Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 From: Sarah Terzo NOTE: these quotes are all true, and a footnote will appear at the end. Some of them are very difficult to read. Abortion is not a subject that can easily be made palatable. I consider this information to be vital to making an informed decision about abortion. However, due to the graphic content of certain of these statements, please use discretion when reading or forwarding this document. I suggest using this as a resource guide, quoting from it as apropriate in letters to the editor, speeches, and debates. 1. "Following [the Doctor's] directions, I took the collection bottle and poured its contents into a shallow pan. Then I used water to rinse off the blood and smaller particles which clouded the bottom of the pan. 'Now look closely,' the doctor said. It is important that we have got all the stuff out.' I looked into the pan to find that the 'stuff' consisted of the reamins of what had been, a few minutes before, a thirteen-week old fetus. I could make out the remains of arms and legs, and trunk and skull. I tried to piece them back together in my mind, to see if there were any missing parts. Most of the pieces were so battered and bloody they were not recognizably human. Then my eyes locked upon a perfect little hand, less than half a centimeter long. I stared at four tiny fingers and a tiny opposed thumb, complete with tiny translucent fingers. And I knew what I had done. -'Chi An' psuedonym of former abortionist and family planning worker from China, now living in the U.S. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. "I got to where I couldn't stand to look at the little bodies anymore." -Dr. Beverly McMillan, when asked why she stopped performing abortions ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. "I have been there, and I have seen these totally formed babies as early as ten weeks. . . with a leg missing or with their head off. I have seen the little rib cages...." -Debra Harry, former abortion assistant in a Michigan clinic who gave instruments to the doctor during the abortion procedure ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. "We do abortions here. That is all we do. There are weary, grim moments when I think I cannot bear another basin of bloody remains, utter another kind phrase of reassurance. So I leave the procedure room in the back and reach for a new chart....I prepare myself for another basin, another brief and chafing loss -abortion clinic nurse ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. "We all wish it were formless. But its not.....and its painful. There is a lot of emotional pain." -another clinic worker ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. "Reconstruction of the fetal sections after removal is necessary to ensure completeness of the abortion procedure. Clearly, D & E transfers much of the possible psychological trauma of the abortion from the patient to the professional." --Family Planning Perspectives Journal -------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. "One viewing of the footage [The Silent Scream, a film made by former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, which shows an abortion via ultrasound] was enough. Like the ultrasound technician, the doctor who had performed the abortion became so nauseated by what he had witnessed on the screen that he was forced to turn away in order to compose himself. He has never performed another abortion." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8. "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, less than an inch long, with arms, legs, and eyes that are closed like newborn puppies, they lie to the women. How many women would actually have an abortion if they told them the truth?" -Carol Everett, former owner of two clinics and manager of four ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 9. "if a woman we were counseling expressed doubts about having an abortion, we would say whatever was necessary to persuade her to have the aboriton immediately." -Judy W., former office manager of the second largest abortion clinic in El Paso, Texas ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 9. "They [the fetuses] were next to the garbage cans in paper buckets, like the take home chicken kind. I looked inside the bucket in front of me. There was a small naked person in there, floating in bloody liquid." -clinic worker Susan Lindstrom, M.D. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10. "You have to become a bit schizophrenic. In one room, you incourage the patient that the slight irregularity in the fetal heart is not important, that she is going to have az fine,, healthy baby. THen, in the next room, you assure another woman, on whom you just did a saline abortion, that the it is good that the heartbeat is already irregular...she has nothing to worry about, she will NOT have a live baby....Somebody has to do it, and unfortunately we are the executioners in this instance." --Abortionist Dr. John Szenes --------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. "The first time, I felt like a murderer, but I did it again and again and again, and now, 20 years later, I am facing what happened to me as a doctor and as a human being. Sure, I got hard. Sure, the money was important. And oh, it was an easy thing, once I had taken the step, to see the women as animals and the babies as just tissue." --abortionist, name withheld ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12. "I have never known a woman who, after her baby was born, was not overjoyed that I had not killed it." --Abortionist Aleck Bourne -------------------------------------------------------------------- 13. "I hate Christians because they know they are forgiven, and I know God will never forgive me for what I do." --abortionist, name withheld ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14. "When discussing a sonogram, you are supposed to tell the client that it is a measurement sa far as the pregnancy is concerned, but not a measure of the fetal head or anything like that." --Rosemary Petruso, on her training to be an abortion counselor. Her story appeared in the St. Louis Review --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Oh no, I've done 13 year olds before. Maybe when they're ten, I'll notice." --abortionist Alen J. Kline, on doing an abortion on 13 year old Dawn Ravenall, which killed her as well as the fetus she was carrying. This quote appeared in various newspapers at the time of Ravenell's death. