Late-term abortion facility caught on tape discussing ending a baby’s life

A newly released undercover recording captures a late-term abortion facility staffer telling a “healthy woman posing as 25 weeks pregnant” that they will “euthanize the fetus.”  The disturbing recording was released by Abortion Free New Mexico and Priests for Life, and was published by the New Mexico group, Pro-life Witness. The undercover phone call was placed to Southwestern Women’s Options (SWO), an Albuquerque, New Mexico, late-term abortion facility operated by infamous abortionist Curtis Boyd.

What appears to be is missing from this disturbing conversation are questions that one would expect an abortion facility to ask, such as the caller’s reasons for seeking an abortion. But in listening to the exchange below, there seems to be no interest in finding out what “health reason” would compel a pregnant woman to seek an abortion so late in her pregnancy:

The basic information sought by facilities like Southwestern Women’s Options is how far along the woman thinks she is and whether or not she can pay. Contrary to what the public is led to believe, it is clear from this video — and others — that late-term abortions are not being performed for reasons of health alone. In several states, including New Mexico, taxpayers are funding late-term abortions done for any reason the woman desires.

It should come as no surprise, then, that abortionists with the abortion industry’s leader, Planned Parenthood, believe all abortions are “medically necessary” and should be funded by taxpayers.

In the video above, one of the first things the facility tells the caller is that if she is able to get to their location quickly (before another week goes by and prices increase further), an abortion at 25 weeks will cost her $8,500. If the abortion industry really wanted to help poor women to have “abortion access,” and “free abortions,” then why are they charging so much? Because abortions, whether paid for by taxpayers or by private individuals, have never been “free.” Despite what the abortion industry might claim, these procedures are (as you can see) quite lucrative.

In 2015, a woman who sought a late-term abortion from Colorado abortionist Warren Hern claims she paid $25,000 to end the life of her baby at 36 weeks. More on that case later.

In detailing the late-term abortion process, the facility staffer tells the caller that the late-term, 25 week abortion is a “three to four day process” of “labor and delivery” which will produce a “stillborn” baby.

On the first day, the doctor, referred to as “she,” will “use a medication.” To do what to the baby, exactly? To “euthanize the fetus” and “stop the fetal heart on that first day,” according to the staffer.

One would expect to hear a term like “euthanize” when taking an animal into a veterinarian’s office. But this callous terminology is fairly common among abortion providers. In the previously mentioned case of a woman seeking an abortion at 36 weeks, costing $25,000, abortionist Warren Hern’s Colorado facility told the woman they would “euthanize” her baby:

“The whole first day was counseling and testing to make sure it was safe to do the procedure. They want to make sure you completely understand what is going to happen and that no one is pressuring you into the decision. At the end of the day, I signed all the paperwork, and the doctor injected the baby with a drug that, over a few hours, slowed her heart to still. It was a very, very difficult day. Euthanizing the baby is, obviously, a very hard thing to do. After the injection, he asked how I was feeling, and I just said, “I feel so sad. I’m going to miss her.”

You might be asking, “What is done to ‘euthanize’ a preborn baby?” To put it bluntly, an off-label use of a heart medication is used to cause cardiac arrest in the child. Southwestern Women’s Options states on its website, “Once the cervix is ready, medications will be administered which will start labor and result in the delivery of a stillborn. On the first day, an injection of Digoxin will also be administered to stop the fetal heart beat.”

Blogging abortionist Leah Torres, who claims that all abortions “save lives” (except the baby’s life, of course) also described the act of “euthanizing” a preborn child not as barbaric, but as a method of avoiding the dreaded complication of the infant being born alive. Torres writes:

During an abortion in the 2nd trimester, specifically after 22 weeks, it is general practice to perform feticide (injection of a lethal medicine into the amniotic cavity or into the fetal heart) to essentially euthanize the fetus prior to the dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure. It is therefore not alive once the abortion procedure is started.

Torres goes on to blame the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act for this requirement of an “intra-amniotic injection” which she’s says “put[s] the woman at risk of injury and infection… prior to the D&E.”

A report from the Society of Family Planning (SFP), whose mission is to support research on contraception and abortion, suggests that euthanizing the baby protects the abortionist from being charged with violating the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act:

The role of inducing demise before dilation and evacuation (D&E) remains unclear, except for legal considerations in the United States when an intact delivery is intended.

It is clear from the SFP report that the use of a feticide like Digoxin (which, while it is meant to stop the fetal heart, isn’t always successful) to “euthanize” a preborn baby before abortion isn’t altruistic. No, there is no concern that the infant will be in agony while it is aborted; there is simply an admission that the abortionist could face criminal charges if the child is accidentally aborted alive:

By electing to use an agent with established feticidal properties at a dose and by a route that have been established to ensure cardiac asystole in most cases, there is no intention of performing the banned abortion procedure… [it will] demonstrate the abortion provider’s intention to avoid the banned procedure and allows documentation of the absence of cardiac activity, thus protecting the provider.

The video below explains what happens in a late-term abortion using digoxin:

3rd Trimester Induction Abortion: Injection and Stillbirth

In the NM undercover video, the caller is given more details of what happens after the feticide is administered to “euthanize” her child.

“Labor is going to be induced here in the clinic, usually one to two days later,” the staffer advises. “The doctor will use a substance; it is called laminaria. She will place that in the cervix overnight… and it will very gradually begin to open up your cervix overnight.” Then the staffer tells the caller she would need to stay “close by” in a hotel near the abortion facility.

This little bit of instruction is important because the abortion staffer knows that once Digoxin is injected into the womb, the woman could go into what the industry calls “extramural delivery,” which means she could go into labor and delivery before her scheduled abortion. The chances of this occurring increase with each additional laminaria prior to the scheduled abortion, according to a study of late-term abortions at UCLA, published by the Journal Contraception.

“If the cervix dilates and your body may go into labor — then — you call us. That’s what you do,” the SWO abortion staffer tells the caller. The caller is then told that the abortionist will induce labor in the facility, where the delivery process will begin and “could take several hours.”

When a Live Action undercover investigator visited this same facility in 2013, she was advised that if she went into labor before her scheduled abortion, she would have to deliver the baby into the toilet of her hotel room — and, of course, there was the possibility of an accidental live birth. In the video below, Southwestern Women’s Options abortionists Shelly Sella and Carmen Landau tell the investigator that they cannot deliver a “live baby.” An unnamed counselor at the facility advises Live Action’s 27-weeks-pregnant investigator:

If we can’t catch it [delivery of the dead baby – the final stage of the abortion procedure] early enough, which has happened… then you’ll want to unlock the door to the hotel room, get your cell phone, and just sit on the toilet.  You don’t have to look at anything … you can stay on the phone with us until the doctor and nurse get there[.]

Abortionist Carmen Landau echoes this advice, telling the Live Action investigator to “sit on the toilet” and “unlock the hotel room.”  “Just sit there,” Landau says, “and you would not move until we come and get you.”

Inhuman: Undercover in America's Late-Term Abortion Industry - New Mexico

Southwestern Women’s Options was also a subject of another Live Action video, titled “What is Human?,” in which Landau likened the lethal injection that kills the preborn baby to “a flu shot, really.”

It is a sad reality that babies in all gestational stages are targeted for death in the womb. Human beings at all stages of life are sacred and should not have their lives extinguished at the whim of those who callously profit from their demise.