minutes before I was blood-soaked from the waist down. They rushed me through triage, where they discovered my blood pressure was roughly 60 over 52. The doctors met me in my room where they immediately put me on I.V. fluids and drew blood. I described what was happening over the last 24 hours and the events that had led up to my visit in the ER. The next 12 hours were degrading, humiliating, painful, stressful, and virtually unbearable. The doctor said he needed to examine me, internally. While cramping and bleeding he inserted a speculum and began to pull out blood clots from inside. He then said I need a sonogram to determined what was left and what was causing the profuse bleeding. He also informed me that I had lost more than 2 pints of blood in the last 24 hours. During his exam I was screaming in pain. He called to the nurse and put me on a heart monitor. I was sent for a sonogram and again the tech needed to go internally, yet more embarrassment and pain. As I met different nurses and doctors I could tell who thought I was an awful person for having an abortion and those who were sorry for my situation. I felt the eyes of judgement and the hands of compassion.

When I returned to my room, I was informed there was a specialist called in to finish my “case”. The doctor was a female, which I found comforting. She was thoughtful and compassionate. Somehow the compassion of other people only made me feel worse, like I didn’t deserve it. There was a third painful internal exam and finally a conclusion. My cervix wouldn’t close back up, it was still dilated and wouldn’t close. The doctor asked me how far along I was and if it was a single pregnancy. I told her about the clinic and said about 6 and 1/2 weeks, and they didn’t tell me anything more. I had to ask the tech at the clinic to even see the sonogram. They discussed nothing with me and I had no idea whether it was twins or not. I told her that I thought it was because thinking back, twins run in my family and it was my generations turn. My oldest brother didn’t have twins so it was a good possibility. Realizing for the first time that it could have been twins made me feel even worse. The doctor told me that at this point it doesn’t matter, they could fix the situation but it would involved a type of “surgical abortion” that I would be sedated for. Before the surgery I received my two pints of blood and antibiotics. I don’t remember much thereafter, I woke up and the pain was finally gone and the bleeding had stopped.

It took me about a week to recover. The doctor told me if I had not come into the hospital I would have bled to death within an additional 24 hours. I was relieved to have survived my ordeal, but the mental ramifications since that day had a large impact on my life. I have regretted my decision, hated myself for ending a life, felt selfish and detached from my boyfriend, friends and everyday life. I have lost my desire to be intimate with my boyfriend; I have zero sex drive. There isn’t a day I wake up and don’t beat myself up about what a horrible person I am. Pro-life activists say this is the “easy way out”. Let me assure you there is nothing easy about what I went through. The statistics say only 3 in every 100,000 experience such drastic side-effects. When you are one of those three it doesn’t matter what the statistics say. I am a healthy 24 year-old without any indications that I would have been a high-risk candidate. I do not use drugs and rarely drink, I am not bulimic, anorexic, or over-weight, I do not engage in high-risk sex or have multiple partners, and I have never been pregnant or had an abortion before this. Please take my story and be warned but most importantly please know that you are not alone. I have shared this story with you because I feel alone, and that no one could possibly understand. I know that is not true. I hope I help someone to make an informed decision. Please actively seek out counseling before you make a decision that cannot be reversed. Don’t feel pressured by your boyfriend or what society thinks is “right”. Do only what you think is right.

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“Medically Necessary” Abortions

This article by Christina Dunigan discusses abortions that are said to be needed because of health issues.

“Don’t like abortions? Don’t have one.” It makes a great bumper sticker slogan. If only it were that simple in real life. Abortion advocates would have us believe that all legalization did was allow those women who would have had dangerous “back alley” abortions to have “safe and legal” abortions instead. It’s all supposed to be about each woman making her own choices based on her own religion, her own ethics, her own plans, her own wants. But that’s not the way it has turned out in practice.

David Reardon’s research of post-abortion women showed that over 60% of them felt “forced” into unwanted abortions by people or circumstances. Nowhere is this more apparent — or more dastardly — than in the realm of “medically indicated” abortions.

This is not to cast aspersions on those rare women whose lives are endangered by a pregnancy. Sometimes the death of the unborn child is the unwanted but tragically necessary side effect of treatment necessary to save the mother’s life. A conscientious doctor will struggle with such cases, and will make all reasonable efforts to preserve the child’s life if possible. The trouble lies in the fact that abortion advocacy efforts have created a climate in which many doctors feel safest recommending abortion at the first sign of trouble.

We’ve all seen how often a small group of troublemakers can cause grief to others. Abortion proponents have painted abortion as a “right,” rather than an evil to be avoided. They have filed suit against conscientious doctors, doctors adhering to the Hippocratic Oath, for failing to advise them to abort in the face of a possible problem with the baby or with the woman’s health. Because these folks are loud and expensive to deal with, they have gotten what they want at the expense of other women and the lives of wanted children.

Over a decade before widespread legalization of abortion, even Planned Parenthood’s Medical Director, Mary Calderone, recognized that “it is hardly ever necessary today to consider the life of a mother as threatened by a pregnancy.”(1) But thanks to the efforts of abortion advocates, pregnancy is perceived as dangerous, and women are being steered by litigation-shy doctors into needless, unwanted abortions, ostensibly for maternal or fetal indications.

Nobody knows how often women are channeled into such abortions. The fact that an abortion was prescribed unnecessarily is usually only discovered if the woman persists in her resolve not to abort, or if someone investigates the situation after the abortion. The very fact that such cases happen proves the lie behind the slogans about women choosing abortions freely. We can also hazard a guess about how frequently women are sold needless, unwanted abortions on medical grounds by looking at the experiences of doctors who take the mother’s desire to preserve her child’s life more seriously.

