Victoria, who compiled a book of women’s stories about about abortion, wrote:
“I telephoned the clinic and was told by the clinic that because I was so early in my pregnancy, I wasn’t carrying a “real” baby. Her exact words were, “it’s just a blob of cells. “It” hasn’t formed into a human being.”
6 week preborn baby. Surgical abortions are not performed before this time in many clinics
The woman on the other end insisted that I have the “procedure” performed right away, the sooner, the better. She always referred to it as the “procedure” never mentioning the word abortion. She said I was only “terminating a pregnancy.
She instructed me to bring cash only to my visit. Checks or credit cards were not accepted.”
At the clinic:
“When my fictitious name was called, I quickly got up and went into the first of three rooms. This was the office of the cashier. She sat me down, shut the door and matter-of-factly asked, “You have your money with you?… I need the full $350, cash only, as I told you over the phone. Remember, if you change your mind while you’re on the table, you don’t get your money back. There are no refunds here. Do you understand this? I nodded again…
I asked again, “Should I really do this?” She seemed nervous. Maybe I was about to change my mind and she wouldn’t make her “quota” for the day.
I guess she wanted to reassure me when she said, “Look, when you leave this place, never think of this day again. Just forget about it. You’ll be fine and you can always have more babies later. You’re too early in your pregnancy to even think of this as a real pregnancy, let alone a real baby. Remember and never forget, we’re only terminating a pregnancy.”…
It was obvious she’d done this before. Her “speech” was so rehearsed…
They asked me not to speak to any of the other women. It might be too uncomfortable for them… We were all sharing the same fate, yet none of us could even look at one another.”
Victoria Koloff They Lied to Us (Worldcomm: 2011) 11 – 13
Abortionist Henry Morgentaler on the danger of perforating the uterus during an abortion:
“What happens during dilatation is that the doctor tries to widen the diameter of the cervical canal leading to the uterine cavity by pushing metal dilators through it. As he does this he encounters muscular resistance. A very thin dilator might pass through the cervical canal easily; however, as they progressively increase in thickness, the resistance of the muscles holding the cervix closed increases correspondingly. The doctor overcomes this resistance by steady pressure until it gives way and the dilator slips into the uterine cavity. Occasionally, the resistance gives way suddenly and the dilator is then propelled into the uterus with a force which might bring it in too far, thus perforating the uterine wall. In pregnancy, the uterine wall softens considerably and thins out in certain places; if the dilator hits a weakened spot, it might go through it. If the doctor is unaware of this, and often he has no way of knowing, he will pursue the dilatation which will then enlarge the perforation.
When the opening necessary for the abortion has attained the appropriate diameter, the doctor will try to evacuate the uterus but may find that no material is forthcoming because his instruments, instead of being in the uterine cavity, are elsewhere, usually in the abdominal cavity. If the aspiration cannula or sharp curette is used, it may damage the small intestine or rupture a major blood vessel with immediate shock a likely occurrence. Major surgery is then needed to repair the damaged abdominal organs.”
Henry Morgentaler Abortion and Contraception (New York: Beaufort Books, Inc., 1982) 73 – 74
Author Luc Boltanski interviewed a woman named Lillian, about what happened after her abortion:
“Afterword, you’re sort of disgusted with the guy, so you don’t want to see him, I don’t know why, but…in my case, with the one I was with at the time, and he was serious, I was fed up with him, sexually I mean, with him, I couldn’t do it anymore. It was purely sexual. I mean that having sex was painful; it really hurt, it was really so uninteresting that I don’t even understand how girls my age who are at that point and think about nothing but sex… It’s so worthless, really there’s no point, because for me, it hurt, it really was bad, but okay, fine, if it doesn’t hurt them, I have the one friend who went through the same thing and had the same reaction as me, but not the other one, she kept on liking it. For me, it’s awful, it hurts, it’s not even fun at all. But the problem is that the guys ask you for it. Indeed, it turns me off, it’s really a chore, but he keeps asking for it. If he doesn’t get it he’s in a bad mood… Well, I can do this to him for a month, but at the end of the month he’ll say to me: “Come on, we better do something about this”, because every night I’m looking for an excuse, because it turns me off, I don’t want it.”