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 15. "Abortion is the taking of a life." --Former Planned Parenthood Medical Director Mary Calderone, who is pro-choice ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 16. "We know that its killing, but he state permits killing under certain circumstances." --Dr. Neville Sender, abortionist ------------------------------------------------------------------- 17. "....the emotional turmoil that the procedure inevitably wreaks on the physicians and staff...There is no possibility of fenial of an act of destruction by the operator....the sensations of dismemberment flow through the foceps like an electric current." --Abortionist, name withheld ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 18. "Remember, there is a human being at the other end of the table taking that kid apart. We've had a couple of guys drinking too much, taking drugs, even a suicide or two." --Dr. Julius Butler, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Minnesota Medical School ------------------------------------------------------------------- 19. "Arms, legs and chests come out in the forceps. It's not a sight for everybody." --Dr. William Benbow THompson at the University of California at Irvine --------------------------------------------------------------------- The following are from the book "Abortion Practice" by Warren Hern, M.D., Boulder Colarado abortionist, and the book was published inb 1984 by the J.B. Lippincott Company. Hern performs abortions up until the 24th week of pregnancy. "THe procedure changes significantly at 21 weeks because fetal tissues become much more cohesive and difficult to dismember" pg 154 "The relationship between the gravid female and the feto-placvental unit can best be understood as one of host and parasite." p 14 A long curved Mayo scissors may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus. -p 154 The aggregate fetal tissue is weighted, then the following fetal parts are measured, foot lenght, knee to heel length, and biparietal diameter" p 164 "Thi is a controversial area, but most professionals in the field feel that it is not advisable for patients to view the products of conceptionk to be told the sex of the fetus or to be informed of multiple pregnancy." --pg 304 'Television interviews in particular should focus on the public issue involved (right to confidential and professional medical care, freedom of choice, and so forth) and not on the specific details of the procedure itself." p 323 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 20. "Nobody wants to perform abortions after ten weeks, because by then [the abortionist] sees teh features of the baby, hands, feet. It's really barbaric." --abortionist, name withheld -------------------------------------------------------------------- 21. "For the most part, the aboriton industry stopped using saline and prostaglandin procedures because of the number of live births. A live birth means you have to let the baby die, or dispose of it in some distasteful way. Most second and third trimester abortionists use the D & E method (editors note, the D & X method has recently become popular with third trimester abortions. This is known as a 'partial birth')The abortionist uses large forceps to crush the baby inside the mother's uterus and removes it in pieces. The side effects of live births and the mother going through labor are avoidee. But it is a horrible procedure in which the baby must be re-constructed outside the uterus to be certain all parts have been removed." --Carol Everett ----------------------------------------------------------------- 22. "I was for abortion, I thought it was a woman's right to terminate a pregnanfcy she did not want. Now I"m not so sure. I am a student nurse nearing the end of my OB_GYN rotation at a major metropolitan hospital and teaching center. It wasn't until I saw what abortion involves that I changed my mind. After the first week in the aboriton clinic several people in my clinical group were shaky about their previously positive feelings about abortion. THis new attitude resulted from our actually seeing a Prostaglandin abortion, one similar in nature to the widely used saline abortion. . . . This method is being used for terminations of pregnancies of 16 weeks and over. I used to find rationales. The fetus isn't real. Abdomens aren't really very swollen. IT isn't 'alive.' No more excuses. . . . . I am a member of the health profession and members of my class are now ambivalent about abortion. I now know a great deal more about what is involved in the issue. Women should percieve fully what abortion is; how destructive an act it is both for themselves and their unborn child. Whatever psychological coping mechanisms are employed during the process, the sight of a fetus in a hospital bedpan remains the final statement." ------------------------------------------------------------------ 