A common pro-choice argument is that abortion is acceptable because a fetus/preborn baby is merely “potential life,” not a person. Therefore, killing him or her (yes, sex is determined at conception) is not murder, and is different than killing an older child or an adult. The pro-choice movement’s common claims — like the one that abortion is the same as any other surgical procedure, similar to removing an appendix — dehumanize preborn babies, who science calls new human beings.
Yet those who commit abortions and actually see the torn-apart bodies of aborted babies realize abortion is not a simple operation that removes tissue. They realize that abortion kills human beings. Some abortionists have plainly admitted that what they do is killing. And some abortion workers express frustration toward women who have repeat abortions.
If abortion was just the removal of cells or tissue, there would be no moral problem, guilt, or anger associated with it. No one gets angry at a person for having multiple wisdom teeth extracted. Yet abortion workers often feel resentful and angry when women come in for repeat abortions.
“I did feel repulsion…”
SA Davies, a British nurse who assists with abortions, says:
I admit that although I did feel repulsion for certain characters who presented themselves before doctors requesting abortions, I soon realized that judgement is an extremely delicate business. Many of the “young girls” who came for termination on a first-time basis were frightened and very repentant and quite obviously regretted everything related to the experience of carrying a child. On the other hand, young girls appearing for second abortions, some undoubtedly had little or no responsibility in any form, let alone any sensitivity related to the life of their foetus. (1)
Sensitivity to the life of the fetus? Davies expresses her “repulsion” towards women who do not have any feelings for their preborn babies, but she helps commit abortions every day. This is cognitive dissonance — believing two contradicting things. Why should lives be valued and regarded with “sensitivity” if they are worthless, like a wisdom tooth?
“That disgusted me.”
Another abortion worker, quoted in Abby Johnson’s book The Walls are Talking, says:
I would counsel the women during the sedation process before their abortions. … One woman was there for her eleventh abortion. Eleventh! That disgusted me. One 37-year-old patient was having her seventh abortion on the same day that her daughter was having her first grandbaby. Her festive mood and celebratory attitude concerning her granddaughter’s birth seemed morbid and out of place in an abortion clinic. (2)
This worker (who later left the industry and became pro-life) was disturbed by the casual way women treated abortion. Her feelings indicate that abortion is not just the removal of cells, and there is nothing to be “festive’ about.
“I want to beat the sh*t out of her.”
Abortionist William Robinson expresses his disdain for some women having abortions:
I do dislike a certain type of modern young woman who indulges promiscuously, uses contraceptives rather reluctantly, preferring repeat abortions, which she regards as lightly as tossing down a cocktail or a glass of whisky.
This abortionist has negative feelings towards women who take abortion “lightly.” But if abortion is just removing some tissue or cells, why not take it lightly? Because Robinson knows abortion kills a developing child.
Another abortionist used strong language to express his rage at a teen having her third abortion:
I have one kid here, seventeen, who’s just had her third abortion… I want to beat the sh*t out of her. I want to put her through the d*mn wall. “What’s the matter with you?” I say to her. Every time she thinks a relationship is going on the rocks, she gets pregnant. Then she has an abortion and starts up a new relationship. She swears every time she has an abortion that she won’t screw again. I tell her screwing isn’t the problem, protection is. (3)
No “protection” is 100% effective, and the abortionist likely sees many women who have had contraceptive failures. He may think these abortions are justifiable. But he is furious at this teen because of her indifference to getting pregnant and having an abortion. Where is his rage coming from? Dentists don’t become furious if a woman comes back a second or third time to get cavities removed..
A New York Times article quotes an abortionist talking about women who are on their sixth abortion: “Some days you just want to shake these people.”
Abortionists’ anger with women having repeat abortions shows they know each abortion ends a unique human life.
“I started to feel this wasn’t right.”
One reporter interviewed abortion workers in The Christian Science Monitor, writing of one, “[She’s seen] the women who are showing up several times a year and clearly using abortion as birth control, a practice that makes Monastersky wince with disapproval.”
But if abortion is just a routine operation, why shouldn’t it be used for birth control?
The son of a prominent abortionist recalls how his father felt about women coming for repeat abortions:
… [H]e said seeing patients register sadness did not disturb him…. What did bother him was seeing a patient (and there were some) for her second, third, or fourth abortion, even after she had been counseled to use contraception, and finding that she still acted blasé about it. … (4)
The abortionist believes an abortion decision is “weighty,” but why, if it’s just removing ’tissue’?
