An abortionist involved in a lawsuit regarding a Kansas abortion law testified that when she lost her own preborn babies, she felt she was being “punished by God.”
During her deposition in Hodes & Nauser v. Kobach, abortionist Dr. Traci Nauser described her own experience with depression after she aborted two of her quadruplets through “selective reduction,” only to have the remaining two die at 20 weeks gestation.
The legal case centers around a pro-life law in Kansas which was temporarily blocked following a legal challenge brought by Planned Parenthood and other abortionists. The law in question, the Women’s Right to Know Act, originally passed in 1997, requiring informed consent for women seeking abortions. Abortionists were mandated to give patients specific information regarding abortion before the procedure.
On January 7, in relation to the case, Nauser detailed her personal heartbreaking experience with abortion that left her feeling that God was punishing her. Asked if she had heard of stories of women becoming depressed because they had an abortion, she answered, “I personally had depression after an abortion. So, yes.”
She added that she “wouldn’t be surprised” to hear a woman say she experienced the same.
“And just because I had depression and grief doesn’t mean I would — regretted it, or would, if put in the same situation, choose a different outcome,” she said. “It just f***ing sucks — sorry — the situation medically that I was in, and I had to make the best decision that I could.”
An adoptee becomes an abortionist
Nauser detailed more of her personal story, which she said she likely could not do “without crying” because she is “emotional.” She said she was placed for adoption when she was born in 1970. Her adoptive parents had struggled with infertility and her father was an OB/GYN. They said yes when the opportunity was given for them to adopt Nauser as a newborn.
Growing up, Nauser knew her father was an OB/GYN and knew he delivered babies — but eventually understood that he was also offering abortions. After attending medical school, Nauser decided she also wanted to be an OB/GYN.
“And then in residency, obviously delivering babies and doing surgeries and you have patients that are having miscarriages and unfortunate circumstances where their water broke — breaks at 18 weeks and there’s very little chance of survival or good outcome with that, and so the standard recommendation is to end the pregnancy. Well, that’s an abortion,” she said.
However, legally speaking, it’s not.
It is a preterm delivery due to the premature rupture of membranes. Labor has begun naturally, but too soon for the baby to survive. In a preterm emergency delivery, there is no intention to directly kill the baby. However, an induced abortion — which is what is prohibited by pro-life laws — is an act that carries the intent of deliberately ending the preborn child’s life.
Nauser noted that at the end of her residency, if she wanted to do abortions, she had to find her own training. “It was a ‘we’re okay if you do it, but don’t tell us if you’re doing it,’ kind of a situation,” she said.
This implies that the procedures she was performing during residency were truly not abortions as she claimed. If she wanted to learn actual induced abortion procedures, she would need to go elsewhere.
She turned to Planned Parenthood for that training.
“On my days off, I would do abortions,” she said. Planned Parenthood trained her to commit abortions up to 14 weeks. The plan was that when her OB/GYN residency was complete, she would join her father’s practice. And when she did, Dr. Hodes (whose name is also on the lawsuit) trained her to carry out second-trimester D&E dismemberment abortions. Nauser learned induction abortions during residency because it is the “same” as labor induction, she said.
However, there is a key difference: in an induction abortion, the doctor injects a feticide into the baby’s head or heart to cause cardiac arrest before delivery is induced.
Her personal choice to ‘reduce’ two children
After all of her abortion training was complete, it was “time” for her and her husband to have a baby. However, they experienced infertility. She took fertility assistance injectables, but her ovaries “overresponded.” She had five follicles and was warned that this could mean becoming pregnant with multiple babies — but she believed that the chance of multiples was low and decided to go ahead with insemination.
“I just want to be pregnant, let’s go for it,” she said. “Oh, I got pregnant with quads….”
She then had four preborn babies, whom she had spent a great deal of time attempting to conceive. But four was considered two too many. In the fertility industry, children who are originally desperately wanted suddenly become ‘extra’ and are targeted for death. It’s a lot more common than people realize.
“I know, as a doctor, the risks of a quadruple pregnancy and the successful outcome rates of that are extremely low. So I had to make the decision — or I made the decision with my husband to reduce it down to twins, which would be a much more successful likelihood pregnancy.”
No doctor in Kansas would commit the selective reduction abortion, however, during which two babies would be killed and left in her womb. Nauser flew to Detroit, Michigan, to have the procedure done.
“I felt like I was being punished by God — and I’m not even a religious person — for doing abortions; so now I’m being punished,” she said. “But I knew it was the right thing.”
However, despite calling the deliberate killing of two of her babies the “right” thing to do, she also said, “I did not feel like I had a choice …”
Losing the two surviving babies
“Everything was great until the day of my anatomy ultrasound at 20 weeks,” she said. “I was at home waiting for my appointment later that afternoon. I had the weekend before — a few days before — had had some increased discharge, mucousy stuff. I called my doctor. I was evaluated, everything looked fine at that point. Stay at bed rest for two days.”
But then, three hours before her scheduled appointment, she felt “massive pressure” and knew what it meant — the amniotic sac had dropped. She knew it was an emergency. She went to the hospital by ambulance; doctors, whom she knew, attempted to “push the membranes back and put in an emergency cerclage — and I knew I was screwed before I even went to the OR because I saw my own ultrasound — my water broke.”
She later woke up in recovery, asking, “Did they save them?”
No, they told her; her water had broken, and the cerclage couldn’t be placed.
“So now, I’m 20 weeks with ruptured membranes with twins. They both have heart rates. You couldn’t possibly have more informed consent than I have and know the risks of everything. It was a fully-desired pregnancy. There was nothing wrong with me or the twins. My waters broke.”
She continued:
And the chance of me not getting infected, potentially never having kids, losing my uterus — the chance of those things happening before I could have kept them in my uterus long enough to get them to a point where they had legit viability and good survival outcomes is — was so low. I wanted to have kids. I chose to have labor induction.
Medically, to me, they’re fetuses. To me, as Traci Nauser, as the person that was pregnant, they were babies.
They had names. Jordan was a girl; Drew was the boy.
Jordan delivered, had a heartbeat, and I held her till she died in my arms. Drew, thank God, did not [have a heartbeat] when he was born. So I didn’t have to have that trauma twice. I grieved their loss.
Nauser’s labor had already begun and couldn’t be stopped; her water had already broken and the cerclage was unsuccessful. It does not appear that it was her desire to kill these two surviving babies. Each year, she hangs up Christmas ornaments for them and cries.
It’s impossible to know what the outcome would have been had she not undergone a selective reduction abortion. But the truth is clear: induced abortion can cause very real trauma and depression — and denying this fact is a disservice to women and babies.
