Nurse witnesses partial-birth abortion on baby with Down syndrome: ‘I still have nightmares’

When you hear the word “fetus,” I think a lot of people think it is just a blob of cells, or a mass of something. It was very revealing to me. I don’t think about abortion the same way anymore. I still have nightmares about what I saw.

Registered nurse Brenda Pratt Shafer was pro-abortion when she was assigned to assist Martin Haskell in committing abortions at his facility, Women’s Medical Center. In her own words:

Haskell has sent a number of women to the hospital with serious complications and pioneered the dilation and extraction abortion, also known as partial birth abortion.

This type of abortion, which was banned in 2003 (and the ban upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007), consists of partially delivering a living preborn baby, and then puncturing her skull with surgical scissors to drain the brain. The infant would be delivered only until her head remained inside the mother, then the skull would be pierced and the brain suctioned out through a tube. This violent procedure was done to collapse the skull, which was considered too large to be safely extracted through the woman’s cervix. Schafer would witness several abortions committed by this method.

Shafer worked in Haskell’s facility for three days – September 28, 29, and 30, of 1993. On the first day, she assisted in first trimester abortions. She noted in her testimony before a Senate subcommittee that one of the clients was a 15-year-old girl getting her third abortion. Disturbingly, the client “laughed” throughout the procedure.

On the second day, Shafer witnessed a D&E abortion. This method of abortion is still committed today and is the most common technique used to abort a baby in the second trimester. During a D&E, the baby is dismembered in utero. Shafer describes:

Dr. Anthony Levatino, who committed 1,200 abortions before he became pro-life, describes the procedure below. You can also see at the link the remains of a 20-week-old baby aborted by D&E method (warning: very graphic).

2nd Trimester Surgical Abortion: Dilation and Evacuation (D & E)

On the third day, Shafer would see a partial-birth abortion procedure completed. She describes one, which was committed on a baby with Down syndrome at 26-and-a-half weeks.

She also saw two other partial-birth abortions, both done on healthy children late in pregnancy:

The face of the aborted baby with Down syndrome haunted Shafer the most:

When Shafer went public with what she had seen, abortion activists scrambled to try and discredit her testimony. At the judiciary committee, a pro-abortion congresswoman read a statement from Haskell claiming that Shafer had never worked for him. She gave this testimony in front of Congress. The lie was easily exposed, and the congresswoman withdrew her accusation and explained it away by saying that there and been confusion over Shafer’s name.

With his first lie exposed, Haskell then came up with a second – he and his employees wrote another letter, admitting that yes, in fact, Shafer had worked for him, but that her testimony was faulty because he did not commit abortions that late in pregnancy. Shafer’s rebuttal was to present excerpts from speeches that Haskell gave in which he admitted committing these abortions up to and beyond 26 weeks. Still another accusation was made that the abortionist  did not use ultrasound while performing abortions, and that therefore, Shafer’s testimony was false. Shafer again referred to speeches that Haskell had made in which he described using an ultrasound while performing a partial-birth abortion.

The parade of misinformation and distortions that were used to attempt to discredit Shafer all fell apart under examination, but the lengths to which the abortion side would go to try to discredit her is very telling. They knew how powerful her testimony would be. Abortion supporters still attempt to discredit facility workers who come forward with their stories. They know that their testimonies are some of the most powerful arguments against abortion that can be made.

Sources: Brenda Shafer, “What the Nurse Saw,” National Right to Life News, July 18, 1995: 23

Statement of Brenda Pratt Shafer, R.N. Before the Subcommittee on the Constitution