The abortion stories abortionists don’t want you to hear

In a New York Times op-ed, an abortionist argues that people like Dr. Caitlin Bernard — recently reprimanded by the Indiana State Medical Board for violating the privacy of one of her patients — have a duty to tell their stories, because stories can change minds. The problem is that the abortionist only wants certain stories told… stories that portray abortion in a positive manner.

Abortionist Christine Henneberg wrote about why abortionists have been speaking to the media with astonishing frequency, claiming that pro-life laws are harming women. “Extraordinary abortion stories remind us that pregnancy can be a matter of life and death,” she said. “Pregnancy can — and does — result from rape, incest and intimate partner violence. Pregnancy can — and does — happen to children as young as 10. Governors and legislators and Supreme Court justices can — and do — make decisions that result in children being forced to give birth.”

She further added that it is her “ethical duty” to expose the violations of “our patients’ rights to privacy and bodily autonomy,” which is why she writes about her experiences.

Yet the New York Times is apparently less eager to share the stories Henneberg herself has written in the past.

Being angry when patients choose life

In her 2022 memoir, Henneberg complained about a Black patient who chose life for her child after seeing an ultrasound — a decision Henneberg says she was “horrified” by. “It was not the decision I had expected or wanted for her,” she said. “I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and say, ‘You do realize, this is not just about how you feel this moment, today. This is about your body, a 40-week pregnancy, and then the rest of your life. A third child. How will you cope? How will you afford it? Think about this.'”

Injuring patients and sending them home without care

She further admitted that Planned Parenthood trained her to send injured patients home without giving them proper treatment — even though Henneberg waxes poetic about her supposed ethical duty. Henneberg said she was being trained by an abortionist named Rebecca, who realized she had perforated the woman’s uterus.

My face must have been ashen. “Have you ever perforated before?” she asked me.

“No.”

She gave a little laugh. “The thing you have to remember is that abortions are one of the safest procedures there is. Perforation is like your worst nightmare, right? We are so careful to avoid it, and we should be.

But now it’s happened to you. You poked a little hole in her uterus. You have to watch her for bleeding, make sure you didn’t suck any bowel through with your cannula. But 99% of the time that doesn’t happen. You’ll watch her. She’ll go home. This will heal itself up in a few days.”

Henneberg said the patient was “fine” and she couldn’t wait to commit more abortions the next day, but there was no follow-up care, no way to know if the woman truly did heal properly. And the very next day, Henneberg perforated another woman’s uterus… and she, too, was sent home. The appropriate treatment for perforation is, at the very least, suturing the wound, which Henneberg did not do. No medications or antibiotics were given, there was no observation. The women were just sent home, to deal with any potential complications on their own.

Aborting a “wanted” and healthy baby girl without telling the mother

In another seeming lapse of ethical duties, Henneberg wrote about committing an abortion because the mother wanted a girl, and believed she was carrying a boy. Henneberg knew the baby was a girl, but committed the abortion anyway, without ever telling the mother.

Her so-called commitment to bodily autonomy evidently means losing the ability to commit an abortion is on the line.

Feeling “joy” while crushing a child’s skull

Another story rarely told to the public is just what abortion procedures entail. A dilation and evacuation (D&E) is commonly called a dismemberment abortion, because the preborn child is literally ripped apart limb by limb:

2nd Trimester Abortion | Dilation and Evacuation (D&E) | What Is Abortion?

As former abortionist Kathi Aultman explained, the most difficult part of the procedure is finding, and crushing, the baby’s skull.

“Usually, the most difficult part of the procedure is extracting the fetus’s head, which at 20 weeks is about the size of a large plum. The abortionist must open the clamp widely to grab the head, and then crush it so that it will fit through the cervix. The abortionist knows he has crushed the skull when a white substance, the fetus’s brain, leaks out of the cervix. The abortionist then removes the compressed head.”

When Henneberg finally did this for the first time, she said she experienced a strange emotion: joy. “On the next procedure, I grasped the calvarium on the first try. I felt like I was flying, soaring under Rebecca’s strong and beautiful wing,” she said, adding, “I’d found the thing I was good at, even gifted at.”

Real abortion stories paint an extremely disturbing picture

Where is the concern with these abortion stories being widely disseminated for the public to read? The problem with them, of course, is they present a much more disturbing picture.

Instead of a warrior for women fighting for justice and to save lives, they present a woman who commits abortions against a woman’s will, who is angry when a woman exercises her right to choose (but chooses “wrong”), who doesn’t care when women are injured, and who is thrilled at being able to successfully crush a child’s skull.

Far from a warrior fighting for women, they make it clear: abortionists all too often are happy to sacrifice women and their well-being on the altar of abortion.