Increasingly, doctors, nurses, counselors, and other abortion clinic workers are speaking out about the deep, dark secrets that go on within the clinics. Some of these workers quit because they can no longer deal with the reality of taking innocent human lives day after day after day. Sadly, some remain.

Below, you can hear real truth from the mouths of abortion workers. If you’ve ever wondered what exactly goes on in abortion clinics, wonder no longer…

Abortion Doctors and Workers on the Reality of Abortion

The idea of abortion to save the mother’s life is something that people cling to becasue it sounds noble and pure – but medically speaking, it probably doesn’t exist.  It’s a real stretch of our thinking.  Abortions, then, can be seen as always purely elective – not necessary from a medical standpoint.

Abortion: A Doctor’s Perspective A Woman’s Dilemma by Don Sloan, M.D. with Paula Hartz (page 60)

In testimony Wednesday in St. Louis Circuit Court, [abortionist] Crist said that it is not uncommon for second-trimester fetuses to leave the womb feet-first, intact and with their hearts still beating. He sometimes crushes their skulls to get the fetuses out. Other times, he dismembers them.

“Abortion Doctor Gives Graphic testimony Describing Abortion Procedure” by Jo Mannies, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 25, 2000

Abortion is, by almost any standards, a violent act.  All surgery violates the integrity of the body; purely elective surgery seems particularly gratuitous.  On the positive side, it gives women the means to decide their own fates and control their own reproductive lives.  But it also puts more of the weight on women’s shoulders, allowing men and society in general to literally scrape and vacuum away their responsibilities.

Abortion: A Doctor’s Perspective A Woman’s Dilemma by Don Sloan, M.D. with Paula Hartz (page 178)

A frequent problem at the beginning of this series was difficulty in removing the fetal skull from the uterus.  The incidence of this declined with experience, with more aggressive use of laminaria in dilatation, and with acquisition of new and more satisfactory instruments for performance of this procedure. It still occurs occasionally, and it is managed by completing the procedure under direct ultrasound visualization or having the patient wait in the recovery room for one or two hours.  The part being sought invariably migrates to the lower uterine segment and is easily grasped and delivered. (Emphasis mine.)

Outpatient second-trimester D&E abortion through 24 menstrual weeks’ gestation by Warren Hern, Boulder Abortion Clinic

And then to see, to be with somebody while they’re having the injection when they’re twenty or twenty-four weeks, and you see the baby moving around, kicking around, as this needle goes into the stomach, you know.

Susan Lindstrom, M.S.W.

It’s just- I mean it looks like a baby. It looks like a baby. And especially if you get one that comes out, that’s not piecemeal. And you know, I saw this one, and it had its fingers in its mouth…it makes me really sad that that had to happen, you know, but it doesn’t change my mind. It’s just hard. And it makes me just sort of stop and feel sad about it, the whole necessity of it. And also….it’s very warm when it comes into the sterile room because it’s been in the mother’s stomach. It feels like flesh, you know…

From “Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic” by Wendy Simonds, 1996. This work by a pro-choice author included…a chapter on how clinic workers emotionally deal with “aborted tissue.”

After an abortion, the doctor must inspect these remains to make sure that all the fetal parts and placenta have been removed. Any tissue left inside the uterus can start an infection. Dr. Bours squeezed the contents of the sock into a shallow dish and poked around with his finger. ‘You can see a teeny tiny hand’ he said.

Abortion clinic worker quoted in “Is the Fetus Human?” and in Dudley Clendinen, “The Abortion Conflict: What it Does to One Doctor” New York Times Magazine, August 11, 1985.

The Real Experiences of Nurses

In the case of late termination, the death of the fetus before delivery, though usual, is not inevitable except in rare cases of extreme physical abnormality…At times the fetus will actually attempt to breathe or move its limbs, which makes the experience extremely distressing for nurses. Also, whereas the woman will probably go through this process once in her lifetime, nurses may go through it several times a year or even in the same week.

The Journal of Clinical Nursing 2002, “Working with Women Experiencing Mid-Trimester Termination of Pregnancy, the Integration of Nursing and Feminist Knowledge in the Gynecological Setting” pp. 273-279

The Lies Women are Told

Every woman has these same two questions: First, ‘Is it a baby?’ ‘No’ the counselor assures her. ‘It is a product of conception (or a blood clot, or a piece of tissue)’ Even though these counselors see six week babies daily, with arms, legs and eyes that are closed like newborn puppies, they lie to the women. How many women would have an abortion, if they told them the truth?

