The Ex-abortionists:Why They Quit

As a young doctor in the early 1970s, Paul E. Jarrett, Jr., did a number of legal abortions. He began having doubts, though, after the urea-induced abortion of a mental patient. The child, weighing two pounds, was born alive, and the mother screamed, "My baby's alive! My baby's alive!" Dr. Jarrett later said, "I often wondered what we did for her mental status. That baby lived several days."

But it was a 1974 operation that "changed my mind about abortion forever." While doing a suction abortion, Jarrett found that the suction curette was obstructed by a torn-off fetal leg. So he changed techniques and dismembered the child with a ring forceps:

Dr. Jarrett is one of many people who used to be deeply involved in abortion but have turned against it. Their experience tells us a great deal about the effects of abortion-most obviously on the children it destroys, but also on the women it traumatizes and the clinic staff it corrupts. Yet their experience also offers hope for the future. If people whose livelihoods depended on abortion can turn around, then certainly there is hope for everyone who supports abortion. (Leading abortion defenders, of course, do not view the situation this way; included here are comments from several of them.)

Although supplemented by other sources, what follows is based mainly on a remarkable series of conferences called "Meet the Abortion Providers," sponsored by the Pro-Life Action League of Chicago from 1987 to 1997. Joseph Scheidler, the League's director, has been involved in street protest against abortion clinics for many years. In that work, and through friends and supporters around the country, he kept hearing about disillusioned clinic staff. They included doctors, administrators, secretaries, a nurse, an ultrasound technician, a clinic guard, and others. Scheidler brought them together, several at a time, for one-day conferences in which they described their clinic work and explained the often-tormenting process of disengaging from it. While the League paid travel costs for many speakers, it did not pay them speaker fees.

Nearly all the ex-clinic staff had religious conversions that helped-or demanded-their exit. Religion was not their only motivation, but it certainly helped them see some truths they had refused to face for a long time.

One truth involves the precise ways in which abortion destroys the unborn. Early abortions can be done by suction machines because the fetal bones and cartilage have not yet hardened. In the very earliest stages, this results in purŽed remains. Even a little later, though, it brings out identifiable body parts that must be reassembled to ensure that nothing was left behind. (Parts left behind can cause terrible infections in the mother.) Dr. Beverly McMillan used to do such reassembly after performing abortions, but "I got to where I just couldn't look at the little bodies any more." Many abortionists do not reassemble the parts themselves, but have other staff do it. Some staffers are not bothered by this; indeed, some are hardened enough to make jokes about it. Others do not want anything to do with it. "Clinic workers may say they support a woman's right to choose," said former Planned Parenthood clinic worker Judith Fetrow, "but they will also say that they do not want to see tiny hands and feet. They do not want to be faced with the consequences of their actions."

Fetrow herself was committed to abortion when she first went to work at a clinic in California. But her view changed, partly because it was her job to look at aborted body parts and then store them, send them to a pathology lab, or dispose of them. While she didn't especially want that job, she believed that the dead should be treated with respect. She did not want to hear a coworker make a sick joke about "taking the kids and putting them in daycare." So Fetrow mourned in the Jewish tradition: "I sat Shiva for the babies; I said the prayers for the dead. I also named each baby when I placed it in the contaminated waste container."

That was far more respect than the bodies of the dead receive in most abortion clinics. Debra Henry, who once worked in a Michigan clinic, said that if a woman had insurance coverage for a suction abortion, the fetal remains were sent to a laboratory. But if she had no insurance, the remains were "put down the garbage disposal." As they prepared to open their second Texas clinic, Carol Everett reported to her abortionist business partner that it would have an "industrial-strength disposal-a double-action one that chops forward, reverses itself, and chops again as it reverses." Their first clinic's disposal had proved unable to handle the body of a child aborted at about thirty-two weeks. In the Illinois clinic where she once worked, Kathy Sparks found that remains of children aborted in the second trimester were put down "a continually flushing toilet." Late-term abortionist George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, had his own crematorium to deal with fetal remains. Luhra Tivis, once a medical secretary at his clinic, recalled a day when Tiller was carrying "a particularly heavy load of dead babies" into the crematorium. He asked her to help him with the door. She did so, then returned to her desk nearby. "I heard him fire it up. . . . And the most horrible thing was: I could smell those babies burning, because I was just around the corner." Tivis later exposed Tiller's practices in a letter to members of the Wichita City Council and in testimony before a state legislative committee.

Some doctors and clinic staffers are shocked by abortion techniques and tiny body parts when they first see them, but gradually become used to them. When the late Dr. David Brewer, as a young resident, first had to examine body parts after a suction abortion, "it was like somebody put a hot poker into me." The next abortions bothered him, too, but he found that it "hurt a little bit less every time I saw one. And you know what happened next? I got to sit down and do one." Again it felt like a hot poker, but again he got used to it. He compared his hardening to the way he developed calluses on his hands when he ran a lawn service as a teenager. With the calluses, he found, "my hands could work all day-and no blisters and no pain. And that's what happened to my heart as I saw the abortions and then began doing them. My heart got callused."

One night, after a saline abortion, Brewer saw a badly burned little baby "kicking and moving for a little while before it finally died of those terrible burns." He assisted with a hysterotomy, which is like a Caesarean section but is intentionally done early enough that the baby dies soon after delivery. "And they simply took that little baby-that was making little sounds and moving and kicking-over and set it on the table in a cold, stainless-steel bowl," he recalled. The baby "kicked and moved less and less, of course, as time went on." Far more common than abortions involving live births are the "Dilation and Evacuation" (D&E) type. This euphemistic term actually means dismemberment by instrument within the womb. It takes over as the usual form of abortion at the point when fetal bone and cartilage have hardened, or calcified, so that suction abortion cannot be done. Dr. Joseph Randall, who did abortions for about ten years, explained that after a D&E, "you have to reassemble that baby-arms, legs, head, chest, thorax-everything. That's when it gets rough even for old timers like me."

At least one clinic worker, nurse Brenda Pratt Shafer, turned against abortion almost immediately after witnessing a partial-birth abortion. (This is also called a "D&X" abortion for "dilation and extraction.") Shafer, who was "very pro-choice" at the time, accepted a temporary agency's assignment to Dr. Martin Haskell's abortion clinic in Dayton, Ohio, in 1993. On her third day at the clinic, she observed the D&X abortion of a Down Syndrome baby in the sixth month of gestation. She saw Haskell deliver most of the little boy's body, keeping only his head inside the womb:

Shafer later gave congressional testimony about her experience and appeared widely in the media speaking against partial-birth abortion. Seldom, one suspects, has a doctor been so sorry that he hired a temporary worker.

Shafer also saw Haskell do D&E abortions. He would "take three-month-old babies and dismember 'em-just tear 'em from limb to limb while the baby's heart was beating, yank off a leg, yank off an arm and just bring it outside . . . And that was horrible. I'd never seen it before. Never really wanted to think about it before."

She learned early what others learned so late. Carol Everett summed it up well when she looked back upon her own abortion, which her husband, Tom, had wanted and she had not: "Death was the ultimate winner; not Tom, and not Carol. Death."

A few former clinic staffers reported that they or colleagues had negative attitudes toward women who came to them for abortions. Former ultrasound technician Joy Davis reported that in an Alabama clinic where she once worked, there were doctors who were "doing abortions because they hated women." Dina Madsen, who worked in a feminist clinic in California, admitted that she didn't have much sympathy for her patients. Her attitude was, "Well, you got yourself into this position; you better tough it out." A couple of the doctors there, she said, "hated women. . . . And there was a lot of comment-making . . . crude jokes . . . sarcasm . . . touchy-feely type of games with the staff members." Some of the women staffers "wouldn't let any of these guys touch 'em with a ten-foot pole," Madsen said. Yet they told women coming to the clinic that: "They're wonderful doctors. They won't hurt you. They're the best at what they do. He's really a nice man."

A few also reported wretched attitudes toward minorities. Mark Bomchill worked as a guard at a Minnesota clinic where he heard a doctor make racist and anti-Semitic comments. After former clinic worker Luhra Tivis became involved in pro-life work in Little Rock, Arkansas, she found herself up against an abortionist "who brags about killing black babies." She said he had told pro-life sidewalk counselors, "If you would just leave me alone, I could clear out Harlem."

Far more commonly reported, though, was an avid interest in money. Doctors and administrators can make fortunes from abortion. Other staff-well-paid at some clinics, poorly-paid at others-are often single mothers in precarious economic circumstances, and they understand that their jobs depend on abortion sales. Hellen Pendley, who ran a Georgia clinic, would listen in on telephone conversations to see whether her staffers were good at sales. She said they knew the bottom line: "If you can't sell abortions over the phone, you will not last."

Kathy Sparks described a skilled "counselor" at her clinic who would find what a woman's key pressure point was-perhaps a fear of telling her parents she was pregnant, perhaps money worries-and then "magnify it." She said that ninety-nine percent of the women who came in decided to have abortions. Joy Davis reported the careful training she received at her first clinic in Alabama: "I had to sit and listen to women answering the phone for at least a month before they would allow me to answer the phone . . . We had to find out very quickly what their problem was, play on that, and get them in that clinic for an abortion. We were very good salespeople." Hellen Pendley's staff learned how to play on money fears by asking a woman who was ambivalent: "Do you know how expensive it is if you go through with this? Let me just tell you. . . . It's gonna cost you about $8,000 just to have [the child]. Now, where are you gonna get that kind of money?" Pendley commented that "it's really pretty simple to bring someone around to your way of thinking if you can manipulate what they've told you and use it against them. And that's exactly what we did."