Dr. Thomas Murphy Goodwin is affiliated with an obstetrical service specializing in high-risk cases. His reflections on cases he has seen in his practice are described by him in The Silent Subject.2 In Goodwin’s cachement area, there are approximately 30,000 births a year. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that there are slightly over 330 abortions for every 1,000 live births. That would mean that there are about 9,900 abortions per year in the area served by Goodwin and his colleagues. The Alan Guttmacher Institute estimates that 3% of abortions are for maternal health indications and another 3% are because of fear of fetal problems. So if we look at only half the problem — maternal indication abortions — there are approximately 300 abortions done for maternal indications in Goodwin’s cachement area every year. Goodwin indicates that in his practice, he and his colleagues will see one or two women a year with health problems that mean they have a greater than 20% risk of death from carrying the pregnancy to term.
That’s one or two abortions that are actually medically indicated for every 300 women who abort because they believe their lives are in danger. This is, to say the least, overkill — in the ugliest sense of the word.

Goodwin tells poignant stories of women who had been sent to his practice for unnecessary abortions. One 21-year-old woman was referred for “immediate abortion” of her 19-week pregnancy because she had been diagnosed with a congenital heart lesion. She was so distressed at the idea of aborting that a physician referred her to Goodwin and his associates for a second opinion. An evaluation that could have been done by the woman’s referring physician showed that her heart abnormality was not endangering her life. She continued the pregnancy, with unremarkable labor induced, and a healthy baby delivered, at 38 weeks.

Another woman, 32 years old, had a test at 7 weeks gestation that was positive for cytomegalovirus. She was advised to abort lest her baby be born with mental retardation and multiple organ problems. Her doctor even told her that he had confirmed this grim prognosis with a “high risk pregnancy specialist.” With great regret, the woman scheduled an abortion. A physician neighbor learned of her plight and referred her to Goodwin’s practice. A review of her test results showed that there was a 4 in 100 chance that her baby had been affected by the virus, and that even if the child was affected, there was a 50% chance that the consequence would just be some hearing impairment. “She was stunned and relieved,” Goodwin wrote, “to learn that the risk was no greater than that.” More precise tests were done which showed that there had been no infection at all. Thanks to the kindly advise of a neighbor, this woman was spared the tragedy of an abortion, and gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

Yet another woman was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was told that she needed immediate chemotherapy, that the chemotherapy would certainly harm her baby, and that trying to continue her pregnancy would worsen her prognosis. She was instructed to abort her 11 week pregnancy so that chemotherapy could be initiated. She scheduled an abortion, but was referred to Goodwin’s practice by her pastor. There she learned that breast cancer did not require abortion for treatment, and that the fetus was likely to tolerate the chemotherapy well. The woman was able to have her chemotherapy, and delivered an apparently healthy baby boy. “That many chemotherapy regimens can be continued without apparent ill-effect in pregnancy is information readily available to any interested physician,” Goodwin notes. “Why was the patient not informed?”

Although these women were put through needless anguish, they were spared the trauma of abortion. Other women have not been so fortunate.

This is the end to Dunigan’s article. I would like to add a few more thoughts.

To further show how rare the need is for abortion to protect a woman’s health, see this quote from abortion provider Don Sloan. Dr. Sloan has been performing abortions for over thirty years and was very active in campaigning against abortion laws before Roe Vs. Wade. He has written two books which discuss his opinion on the need for legalized abortion.

However, he is quoted saying:

“Abortionist Don Sloan is quoted saying the following:

“…if a woman with a serious illness- heart disease, say, or diabetes- gets pregnant, the abortion procedure may be as dangerous for her as going through pregnancy – with diseases like lupus, multiple sclerosis, even breast cancer, the chance that pregnancy will make the disease worse is no greater that the chance that the disease will either stay the same or improve. And medical technology has advanced to a point where even women with diabetes and kidney disease can be seen through a pregnancy safely by a doctor who knows what he’s doing. We’ve come a long way since my mother’s time – The idea of abortion to save the mothers’ life is something that people cling to because it sounds noble and pure- but medically speaking, it probably doesn’t exist. It’s a real stretch of our thinking.”(3)

This is not anti-abortion propaganda!

While no woman should be forced to give up her life for her child in principle, the instances where this is truly a reality are rare. The “need” for abortion to preserve the woman’s life should not be a wedge for legalizing abortion.

1. Calderone, Mary; “Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem;” AJPH v. 50 n. 7. pp. 948-9, July 1960
2. Stetson, Brad (ed); The Silent Subject: Reflections on the Unborn in American Culture; Praeger Publishers, CT, 1996
3. Don Sloan, M.D. and Paula Hartz “Choice: A Doctor’s Experience with the Abortion Dilemma” New York: International Publishers. 2002 pgs 45-46

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Christian Singer Speaks To Pregnant Rape Victims

Christian singer Tata Vega, who has released twelve albums and performed with artists such as Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson, had two abortions, one after a rape as a teenager. She maintains that her abortions led to substance abuse and a life-long depression that required hospitalization, and says that she regrets her abortions- both of them. She is quoted saying:

“Now, if somebody gets pregnant, I tell her to have the baby; I’ll take it. God has a plan for these children– even if they’re conceived in rape.”

Vega is not just spewing religious rhetoric- she’s lived through it.