Luc Boltanski The Foetal Condition: A Sociology of Engendering and Abortion (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013) 118
“… A 27-year-old woman named Laura, with a history of excellent health, who became pregnant for the first time. Her husband Bill was 29 years old and also in good health. Laura’s first trimester was unremarkable except for mild, early-morning nausea and her first three prenatal visits were uneventful.
At the fourth month of gestation, a sample of amniotic fluid was tested for a fetoprotein (AFP), which was reported as “high.” Elevated AFP levels may be indicative of central nervous system defects. A repeat amniocentesis yielded the same results. The sonogram was “suggestive of a brain defect.” The option of abortion was raised, but Laura and Bill rejected it on the basis of personal religious conviction. A baby girl was born on time – healthy, robust, and perfectly normal. Her parents named her Mary Elizabeth.”
Frank Pedreira, MD A Doctor’s Prescription for Life (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Sterling House, 1999) 70
Reverend Paul Schneck, president of the National Clergy Council for Operation Rescue, tells the story of how he became pro-life:
“I suppose I’ve always been pro-life by conviction, but in truth I was pro-choice by default. I paid lip service to those who opposed abortion, but I never really did anything about it. That is, until about two years ago.
It all started when a young couple came to my office to see me. They placed a garbage bag on my desk and told me to open it. Inside were the mutilated bodies of four aborted babies. They were disemboweled. Their tiny arms and legs had been torn from their torsos. They had been decapitated.
For the first time I realized what abortion really was – the deliberate, premeditated murder of a preborn baby. For years I’d heard the numbers: 15 million, 18 million, 22 million, but they were just that – numbers. Now I knew better. On my desk was the gruesome evidence! I couldn’t pretend any longer.”
He became active with Operation Rescue and was repeatedly arrested for trying to prevent abortions.
Richard Exley Abortion: Pro-Life by Conviction, Pro-Choice by Default (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Honor Books, 1989) 64
A woman who was raped and conceived, and chose to have her baby says:
“I have the most amazing daughter. She is perfect and beautiful in EVERY way; inside and out, I can’t even begin to express the level of kindness and love she has within her….
My daughter is smart, beautiful, helpful, compassionate, and everything that someone could wish for when having a child. She deserved the chance to live whether with me or another family. She has a lot to contribute to this world and I’m grateful I didn’t deny the world of her presence…..
Having the bright light of my daughter helped me recover from the trauma, and also to forgive those who hurt me.”
“I had an infertility patient, 31 years old, walk in pregnant one day. Married to a husband who had no sperm and who knew he was azospermic. It didn’t take much to figure that one out… But she wasn’t concerned over having an abortion. She was worried her husband would find out she had been pregnant and had gotten rid of the baby. She wanted the abortion and she didn’t want him to know… Some time ago this couple had put in for adoption, and after a long wait, had just gotten two little nonidentical twins.
Later, when this woman came back for her checkup, she told me the whole story. It turned out that the guy who had gotten her pregnant was a friend of her husband’s. He also was married. The two couples used to go away on weekends together… After the abortion, she put a halt to their relationship because she wanted to keep her own marriage intact for three more months. At the end of that time, she and her husband could legally adopt the twins. Having accomplished this, she was going to reconsider resuming her affair or getting a divorce.”
William J. Sweeney III, MD, Barbara Lang Stern Woman’s Doctor: A Year in the Life of an Obstetrician-Gynecologist (New York: Morrow & Company, 1973) 210
A woman who counsels women who regret their abortions says:
“Of the many women I’ve counseled, I would say that well over 90% of them aborted their babies to please someone else: their husbands, boyfriends, parents, or peer group… It’s a mockery to talk of a woman’s right to choose when she’s not the one doing the choosing.”
Melanie Symonds, Phyllis Bowman And Still They Weep: Personal Stories of Abortion (The SPUC Educational Research Trust, 1996) 9
Are women who are pressured into abortion more likely to regret their choice?
From William J. Sweeney III, MD, an ObGyn who was practicing when Roe vs. Wade was decided:
“… The saline we inject normally kills the baby, so it’s born dead. But there’s already been one case involving a woman who was carrying twins: when her doctor injected saline into one sac, one baby came out dead and another baby came out alive. The doctor knew she had twins. Usually the substance from one amniotic sac passes into the other sac. But this time it didn’t. What must that woman have felt? The second baby finally died, but the question remains, what should a doctor do if its alive? Are you asking him – or me – to drop it in the bucket?”