Many women are psychologically devastated by abortion. And note that the word "women" should be interpreted broadly here: in many cases those having abortions are actually girls. Nita Whitten, who worked in a Texas clinic, said many women forced their daughters to have abortions. One such daughter, subjected to a second-trimester abortion, was clearly miserable and kept making trips to the bathroom. On one visit there, she started screaming, "It's a baby! It's a baby! Mama, Mama, Mama!" She had seen the baby in the toilet.

Dr. Arnold Halpern, who had seen women harmed by illegal abortions in the 1960s, thought of legal abortion as an aid to women. He performed abortions for years, but became "more aware of the adverse reactions women were having. Many felt badly about their decision to abort and still felt guilty years later." While doing abortions, he was also "treating women who had had abortions but now desperately wanted to conceive." Often abortion complications had made them infertile. (Halpern was also concerned about "the big problem of sexually transmitted disease," which he said was "growing by leaps and bounds.")

Staff at Hellen Pendley's clinic saw many women who suffered psychologically from their abortions. But they were trained to tell such women that, if they had a problem, then "you had it before you had the abortion" and the abortion "has nothing to do with it."

Joan Appleton was a committed feminist, an activist in the National Organization for Women, when she became head nurse of an abortion clinic in Virginia. She was deeply committed to women's welfare. But in the course of her clinic experience, she became tormented with the question of why abortion "was such an emotional trauma for a woman, and such a difficult decision for a woman to make, if it was a natural thing to do. If it was right, why was it so difficult?" She also asked herself: "I counseled these women so well; they were so sure of their decision. Why are they coming back after me now-months and years later-psychological wrecks?"

Women whose babies were aborted at other clinics sometimes were physical wrecks as well. Judith Fetrow said she saw a doctor "perforate a woman's uterus and then lie about the severity of the perforation." Her clinic "often had women come back with severe infections caused by retained tissue or incomplete abortions-especially when we were training new doctors." Perforating or tearing the uterus appears to be far more common than lay people realize; even competent doctors can do it. Dr. Jarrett explained that "the pregnant uterus in the first trimester is often the consistency of a wet paper bag"; it is frighteningly easy to push a suction curette or other instrument through its wall.

Hellen Pendley recalled how a doctor at her clinic, performing an abortion on a fourteen-year-old girl, tore her uterus and pulled the bowel through. He asked Pendley, "What do I do?" She interpreted that to mean, "What do I do to make sure that this stays under wraps?" Consulting the girl's medical record, Pendley found that she lived some distance from the clinic and was accompanied only by a friend. So Pendley said, "Poke it back in, and send her home." When she later described the case, Pendley admitted: "Whether she lived or died, I do not know."

Once an acquaintance of Pendley's alerted her about a young woman who was desperately ill in a local hospital. "She's comatose right now," Pendley's informant said. "We're getting ready to amputate her limbs. She's throwing blood clots. I don't think she's gonna make it. But we were able to determine that she had had an abortion today." They didn't know where the abortion was done, so Pendley drove to her own clinic at midnight to see if it was involved. She did not find any record of the woman at her clinic; if she had, she would have shredded it. "We had a personal shredder in my office for that purpose," she said. "There would not have been a medical record if the D.A. had shown up on my doorsteps the next morning."

Pendley described how Atlanta abortion providers responded to news reports that a woman had suffered cardiac arrest at one clinic. (The woman never recovered from her coma, and died months later in a nursing home.) Worried people from the clinics in the area met, but expressed no concern about the woman in coma. "We didn't care what happened to her," Pendley recalled. "We cared about what happened to us."

Pendley said that state inspectors, visiting the clinic where the woman's abortion had been done, found:

The list goes on and on and on," Pendley remarked, "and this is in a state where it's regulated."

Some clinics, Pendley suggested, put women at risk of Hepatitis B or HIV/AIDS infection. "If you reuse a vacuum-aspiration cannula," she said, "you're going to infect the next person. But when you get busy in a clinic, there is no time to sterilize instruments. I'm sorry. You wash 'em; you repack 'em; and you reuse 'em."

Carol Everett and her abortionist partner had what they felt was "the Neiman-Marcus of the abortion industry" in the early 1980s. They had a record of no complications-until they decided to go for the big money by doing late abortions. Operating on one woman who was about twenty-two weeks pregnant, the abortionist perforated her uterus and pulled out the lining of her colon. Instead of calling an ambulance-which could have given the clinic bad publicity-Everett drove the woman to a hospital, where she had a colostomy. The abortionist persuaded a colleague to reverse the colostomy later at no charge; he also arranged for the hospital to write off bills for both surgeries. There was no lawsuit.

Another abortionist at an Everett clinic perforated a woman's uterus and also severed her urinary tract. Again Everett drove the woman to a hospital instead of calling an ambulance. "We were maiming at least one woman a month," at one point, she recalled.

Then there was the woman named Sheryl, who, after an abortion at twenty weeks, was in the recovery room "lying in a pool of blood." Everett said her bed "was soaked with blood, the privacy curtains were splashed with it, and even the wall had blood on it." The staff were finally able to control the bleeding; but the abortionist, eager to leave for a date, did not examine the woman to find the source of the bleeding. The woman was anxious to go home, and the staff let her go a few hours later, although her blood pressure was very low. She lost consciousness the next morning and was rushed to an emergency room, but she died. The abortionist and his girlfriend changed her medical chart so that the blood pressure readings appeared to be normal. But the coroner established the cause of death as hemorrhage due to a cervical tear. Everett said she "went numb" upon hearing this:

Some clinics have lay staff do what only nurses or doctors are supposed to do. Mark Bomchill indicated that "untrained people" gave injections and medications to patients at the clinic he guarded. Hellen Pendley, who was a clinic administrator but not a doctor, said that when a patient had severe bleeding outside of regular clinic hours, "that was my problem, not the doctor's. . . . I was the one who called in all the drugs. I was the one who prescribed the medication."

Joy Davis, an ultrasound technician, went even further. Working for abortion doctor Thomas Tucker, she eventually managed a chain of six clinics in Alabama and Mississippi for him. Tucker, finding that he couldn't cover all the clinics by himself, trained Davis to do abortions and other routine clinic work. Davis described what happened:

This included the case of one young woman who had breathing difficulty, heavy bleeding, and extremely low blood pressure after her second-trimester abortion. Tucker, who had told Davis to stabilize the woman, canceled an ambulance Davis called when the situation became desperate. "We cannot send this patient to the hospital in this condition," Tucker said. "They'll hang us." But the woman's blood "was pouring like a faucet," Davis recalled, "and I couldn't stop it." Tucker finally allowed her to call an ambulance as he left to catch a plane. Davis was greatly relieved when the ambulance rushed the woman to a hospital-"until the hospital called me and told me that she had died."

Tucker's persistent, extreme malpractice caught up with him when Davis went to state authorities and urged them to shut his clinics down. The Alabama authorities were in no great hurry to do so. People at the state medical board, Davis said, told her that "abortion was a hot political issue, and they really didn't want to touch it." Finally, though, Tucker lost his medical licenses in both Mississippi and Alabama.

Abortion has a politically privileged status in many other states. Politicians who have spent their careers supporting "safe, legal abortion" cannot admit that, after Roe v. Wade, many incompetent back-alley abortionists just moved around to the front and obtained instant respectability.

Whether competent or incompetent, many abortionists understand the value of campaign contributions. Luhra Tivis reported that Dr. George Tiller-the late-term abortionist with his own crematorium-made a great deal of money. "And, believe me, he spreads it around," she added, "because I mailed out the checks to the legislators, so I know." In 1996 Tiller contributed $25,000 to the Democratic National Committee and attended one of President Clinton's White House coffees. Nita Whitten said that Texas abortionist Curtis Boyd made large campaign donations to people "he knew would be effective in keeping abortion legal in Texas and in the United States." In this, as in so many other ways, abortion has become just another business.

Those who are in the business, though, know that it is different in significant ways. Involvement in the planned, routine administration of death can take a heavy toll. Many former clinic staffers report that they suffered from nightmares, depression, alcoholism, and/or drug abuse. Some considered suicide.

Some had enormous personal problems before they ever worked in the abortion business. Indeed, they may have wound up in the clinics largely because of their personal problems. Former Planned Parenthood worker Judith Fetrow said that over one-third of the workers at her clinic "had child sexual abuse or forcible rape in their backgrounds." Some were from alcoholic homes; some had suffered emotional or physical abuse. Many were lesbian or bisexual, she said, adding that "their lesbianism was a response to having been abused." (This is often the case, according to literature on lesbianism.) Fetrow said that, for a woman who has grown up in "a world of secrets and pain, where the only safe place is the company of other wounded women, then it is not reaching very far to come to the wrong conclusions: that killing children means saving them and that women are safer, more autonomous and better able to care for themselves in a dangerous world if they bear no children."

