‘Ashes into beauty’: Former abortionists and abortion survivors meet ‘Face to Face’ for emotional discussion

The latest video in Live Action’s “Face to Face” series brings together abortion survivors and former abortionists in a roundtable discussion about the devastating effects of abortion, touching on a range of subjects — including the fact that so few people realize that abortion survivors exist. They are not a myth.

Former abortionists Dr. Haywood Robinson, Dr. Kathi Aultman, and Dr. Anthony Levatino heard the impactful stories of Claire Culwell and Josiah Presley, who were each adopted as infants by different families. Culwell and Presley later learned that they were only alive because the abortions sought by their mothers did not kill them as planned.

A Conversation Like No Other: Abortion Survivors & Abortion Providers Speak Face to Face

Culwell described meeting her birth mother in 2009 and thanking her for the gift of life, only to have her birth mother break down in tears and say she had meant for Claire to be aborted. Instead, the abortion successfully killed Claire’s twin.

Presley explained that, at age 13, he learned that his birth mother in South Korea had tried to kill him via an unsuccessful D&C abortion.

Moderating the discussion, Live Action’s founder and president Lila Rose asked the duo how people react when they learn they are abortion survivors.

“Most of the time people have no idea that a baby can survive an abortion,” Claire said. “I mean its unfathomable that a procedure that was meant to end someone’s life could accidentally not end it, but I think it has also humanized the unborn baby, the aborted baby, for a lot of people. When you look at my face, the fact that I was a twin, you’re actually looking at my twin, so people can see the humanity of the unborn baby, the human baby, through my existence.”

Presley agreed, noting that people are usually “shocked” when they learn he is an abortion survivor, and many don’t believe him.

From dehumanizing to re-humanizing

Much of the panel’s discussion centered around the idea that abortion survivors serve to “re-humanize” the preborn children who have been “dehumanized” through abortion. They are the human faces who represent the children who were killed by abortion.

At one point, Dr. Aultman said that just a couple of years ago, God led her to begin to assign and write down names for each and every baby she had aborted on a pad of paper. Emotionally, she recalled, “And I’m not sure why, or what all it had to do with spiritually, but I had to just name each one, and as I thought of each one, I named them. And that seemed to bring healing.”

Dr. Robinson said in response, “And that’s part of the re-humanization process… I went through that… We can come to the Lord, but there is a process, there is a working out of your salvation or a sanctification process, that you recognize that you have been damaged…. That same dehumanization that you projected on that child, it’s part of you. I was dehumanized, you were dehumanized, and here we are dehumanizing the baby, and it’s part of a process… You’ve got to own up to that responsibility….”

Beauty from ashes

At one point of the discussion, Culwell extended grace and forgiveness — and even gratefulness — to the former abortionists at the table. “I appreciate that something people have have said to me so often is, Claire, God has turned ashes into beauty through your life,” she told them. “But the same is true for y’all.”Culwell said because she was raised in a Christian home and taught about extending forgiveness, it “was easy for me to forgive my birth mother, and I can say that it’s easy for me today to recognize that the same is true for each of you. That God has turned something that was meant for evil into something that is good.”Culwell added that when she, as a pro-life speaker, makes presentations to students, she often uses video recordings of Dr. Levatino describing abortion procedures and informing viewers that intentionally killing preborn babies is not medically necessary.“And so all that to say, I am just so grateful that y’all have allowed God to use your experience and that there is good coming out of that,” she said. “I can share my story and people are able to see the humanity of the baby and empathize with the woman who’s had an abortion, and then I can share an experience like yours, and they’re able to hear truly what is going on inside of abortion facilities. And that is how God is using what you’ve done — your regret — He’s using that for good, and it’s opening the eyes of people to the truth, and so I’m so incredibly grateful that you are sharing your story… as hard as it might be.”

Other babies have survived abortions

Culwell asked the three former abortionists if they ever had a baby survive an abortion. Levatino said he personally did not, but emotionally recalled that during his residency, he had an encounter with a baby who had survived a saline abortion at about 20 weeks. Robinson also described a residency experience in which the abortionist was having trouble killing the child in the womb; Robinson never discovered whether or not the child actually survived.

All three acknowledged that there are instances in which babies are born alive following abortions. Sometimes these babies are offered medical care and attention, but other times, they are simply left to die. In a previous panel discussion, nurse Jill Stanek discussed how she learned the hospital where she once worked was committing “induced labor abortions” on babies who, if born prematurely today, might be able to survive outside the womb with medical assistance.

Aultman pointed out that with the increase in abortion pill procedures (which now comprise approximately 63% of all abortions), she believes even more babies could be born alive following abortion attempts. “Women take the abortion pill, they haven’t seen a doctor. They don’t know how far they’re pregnant, and if they’re too far along it’s not going to abort their pregnancy,” she explained.

And more than that, these chemical abortions are presented as something easy and consequence-free, and the babies they kill are spoken of as nothing more than “tissue” — dehumanized. And yet, some women see their babies and realize, with horror, that they have been lied to.

“The thing I worry about with the abortion pill is the woman herself becomes the abortionist, and it just piles the guilt on later when they finally realize what they have done,” said Dr. Aultman. “At some point, women understand and realize what they have done.”

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