William J. Sweeney III, MD, Barbara Lang Stern Woman’s Doctor: A Year in the Life of an Obstetrician-Gynecologist (New York: Morrow & Company, 1973) 207-208
Abortion providers talk about the problems they have disposing of the bodies of aborted children. Undercover footage shot at National Abortion Federation conference recorded by David Daleiden. It was released on December 29, 2015:
Abortion Provider Rene Chelian:
“So in coalition, we started working with hospitals who didn’t want to be seen with us. We met them in like Denny’s restaurant, there’s not even many of those left…We talked about you know what are you guys going to do. They were terrified of a public relations nightmare. That hospital actually had big freezers with breasts and kneecaps and gallbladders and abortions or miscarriages. Um and they put all their jars together, at some point. and they go to Stericycle unless the hospital happens to have their incinerator which is rarer and rarer. The guy from Stericycle was quick to point that out to me.”
We were really tempted to give the fetus back. We thought we’ll give it to everybody in a gift bag, they can take it home, figure out what to do with it. It’s their pregnancy. Why is it our problem? And I’m saying that in all seriousness. Nobody wants to talk about dead bodies. Nobody but me. There was a point when Stericycle fired us that I had five months of fetal tissue in my freezers and we were renting freezers to put them in. So all I thought about, I am so consumed with fetal tissue, I was ready to drive to upper Michigan and have a bonfire. And I was just trying to figure out, you know how I wouldn’t get stopped or how far in the woods would I have to go to have this fire that nobody was going to see me. And the garbage disposal was an option, I mean, there was a point that I actually hired someone from another clinic to come in and take 20 bottles and put it into my garbage disposal.
When you look at incinerators for cremation the website descriptions are small cat, small dog, larger dog. So we were looking trying to compare our jars to various animals you might incinerate. We knew we wouldn’t need one big enough for a horse [laughter from abortionists in the crowd].… Were we going to have to go into inner-city Detroit and get a lot and put an incinerator there and then how do we transfer the waste? I mean fortunately, we have those really lax laws in Michigan, so I was going to get a license as a transporter [laughter], yet another fun thing, yup.… Got another fun thing, and there are a bunch of clinics buying an incinerator and then we can just go pick up for each other if we all got a license. I mean talk about moving on the competition.… I mean really, this is my backup plan. It’s going to have a name that is really, you know, nothing to do with anything in the universe and it’ll be really hard to find because it’s going to be in somebody else’s name, not mine.
Aborted child at 10 weeks
So I don’t know, that’s how awful this is. I feel like the Mafia.
We actually found some green technology that is like a dishwasher. And you plug it in like a dishwasher, like a portable dishwasher, and you add some kind of chemical – I mean, I’m using the word chemical really loose – it’s green, that’s all I know. And you’re just using it because they don’t have enough cemetery, they don’t have any space. And you run this cycle and then it goes in the sewer system, which sounds like a really great idea! Although I have to say I can’t remember if that was approved.”
aborted at 20 weeks
Abortion provider Karen:
“Even in our hospital in Canada, we contract out ultimately to Stericycle, and it’s going out to Portland. And Portland is a waste to energy facility. It’s a PR nightmare for us. It would end up being the front page of the paper “Fetuses Are Being Used for Energy.” I mean, I think it’s a great idea…”
13 weeks,
Abortion provider Rene Chelian:
“When we sent to another state, it became the whole issue of, do we tell FedEx what they’re picking up? How long will it take for the antis to figure it out? And if we don’t tell them, what if there’s a bad snowstorm, like there was this winter, and UPS gets delayed or FedEx get delayed, and their truck starts stinking – I mean every state law is different.
11 weeks
I know what I wanted to actually put the fetal tissue in my car and drive to the crematorium in Illinois [but] I was advised by my attorneys that I was breaking several state laws and that, that really wasn’t a good idea. Although, I have a good friend in another state who is currently driving across two states, once a month, with fetal tissue to go to a funeral home and and they have an arrangement to send out for cremation.
20 weeks
But everything is a secret, so it’s really scary. Because we are all one incinerator away or one incineration company away from being closed. Whatever your laws are in your state, if the antis know, this could shut us down.”