Hellen Pendley, in her searingly honest account of running a clinic, portrayed herself as a greedy monster who cared nothing for the women she was supposedly helping-much less for the children she was destroying. But then she revealed her own world of secrets and pain. When she was only twelve years old, a man who had given her rides to church youth gatherings raped her and "told me, as he raped me, that God sent him to do this to me." The predictable result: "I felt nothing but hatred and bitterness and anger that a God could send anyone to do this." She thought that God "was a hateful, destructive man." She started using drugs and eventually ran away from home. Retrieved by her father, she finally told him about the rape. Instead of comforting her, he turned her over to the juvenile authorities, saying: "You can have her. I can't do anything with her." By age twenty-eight, after one "shotgun wedding" and two divorces, Pendley "was taking anti-depressants just so I could get out of bed in the mornings."

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the most famous of the ex-abortionists, a brave man who blazed a path for everyone else, described a tormented life in his autobiography, The Hand of God. Among the stories in Nathanson's past:

Nathanson was also influenced by his own experience with illegal abortion as a medical student, when his girlfriend aborted their child-with his agreement and using money provided by his father. And he was influenced, as were many doctors of his generation, by having to care for women badly injured by illegal abortionists. Dr. Beverly McMillan, rotated to Chicago's Cook County Hospital as a young resident, found that fifteen to twenty women per night "were coming from the back-alley abortion mills of Chicago." She was delighted, four years later, when the Supreme Court struck down laws banning abortion in its Roe v. Wade decision.

Both doctors ultimately concluded that legal abortion was not the answer to the tragedies they had seen. When Nathanson was asked to clean up a legal abortion clinic in New York in the early 1970s, he found that the abortion doctors there were "an extraordinary variety of drunks, druggies, sadists, sexual molesters, just plain incompetents, and medical losers." One, he said, "was a fugitive from justice, with the FBI close on his tail." Nathanson replaced the old crew with skilled doctors. But then competition from other clinics led him to reduce the doctors' pay in order to reduce the price of abortions, and many of the most competent doctors left his clinic. The result? "Abortion clinics, my own included, were increasingly populated with younger, inexperienced physicians and-yet again-the medical losers." Nathanson finally concluded that "the abortionist problem is inherent to abortion and likely to get worse, not better."

Dr. McMillan and others decided that the answer to crisis pregnancies is helping women with counseling, prenatal and obstetrical care, and other assistance. Many of the ex-abortionists do volunteer work for pregnancy aid centers started by pro-life activists in the past thirty years. What if such centers had been started by senior doctors and medical professors sixty years ago? It seems fair to say that millions of children's lives would have been saved, and women and health professionals would have been spared much guilt and grief.

For many people who became involved in abortion, however, it was not because they had been abused as children or because they wanted to help women. Some of the doctors started doing abortions simply because this was expected in their residency training or because they wanted to be agreeable to their medical partners. Dr. David Brewer described himself as having "no real convictions" and being "caught in the middle" when he became involved in abortion as a young resident. Dr. McArthur Hill, involved as a young Air Force surgeon, later said that his participation "was not as an avid abortion proponent, but as a reluctant puppet in a world gone berserk."

Money was certainly a major incentive for some. Dr. Noreen Johnson became medical director of a California abortion clinic in the late 1970s when she was still a hospital resident. Averaging 30 to 40 abortions a week, she was making $70,000 to $80,000 per year from abortions alone. That was over twice as much as her resident's salary of roughly $30,000 per year. By 1994 the main doctor at a North Dakota abortion clinic made $100,000 a year while working there only two days per week.

Carol Everett described herself as consumed by greed during her years in the abortion industry. When she surpassed her first goal of two hundred abortions per month at her clinic and $5,000 per month for herself,

I already had my sights set on my next six-month goal-four hundred abortions and ten thousand dollars a month in take-home pay by the end of March, 1982. When I got there, I planned to reward myself with a new Oldsmobile Toronado. . . .

Hellen Pendley recalled that "I walked in the laboratory every day. I saw dead babies every day for three years. . . . If I could see fifty, I was so happy. Because, you know what? That meant I was really gonna have a good bonus in my next paycheck."

At the other end of the payscale were single mothers who could not easily leave their jobs even if they became assailed by doubts about what they were doing. When Joy Davis was hiring staff for Thomas Tucker's chain of abortion clinics, she looked for single mothers who "needed us and needed the money. That way, I knew that I would have their loyalty and that they would stick with it no matter how tough it got."

It can get very tough, indeed. When Dr. McArthur Hill took care of saline-abortion patients, he started having a recurring nightmare that he was holding a newborn baby and waiting for a faceless jury to signal thumbs up or thumbs down. Debra Henry, a medical assistant at a Michigan clinic, had seen tiny body parts and had heard a baby's skull being crushed within the womb. Her nightmare involved carrying a dead baby down an endless corridor.

Dr. Nathanson went through many painful years after he did his last abortion in 1979. His guilt was overwhelming, not only because he had performed many abortions himself and had directed an abortion clinic, but also because he had helped bring about the legalization of abortion: "I would awaken each morning at four or five o'clock, staring into the darkness and hoping (but not praying, yet) for a message to flare forth acquitting me before some invisible jury." Although a longtime atheist, he had started reading religious literature, but still had "an unremitting black despair." He considered suicide.

Dr. Brewer said that "when I was doing abortions, my life was in a shambles in terms of drugs, immorality and all the rest." Abortionists, he said, "have marriages that are on the rocks. They have a seed of greed that's so big (and bearing fruit now) that they are just clamoring for more money. And they're seeing their teenage children be lost. . . . And they're very, very lonely people."

Nita Whitten, working as a secretary in a Texas abortion clinic, became depressed and addicted to drugs. "I took drugs to wake up in the morning," she said. "I took speed while I was at work. And I smoked marijuana, drank lots of alcohol. . . . this is the way that I coped with what I did. It was horrible to work there, and there was no good in it." After having an abortion herself, she became severely depressed and at one point planned to commit suicide.

Kathy Sparks, medical assistant at an Illinois clinic, thought she was not bothered by the blood and gore. When she first witnessed an abortion, she thought it was no different from "dissecting a frog" in biology class. But she did turn to alcohol and other drugs. Some other staffers at her clinic were on drugs, she said, and several were alcoholics. Then a series of personal problems made her depressed and finally desperate: her father died; her marriage appeared to be ending when her daughter was only six weeks old; she lost her best friend; and she had a terrible relationship with her mother. At one point, Sparks actually put a gun to her head and cocked it, but found that she could not pull the trigger. Although hysterical, she had the sense to telephone her mother-in-law, who calmly told her: "Put the gun down. Pick up the baby and come over here."

Fortunately, Sparks had already put the gun down to use the telephone. She drove herself and her child to her mother-in-law's home. Then she had her "born-again day" as the older woman told her about Jesus Christ, and "I just listened." The two prayed together; Sparks committed her life to Christ and repented. She did not leave the abortion clinic right away. But soon she felt very cold in the clinic and noticed "a stench in the air." After assisting at a horrific abortion in the twenty-third week of pregnancy, she took the fetal remains to the clean-up room and found herself "weeping uncontrollably." The next day, she told the clinic director that she would have to quit because of her religion. "What you're doing here is wrong, and I must leave," she said.

Religious conversions, either in the evangelical Protestant tradition or in the Catholic tradition, were typical of those who spoke at the "Meet the Abortion Providers" conferences. Dr. Nathanson was unusual in that he was still an atheist for years after he turned against abortion and started his awesome amount of writing, speaking and filmmaking against it. A long religious quest ended in his baptism as a Catholic in 1996.

Many did not leave the abortion business right after their conversions, or when they first realized that they were involved in deep evil. When Dr. McMillan, then the medical director of an abortion clinic, became increasingly disturbed by the tiny body parts, she started arranging the clinic schedule so that she wouldn't have to do abortions. Later, she simply resigned. A former clinic nurse told this writer years ago that at one point she found she could no longer turn on the suction machine. Then she could no longer do the measurements to determine stage of pregnancy; so she retreated to counseling. When she started counseling everyone against abortion, she and the clinic soon parted. Hellen Pendley, worried about supporting her three children, decided to stay at her clinic while she looked for another job. But this previously hard-boiled administrator started looking for women who hadn't yet had their abortions and who needed to talk with someone. When she found one, she would lead the woman into her office, lock the door, and say, "You've got to find another way. . . ."

Some staffers left their clinics under their own steam, but others were helped along by what might be called tugboats in human form. Pendley was aided by a pastor she had expected to respond harshly when she told him that she ran an abortion clinic. But the pastor was kind. "I didn't know you were struggling with that," he said, "but, you know, I'm glad you're here."

When Joan Appleton was tormented by questions about abortion's effects on women, she felt that she couldn't go to a feminist leader such as Molly Yard and say, "Molly, you got a minute?" But there was one anti-abortion sidewalk counselor at her clinic, Debra Braun, whom Appleton trusted because "I really believed she cared about women." Appleton went to Braun with her questions. The two had many conversations over several years; they became good friends, and Appleton eventually left her clinic. Now she and Braun both work for Pro-Life Action Ministries in St. Paul, Minnesota. Appleton helps staffers leave abortion clinics and achieve reconciliation and healing.

Dr. Anthony Levatino started withdrawing from abortion after a tragic death in his family. He had done abortions as a resident but felt internal conflict about it. He and his wife were "going crazy trying to find a baby to adopt"-while at work he was aborting babies and "throwing 'em in the garbage at the rate of nine and ten a week." He thought, "I wish one of these people would just let me have their child." The Levatinos finally adopted a little girl, Heather, and later had a son. The doctor kept doing abortions, even the gruesome D&E type-until Heather, playing outside one day, was killed by a car. After that, he said, "I couldn't even think about a D&E abortion anymore. No way." He kept doing early abortions for several months, but "I began to feel like a paid assassin. That's exactly what I was. . . . So I quit."