“Amazing Grace” by Ginger E. McFarland “Today’s Christian Woman” Jul/Aug 2000 vol. 22 Issue 4, p20

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Letter To A Baby Aborted After Rape

In a program for those who regretted having an abortion, one exercise was to write a letter to the aborted baby. One woman made her letter public. This is what she wrote:

“Dear Jennifer,

I knew the moment you were conceived, although I tried hard to ignore it. Since you were the result of rape, I felt so lonely and confused. In the beginning I wanted only to destroy you. However, when I began to experience your movements within, I found myself accepting your existence. You were 22 weeks old by the time permission for my legal abortion was granted, and I had decided to keep you. I had grown to love you, but under pressure from those around me, I went ahead with the abortion. For years afterwards your cries echoed in endless dreams until healing finally took place. Then I named you and allowed myself to grieve over your death. I also was a victim as a result of making my decision based on a few scraps of misinformation. Part of me died with you. As you look down from Heaven, I know you forgive me as even I have learned to forgive myself. Now, I press on to help others not to make the mistake I did.”

“Raped and Pregnant: Three Women Tell Their Stories” 1986

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The Born Alive Infants Protection Act

The Born Alive Infants Protections Act was signed into law by President Bush.

The Act stated that any baby born alive after an abortion must receive appropriate medical care. If signs of life are present, such an infant would have to be cared for. The practice of simply discarding these children is forbidden (though not always stopped) by this Act.

The Act defines the terms “person” and “born alive” in the following ways:

(a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual” should include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.

(b) As used in this section, the term “born alive”, with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, caesarian section, or induced abortion.

Public Law 107-207

U.S. Code

Title 1, Chapter 1: Rules of Construction

Section 8.

As simple as this may be, Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) opposed the Act because it was not specific enough. He also requested that the court not “proceed so quickly” and that the bill might “require medical professionals to provide treatment that is not mandated under existing and future applicable standards of care.”

Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), testified before the Subcommittee that providing legal personhood to premature infants who survive abortions:

“is an attempt to do what the U.S. Supreme Court has strictly forbidden over and over–it unduly restricts a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.”

From “Senate Passes Born-Alive Infants Protection Act,” National Right to Life, at: http://www.nrlc.org/ NARAL. Pro-Choice America issued a press release denouncing the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Here is the text:

“ROE V WADE FACES RENEWED ASSAULT IN HOUSE”

Anti-Choice Lawmakers Hold Hearing on So-Called “Born Alive Infants Protection Act”

WASHINGTON, DC- The basic tenants of Roe v Wade were the subject of yet another anti-choice assault today, as the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on H.R. 492, the so-called “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act.” The Act would effectively grant legal personhood to a pre-viable fetus- in direct conflict with Roe- and would inappropriately inject prosecutors and lawmakers into the medical decision-making process. The bill was was introduced by well-known abortion opponent Rep. Charles Canady (R – FL) and has been endorsed by the National Right to Life Committee.

Roe V. Wade clearly states that women have a right to choose prior to fetal viability. After viability, Roe allows states to prohibit or restrict abortion as long as exceptions are made to protect the life and health of the woman. In proposing this bill, anti-choice lawmakers are seeking to ascribe rights to fetuses “at any stage of development,” thereby directly contradicting one of Roe’s basic tenants.

The bill also attempts to inject Congress in what should be personal and private decisions about medical treatment in difficult and painful situations where a fetus has no chance for survival. It could also interfere with the sound practice of medicine by spurring physicians to take extraordinary steps in situations where their efforts may be futile and when their medical judgment may indicate otherwise.

This is not the first time we’ve seen Rep. Canady and his anti-choice colleagues attempt to chip away at the foundation of Roe v Wade in just this manner. Last year, the same subcommittee held a hearing on the so-called “Unborn Victim of Violence Act” … With all these bills, anti-choice lawmakers purposefully set America on a path that they believe will ultimately lead to the overturn of Roe V Wade. In keeping with this goal, the subcommittee has put the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act” on the fast track and has scheduled a markup for Friday, July 21, 2000.”

NOW later flip-flopped and claimed to no longer oppose the law.

An article on Planned Parenthood’s website, “PP Profiles of 15 Anti-Choice Organizations” cites National Right to Life as one of the “anti-choice” groups threatening women’s rights. Supporting the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act is included in a list of Right to Life’s crimes. Not only that, but Planned Parenthood’s voter guide includes information on every congressman who voted on ‘anti-choice’ legislation, including the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act.

And the Feminist Majority Foundation published an article on their newswire in September of 2000 entitled “Anti-Choice Bill Passes House.” Here are some excerpts from that article:

“On Sept. 25, the House of Representatives passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a measure that would treat as a person under the law a fetus that is breathing when it leaves the womb, even if during an abortion procedure….Pro-choice activists call the bill an attempt to chip away at the rights women gained in the 1972 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Rosemary Dempsey, Washington DC Director of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy called the bill “deceptive, extreme and unconstitutional.” She noted that “The bill proposes a definitional change to the entire United States Code, clouded in a deceptive scheme to denounce the principles guaranteed in Roe v. Wade and confirmed by the recent Stenberg v. Carhart Supreme Court decision.” The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals also opposed this act. From the article “Bush signs Born-Alive Infants Protection Act” in ARHP Update September 2002: “On August 5th, President Bush signed the so-called “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act” (HR2175) in a ceremony in Pittsburgh, PA, which will ensure federal rights for all human fetuses that are born alive, including live births that occur during an abortion procedure…The bill will amend the legal definition of “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual” to include “any human being who is born alive” and will consider a fetus to be born alive if its “completely outside the mother’s body and has a beating heart or shows other signs of life.” Although the bill’s language states that it is not meant to “affirm or deny” the legal rights and status of fetuses, abortion-rights activists feel that this, and similarly proposed bills, try to give the fetus personhood.”

