abortion, a form of killing

7/28/2019 Abortion, A Form of Killing

1/8

Abortion, a form of killing

" Listening to patients and letting them use words like "baby" and "killing"is one of a numberof innovations that abortion activists are instituting to break away from the calcifiedapproach to abortions and abortion rights post Roe."

Jennifer BaumgardnerFairfield County Weekly: May 26, 2005

Listening to Women About Abortion

Completely formed after nine months

On November 11, 2005, the LA Times, reported in an article they entitled, Offering Abortion,Rebirth, that an abortion clinic nurse said that they tell patients,

"If they truly feel they're killing a baby, we're not going to do an abortion for them..."

Later, the LA Times reporter observed her speaking with a patient. She told the girl this abouther baby, "It's completely formed about nine weeks. Yours is more like a chicken yolk."

Killing, not what I like to think I'm doing


2/8

An abortionist said in the January 7, 1990, Los Angeles Times article, The Abortions of LastResort,

"Killing a baby is not a way I want to think about myself."

Potential life

In June 1997, Salon Magazine featured an article entitled,An intimate conversation with awoman on the front lines of America's most emotionally charged debate.

The author, Camille Peri, begins the article by describing the abortionist she interviews thisway, "She knows it is killing, but she doesn't believe it is wrong. As a doctor, she hasperformed hundreds of abortions, but as a mother of three small children, she has been

forced to reexamine the values that propelled her to become pro-choice. Over time, saysDr. X, who requested anonymity out of concern for her safety and that of her family, herviews about abortion have changed."

In the article, Dr. "X" makes the profound statement, "It's very clear to me that it's killing apotential life. And I found that hard at first."

It [abortion] makes us all schizophrenic

Abortionist Richard Hausknecht, Associate Clinical professor of Obstetrics/Gynecology atMount Sinai Hospital, specializes in high risk pregnancies. He opened up his first abortionclinic in New York City in July of 1970, in a building on the corner of 73rd Street andMadison, where he did thousands of abortions. He brags that women came from all over theUnited States because New York was one of three states that had made abortions legal.

Hausknecht sounded almost conflicted when hesaid, in the February 15, 1984, NY Timesarticle When abortion becomes birth:''It makes us all schizophrenic. Nowadays we are asked to terminate a pregnancy that intwo weeks doctors on the same floor are fighting to save.''


3/8

Preterm baby on ventilator in an incubator

According to Voices of Choice, Dr. Richard Hausknecht is a founding member and served onthe Board of Directors of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health until 2004. Dr.Hausknecht pioneered the research on the safety and efficacy of methotrexate-misoprostol for

medical abortion. He also served as the Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of New YorkCity. During the sixties, Dr. Hausknecht was very active in abortion reform.

I've killed my baby, they are right

American Medical News ran a story about the conflicts that abortion staff have. The July 12,1993 article entitled,Abortion providers share inner conflicts, talks about oneabortion clinicnurse who described what she witnessed in the recovery room after the girls had theirabortions.

She stated that the abortion clinic patients would lie in the recovery room and cry andsay,Ive killed my baby. Ive killed my baby. She went on to say, I dont know what tosay to these women. Part of me thinks maybe they are right.

It's a Baby

On the Orlando Women's Center abortion clinic website abortionist James Pendergraft writes

regarding later term abortions:

"One of the main differences for third trimester patients having a pregnancyterminated for a fetal anomaly is that they may wish to have an intact fetus they canview and hold as part of the grieving process. For many of these patients, it isn't just afetus - it is a baby."


4/8

Abortionist James Pendergraft

You said you were fine or that you were a murderer

Fairfield County Weekly's February 26, 2005 article, Listening to women aboutabortion,describes Charlotte Taft director of the Routh Street abortion clinic in Dallas.

Taft tells Fairfield, "I wanted to know if patients were afraid to be intimate sexually andemotionally after a procedure and [if] they felt adequately protected from anotherunintended pregnancy. So, I asked a lot of open-ended questions. . . I was shocked byhow many who seemed fine during the procedure were now having thoughts andfeelings that no one had anticipated."

The article says that the biggest thing Taft noted was that woman felt sadder than they hadanticipated.

"They wondered, 'How could I feel sad about something I chose?'"