A former abortion worker expressed frustration at women for repeat abortions. This was prior to the Hyde Amendment, when Medicaid still paid for poor women’s abortions:
I didn’t have a personal opinion on abortion until I saw how many were done and for the multitude of ridiculous reasons. Not to mention the actual procedure itself and the “aftermath.” It wasn’t until a few years afterwards that I started to feel this wasn’t right. That is when I transferred to a different department and hospital completely. . . Plus you must understand, I worked for a hospital smack dab in the middle of NYC, I got to know some of the girls getting these abortions on a first name basis, since they had them so often. That really got under my skin, seeing these girls using it as a birth control measure. And why shouldn’t they? The state paid for it anyway! Just not right!
These repeat abortions troubled the worker so deeply that she quit her job. Sadly, some stay.
“[A] number of staff members were visibly and audibly agitated.”
An abortion worker on the pro-abortion blog, The Abortioneers, says, “[T]he fact of the matter is there are women who will present in a clinic five, six, seven times for a procedure. This makes a lot of people, myself included, uncomfortable on some level.”
Another, on the AbortionClinicDays blog, said:
When [the pregnant woman] came in today for her fifth abortion, a number of staff members were visibly and audibly agitated. They clearly were upset that all of the previous discussions about birth control seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.
Another abortion worker, quoted by author Wendy Simonds, described how, while fellow workers didn’t like women who came in for repeat abortions, she did, because they required little time or effort:
Most of the counselors didn’t like dealing with women who had had several abortions, they saw them as irresponsible at best, or, at worst, stupid. But I liked “repeat aborters” because they already knew what to expect and weren’t afraid of the abortion. They offered less emotion for me to soak up; they were easy process in 10 minutes. (5)
Another worker, Margaret Briggs, told pro-choice author Magda Denes, “I’m not completely and wholly for it. We’ve had several patients in here who came three times in two years… Abortion is not to be used for a birth control method. It’s ridiculous.” (6)
An abortionist quoted in Salon also dislikes women using abortion as birth control, but attempts to rationalize it: “[I]t’s usually those people who also make me think, ‘Oh great! They’re not having a child’ — even though I think it’s an awful way to do your birth control.”
Why is it “awful” if it’s just removing ’tissue’?
“I get mad, frustrated, angry.”
Planned Parenthood abortionist Carole Meyers told a group of Johns Hopkins medical students considering abortion work:
What about the woman who comes in for her third abortion and doesn’t want to hear about birth control? How are you going to feel about that? I’ll tell you how I feel. I get mad, frustrated, angry. (7)
An abortion counselor says clinic workers “go to great lengths to help a youngster through an abortion. Despite the emotional stress of the work, they are, as they say ‘there for her’… But if the same 15-year-old girl becomes a repeater and returns at 16 and 17, and if she develops a cool attitude toward the counseling experience, the reaction is different.” (8)
In his textbook on how to do abortions, late-term abortionist Warren Hern said:
One of the most difficult [cases] for staff members of an abortion facility is the patient who returns several times for repeat abortions. (9)
“This is self-destructive behavior.”
In the American Medical News, an abortion clinic employee says:
I had to work through my own issues with women who had multiple abortions. And I did become moralists and judgmental. My first cut off was two. It’s gone up to four. I am going to be honest and say that’s hard for me. I wish I could get past the four…if it was 14, I know I would have a very hard time sitting across from this woman and trying to be as pleasant as possible….This is self-destructive behavior. (10)
If abortion was simple and innocuous, why does this abortion worker acknowledge that repeat abortions are a “problem” and “self-destructive”?
Those who see the bodies of aborted babies and assist in killing them know there is more to abortion than pro-choice talking points claim: Abortion kills babies.
Sources
- Mary Kenny, Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986)
- Abby Johnson, The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2016) 95
- Linda Bird Francke, The Ambivalence of Abortion (New York: Random House, 1978) 182
- Eyal Press, Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America (New York: Henry Holt & company, 2006) P 246-247
- Wendy Simonds. Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996) 7
- Magda Denes, PhD. In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital (New York: Basic Books inc 1976) 25
- Patricia Meisol, “A Hard Choice: A young medical student tries to decide if she has what it takes to join the diminishing ranks of abortion providers” Washington Post, Nov 23 2008)
- Thelma McCormick and Gary Crum, Abortion: Pro-Choice or Pro-Life (University Press, 1992) 104
- Warren Hern, Abortion Practice (Alpenglo Graphics: 1990) 88
- “Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflicts,” American Medical News July 12, 1993