These pro-choice groups would allow the killing of born babies by neglect or direct action rather than let the impression be given that a “fetus” is a person. Not even the baby below would be considered a “person” if he were born alive after an abortion procedure if these organizations had their way.

Even more strident is an article in the Pro-Choice Press, a publication of BC’s Pro-Choice Action Network.

Here is an excerpt from this article.

Autumn / Winter 2002 Issue

“Right Wing Extremists Lead the Free World”

Women Drowning in a Flood of Anti-Choice Measures

“But even the Democratic Senate enacted an unnecessary anti-choice law in July, called the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. The law supposedly will protect the lives of infants who may be born alive after an abortion – President Bush signed the law in August with a strong anti-abortion speech, thereby exposing the anti-choice sentiment behind the bill.”

It’s clear that certain pro-choice organizations will not let a living, breathing baby stand between them and their support for abortion on demand at any time for any reason.

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“This Baby Won’t Stop Breathing” Abortion Doctor Strangles Inconvenient Child

Mary W., a high school student, was examined by an ob/gyn and found to be 28 weeks pregnant. This ob/gyn counseled that Mary’s pregnancy was too advanced for an abortion, and advised Mary to consider an adoption plan. Somehow, Mary learned that Dr. William Baxter Waddill would be willing to do an abortion, which he initiated by saline injection on March 2 at Westminster Community Hospital in California.

Mary’s baby, a 2 lb, 8 oz infant girl, was expelled that evening and discovered by a nurse who was attending Mary.

The nurse clamped the cord and was about to put the baby in a bucket for transport to the pathology lab, when she noticed that the baby was moving and crying. Another nurse suggested putting the baby in the bucket anyway. Yet another nurse testified that she had seen the infant move but said nothing about this to avoid distressing Mary. The first nurse summoned the nursing supervisor, who noted that the baby was pink and making sucking motions. She sent the baby to the nursery and summoned Waddill.

A nurse at the nursery cleared the infant’s throat, placed her in an isolette, and charted a heartrate of 88. A neonatal ICU nurse began providing respiratory assistance on the little girl, and asked for help performing an intubation, which is routine NICU care.

Waddill arrived and dismissed all the others from room. Several witnesses heard Waddill instruct staff “not to do a goddam thing for the baby.”

…..

A tape was entered into evidence of a call from Waddill to a pediatrician, Dr. Ronald Cornelsen. The tape had Waddill telling Dr. Cornelsen to come to the hospital, because the law required a pediatrician to assist when a newborn was in distress. Waddill said, “If we all tell the same story, there will be no trouble. … So long as we stand together, no one anywhere can make any accusations anywhere. … Do not get squirrely. Just tell them exactly as we’ve discussed. Just say you went in, there was no heartbeat and you left.”

Dr. Cornelsen testified that when he arrived at the hospital the infant, a baby of about 31 weeks gestation, was breathing and had a heart rate of 60-70. There were bruises on her neck. Dr. Cornelson said that Waddill told him, “Sorry to get you in this mess. We had a baby that came out live from a saline abortion, and it can’t live!” Dr. Cornelsen testified that he saw Waddill press on the infant’s neck, saying, “I can’t find the goddam trachea,” and “This baby won’t stop breathing.” Dr. Cornelsen testified, “I said, ‘Why not just leave the baby alone?’ He said, ‘This baby can’t live or it will be a big mess.'” Waddill requested potssium choloride, for an injection to stop the baby’s heart, but Dr. Cornelsen wouldn’t let the nurse get it. Dr. Cornelsen said Waddill also asked for a bucket to drown the baby in.

Waddill claimed that he hadn’t strangled the baby, that she had died of natural causes before he even arrived at the hospital to deal with the delivery. He also said that all of his actions were done in the best interests of the mother and the baby.

A pathologist examined the baby’s lungs and concluded that she’d been alive for at least 30 minutes. The neck trauma was “consistent with manual pressure, and inconsistent with saline.” This pathologist also testified that only the infant’s placenta and small bowel seemed to have been “significantly affected by the saline,” meaning that the baby had not suffered fatal injury from exposure to the saline in-utero. The autopsy found the cause of the baby’s death to have been “manual strangulation.” The baby’s gestational age was determined to have been 29 to 31 weeks at autopsy.

All told, over 13 weeks of testimony, the witnesses described three unsuccessful attempts by Waddill to strangle Mary’s baby, and the fourth, successful, attempt. But during deliberations, the jury asked for clarification of a procedural point. A few phone calls to clarify the point led to the discovery by the attorneys and judge that there was a definition of “death” in the California health and safety code that the jury had not been informed of. Because the testimony hadn’t directly addressed this particular definition of “death,” the jurors became hopelessly deadlocked over whether Waddill’s actions, though clearly causing what laymen would consider the “death” of the baby, had caused what the law would call the “death” of the baby. The judge had to delcare a mistrial. A second jury was also deadlocked, and the charges against Waddill were eventually dismissed.

Mary later sued Waddill, saying that he’d never told her that her baby might been born alive, and that she never would have consented to the abortion had she known this was possible. She said that Waddill “willfully and unlawfully used force and violence upon the person of the baby [W.] … causing the decedent baby [W.] to die.”