23. "I found much distress in the clinic, but it involved not only the women. I saw the pain of the babies who were bron 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. Most of the patients weren't 14 year old girls who had been seduced by some insensitive boy. Most of them were (they said) happily married women who just didn't want he hassle of another baby." --One time clinic worker Paula Sutcliffe ------------------------------------------------------------------ 24. "The picture of the baby on the ultrasound screen bothered me more than anything else." --Dr. Joseph Randall, former abortionist -------------------------------------------------------------- 25. "The doctors would remove the fetus while performing hysterotomies and then lay it on the table, where it would squirm until it died. . . . They all had perfect forms and shapes. I couldn't take it. No nurse could" --Joyce Craig, director of a Brooklyn clinic of Planned Parenthood. She worked in surgery, assisting in abortions for two months, then quit --------------------------------------------------------------------- 26. "we tried to avoid the women seeing them [the aborted babies] They always wanted to know the sex, but we lied and said it was too early to tell. It is better for a woman to think of a fetus as an 'it.' . . . I couldn't take it any longer, so I quit." --Abortion clinic worker Norma Eidelman ------------------------------------------------------------------- 27. "After an abortion, the doctor must inspect these remains to make sure that all the fetal parts and the 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 --------------------------------------------------------------- 28. "Financially, after years of struggle, I can't help feeling like the Texan who drilled for water and struck oil." --Mark Juliene, "Suddenly I'm a Legal Abortionist" Medical Ecomonics, Nov 23,1970 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 29. "Our statistics clearly reflected that . . . the shorter the period of time a woman had to consider her abortion, the more likely whe was to abort....a physician can accomplish ten to twelve abortions per hour. . . Our physicians were payed in cash. No records were kept." --Affidavit of Carol Everett --------------------------------------------------------------- "From May to Novermber 1988, I worked for an abortionist. He specializes in third-trimester killings. I witnessed evidence of the brutal, cold-blooded murder of over 600 viable, healthy babies at seven, eight, and nine months gestation. A very, very few of these babies, less than 2%, were handicapped. . . I thought I was pro-choice and I was glad to be working in an abortion clinic. I thought I was helping provide a noble service to women in crisis....I was instructed to falsify the the age of the babies in medical records. I was required to lie to the mothers over hte phone, as they scheduled their appointments, and to tell them that they were 'not that far along.' Then I had to note, in the records that Dr. Tiller's needle had successfully pierced the walls of the baby's heart, injecting the poison that brought death...one day, Dr. Tiller came up the stairs from the basement, where the mothers were in labor. He was carrying a large cardboard box, and ducked into the employees only area of the office so that he wouldn't have to walk through the waiting room. He passed behind my desk as I sat working on the computer, and he turned the corner to go around a short hall. He called out for me to come and help him. The box was so big and heavy in his arms that he couldn't get the key into the lock. SO I unlocked the door for him and, pushing the door open, saw very clearly the gleaming meatl of the crematorium- a full sized crematorium, just like the one's used in funeral homes. I went back to my computer. I could hear Dr. Tiller firing up the gas oven. A few minutes later I could smell burning human flesh. Mine was the agony of a participant, however reluctant, in the act of prenatal infanticide. I felt guilt and shame, worse than after my own two abortions in 1977...." --Luhra Tivis, now a member of Operation Rescue, on her experiences in the abortion business --------------------------------------------------------------- The following are from the film "Meet the Abortion Providers" 1989 "I want the general public to know what the doctors know- that this is a person, this is a baby. THat this is not some kind of blob of tissue."-Former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levantino "Women who were having abortions were never allowed to look at the ultrasound" --former abortionist Joseph Randall "My heart got callous against the fact that I was a murderer, but that baby lying in a cold bowl educated me as to what abortion really was." --Dr. David Brewer, former abortionist "The counselor at our clinic could cry with the girls at the drop of a hat. She would find their weakness and work on it. The women were never given any alternatives. They were told how much trouble it is to have a baby." --former abortion worker Debra Harry "I have taken the lives of innocent babies, and I have ripped them from their mother's wombs with a powerful suction machine." --McArthur Hill, M.D. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 31."I am deeply troubled by my own increasing certainty that I have in fact presided over 60,000 deaths. There is no longer serious doubt in my mind that human life exists from the very onset of pregnancy" Dr Bernard Nathanson ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 32. "Can a physician or a medical center, in good conscience, do an abortion one day, and a life-saving medical operation [on an unborn baby] the next?" --Dr. Hugh Barber in the August 1982 issue of "the Female Patient" ------------------------------------------------------------------- 33. "I dare say that any thinking, caring individual can't not realize that he is ending life or potential life." --abortionist, name withheld -------------------------------------------------------------------- 34. "[Powell] said 'Is this a fair way of expressing what you have just said, Doctor? You tell the mother, 'Because your baby is defective, you have the right to kill it or not to kill it. If you choose to kill it, I will do the killing." "Of Course," he [the abortionist] said. "There is no other way to say it and be honest. -an interviewed abortionist -------------------------------------------------------------------- 35. "I wanted to be the world's best abortionist, for the good of my patients. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. So, after I met each patient, reviewed the medical informtion gathered by my nurse, examined the patient and performed tha abortion, I would then carefully sift thorugh the reamins to be sure all the parts were accounted for. I had to find four extremities (two arms and two legs) a spine, a skull, and the placenta, or my patient would suffer later from an incomplete abortion. SOmetimes people ask me, 'how could you look at body parts and believe you hadnt destroyed a human being?' . . . it bothered me at first, but with time I became desenstitized to what was really happening. My attention was so focused on my perceived patient that I managed to deny that there were, in fact, two patients involved- the expectant mother and a very small child....I had to wonder, how can having a child be so wrong for some people that they will pay me to end its life?....."--Former abortionist Dr. Beverly McMillan ------------------------------------------------------------- 36. "One doctor who will do saline abortions (where he can potentially avoid seeing the fetus) but refuses to abortions by D & E, in which he would have to remove the fetus in pieces, gave this as his reason for doing one and not the other- "Killing a baby is not the way I want to think about myself." ------------------------------------------------------------- 37. "Abortions are very draining, exhausting, and heart-rending. There are a lot of tears. Some patients turn on you. . . I do them because I take the attitude that women who are going to terminate babies deserve teh same kind of treatment as women who carry babies...I've done a couple thousand and its been a significant financial boon . . . the only way I can do an aboriton is to consider only the woman as my patient and block out the baby." --------------------------------------------------------------- >From the article "Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflicts" which appeared in the July 12 1993 issue of AAA News, a publication of the American Medical Association; One abortionist is quoted "I have angry feelings at myself for feeling good about grasping the calvaria, for feeling good about doing a technically good procedure that destroys a fetus, kills a baby." "When I put my hands on somebody to feel how big they are and I get kicked, I am barely able to talk at that moment." an abortionist stated that 'somebody had asked her what they could say to the staff to make them look less shocked when they look at a 20 week fetus..."it's hard to be in a profession where you have a hard time answering the questions that other people ask you about what you do." Endnotes 1. Mosher, Steven "A Mother's Ordeal: One Woman's Fight Against China's One CHild Policy" pgs 60-61 2.Mary Meehan, THe Ex-Abortionists- They have Confronted Reality" Washington Post April 1, 1988 p a 21 3. Ibid. 4. Sallie Tisdale "We DO Abortions Here" Oct 1987 Harpers Magazine p 66 5. Ibid. 6. "Emotional Impact of D&E vs. Instillation "Family Planning Perspectives" dec 1977 8. Carol Everett "A Walk Through an ABortion Clinic" ALL About Issues Aug-SEpt 1991, p 117 9. Dr. Magda Denes "Performing Abortions" Commentary OCt 26, pp 35-37 10. Ibid 11. Quoted (From a radio talk show) by John Rice, D>D In "Abortion" Litt D. Murfreesboro, TN, Sword of the Lord publishers 12. "A Doctor Speaks" London Express, Jan 25 (quoted ny James Wilkerson) 13. Women Exploited: the Other Victims of Abortion Paula Ervin, p 127 14. Ibid. 15. American Journal of Public Health 16. Quoted in "Abortion: the silent holecaust" 17. "Meeting of American Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians" OB/GYN News p 196 18. Melody Green and Sharon Bennett "THe Crime of Being ALive: abortion, Euthanasia, Infanticide" p 3 19. Ibid. 20. John Pekkanen "M.D. Doctors Talk about Themselves." P 93 21. "A Walk Through an Abortion Clinic" Carol Everett 22. "The Zero People" "Abortion, a nurses view" Mary Roe Jeff Lane Hensley editor 23. "Prescious in my Sight" by Paula Sutcliffe, "PRo-life feminism: Different Voices" Gail Garnier-Sweet, editor 24. quoted in"Now Wombs Have WIndows" Shari Richards 25. "Rachel Weeping" James Brtchaell, ed 1982 p 34 26. Ibid. 27. quoted in "Is the Fetus Human?" "Dudley Clendinen, "The Abortion Conflict: What it Does to One Doctor" New York Times Magazine, Aug 11 1985 p 26 28. Sisterlife 29. Ibid 30. Luhra Tivis Where is the Real Violence" Celebrate Life Sept/Oct. 1994 31. Bernard Nathanson, "Deeper Into Abortion"New England Journal Of Medicine, Nov 1974 p 1189 32. "We the people" June 1992 33. The Zero People p. 9 34. Ibid. 36. Beverly McMillan, M.D. "How One Doctor Changded Her Mind about Abortion" Focus on the Family, COlorado Springs, COlorado 37. M.D. ---------------------------------------------- file: /pub/resources/text/contemp: abort-1.txt .