Some clinic workers who were starting to waver had experiences with antiabortion demonstrators that simply hardened their resolve. Judith Fetrow recalled that, at her California clinic:

She had a far better experience, though, with a pro-life sidewalk counselor named Steve:

Notwithstanding her own initial bad experience, Fetrow mentioned that Planned Parenthood people have been instructed not to talk with abortion foes at the clinics "because too many staff and volunteers have been hearing the truth and repenting." She added: "It's hard to fight a battle, much less win a war, when your soldiers keep surrendering."

Norma McCorvey, the famous "Jane Roe" plaintiff of Roe v. Wade, made a spectacular surrender in 1995. McCorvey was working in a Texas abortion clinic when the Rev. Flip Benham of Operation Rescue moved in next door. Benham befriended "Miss Norma"; so did the little daughter of an Operation Rescue worker. Soon Benham baptized McCorvey, who later started the Roe No More Ministry and still does a lot of public speaking against abortion. People sat up and paid attention when McCorvey described seeing empty swings on a playground and thinking, "Oh my God, the playgrounds are empty because there's no children, because they've all been aborted."

Religious and intellectual conversions have changed many clinic staffers' lives, but they do not take away all the psychological burdens. Joan Appleton has warned that the initial "honeymoon period" after leaving the clinics cannot last, because "the whole reality of the horror" clinic staff have been involved in comes to them gradually. "If I knew back in '89, when I left, what I know now," she said, "I would've gone to the nearest bridge and jumped." If former clinic staff do not receive help early, she said, they are likely to turn-or return-to drugs, alcohol, and suicide attempts. She has organized a U.S. branch of the Centurions, which helps former clinic staffers with healing therapy and fellowship.

Appleton warns right-to-life activists against treating clinic defectors as "trophies" to be paraded in public right away. They need time apart, she explains, to face why they "killed in the first place"; they must deal with this if they are "to have any healing whatsoever." Appleton advises former clinic staffers "to give it at least a couple of years before you go in front of a microphone."

Some still have much work to do on old habits, perhaps including greed. "Some of us demand enormous amounts of money to talk about our sins," Appleton once noted wryly, "and unfortunately, there are too many pro-life groups more than willing to pay the price to have their hero speak." She believes that genuine reparation "cannot and must not include monetary profit for our sins." She realizes, though, that former clinic staff must earn a living and that many have children to support, and she does not object to modest speaking fees.

Joseph Scheidler, on the other hand, said at one of his conferences that the speakers were "not getting a cent for this. I don't give stipends to anybody-especially former abortionists. I think they owe us this testimony. And they know it."

Their public speaking often comes at great personal cost. It involves mentally reliving the worst parts of their lives and exposing-in detail and to strangers-their complicity in abortion. For some, including Nathanson and McCorvey, it also involves admitting that their earlier public abortion advocacy was deeply wrong. The former clinic staffers who speak out are much like the Ancient Mariner, who had to keep retelling the terrible story where "the dead were at my feet." As Hellen Pendley said, "It never gets easier." No one should underestimate their courage, or their suffering.

They can take comfort, though, in knowing that they have influenced the public debate and have helped save many lives already. Those who volunteer for pregnancy aid centers or sidewalk counseling have the extra solace of knowing about specific lives they have saved and women they have aided.

Last January Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), held a press conference to complain about state laws concerning abortion, including efforts to regulate abortion clinics. She was asked about women who used to work in the clinics and "have now gone over to your opposition": Don't their accounts suggest "that some regulation is needed"? Michelman responded that women's lives and health have been "vastly improved" since the Supreme Court legalized abortion. Reproductive health services, she claimed, "are the safest medical services available." If there is occasional "faulty adherence" to high medical standards, "the states take care of that. But women are very safe." Then she quickly moved to the next question.

Ronald Fitzsimmons is executive director of a trade group called the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (NCAP), which consists of about 200 independent (non-Planned Parenthood) clinics. In a recent interview, he acknowledged problems at some clinics, but said that every business has its "bad apples" and that he is "not shy about criticizing" them. Of allegations about destruction or falsification of records, he said that "people should be prosecuted for that stuff." Responding to Pendley's report about reuse of instruments without sterilizing them, he commented: "Oh, Jeez. I mean, that shouldn't be happening. That disgusts me. . . . She should be going to NAF with that stuff." NAF is the National Abortion Federation, a providers' group that sets standards its member clinics are supposed to meet, whereas NCAP is more oriented toward the political, public-relations and business side. Fitzsimmons said at least one-half of NCAP's members also belong to NAF.

On the question of calling ambulances for women with serious injuries, Fitzsimmons said they "absolutely" should be called. He added, though, that there have been cases where antiabortion demonstrators at clinics have followed an ambulance to the hospital and actually entered the patient's room. Of the story about the continually flushing toilet for fetal remains, he said that "I can't tell you how disgusting that is to me, if that's happening." The clinic, he said, "should be cited for health-code violations." (A current staff member of the clinic in question said it does not dispose of fetal remains in this way; she said state law requires it to submit tissue from any surgery to a laboratory for a pathology report.)

Fitzsimmons said there is more clinic regulation in some areas than abortion foes realize. He remarked that in New York, for example, it is sometimes almost impossible to open a new clinic because "of the regulations and the paperwork that you have to go through."

Yet some horrific operators have done many abortions in New York before finally being convicted of criminal violations. And Fitzsimmons's own organization, on its Web site, has an interesting disclaimer: "We suggest that patients contact their State health authorities to make sure that the clinics and doctors they choose are reputable. NCAP makes no warranties or guarantees about the providers listed in this site. . . ." This disclaimer introduces a list of NCAP's own members.

Fitzsimmons was bothered by the assumption "that the folks who work at the clinics are uncaring and driven by greed." He said again, "You're gonna get those bad apples," but he added that most clinic staff "really mean well. And they certainly think they're doing the right thing."

Asked about ex-providers' reports of their nightmares, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse, Fitzsimmons said, "I don't know about drug abuse and stuff like that." But he did acknowledge that "everyone in this field" has medical and moral limits and that some doctors do not perform late abortions. As "the fetus becomes more developed," he said, "it does become more of an emotional thing and all." He suggested that people on both sides of the abortion issue should be asking why some women seek late abortions even though they know, from brochures and models, just what the older fetus looks like. (Point well taken.)

How about the reports of psychological suffering in women after their abortions? Fitzsimmons admitted that "a number of our clinics offer post-abortion counseling," but he generally downplayed this problem. Trauma is not necessarily due to the abortion alone, he said, since "people often come to the clinic with a lot of emotional issues to begin with." Relief may be the most common response after abortion, he suggested, although he conceded that "there is also guilt" and there may be regret. Mentioning postpartum depression and regret about releasing a child for adoption, he said it is not as though "abortion is the only thing out there that evokes emotional reactions."

No, but it is the only one of the three that involves taking a human life. In the other cases, a woman can say, "It was very difficult, but I got through it-and my child is alive to be happy about that."

Margaret Johnson, director of the Southern Tier Women's Services, an abortion clinic in Vestal, N.Y., said that "the best way to help women is to make sure that they're making a good decision." Decrying the highly politicized national debate on abortion, especially during election years, Johnson said that women facing an abortion decision "feel so alone and so unrecognized or silenced" by both sides of the debate. Neither side, she remarked, speaks to "what that woman is facing," which is the question of how she balances "the needs of my family, myself, my partner, and this pregnancy." Johnson deplored the "judgmental and uncompassionate climate for women" considering abortion.

Yet one might respond: Harsh and shrill language is often self-indulgent, and usually counterproductive. Yet if the question is reduced to one of "balance" and the party whose life is at stake is referred to as "this pregnancy" rather than "this child," then the cards are certainly stacked in favor of the idea that "making a good decision" can include deciding to kill the child.

At least, though, Johnson does not start with the assumption that abortion is the best outcome. She has worked with women who ultimately decided against abortion, and she says "I'm happy for them." She tries to be sure that a woman "is not being forced into a decision . . . has resolved whatever ambivalence there is"; that she is "not going against a major belief system or that, if she is, she has some help"; and that she "is not having a major relationship problem." How about pregnant women (and girls) who are pressured by abandonment-kicked out of the house by a parent or abandoned by a boyfriend? She said "we see that a lot" and "we try to at least point her to her own resources" or to helpful community resources.

Johnson is not much impressed by the efforts of pro-life pregnancy aid centers, "mostly because they give out such distorted and propagandistic information." Although she acknowledged that some centers offer help "quite in good faith," she suggested that in an economic sense it is just "a drop in the bucket."

Many would dispute her on both counts. Most of the information the centers offer is truth that women need to hear and see. The practical aid they give-which may include maternity and baby clothes, baby furniture and formula, and sometimes cash assistance-is quite helpful to women who are hard pressed economically. Their moral support, in welcoming both mother and child, may be even more important. Some of their staffers and volunteers become expert at directing women to community resources for additional aid. Some do informal but effective work in family conciliation.

But many of the women who staff pregnancy aid centers might agree with Johnson that welfare reform is harming women who have, or want to have, children. They might also agree with her contention that there is too little psychological support for those who have their babies despite difficult circumstances. She recalled, for example, the case of a teenager barred from an honor society because she had a child outside of marriage; where, Johnson asked, "is the support for that kid?"