Waddill continued to perform abortions in California, and as of 2000 was working for National Abortion Federation member Family Planning Associates Medical Group, a chain where the following women and girls suffered fatal abortions: Deanna Bell, Chanelle Bryant, Patricia Chacon, Laniece Dorsey, Josefina Garcia, Denise Holmes, Susan Levy, Christine Mora, Kimberly Neil, Joyce Ortenzio, Mary Pena, and Tami Suematsu.

It should be noted that Waddill was on trial for only one of the three saline abortions he committed that morning at the same hospital. The other two apparently did the job effectively,

(Sources: Omaha World-Herald 10-19-79; LA Times Magazine 1-7-80; Philadelphia Inquirer 8-2-81; Orange County Superior Court Case No. C-37815, and Case No. 28-84-14; “The Ordeal of a Divided Jury,” Time, May 22, 1978)

Credit: Christina Dunigan

Here is a picture of a child in the womb at 28 weeks.

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The Abortion Baby That Lived

Nurse Joan S. Smith tells the following story:

“It was a night I’ll never forget. It was 11 pm and my colleague Karen and I “scrubbed in” at the beginning of our shift in the Special Care Nursery of a large teaching hospital….Without warning, a harried nurse rushed into the doorway.

Her white uniform seemed out of place in the area of the hospital where only surgical scrubs are worn. “Here, take this,” she said, thrusting into my hands a small silver specimen pan covered with a paper towel.

“What is it?” I asked, realizing by the look on her face that something was very wrong.

“It’s an abortion at 22 weeks gestation, delivered on our floor. But it’s alive,” she explained, then turned on her heel and was gone. I removed the paper towel to see the perfectly formed body of a baby boy curled up in the cold metal pan….Karen came over to help. “This happens every so often,” she explained sadly. She had trained at the hospital and worked there for over 15 years.

[After a doctor Joan called simply told her to do nothing but fill in the time of death for the baby] Stoking his tiny arm, I tried to sort out my jumble of emotions. I felt powerless, angy, and overwhelmed by sadness. How could our medical system be so full of ironies? Here I was surrounded by medical technology, which was of no avail to this tiny child. I wondered if the parents even were told that their son had been admitted to the hospital as a live birth with footprints taken, and identification number and band given, a physician notified of his birth- yet all of this merely an unpredicted complication of a routine abortion. It took nearly four hours until that tiny heart slowed to a stop. With tears in my eyes, I wrapped his body for the morgue. This was all of a life this child would ever know. He would never know the warmth of a mother’s embrace. No one would ever celebrate his birth. He would never even be given a name.

This child, named Kelly, was born at 21 weeks and survived. She is pictured here at one week younger than the baby Joan held.

Source: Joan E. Smith “To Live or Let Die” Easton Publishing Company, 1991

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My Hardest Night: A Nurse’s Story

There have been many difficult nights in my 12 years as a registered nurse. Deaths happen in medicine. Sometimes they are anticipated, sometimes they come unexpectedly.

As I think back over the years, I remember the woman, in her 80s, who was suffering from congestive heart failure. Her family sat by her bedside, holding her hand as she gasped her last few breaths. I also remember the man, only in his 30s, who was hit by a drunk driver while on the way home from work. I arrived at the scene of the accident and saw the blank stare of someone in severe shock. On the way to the hospital, despite all our attempts to resuscitate him, this young man died in the back of the ambulance. It would have been hard for me to believe that night, but my most difficult night was yet to come.

One night last August the intensive care nursery was especially busy. As I began my shift that evening, I noticed right away that there was an extra amount of tension in the room. There have been emergency calls from other hospitals that day, and our transport team had been busy bringing in three infants requiring special care which our nursery could provide. Two of the babies were very critical. I could see that it would be difficult night.

What I was not prepared for was our next admission, which I was to be responsible for, since I was the least busy at the time. The nurse from Labor and Delivery walked into our unit carrying a blanket and stating “This is a prostaglandin abortion. He has a heartbeat so we brought him over.” The baby was placed under a radiant warmer and I was told the rest of the facts. The gestational age of the baby was given to be 23 weeks by ultrasound. The mother had cancer and had received chemotherapy treatments before discovering that she was pregnant. The parents had been told that their baby would be horribly deformed because of the chemotherapy.

I looked at the baby boy lying before me, and saw that from all appearances he was perfect. He had a good strong heartbeat. I could tell this without using a stethoscope because I could see his chest moving in sync with his heart rate. With a stethoscope I heard a heart pumping strongly. I look at his size and his skin — he definitely looked more mature than 23 weeks. He was weighed and I discovered that he was 900 grams, almost two pounds. This was almost twice the weight of some babies we have been able to save. A doctor was summoned. When she arrived the baby started moving his tiny arms and legs flailing. He started trying to gasp, but was unable to get air into his lungs. His whole body shuddered with his efforts to breathe. We were joined by a neonatalist and I pleaded with both doctors saying, “The baby is viable — look at his size, look at his skin — he looks much older than 23 weeks.”

it was a horrible moment as each of us wrestled with our own ethical standards. I argued that we should make an attempt to resuscitate him, to get him breathing. The resident doctor told me, “This is an abortion. We have no right to interfere.” The specialist, who had the responsibility for the decision, was wringing his hands and quietly saying, “This is so hard. Oh, God, it’s so hard when it’s this close.” In the end, I lost. We were not going to try to resuscitate this baby. So, I did the only thing I could do. Dipping my index finger into sterile water and placing it on his head, I baptize the child. Then I wrapped him in blankets to keep him warm, and held him. These were the only measures I could take comfort the baby under the circumstances, no matter how much I wanted to do more. I held this little boy, who was still gasping for breath, trying to stay alive on his own. As the tears flowed down my face, I pray to God that he would take this child into his care, and that he would forgive me for my own part in his death. After a while, he stopped gasping. His heart continued to be, but the beating became slower and weaker until it finally stopped. He was gone.

