USA TODAY International Edition
Ex- abortionist: How I became pro- life
Industry doesn’t prioritize patient safety
I’ve killed more people than Ted Bundy. Coming to terms with the fact that I was a professional mass murderer was devastating, but it compelled me to speak the truth.
I began my medical career believing the clichés that women must have total control over our bodies, and that it’s unethical to bring unwanted children into an overpopulated world. During my OB- GYN residency in Florida in the late 1970s, I went beyond the first- trimester abortion requirement and asked to learn to perform second- trimester dismemberment abortions. When faced with my own unwanted pregnancy before entering medical school, I chose abortion.
Abortions, I discovered, can be very profitable. When I got my medical license, I moonlighted as an abortionist on the weekends, making more money than I would have made working in the emergency room. I treated fetal remains like any other medical specimen — with no emotion. I even performed abortions while I was pregnant. The difference was clear to me at the time: My baby was wanted; my patients’ babies weren’t. I saw no contradiction.
The only time I questioned my line of work was during my neonatal rotation, when I realized I was trying to save babies in the neonatal intensive care unit who were the same age as some of the babies I was aborting.
Why I stopped
Three patients changed my professional trajectory.
I was preparing to perform an abortion on the first when I realized I had already performed three on her in the past — she used abortion as birth control. I protested, only to be told by my boss that I had no right to deny it to her. “Easy for you to say, you’re not the one doing the killing,” I snapped. I did the killing, but my response startled me.
The second patient was a young woman there with a friend who asked whether she wanted to see the tissue when I was done. The patient replied angrily that no, she just wanted to kill it. “What did this baby ever do to you?” I wondered. I don’t think I had ever thought of them as babies before.
But it was a mother of four who felt she just couldn’t manage another child who brought me to tears. She wept before, during and after the procedure. It was the grief of a woman who knew the moral gravity of what she was doing that ended my abortion career.
I stopped doing abortions, but I remained pro- choice.
Over time, however, I saw in my OBGYN practice young girls flourish who had chosen not to abort, and older, more educated patients who had aborted struggle psychologically. Gradually, I began to see the feminist narrative that abortion empowers women as increasingly flimsy.
Ultimately, I could not shake the realization that the only thing that decided the fate of the baby was whether he or she was wanted or not. The former was born. The latter was killed. The life or death of a human being should not be so arbitrarily decided.
I became pro- life.
I now give expert testimony on the realities of abortion. For years, many abortion clinics have gotten away with shoddy practices that no surgery center would be likely to get away with. A former manager of an abortion clinic told me that she was instructed to use dish washing liquid to clean instruments when their sanitizer broke down. Inspection reports in multiple states have found clinics not properly sanitizing instruments.
As a gynecologist in the emergency room, I treated women experiencing severe complications, including lifethreatening hemorrhage and infection from abortions, because no one at the abortion clinic had admitting privileges. No abortion clinic personnel ever called to give me information on a patient they sent to the ER. This is not a safe way to practice medicine.
Supreme Court case
When it comes to abortionists being required to have local hospital admitting privileges — the issue the Supreme Court will soon consider in June Medical Services LLC v. Gee — the fact is that many physicians on staff at ambulatory surgical centers are required to have hospital privileges to ensure that patient care is not compromised in the event of a complication.
One of the reasons we are told these safety standards aren’t needed is because abortion is so safe, but we don’t know the true frequency of complications. Only 28 states require abortion providers to report post- abortion complications, and states are not required to submit abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Yet Americans were horrified when the unsanitary conditions and unsafe medical practices of Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic were uncovered, and shocked when news broke about Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, an abortionist who walked out of his office with thousands of bags of aborted fetal remains. These are hallmarks of an unsafe industry.
I was pro- choice for decades. I performed abortions and had an abortion. I understand where the fault lines over abortion in America lie. But can’t we at least all agree on the importance of safety in the abortion industry?