Johnson suggested that horror stories about clinic conditions come from a minority of "bad providers." Referring to a couple of former clinic administrators who described terrible conditions, she noted that they were in charge and "could have done things differently." If you are out to take advantage of women and abuse them, she added, then "you're gonna have nightmares, and you should have nightmares."

Point well taken. But nightmares, depression, and substance abuse are by no means confined to staff in the sleaziest clinics. People who set out to give women what they considered quality service have been afflicted as well. And it is not just former clinic staff who suffer. Current staff, too, agonize over their work in sessions sponsored by the National Abortion Federation. According to an account in American Medical News:

One clinic worker described her use of ultrasound to find gestational age in late pregnancies. She said she started feeling miserable when she could see the fetal heart's four chambers. She felt even worse when she placed her hands on a woman and felt the child kick. Right after their abortions, a nurse reported many women cry and say, "I've just killed my baby. I've just killed my baby." All of this sounds remarkably like what ex-providers said at Joseph Scheidler's conferences.

Years ago, the Washington Post described a Chicago doctor who had seen poor teenagers injured or killed by illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade. It did not occur to him to set up a pregnancy aid center to help poor women; instead, after Roe v. Wade, he provided abortions in a hospital clinic. He even became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against restrictions on federal funding of abortion. Yet he was not happy about his abortion activism:

There is room for debate over how many "bad providers" there are. In a real sense, though, all of the clinics are bad providers. As Dr. Nathanson wrote when he looked back upon his efforts to improve an abortion clinic nearly thirty years ago: "I had replaced a gaggle of medical rogues and ruffians with a spotless, respectable collection of superbly trained, highly competent physicians-and these new recruits continued to carry out the same grisly task . . ."

The Blackmun Wall is a listing of the women killed by legal abortions, along with information regarding the circumstances of their death. We named this project after Harry Blackmun, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the Roe v. Wade decision and launched America's Holocaust.

BlackGenocide.org | The Negro Project '"Civil rights' doesn't mean anything without a right to life!" declared Hunter.

It has been estimated that since 1973 Black women have had about 10 million abortions. Michael Novak had calculated "Since the number of current living Blacks (in the U.S.) is 31 million, the missing 10 million represents an enormous loss, for without abortion, America's Black community would now number 41 million persons. It would be 35 percent larger than it is. Abortion has swept through the Black community like a scythe, cutting down every fourth member."

Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. Are we being targeted? Isn't that genocide? We are the only minority in America that is on the decline in population. If the current trend continues, by 2038 the black vote will be insignificant. Did you know that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a devout racist who created the Negro Project designed to sterilize unknowing black women and others she deemed as undesirables of society? The founder of Planned Parenthood said, "Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated." Is her vision being fulfilled today?

Project Vote Smart

Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi: 1999-2002: On the votes that the National Right to Life Committee considered to be the most important, Senator Lott voted their preferred position 100 percent of the time. NOT QUITE THE RACIST THAT MANY SUPPOSED!

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York: 2001-2002: On the votes that the National Right to Life Committee considered to be the most important in 2001-2002, Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 0 percent of the time. On the votes that the The Humane Society of the United States considered to be the most important in 2001 , Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 86 percent of the time. BLACKS HAVE LESS RIGHTS THAN ANIMALS, ACCORDING TO KILLARY KLINTON'S KAST.

Fetal Pain and Partial-Birth Abortion This procedure, if it was done on an animal in my institution, would not make it through the institutional review process. The animal would be more protected than the child is."

Clintons Made Anti-Semitic, Racist Remarks In the special audio program "Hillary: Up Close" retired Arkansas State Trooper Larry Patterson says Hillary and Bill Clinton frequently mouthed racist, bigoted and other intolerant remarks.

...Patterson says Bill and Hillary had little nice to say about African-Americans, though the pair counted the black vote as the bedrock of his support.

Clinton Was Sued for Intimidating Black Voters in Arkansas

On Thursday and Friday, both ex-President Clinton and his wife, Democratic Party presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, criticized Republicans for trying to suppress the black vote in states like Arkansas and Florida. But reporters declined to ask either Clinton about the well-documented record of black voter disenfranchisement in Arkansas while they ran the state.

PRO ~~CHOICE~~ RACIST

The Founder of Planned Parenthood was an Extreme Racist and a Nazi Sympathizer Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood, said some rotten things. Note that her statements have NEVER been retracted by Planned Parenthood.

"The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." -- Women and the New Race (New York: Brentano's, 1920)

"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population." -- Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Social History of Birth Control in America (New York, Grossman Publishers, 1976) p. 333. Sanger considered Blacks, Hispanics, and others to be "human weeds" and "a menace to civilization".

Abortion: The Black Woman's Voice

Akua Furlow, Executive Director for the Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN): "Planned parenthood started back in 1960 by Margaret Sanger. If people would just study the documentation they would find that Planned Parenthood was rooted in racism and founded by a white supremist. She believe there were disgenic groups of people who needed to be exterminated. Most of Planned Parenthood's clinics are in minority communities. The language has changed, but the original intent is still the same - to limit the births of minority people, poor people, and people that are handicapped."

In 1996 Tiller contributed $25,000 to the Democratic National Committee and attended one of President Clinton's White House coffees.

The Evolution of Genocide by Rebecca Messall We should remember the statement by the Deputy Nazi Party Chief, Rudolf Hess: "National Socialism is nothing but applied biology."

The Story Of Sarah Baby girl Sarah was born on July 15, 1993, in Wichita, Kansas. She had survived a late term abortion attempt on her 15 year old mother. The infant's mother had been brought nine hundred miles by her parents, to the office of George Tiller, infamous late term abortionist of Wichita, Kansas. This is the same clinic and the same abortionist who recently was contacted by Arizona authorities to commit a late term abortion on a 14 year old Arizona ward of the courts who was 26 weeks pregnant.

The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the [surgical] scissors in the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out . . .

The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby went completely limp. I was really completely unprepared for what I was seeing. I almost threw up as I watched Dr. Haskell doing these things. . . .

The woman wanted to see her baby, so they cleaned up the baby and put it in a blanket and handed it to her. She cried the whole time. She kept saying, "I am so sorry, please forgive me." I was crying, too. I couldn't take it.

STENBERG v. CARHART :Justice Scalia, dissenting. I am optimistic enough to believe that, one day, Stenberg v. Carhart will be assigned its rightful place in the history of this Court's jurisprudence beside Korematsu and Dred Scott. The method of killing a human child-one cannot even accurately say an entirely unborn human child-proscribed by this statute is so horrible that the most clinical description of it evokes a shudder of revulsion. And the Court must know (as most state legislatures banning this procedure have concluded) that demanding a "health exception"-which requires the abortionist to assure himself that, in his expert medical judgment, this method is, in the case at hand, marginally safer than others (how can one prove the contrary beyond a reasonable doubt?)-is to give live-birth abortion free rein. The notion that the Constitution of the United States, designed, among other things, "to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, . . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," prohibits the States from simply banning this visibly brutal means of eliminating our half-born posterity is quite simply absurd.

STENBERG v.CARHART Thomas, J., dissenting In 1973, this Court struck down an Act of the Texas Legislature that had been in effect since 1857, thereby rendering unconstitutional abortion statutes in dozens of States. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 119. As some of my colleagues on the Court, past and present, ably demonstrated, that decision was grievously wrong. See, e.g., Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 221-223 (1973) (White, J., dissenting); Roe v. Wade, supra, at 171-178 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). Abortion is a unique act, in which a woman's exercise of control over her own body ends, depending on one's view, human life or potential human life. Nothing in our Federal Constitution deprives the people of this country of the right to determine whether the consequences of abortion to the fetus and to society outweigh the burden of an unwanted pregnancy on the mother. Although a State may permit abortion, nothing in the Constitution dictates that a State must do so.

Statement of Brenda Pratt Shafer, RN - Hearing on Partial-Birth ... Last July 12, I sat in the audience as the full Judiciary Committee debated this legislation, and I heard Congresswoman Schroeder read a letter from Dr. Haskell to the Judiciary Committee (also dated July 12) in which he said, "I have examined our records and found no evidence of a Brenda Shafer working for us during 1993."[ Why They Help Them Lie ]

Fortunately, I had previously provided the Constitution Subcommittee with the pertinent payroll records from Kimberly Quality Care, including their invoice to Dr. Haskell's clinic. After these documents were circulated, Congresswoman Schroeder withdrew that particular allegation, explaining it away as resulting from confusion over my married name. But it seemed peculiar to me at the time that neither she nor her staff had contacted me, or the subcommittee staff to request documentation, before she basically called me a liar in front of everybody. But there was much more of that sort of thing to come.

[H.R.4965.EH] Passed the House of Representatives July 24, 2002.

Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2002 - Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit any physician or other individual from knowingly performing a partial-birth abortion, except when necessary to save the life of a mother that is endangered by a physical disorder, illness, or injury.[ Partial-Birth Abortions: Medical Necessity? Medical Nonsense]

Defines a "partial-birth abortion" as an abortion in which: (1) the person performing the abortion deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the mother's body; or in the case of a breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the naval is outside the mother's body for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus; and (2) performs the overt act, other than completion of delivery, that kills the partially delivered living fetus.