"So these women had no idea who else in their lives had gone through this experience.We don't have good language even today for making a good but complex decision.Some women felt that if they said anything, it was ammunition to remove the right to

choose. You either said you were fine or admitted you were a murderer."

I feel like I'm killing my baby


5/8

The Fairfield County Weekly May 26, 2005 article, Listening to women about abortion, reportsthat Peg Johnston, who worked at Southern Tier Women's Services, an independent abortionclinic, in Binghamton, NY, commented on what she heard the women seeking abortions at herclinic saying .

In the article Johnston explains, "I don't know if I just started getting bored with OperationRescue, but I definitely started to get interested in what women were saying instead."

She'd sit in on a counseling session with a woman who'd say, "I feel like I'm killing mybaby."

At first, she said, she assumed that the patients were simply repeating what they'd heardoutside, having internalized right-wing disinformation that Johnston needed to "correct."

But she continues, "once I began listening more intently to her, I learned that she wasn'tsaying what the picketer was saying--although she used the same words. Frequentlythey were already mothers and they knew a time when, at that same stage of pregnancy,they had welcomed the life and felt like it was their baby. They weren't mouthing an anti-

choice message--they were acknowledging that this was serious stuff. How can I wantone kid and not the other?"

In the article, In Search of New Words: Redefining the Abortion Debate, posted on msn.com

Johnston also talks about her conflicts.

The article states that over the years, when protesters had conducted sit-ins and blockadesand locked themselves inside the clinic, Johnston recalls, "I would go out there and screamat them. Then I would come back in and listen to a woman talk. Frequently the wordswere almost the same. The protesters would be saying, 'You're murdering your baby,'and the women inside would be saying, 'I feel like I'm killing my baby.' I used to think,well, they're just echoing what they are hearing. There was a time when I would correctthem if they used those words."

"The word killing was hard. It was so difficult to see women that guilty ordistressed," continues Johnston, who has run the clinic since 1981. "But eventually we gotinto conversations about the difference between murder and killing. Now our reaction ismore: well, does it feel like killing to you and how are you going to make peace withthat?"


6/8

Abortionist, no concern for fetus

In the September 6, 2006 Daytona Beach News Journal, The Great Divide, Florida


7/8

abortionist Randal Whitney stated,

"I sleep well, I have no concerns about what might have been if a fetus lived."

I end life for a good reason

In a December 2004 article, Confessions of an Abortion Doctor, an abortionist tells BostonMagazine's Cheryl Alkon this about doing abortions, "I have the utmost respect for life; Iappreciate that life starts early in the womb, but also believe that Im ending it for goodreasons. Often Im saving the woman, or Im improving the lives of the other children inthe family. I also believe that women have a life they have to consider. If a woman isworking full-time, has one child already, and is barely getting by, having another childthat would financially push her to go on public assistance is going to lessen the qualityof her life. And its also an issue for the child, if it would not have had a good life. Lifeshard enough when youre wanted and everythings prepared for."

The abortion doctor ends the sentence this way, "So yes, I end life, but even when its hard,its for a good reason."

Abortion Coalition leader - Abortion is killing

On the ABC news program Nightline, Ron Fitzsimmons, the executive director of The NationalCoalition of Abortion Providers, said I lied thorough my teethwhen [I] said the partial birthabortion procedure was used rarely and only on women whose lives were in danger or whosefetuses were damaged.


8/8

Fitzsimmons also said that one of the facts of abortion is that women enter abortion clinics tokill their fetuses. "It is a form of killing," he said. "You're ending a life."

This according to a February 26, 1997 article in the New York Times,An Abortion RightsAdvocate Says He Lied About a Procedure.

Fetal life on expulsion

In Chapter 5 of Warren Hern's book,Abortion Practice, Hern addresses second trimesterabortions, where he states that, "midtrimester abortion is beset with numerous technical

problems that are considerably more difficult to solve."

Hern goes on to explain ambivalence for these abortions this way, "The signs of fetal life onexpulsion and the repugnance of dismemberment plague the alternatives inmidtrimester abortion."

Later in the chapter (page 133), Hern defends the D & E (Dilation and Evacuation) abortionprocedure stating that a benefit of this type of abortion is that the patient, "does not have to

experience the expulsion of the fetus, which may or may not have signs of life..."

abortion, a form of killing

Documents