It seems so ironic. No more than 5 feet from where I was watching this baby die, a team of doctors and nurses were gathered around a severely ill infant. They were trying every treatment they could to save this baby, while I stood alone with an infant who had a good chance to survive. But we did nothing for him. As it turned out, we lost both of them.

By Barbara. From Vital Signs: the Journal of the Friendship Pregnancy Center fall 1991

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Pro-Choice “Facts”: Fetal Development

Sometimes abortion advocates say things that cannot be squared with the facts of science.

For example, when a pro-life group displayed large photos of aborted fetuses on the sides of trucks in Los Angeles, Feminist Majority Foundation Vice President Katherine Spillar was quoted saying:

“The typical abortion is done at 8 weeks or less and when we are talking about a pre-embryo the size of a grain of rice.”

She was quoted in Washington Times August 23, 2001 “A Vehicle for Change.”

According to The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th ed. Keith L. Moore, Ph.D. & T.V.N. Persaud, Md., (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998), the crown-rump length of an eight week fetus is about the size of a quarter. (Note that this measurement does not include the legs) An embryo the size of a grain of rice would be only three to four weeks old- and very few abortions are performed that early.

Here is a picture of an eight week old unborn, taken by Andrzej Zachwieja and Jan Walczewski under the direction of Professor Andrzej Skawina of Collegium Medicum, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

Incidentally, according to the Center for Disease Control cited in the MMWR, Nov.29, 2002 vol51 No55-9, 18% take place at 8 weeks with roughly 41-42% taking place later, adding up to nearly 445,000 a year.

Abortion clinic spokesperson Ellen Kreuger stated to the Winnipeg Sun (cited in Kansans for Life May 1991, p 9) that the unborn baby was

“a frog-like thing…without a heartbeat, brain, eyes, or internal organs.”

An embryo’s heart begins to beat around the 18-24th day after conception.(J.M. Tanner, G. R. Taylor, and the Editors of Time-Life Books, Growth, New York: Life Science Library, 1965) Eye development begins in the fourth week and is well underway by the sixth. (K. Moore, Before We Were Born, 3rd ed., 1989, p. 278) The brain develops very early and brain waves have been recorded by six to seven weeks after conception. (J. Goldenring, “Development of the Fetal Brain,” New England Jour. of Med., Aug. 26, 1982, p. 564) All body systems are present at 8 weeks. (Hooker & Davenport, The Prenatal Origin of Behavior, University of Kansas Press, 1952)

From a booklet entitled “Organizing for Action.” Prepared by Vicki Z. Kaplan for the National Abortion Rights Action League, 250 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019. 51 pages, no date.

“Describe how quick and safe the procedure is, how pleasant the clinic, how relaxed the patient, how the conceptus looks at ten weeks – a small bloody mass, very jelly-like, about an inch long, and weighing about 3/4 of an ounce. Absolutely no arms and legs – no “baby” at all!”

See actual pictures of babies aborted at 10 weeks here

Here is a picture of a sonogram of an unborn baby at 10 weeks.

In a Planned Parenthood fact sheet, found on their website entitled “The Facts Speak Louder than ‘The Silent Scream” one statement made is:

“A fetus of 12 weeks cannot in any way be compared to a fully formed functioning person. At this stage only rudiments of the organ systems are present. The fetus is unable to sustain life outside the woman’s womb, it is incapable of conscious thought; it is incapable of essential breathing.”

Several assertions in this paragraph fly in the face of the known facts about fetal development. Even worse, the facts I am about to relate have been known to reputable scientists for decades. It is almost impossible for these statements to be the product of ignorance. They are either signs of an unbelievable amount of callous stupidity or deliberate lies.

By eight weeks, all body organs are present in the fetus. This was reported in Hooker & Davenport, The Prenatal Origin of Behavior, University of Kansas Press, 1952. Yes, 1952- and not a single study has ever contradicted this.

Further,

“By 11 weeks, all body systems are working.” “Life Before Birth,” Life Magazine, Apr. 30, 1965, p. 13

As for breathing:

“By 11 to 12 weeks (3 months), he [the fetus] is breathing fluid steadily and continues so until birth. At birth, he will breathe air. He does not drown by breathing fluid with-in his mother, because he obtains his oxygen from his umbilical cord. This breathing develops the organs of respiration.” “Life Before Birth,” Life Magazine, Apr. 30, 1965, p. 13

In addition, information recently came out that clinics were sending fetal parts, including eyes and organs, to laboratories to be experimented on. A pamphlet from a tissue harvesting company called “Opening Lines” advertised fetal tissue, including “livers less than 8 weeks for $125 (“discounted if significantly fragmented”) spleens over 8 weeks for $75, and eyes for $50-100 depending on fetal age with “40% discounts for individual eye.” (See chart below)

If fetal organs from babies under 8 weeks can be labeled and sold, then a twelve week unborn must have more than “rudiments of organs.”