Authorizes the father, if married to the mother at the time of the abortion, and the maternal grandparents of the fetus, if the mother is under 18 years of age, to obtain specified relief in a civil action, unless the pregnancy resulted from the plaintiff's criminal conduct or the plaintiff consented to the abortion.

Authorizes a defendant accused of an offense under this Act to seek a hearing before the State Medical Board on whether the physician's conduct was necessary to save the life of the mother.

Prohibits the prosecution of a woman upon whom a partial-birth abortion is performed for conspiracy to violate this Act or under provisions regarding punishment as a principal or an accessory or for concealment of a felony.

Third Trimester Abortion Exposed by NY Press The New York Post's opening lead in a December headline read: "Police yesterday raided a filthy Lower East Side medical office and arrested a doctor they say ripped the arm off a fetus he was trying to abort - but who was born alive the next day."

(Senate - September 26, 2002) UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--H.R. 4695 --
I rise to offer a unanimous consent request for the Senate to consider the partial-birth abortion bill that passed the House recently. We have been working diligently for the past 18 months, since the Supreme Court decision, to craft a partial-birth abortion bill that meets the constitutionality muster of the Nebraska decision.[ Impeaching Federal Judges:A Covenantal And Constitutional Response To Judicial Tyranny ] We think we have accomplished that, and I would argue that the House agrees with us.

The House recently passed this legislation 274 to 151. I understand time is short, and we have held this bill at the desk. I am hopeful and have been working to try to get a unanimous consent agreement that we can bring up this legislation for debate and discussion. We are willing to do it on a very limited time agreement, limited amendments, or as many amendments as the other side thinks is necessary.

This is an important piece of legislation. It is one the President said he would sign. It is one that received an overwhelming bipartisan vote in the House. I believe it will have a very strong bipartisan vote in the Senate.

While I understand this unanimous consent will be objected to this evening, I am hopeful we can continue to work together to try to bring up this very important piece of legislation that has been voted on here at least in the last three sessions of Congress with very strong majorities. Unfortunately, it was vetoed by President Clinton. We now have a President who will sign it. We have language that will meet constitutional muster. We will continue to work and seek the unanimous consent request to bring this up.

I now offer that request. I ask unanimous consent that at a time determined by the majority leader, after consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 521, H.R. 4965 , a bill to prohibit the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion. I further ask unanimous consent that there be one relevant amendment on each side, with 1 hour of debate equally divided on each amendment, and that there be 2 hours for debate equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; provided further that following the use or yielding back of time, the bill be read the third time and the Senate proceed to a vote on passage of the bill, with no further intervening action or debate.

Mr. REID. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, the Senator from Pennsylvania is absolutely right. Time is so critical. Separate and apart from the time involving this matter, there are a number of Senators who have spoken to me personally about their objection to proceeding to this matter, if it came to the floor while I was here. Senator Feinstein was the last to have spoken to me in this regard.

I note an objection.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

The Senator from Wisconsin.

The Story of Baby Hope "Baby Hope" was scheduled to die in two days, another victim of partial-birth abortion. Her mother had already begun the three-day procedure at notorious abortionist Martin Haskell's clinic, preparing her body to allow the abortionist to pull most of her baby feet-first out of the womb and then suck out the little girl's brain. Instead, the baby took her final breaths in the loving arms of a medical technician at the hospital that treated her mother for pain caused by the initial phase of the abortion procedure.

Senators, NRLC Assail Senate Democratic Leadership WASHINGTON (Oct. 3, 2002) -- Sixty-one out of 100 U.S. senators are on record in support of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act -- a bill that has already passed the House of Representatives and that President Bush is eager to sign.

Amazon.com: Books: Gianna: Aborted...and Lived to Tell About It The miraculous story of a girl who, after surviviing being aborted, now travels the country, singing and speaking on behalf of the unborn.

Hearing on H.R. 4292, the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2000", Testimony of Gianna Jessen

...saline abortion is a solution of salt saline that is injected into the mothers womb. The baby then gulps the solution, it burns the baby inside and out and then the mother is to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours.

This happened to me! I remained in the solution for approximately 18 hours and was delivered ALIVE on April 6, 1977 at 6:00 am in a California abortion clinic. There were young women in the room who had already been given their injections and were waiting to deliver dead babies. When they saw me they experienced the horror of murder. A nurse called an ambulance, while the abortionist was not yet on duty, and had me transferred to the hospital. I weighed a mere two pounds. I was saved by the sheer power of Jesus Christ.

Ladies and gentleman I should be blind, burned.....I should be dead! And yet, I live! Due to a lack of oxygen supply during the abortion I live with cerebral palsy.

...Adolph Hitler once said: "The receptive ability of the great masses is only very limited, their understanding is small; on the other hand their forgetfulness is great. This being so, all effective propaganda should be limited to a very few points which in turn, should be used as slogans until the very last man is able to imagine what is meant by such words." Today's slogans are: "a woman's right to choose" and "freedom of choice," etcetera. [ Hillary Clinton on Abortion ]

Doctors, clinic staffers tell shocking behind-the-scenes story

"I remember laughing when we made those slogans up," recalls Bernard Nathanson, M.D., co-founder of pro-abortion group NARAL, reminiscing about the early days of the abortion-rights movement in the late '60s and early '70s. "We were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion. They were very cynical slogans then, just as all of these slogans today are very, very cynical."

"We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was a liberal, enlightened, sophisticated one," recalls the movement's co-founder. "Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60 percent of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion. This is the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority. We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000, but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000.

"Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law.

"Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1,500 percent since legalization."

ROE v. WADE, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) REHNQUIST, dissenting.
To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. Conn. Stat., Tit. 22, 14, 16. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth [410 U.S. 113, 175] Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. 1 While many States have amended or updated [410 U.S. 113, 176] their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today. 2 Indeed, the Texas statute struck down today was, as the majority notes, first enacted in 1857 [410 U.S. 113, 177] and "has remained substantially unchanged to the present time." Ante, at 119.

The Origin and Scope of Roe -- Professor Douglas W. Kmiec presents letters and records of correspondence between members of the Roe court that reveal questionable motivations as well as a fundamental disrespect for normal principles of judicial restraint.

Rightgrrl! A Meeting Ground for Conservative and Prolife Women!

Today's feminists are often pro-choice, but the founders of feminism didn't feel that way:

Victoria Woodhull
"Every woman knows if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth." Woodhull was the nation's first female presidential candidate, who ran under the banner of the Equal Rights Party in 1872. Wheeling, West Virginia Evening Standard, November 17, 1875

"We are aware that many women attempt to excuse themselves for procuring abortions, upon the ground that it is not murder. But the fact of resort to so weak an argument only shows the more palpably that they fully realize the enormity of the crime. Is it not equally destroying the would-be future oak to crush the sprout before it pushes its head above the sod, as to cut down the sapling, or cut down the tree? Is it not equally to destroy life, to crush it in the very germ, and to take it when the germ has evolved to any given point in its line of development?"
Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin - Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly, 20 June 1874

Susan B. Anthony
In her publication The Revolution, was written:
"Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!"

"All the articles on this subject that I have read have been from men. They denounce women as alone guilty, and never include man in any plans for the remedy." The Revolution, 4(1):4 July 8, 1869

Abortion was referred to as "child murder." The Revolution, 4(1):4 July 8, 1869

Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"When we consider that woman are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should Treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit." Letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873, recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University Library

"There must be a remedy even for such a crying evil as this. But where shall it be found, at least here begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women?" The Revolution, 1(10):146-7 March 12, 1868

She classified abortion as a form of "infanticide." The Revolution, 1(5):1, February 5, 1868

Sarah Norton
"Child murderers practice their profession without let or hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned...Is there no remedy for all this ante-natal child murder?...Perhaps there will come a time when...an unmarried mother will not be despised because of her motherhood...and when the right of the unborn to be born will not be denied or interfered with."
Woodhull's and Claffin's Weekly, November 19, 1870

Mattie Brinkerhoffn
"When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society - so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged." , The Revolution, September 2, 1869, pages 138 and 139.

Mary Wollstonecraft
As early as 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Women," which Susan B. Anthony admired enough to serialize in The Revolution. After decrying, in scathing 18th century terms, the sexual exploitation of women, she stated:

"Women becoming, consequently, weaker...than they ought to be...have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection...either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity."

President Signs Born-Alive Infants Protection Act Today, through sonograms and other technology, we can clearly -- see clearly that unborn children are members of the human family, as well. (Applause.) They reflect our image, and they are created in God's own image.

lifeissues.net | Evangelizing Abortion Survivors The proclamation of Christ crucified, who was a survivor of Herod's rage, is the essential focus for abortion survivors. In finding their relationship with the Son of God, they will be led to the healing of their wounds, to ultimately being able to say, "I have the right to be, just the way I am. I do not have to fight for my existence. I am welcomed as I am."

I could smell those babies burning, because I was just around the corner."

The Abortion Holocaust

During the height of the killing season at Auchwitz living children were tossed directly into the fires of crematorium furnaces or flaming pits. Their screams could be heard throughout the camp compound....