“A Walk Through an Abortion Clinic” by Carol Everett (former owner of two abortion clinics and director of four clinics) ALL About Issues magazine Aug-Sept 1991, pg. 117

“I have never yet counseled anybody to have the baby. I’m also doing women’s counseling on campus at Albany State, and there I am expected to present alternatives. Whereas at the abortion clinic you aren’t really expected to.”

Abortion counselor in Rachel Weeping and Other Essays About Abortion, James Tunstead Burtchaell, editor, pp. 42-43

What Workers Hate About the Clinics

A friend, specialist in perinatology, head of hospital OBGYN dept – ‘On some mornings,’ he said, ‘I leave my office, and if I turn right, I go down the hallway to the TOP clinic and terminate.  I am a destroyer of pregnancies.  If I turn left down the same hallway I go toward the nursery and the labor and delivery unit and take care of the myriad complications in women who are in the throes of problem pregnancies – and I do things to help them hold on.  It’s all so schizophrenic.  I have a kind of split personality.’

Abortion: A Doctor’s Perspective A Woman’s Dilemma by Don Sloan, M.D. with Paula Hartz (page 78)

I hated putting babies in strainers and rinsing them off and putting them in zip-lock bags.

Former abortion clinic owner Eric Harrah

I went up to the lab one day and on the pathologiest’s table I saw what I thought was little rubber doll until I realized it was a fetus. . .I got really shook up and upset and I couldn’t believe it. It had all its fingers and toes, you know, hands and feet. . . I never thought it would look so -real. I didn’t like it.

Planned Parenthood employee quoted in Magda Denes’ book “In Necessity and Sorrow:Life and Death Inside an Abortion Hospital” New York: Basic Books, 1979

I found much distress in the clinic, but it involved not only the women. I saw the pain of the babies who were born burned from the saline solution used for late-term abortions. I saw the bits of feet, bits of hands, the mangled heads and bodies of the little people. I saw pain and felt pain.

Onetime clinic worker Paula Sutcliffe in “Precious in My Sight” “Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices,” Gail Garnier-Sweet, editor

Increasingly, doctors, nurses, counselors, and other abortion clinic workers are speaking out about the deep, dark secrets that go on within the clinics. Some of these workers quit because they can no longer deal with the reality of taking innocent human lives day after day after day. Sadly, some remain.

Below, you can hear real truth from the mouths of abortion workers. If you’ve ever wondered what exactly goes on in abortion clinics, wonder no longer…

Abortion Doctors and Workers on the Reality of Abortion

The idea of abortion to save the mother’s life is something that people cling to becasue it sounds noble and pure – but medically speaking, it probably doesn’t exist.  It’s a real stretch of our thinking.  Abortions, then, can be seen as always purely elective – not necessary from a medical standpoint.

Abortion: A Doctor’s Perspective A Woman’s Dilemma by Don Sloan, M.D. with Paula Hartz (page 60)

In testimony Wednesday in St. Louis Circuit Court, [abortionist] Crist said that it is not uncommon for second-trimester fetuses to leave the womb feet-first, intact and with their hearts still beating. He sometimes crushes their skulls to get the fetuses out. Other times, he dismembers them.

“Abortion Doctor Gives Graphic testimony Describing Abortion Procedure” by Jo Mannies, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 25, 2000

Abortion is, by almost any standards, a violent act.  All surgery violates the integrity of the body; purely elective surgery seems particularly gratuitous.  On the positive side, it gives women the means to decide their own fates and control their own reproductive lives.  But it also puts more of the weight on women’s shoulders, allowing men and society in general to literally scrape and vacuum away their responsibilities.

Abortion: A Doctor’s Perspective A Woman’s Dilemma by Don Sloan, M.D. with Paula Hartz (page 178)

A frequent problem at the beginning of this series was difficulty in removing the fetal skull from the uterus.  The incidence of this declined with experience, with more aggressive use of laminaria in dilatation, and with acquisition of new and more satisfactory instruments for performance of this procedure. It still occurs occasionally, and it is managed by completing the procedure under direct ultrasound visualization or having the patient wait in the recovery room for one or two hours.  The part being sought invariably migrates to the lower uterine segment and is easily grasped and delivered. (Emphasis mine.)