And from BabyCentre.co.uk, which is a site that provides fetal development and other information for pregnant women, and is NOT a pro-life site but a neutral one:

Under the 12 week heading:

“Measuring from the crown of his head to his rump, your 2.5-inch/ 6-centimetre fetus has all his parts, from tooth buds to toenails. Your baby is busy kicking and stretching; his movements are so fluid they look like water ballet. Fingers and toes have fully separated. Now the fetus’s main task during the next six months will be to grow larger and stronger until it can survive on its own outside the womb.”

From pregnancy.org, page on week 12, here are some characteristics listed:

— Intestines move farther into your child’s body
— His or her liver begins to function – Responsible for cleansing the blood, storing nutrients, and providing needed chemicals, this is an important event!
— The pancreas begins to produce insulin

Also note:

“At nine weeks, the embryo’s ballooning brain allows it to bend its body, hiccup, and react to loud sounds. At week ten, it moves its arms, “breathes” amniotic fluid in and out, opens its jaw, and stretches. Before the first trimester is over, it yawns, sucks, and swallows, as well as feels and smells. By the end of the second trimester, it can hear; toward the end of pregnancy, it can see.”

This is from the article “Fetal Psychology” by Janet L. Hopson, Psychology Today, October 1998

These fetal development sources present quite a different picture than Planned Parenthood!

Pro-choice activist Leonard Peikoff, in his article “Abortion Rights are Pro-Life”(www.AynRand.org)says the following:

“The status of the embryo in the first trimester is the basic issue that cannot be sidestepped. The embryo is clearly pre-human; only the mystical notions of religious dogma treat this clump of cells as constituting a person… what it [the unborn] actually is during the first trimester is a mass of relatively undifferentiated cells that exist as a part of a woman’s body. If we consider what it is rather than what it may become, we must acknowledge that the embryo under three months is something far more primitive than a frog or a fish.”

See the picture below:

Here is what this baby would look like after an abortion.

Pro-Choice activists have to work hard to distort the facts of fetal development in order to convince people that the unborn baby, even when she so clearly resembles a human being, is not a living person.

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Abortion at 10 Weeks pictures

This page is about abortion at 10 weeks and has pictures of what an abortion looks like at 10 weeks. If you are thinking of getting an abortion at 10 weeks, this is some information you may want to know. Here is a sonogram of a ten week old baby in the womb.

From The Endowment for Human Development

Before you look at the pictures of the babies aborted at 10 weeks, I want to share something with you. If you are woman considering abortion at 10 weeks, and you came to this page wanting to find out more, I want to talk to you from the heart and share some information with you. If you are not a woman seeking an abortion at 10 weeks, and/or don’t want to read my message, just scroll down to see the pictures.

First I want to tell you a little more about your baby. I’m getting this info from the site Endowment for Human Development, a scientific website affiliated with National Geographic. It has no ties to the prolife movement.

The baby inside you has had a beating heart for 7 weeks now. He or she has brain that is giving off waves. Your baby responds to touch and will how a startle reaction when he or she is touched with something. The baby will pull away and react when the abortion instruments come at her. Some scientists believe she can feel the pain of being ripped apart. She can have the hiccups. She is already right or left handed. If she is a girl she has ovaries and a uterus of her own. Believe it or not, he or she not only has hands and fingers, but also fingerprints. These fingerprints mark her as a unique individual who has never existed before in all of history and will never exist again.

Jewels Green worked in an abortion clinic. Her clinic only provided 1st trimester abortions. She held women’s hands, watched women cry as they had their abortions. And in the backroom, she handled the broken pieces of the babies, holding the aborted babies feet up to a little chart to verify how far along the pregnancies were for the clinic’s paperwork. She witnessed abortion at 10 weeks. Even in abortion at 10 weeks, many of the babies were fully formed, like the pictures you just saw. She told me that after each abortion, she had to look through the torn apart remains and make sure there were two arms, two legs, one head ,etc. Any parts left behind could cause an infection in the mother. In a book by pro-choice author Wendy Simonds called Abortion at Work, clinic worker “Risa’ says:

“I hate it when people put it [the aborted fetus] together to look like a baby. I hate that…

On page 86-87 of the same book, Simonds says all the clinic workers she interviewed told her “they never look at the face” when processing ’tissue’ from abortions.

Right now you may feel frightened, worried and alone. I don’t know your situation, but I know there are places out there that can help you. There are these places called Crisis Pregnancy Centers. These centers exist all over the world. They can help with all kinds of things. The one in my town providers counseling, help finding medical care, a place to live if the woman is homeless, baby clothes, maternity clothes, cribs, diapers, information about applying for benefits if you choose to, job training, help finding a job, and even day care.

Also, most of these places will do an ultrasound. Most abortion clinics will do an ultrasound too, but they will charge you for it. The crisis pregnancy center will do one for free. If you DO decide to have an abortion, and you tell the clinic you have already had an ultrasound to verfiy length of pregnancy, they may say you don’t need another one- and you’ve just saved yourself a hundred dollars. The crisis pregnancy centers can’t stop you from having an abortion, no one can, abortion is legal. But they can give you information about abortion’s risks and alternatives you may not get at the clinic. And all their help is FREE. Whereas an abortion clinic is a business that makes profit and charges for everything it offers. The main reason abortion clinics have for turning away women and sending them home is not health problems, but lack of money. The owner of one abortion clinic said in the Chicago-Sun Times: (he didn’t realize he was talking to a reporter)

“We have to sell abortions. We have to use all the tactics we can because just like my other businesses [a trucking firm, a pollution control business, and a real estate sales office] we have competition. Now, we have to go by the rules, but rules have to be broken if we are gonna get things done.”