Between Two Holocausts

A number of years ago, I took a college course in contemporary Jewish history, and the course content obviously included a Holocaust retrospective. The two questions every person in that class asked at the end of the term are the same two questions that all distraught Jews have been asking since the end of World War II: 1) How can a civilized, intellectual and educated society of people, made up of individuals presumably with consciences and souls just like everyone else, choose to systematically target and eliminate another group of individuals in cold blood, without mercy or a second thought? 2)

The Third Reich leaders were experts in distortion, and indoctrination techniques. To dehumanize Jews, Nazi leaders had to suppress facts and propagandize with a barrage of lies about the Jewish people.

There is no argument that the Nazis used a variety of methods to thwart resistance to their goal, the annihilation of every Jew in Europe. However, even with our democratic government, we do not really have freedom to choose freely. System-regulated propaganda is so pervasive that individuals who initially support certain causes can eventually fall victim to the lies built within, with devastating consequences (Norma McCorvey is one example; she was deceived by the feminist pro-abortion propaganda machine. Let's not forget the many women who, seduced by "choice," opt for abortion and suffer from post abortion syndrome later on).

The dehumanization of unborn children did not occur in a vacuum. Following the introduction of birth control pills, feminist organizers became preoccupied with reforming abortion laws as the sexual revolution unfolded during the 1960's. Gradually, through judicial activism, abortion laws were liberalized in a number of states prior to Roe. Feminist literature from that time seems almost quaint, articles longingly spoke of a day when coat hangers would be back in the closets; when back-alleys would be no more sinister than backyards, and the word "quack" would refer to nothing more than the petulant phonations of an aquatic bird.

"Clinic workers may say they support a woman's right to choose," said former Planned Parenthood clinic worker Judith Fetrow, "but they will also say that they do not want to see tiny hands and feet. They do not want to be faced with the consequences of their actions."

The Emerging Reality of Fetal Pain in Late Abortion The disturbing concept that an unborn child feels pain while being destroyed has once again entered the public conscience in England, when a pro-choice fetal researcher suggested that anesthesia should be given to comfort the fetus from pain from abortions as early as 17 weeks gestation.

ABCNEWS.com : New Ultrasound Gives Womb With a View As early as the seventh week of pregnancy, they provide a window parents have never had, and an early opportunity to bond.

The scan provides completely different information from the 2-D black and white ultrasound images that all women are offered at 12 and 20 weeks of pregnancy," said Stuart Campbell, head of obstetrics and gynecology at St. George's Hospital Medical School. "The 2-D scan is excellent at showing the structure of the internal organs but the [more-detailed scan] gives better views of the surface features.

The Use of Graphic Photos of Aborted Children in the Public Forum Ephesians 5:11 states "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but rather expose them." The large graphic photos expose the heinous truth about abortion in an unsurpassed way. Unlike other modern social movements, the media has been unwilling to take images of injustice against the unborn to the public. Pro-life activists have struggled one city, one neighborhood, one person at a time to expose the grim truth about the plight of the unborn. The large graphic photos are a crucial tool, which has successfully allowed Christians to fulfill the Biblical mandate to expose evil.

The Silent Scream A Realtime ultrasound video tape and movie of a 12-week suction abortion is commercially available as, The Silent Scream, narrated by Dr. B. Nathanson, a former abortionist. It dramatically, but factually, shows the pre-born baby dodging the suction instrument time after time, while its heartbeat doubles in rate. When finally caught, its body being dismembered, the baby's mouth clearly opens wide - hence, the title (available from American Portrait Films, P.O. Box 19266, Cleveland, OH 44119, 216-531-8600). Proabortionists have attempted to discredit this film. A well documented paper refuting their charges is available from National Right to Life, 419 7th St. NW, Washington, DC 20004.

After showing this film to thousands of women contemplating an abortion, we can testify to its powerful impact on them to choose life for their preborn child.

Click Here to See What Abortion Looks Like From the inception of his pro-life work, Fr. Frank Pavone has been urging the mass media to show the American people what an abortion is. Abortion is a reality which is so horrific that words alone can never convey its meaning.

CBR / Abortion Pictures The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) is working to establish prenatal justice and the right to life for the unborn, the disabled, the infirm, the aged and all vulnerable peoples through education and the development of cutting edge educational resources.

Abortion Videos

Medical Evidence that a Child Feels Pain

Some staffers are not bothered by this; indeed, some are hardened enough to make jokes about it.

Ximena Renaerts was born alive at VGH after an attempted abortion was performed on her in Belingham, Washington. Gasping for air, she was placed in a pot and whisked away to be stored near the remains of dead babies.

Why Abortion Isn't Important
...Perhaps the single thing that contributed most to this realization was when I first read the famous paper published in 1958 by the eminent (and recently departed) Cambridge philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. Writing about the utilitarianism that has, since Bentham and Mill, taken over virtually all moral theorising in the English-speaking departments of philosophy (perhaps less true today of high-level moral theory than of applied ethics, where of course the damage is really done-witness Singer and Co.), Professor Anscombe noted that it had become a serious topic of moral debate among philosophers whether it could ever be justified to kill an innocent man (e.g., to save five others). Her response was brave-brave because it went so contrary to the grain of philosophy as argument and dialectic. What she said (and here I paraphrase and interpret1) was that when confronted with a person who really thinks it a live moral issue whether killing the innocent might ever be justifiable, even if that person offers sophisticated utilitarian arguments in support, the right thing to do is to walk away rather than argue; for such a person shows evidence of a corrupt mind. [ Romans 1 ]

Here is one of the (to my mind) greatest philosophers produced by England in the last century, telling people-especially other philosophers-that sometimes it is better to walk away than to argue. Why? Because a person's conscience can become so corrupt, and lead to such equally corrupt rationalizations, that to engage them in serious argument about those rationalizations is both pointless-being unlikely to have the slightest impact on their thinking-and, what is worse, dangerous-bringing the thinker of good will into serious danger of having his own conscience perverted by the sophistries of the other.

Abortion Survivors ...Sadly enough, statistically speaking and I have to say this very carefully, statistically speaking women who have had abortions are less likely to bond to their children, and therefore these children are more likely to be abused and neglected. Also, women who were abused and neglected as children are more likely to have abortions. And I can tell you that wherever I have said this, in whatever kind of an audience, people have become really quite upset, sometimes very angry. But I think I can say that having done the research now over a number of years and published a number of papers, that that is a statistically significant connection. That is not to say that every mother who has an abortion is a bad mother, just not true. But it does say that this is something we had better look into, because people are very concerned about rising rates of child abuse, neglect. So that is one area. And that is how it got started.

Best Reference Book on Abortion Complications Updated and ...Detrimental Effects of Abortion: An Annotated Bibliography with Commentary (3rd Edition). This expanded and newly updated edition is the most complete summary available of statistically significant studies on abortion. Compiled by attorney and post-abortion expert Thomas W. Strahan.

Elliot Institute director, David C. Reardon, Ph.D., one of the nation's leading experts on post-abortion issues is asking pro-life advocates around the country to donate copies of Detrimental Effects of Abortion to their local public, high school, and university libraries.

Though Reardon works full time on post-abortion research, he says Strahan's earlier bibliographies have always been his first reference source whenever he begins a new research project.

"Tom Strahan has performed a great service in tracking down all the best studies and organizing their finding in a way that is easily accessible to the average reader," Dr. Reardon said. "Without it, the task of searching for this material on the Internet or in a reference library would be overwhelming. Many of the best studies are simply not indexed under the keywords you would normally expect to find abortion complications."

Strahan edits The Research Bulletin for the Association for Interdisciplinary Research in Values and Social Change and has written numerous articles on abortion. He hopes this revised and expanded reference book will help people to better understand the range of risks associated with abortion.

"Most people think that because abortion is legal, it's safe for women, period," Strahan said. "They think that as long as the government says it's okay, then it must be good for our society. They don't realize that many researchers and scholars studying this issue have found that just the opposite is true."

The Effects of Abortion Including Known Complications.

And as I brought out the rib cage, I looked and I saw a tiny, beating heart. And when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being-a human being that I'd just killed. I turned to the scrub nurse and said, "I'm sorry." But I just knew that I couldn't be a part of abortion any more.

Homicide Based on the Killing of an Unborn Child -- In this essay, Alan Wasserstrom surveys the history of laws which prosecute feticide--the destruction of a human fetus--as homicide.

State Homicide Laws That Recognize Unborn Victims

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act (H.R. 503) recognizes unborn children as victims of federally prohibited crimes of violence. If someone injures or kills an unborn child while committing a violent federal crime against a pregnant woman, the assailant will be charged with a separate offense on behalf of the unborn child. The bill simply puts federal law behind the common sense recognition that when a criminal attacks a pregnant woman, and injures or kills her unborn child, he has claimed two human victims. The House passed H.R. 503 / vote: 252-172 April 26, 2001

Psalms 139:13 Certainly19 you made my mind and heart;20 you wove me together21 in my mother's womb.

139:14 I will give you thanks, because your deeds are awesome and amazing.22 You knew me thoroughly;23

139:15 my bones were not hidden from you, when24 I was made in secret and sewed together in the depths of the earth.25

139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was an unborn fetus.26 All the days ordained for me were recorded in your scroll before one of them came into existence.27

20tn Heb "my kidneys." The kidneys were sometimes viewed as the seat of one's emotions and moral character (see Pss 7:9; 26:2, as well as BDB 480). A number of translations, recognizing that "kidneys" does not communicate this idea to the modern reader, have generalized the concept: "inmost being" (NAB, NIV); "inward parts" (NASB, NRSV); "the delicate, inner parts of my body" (NLT). In the last instance, the focus is almost entirely on the physical body rather than the emotions or moral character. The present translation, by using a hendiadys (one concept expressed through two terms), links the concepts of emotion (heart) and moral character (mind).
26tn Heb "my shapeless form." The Hebrew noun <lg occurs only here in the OT (HALOT 194). In later Hebrew the word refers to "a lump, a shapeless or lifeless substance," and to "unfinished matter, a vessel wanting finishing" (Jastrow, 222). The translation employs the additional adjective "unborn" to clarify that the speaker was still in his mother's womb at the time he was "seen" by God.