Outpatient second-trimester D&E abortion through 24 menstrual weeks’ gestation by Warren Hern, Boulder Abortion Clinic

And then to see, to be with somebody while they’re having the injection when they’re twenty or twenty-four weeks, and you see the baby moving around, kicking around, as this needle goes into the stomach, you know.

Susan Lindstrom, M.S.W.

It’s just- I mean it looks like a baby. It looks like a baby. And especially if you get one that comes out, that’s not piecemeal. And you know, I saw this one, and it had its fingers in its mouth…it makes me really sad that that had to happen, you know, but it doesn’t change my mind. It’s just hard. And it makes me just sort of stop and feel sad about it, the whole necessity of it. And also….it’s very warm when it comes into the sterile room because it’s been in the mother’s stomach. It feels like flesh, you know…

From “Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic” by Wendy Simonds, 1996. This work by a pro-choice author included…a chapter on how clinic workers emotionally deal with “aborted tissue.”

After an abortion, the doctor must inspect these remains to make sure that all the fetal parts and placenta have been removed. Any tissue left inside the uterus can start an infection. Dr. Bours squeezed the contents of the sock into a shallow dish and poked around with his finger. ‘You can see a teeny tiny hand’ he said.

Abortion clinic worker quoted in “Is the Fetus Human?” and in Dudley Clendinen, “The Abortion Conflict: What it Does to One Doctor” New York Times Magazine, August 11, 1985.

The Real Experiences of Nurses

In the case of late termination, the death of the fetus before delivery, though usual, is not inevitable except in rare cases of extreme physical abnormality…At times the fetus will actually attempt to breathe or move its limbs, which makes the experience extremely distressing for nurses. Also, whereas the woman will probably go through this process once in her lifetime, nurses may go through it several times a year or even in the same week.

The Journal of Clinical Nursing 2002, “Working with Women Experiencing Mid-Trimester Termination of Pregnancy, the Integration of Nursing and Feminist Knowledge in the Gynecological Setting” pp. 273-279

The Lies Women are Told

Every woman has these same two questions: First, ‘Is it a baby?’ ‘No’ the counselor assures her. ‘It is a product of conception (or a blood clot, or a piece of tissue)’ Even though these counselors see six week babies daily, with arms, legs and eyes that are closed like newborn puppies, they lie to the women. How many women would have an abortion, if they told them the truth?

“A Walk Through an Abortion Clinic” by Carol Everett (former owner of two abortion clinics and director of four clinics) ALL About Issues magazine Aug-Sept 1991, pg. 117

“I have never yet counseled anybody to have the baby. I’m also doing women’s counseling on campus at Albany State, and there I am expected to present alternatives. Whereas at the abortion clinic you aren’t really expected to.”

Abortion counselor in Rachel Weeping and Other Essays About Abortion, James Tunstead Burtchaell, editor, pp. 42-43

What Workers Hate About the Clinics

A friend, specialist in perinatology, head of hospital OBGYN dept – ‘On some mornings,’ he said, ‘I leave my office, and if I turn right, I go down the hallway to the TOP clinic and terminate.  I am a destroyer of pregnancies.  If I turn left down the same hallway I go toward the nursery and the labor and delivery unit and take care of the myriad complications in women who are in the throes of problem pregnancies – and I do things to help them hold on.  It’s all so schizophrenic.  I have a kind of split personality.’

Abortion: A Doctor’s Perspective A Woman’s Dilemma by Don Sloan, M.D. with Paula Hartz (page 78)

I hated putting babies in strainers and rinsing them off and putting them in zip-lock bags.

Former abortion clinic owner Eric Harrah

I went up to the lab one day and on the pathologiest’s table I saw what I thought was little rubber doll until I realized it was a fetus. . .I got really shook up and upset and I couldn’t believe it. It had all its fingers and toes, you know, hands and feet. . . I never thought it would look so -real. I didn’t like it.

Planned Parenthood employee quoted in Magda Denes’ book “In Necessity and Sorrow:Life and Death Inside an Abortion Hospital” New York: Basic Books, 1979

I found much distress in the clinic, but it involved not only the women. I saw the pain of the babies who were born burned from the saline solution used for late-term abortions. I saw the bits of feet, bits of hands, the mangled heads and bodies of the little people. I saw pain and felt pain.

Onetime clinic worker Paula Sutcliffe in “Precious in My Sight” “Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices,” Gail Garnier-Sweet, editor