Former abortion clinic worker Nina Whitten says:

“Every single transaction that we did was cash money. We wouldn’t take a check, or even a credit card. If you didn’t have the money, forget it. It wasn’t unusual at all for me to take $10,000 to $15,000 a day to the bank – in cash. It’s a lie when they tell you they’re doing it to help women because they’re not. They’re doing it for the money.”

There are MANY more quotes like this here.

Abortion clinics can only stay open if they make money. They even charge for pregnancy tests, often many times more than you would pay buying one at the supermarket (and its the same test). They don’t make any money if you walk out and have the baby. Since they only make money if you abort the baby, they may not tell you about abortion’s risks or how developed the baby is. They may not tell you anything that would convince you not to have an abortion. But a crisis pregnancy center makes no money either way you decide. So you may get more honest information.

I will give you the numbers and contact info for the pregnancy centers if you scroll down.

But first please look at some of the pictures of what will happen to your baby at 10 weeks if she or he is aborted.

More pictures of abortion at 10 weeks.

If you have taken the abortion pill but now regret it it may not be too late to save your baby . Go here immediately or call 1 877 558 0333

Here is an excerpt from an article by Jewels Green, who I mentioned before:

“Working in the autoclave room was never, ever easy. I saw my lost child in every jar of aborted baby parts. One night after working autoclave my nightmares about dead babies were so gruesome and terrifying and intense I met with the clinic’s director to talk about my feelings. She was very understanding, open and honest, and painfully forthright when she told me, “What we do here is end a life. Pure and simple. There is no disputing this fact.”

And now the crisis pregnancy centers:

Birthright is an excellent organization that helps women considering abortion. They have centers mostly in English speaking countries. They are not affiliated with any religion. I called them once. When I told them I was pro-life, they made a point to tell me they were “not political” They will not try to sway your decision. They have a 24 hour hotline. Please call them at 1-800 550 4900

In the United Sates, Carenet is a Christian group of crisis pregnancy centers. They can help in many ways. Their page has an anonymous chat and they too have a hotline, as well as a directory you can search to find a center near you. Go here.

And here is an international directory of pregnancy help.

If you have had an abortion and need support, here are some links for you to try.

There are other options for you than abortion. What about adoption? A lot of women feel they can’t “give away” their baby. But adoption is not the same as it once was. Now there is open adoption, where you can be in touch with the family that raises your child and even be a part of that child’s life. I have a friend who is therapist, who says that her clients who give babies up for adoption do much better emotionally than those who have abortions- because they know their babies are alive and happy and not dead. Another person I know gave her baby to a couple in Canada. Now she and the family are close and she spends every Christmas with the couple. She had another daughter, who she kept, and the girls are growing up like cousins. She didn’t lose a baby- she gained a family.

Please also know that abortion can cause a lot of heartache to you, the mother. Several huge studies in Finland that took medical records from several countries found that women who abort have a higher rate of needing psychiatric treatment both inpatient and outpatient and the suicide rate for women who abort is 6-7 times that of women who don’t. For teenagers, another study found a 10x higher suicide rate. Here are some studies.

Although women very rarely die of abortion at 10 weeks, there are other risks. Having an abortion at 10 weeks can create scar tissue on the uterus which can cause tubal (ectopic) pregnancy, a potentially fatal condition where a subsequent baby develops in the Fallopian tube. Also, scarring can cause infertility when a fertilized egg can have trouble implanting. Damage to the cervix, the opening to the womb, can cause miscarriages, premature births, and stillbirths. The cervix is meant to open slowly during hours of labor, not wrenched open in seconds by the abortionist. See studies here.

Also, there are no less than 58 studies showing a link between abortion and breast cancer. This is because the breasts begin to change in the first days of pregnancy to get ready to produce milk, but don’t finish changing until the third trimester. Aborting before then puts them in an intermediate state, more susceptible, some researchers say, to cancer.

When asked about this, most pro-abortion groups point to a statement by the American Cancer Society claiming there is no link. However, the ACS denied a link between smoking and lung cancer for over three decades, even after multiple studies were released showing it. American Cancer Society officials are political appointees. The ACS only acknowledged the smoking/cancer link when the Surgeon General of the US ordered them to.

Finally before you go to the abortion clinic, read about what other women’s experiences with abortion were like. Silent No More collects the testimonies of women who had abortions. It has over 2000 stories. if you read what these women are saying, you may get an idea of what abortion is like. Also, if you do have an abortion, Silent No More can tell you where support groups and other resources for post-abortion women can be found. Read what other women are saying.

Below is a picture of anesthesia being injected after dilation of the cervix. This is the first stage of an abortion at 10 weeks. The woman’s legs are blurred out.

Too see the rest of this procedure, go here.

And if you just want someone to talk to, feel free to email me sarah5775@gmail.com

Before you make your final choice I want to leave you with these words from a woman who had an abortion. When asked what she would say to other women considering it, she said:

Never killed the child. It will haunt you the rest of your life… Recognize that, if you have the abortion, you’re not only killing your child, you are killing someone’s brother/sister, someone’s cousin, someone’s friend, someone’s grandchild, someone’s mother, someone’s father, someone’s neighbor. Realize that abortion is killing children…”

Jeanne G Miller Lives Interrupted: the Unwanted Pregnancy Dilemma (Tyler, Texas, 2014) 126

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