Are unborn children human beings? Are they persons? No doubt about it. The following essays argue the pro-life case...

When Do Human Beings Begin? -- by Dianne N. Irving, Ph.D. In this essay, former NIH bench research biochemist Dianne Irving demonstrates the scientific fact that the lives of human beings--and human persons--begin at conception.
Personhood Begins At Conception -- by Peter Kreeft, Ph.D. Professor Kreeft explains what exactly a "person" is and why the various philosophical positions which deny that the unborn child is a person are themselves inadequate.
Is the Unborn Less Than Human? -- by Francis J. Beckwith, Ph.D. In this essay, Dr. Beckwith lays out the scientific facts surrounding human development and explains why it does not make sense to argue that a human being is created at implantation, quickening, or birth.
When Does a Human Become a Person? -- by Francis J. Beckwith, Ph.D. Continuing the previous essay, Dr. Beckwith demonstrates why other functional criteria given for personhood--such as sentience, brain development, and viability--are inadequate. He then refutes the "gradualist" position, which incorrectly asserts that the unborn becomes more and more human as the pregnancy progresses. Finally, he discusses the positions of various abortion and infanticide advocates like James Rachels, Mary Wollenkott, and Michael Tooley.
Does Life Begin At Implantation? -- by Francis J. Beckwith, Ph.D. In this essay, Dr. Beckwith addresses the phenomena of monozygotic twinning, hydatiform moles, choriocarcinoma, blighted ova, cloning, and fertilization wastage. He then shows how these phenomena fail to disprove the position that human life begins at conception.
Scientific and Philosophical Expertise: An Evaluation of the Arguments on Personhood -- by Dianne N. Irving, Ph.D. In this essay, biochemist Dianne Irving argues that positions which assert that early human embryos are not persons are based on inadequate philosophical principles and faulty scientific data.
The Human Rational Soul in the Early Embryo -- by Stephen Heaney, Ph.D. In this essay, Professor Heaney discusses the various theories of "ensoulment" that permeate philosophical (and theological) discussions on abortion.
A Survey of Arguments for Immediate versus Delayed Animation -- by Scott Sullivan. In this essay, Thomist Philosopher Scott Sullivan critically analyzes the theory of mediate animation.
The Tiniest Humans -- an interview with the renowned geneticist Jerome Lejeune and the father of modern embryology, Sir Albert William Liley

Some abortion advocates are willing to concede that unborn children are human beings. Surprisingly enough, they claim that they would still be able to justify abortion. According to their argument, no person-no unborn child-has a right to access the bodily resources of an unwilling host. Unborn children may have a right to life, but that right to life ends where it encroaches upon a mother's right to bodily autonomy. The argument is called the bodyright argument, and it is refuted in the following essays...

The Bodyright Argument: A Pro-life Response -- By Brian D. Parks. In this essay, your webmaster gives a comprehensive analysis of the bodyright argument, including a discussion of the various pro-abortion analogies to pregnancy, and a refutation of the positions of Philosophers Judith Thomson, Susan Mattingly, Patricia Jung, Frances Kamm, Margaret Little and others.
The Changing Pro-Life Argument: Does the Humanity of the Unborn Matter Anymore? -- by Francis J. Beckwith, Ph.D. In this essay, Professor Beckwith introduces and refutes the famous argument from "bodily rights".
A Woman's Right Over Her Body? -- by Stephen Schwarz, Ph.D. In an excerpt from his book The Moral Question of Abortion, Dr. Schwarz addresses arguments in defense of abortion that are based on a woman's "right" to control her own body.
Unplugging a Bad Analogy -- by Doris Gordon. In this essay, Doris Gordon, the National Director of Libertarians For Life, refutes a famous argument put forth by philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson.
Abortionists, Violinists and Burglars -- by Christopher Kaczor, Ph.D. In this essay, Professor Kaczor addresses Thomson's arguments from a different angle.
A Fetus is NOT a Parasite -- by Thomas L. Johnson, Ph.D. In this piece, chordate embryologist Dr. Thomas L. Johnson attacks the popular misconception that a human fetus is the equivalent of a biological parasite.
Begging the Question -- by Edwin Viera. In this brief essay, Dr. Viera explains why the statement "a woman has a right to control her own body" begs the basic question in the abortion debate--is she only affecting her own body when she aborts?

Why would it be wrong to kill an adult? Why would it be wrong to kill a baby after it has been born? Questions like these seems trivial, but their answers are extremely important to the abortion debate. What many people fail to realize is that most of the arguments used to justify killing unborn children could be used with just as much force to justify killing newborn children and, in some cases, even full-grown adults. The wrongness of killing is discussed in the following essays...

I Was Once a Fetus -- By Alexander Pruss. In this essay, mathematician and philosopher Dr. Alexander Pruss offers an identity based argument against abortion.
The Real Problem with Abortion -- by Mark McNeil. In this essay, Mark McNeil examines two competing positions on the issue--the position of moderate pro-life advocate Don Marquis and the position of liberal abortion advocate Mary Anne Warren. McNeil concludes that neither position sufficiently explains why it is wrong to kill human beings, and introduces his own viewpoint.

A Biblical Perspective on Abortion (Official A/G Position Paper) John Calvin made a very significant observation concerning abortion in commenting on Exodus 21:22,23: "The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of his mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light." [2]

God's Attitude Toward Killing Innocent Persons

God's Word is very explicit concerning the taking of innocent human life. "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13, NKJV) is not only one of the Ten Commandments, but also a dictate which reoccurs throughout Scripture.

God instructed Moses to set a law before the Children of Israel which brings the sanctity of life of unborn children into focus. "If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Exodus 21:22-24).

Dr. Stanley M. Horton, former professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, stated the opinion of many when he wrote the following concerning Exodus 21:22-24: "The situation here is of two men who are fighting as a result of a quarrel. The same Hebrew verb is used in Exodus 2:13 of the two men Moses saw fighting. Somehow as they are fighting, they hit a pregnant woman, and her child 'comes out,' that is, is born prematurely. If there is no 'mischief,' no 'mortal accident,' to the child or the mother, then the man who struck the woman must pay a fine as determined by her husband and ratified by the judges. But if there is 'mortal accident' causing the death of the child or the mother, then the law of a 'life for a life' takes over.

"'Her fruit' is the Hebrew yeladeha, translated 'her children' in this same chapter (v. 4), as well as everywhere else it occurs in the Old Testament. The plural is used here because it would not be known in advance whether more than one child was in the womb.

"'Mischief,' Hebrew ason, is used in Genesis 42:4 where Jacob is afraid something might happen to Benjamin (as he thought had happened to Joseph), that is, death. (See also 42:38; 44:29.)

"It is clear from this that the fetus is recognized as a child and has the same rights as older children."

God's attitude toward the killing of innocents is clear. Except in capital punishment decreed through the judicial process (Numbers 35:12) or protection of property at night probably involving self-defense (Exodus 22:2), no one is guiltless who takes the life of another.

The Sanctity of Human Life: Harvesting Human Fetal Parts

We celebrate the incarnation at Christmas, Jesus' birth, but the actual event took place at conception. This reality is brought home to us when Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth a short time later. John the Baptist, at six months gestation in Elizabeth's womb leaps for joy inside her as he comes into the presence of the Messiah in Mary's womb. At that point Jesus was not just a blob of cells or mere tissue. He was the Messiah, the Son of the Most Holy God. It is also important to note that John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit and leaped for joy in the womb. Only beings made in God's image can be filled with the Holy Spirit and that is what John was.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Reprinted from: Psychology Today - September/October 1998 -Volume 31, No. 5, Pages 44-48, 78

Behaviorally speaking, there's little difference between a newborn baby and a 32-week-old fetus. A new wave of research suggests that the fetus can feel, dream, even enjoy "The Cat in the Hat."

As if overturning the common conception of infancy weren't enough, scientists are creating a startling new picture of intelligent life in the womb. Among the revelations:

By nine weeks, a developing fetus can hiccup and react to loud noises. By the end of the second trimester, it can hear.
Just as adults do, the fetus experiences the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep of dreams.
The fetus savors its mother's meals, first picking up the food tastes of a culture in the womb.
Among other mental feats, the fetus can distinguish between the voice of Mom and that of a stranger, and respond to a familiar story read to it.
Even a premature baby is aware, feels, responds, and adapts to its environment.

By monitoring changes in fetal heart rate, psychologist Jean-Pierre Lecanuet, Ph.D., and his colleagues in Paris have found that fetuses can even tell strangers' voices apart. They also seem to like certain stories more than others. The fetal heartbeat will slow down when a familiar French fairy tale such as "La Poulette" ("The Chick") or "Le Petit Crapaud" ("The Little Toad"), is read near the mother's belly. When the same reader delivers another unfamiliar story, the fetal heartbeat stays steady.

Abortion Stops a Beating Heart

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