This investigation of Planned Parenthood is based on false premises, one after another, after another.
It's time to stop wasting time. Get on with meaningful work,
and stop picking on women and trying to take their choice away.
I yield back the balance of my time.
The time of the gentleman has expired.
We welcome our distinguished witnesses today.
Do you and each of you swear that the testimony that you are about to give
shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?
I do
And I'll now begin by introducing today's witnesses.
The first witness is Dr. Anthony Levatino.
Dr. Levatino is a board-certified obstetrician gynecologist.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Levatino has practiced obstetrics and gynecology
in both private and university settings
including as an associate professor of OB/GYN at the Albany Medical College
Dr. Levatino we'll begin with you
Welcome.
Thank you chairman, and members of the committee.
I only have five minutes so I'm gonna get right to it.
Second trimester D&E abortions perform between roughly 14 and 24 weeks of gestation.
Your patient today is 17 years old. She is 22 weeks pregnant.
Her baby is the length of your hand plus a couple of inches,
and she's been feeling her baby kick for the last several weeks,
but she's asleep on an operating room table.
You walk into that operating room scrubbed and gowned,
and after removing laminaria you introduce a suction catheter into the uterus.
This is a 14 French suction catheter.
If she were 12 weeks pregnant or less,
basically the width of your hand are smaller you could basically do the entire procedure with this,
but babies this big don't fit through catheters this size.
After suctioning the amniotic fluid out from around the baby,
you introduce an instrument called the sulfur clamp.
It's about 13 inches long. It's made of stainless steel.
The business end of this clamp is about two and a half inches long and a half inch wide.
There are rows of sharp teeth.
This is a grasping instrument, and when it gets ahold of something it does not let go.
A D&E procedure is a blind abortion, so picture yourself introducing this,
and grabbing anything you can blindly and pull,
and I do mean hard and out pops a leg
about that big, which you put down in the table next to you.
Reaching in again; pull again,
pull out an arm about the same length, which you put down on the table next to you.
And use this instrument again and again to tear out the spine, the intestines, the heart and lungs.
Head and the baby that size is about the size of a large plum.
Can't see it, but you pretty good idea you got it if you've got your instrument around something,
and your fingers are spread about as far as they go.
You know you did it right if you crush down on the instrument white material runs out of the cervix;
that was the babies brains,
and you could pull out skull pieces,
and you have a day like I had a lot of times
sometimes a little face comes back, and stares back at you.
Congratulations.
You just successfully performed a second trimester D&E abortion. You just affirmed her right to choose.
One more question Dr. Levatino,
Why did you end your practice of doing abortions?
I did over 1,200 abortions over a four-year period in private practice
not counting the ones that I did during my training.
I met my wife am during my first year of training at Albany Medical Center.
We got married about a year later, and found that we had an infertility problem.
After years of failed infertility treatment, and several years trying to adopt a child,
we were blessed with the adopting a little girl that we named Heather in August of 1978.
As sometimes happens in those situations,
my wife got pregnant the very next month, and we had two children ten months apart.
Two months short of my daughter Heather's sixth birthday,
she was killed in an auto accident and literally died in our arms in the back of an ambulance.
Anyone, who has children might think they have some idea of what that feels like,
but unless you've been through it yourself you have no idea whatsoever.
I know people find it hard to believe, but what do you do after disaster,
you bury your child, and then you go back to your life.
And I don't remember exactly how long it was after my daughter died
that I showed up at Albany Medical Center O R number 9 to perform my first second trimester D&E abortion.
I wasn't thinking of it as anything special, this was routine to me,
but I reached in literally pulled out an arm or leg and got sick.
You know earlier on I described stacking up body parts on the side of the table
it's not to you know gross people out to use the simple term.
When you do an abortion you need to keep inventory.
You have to make sure you get two arms and two legs and all the pieces.
If you don't, your patient is going to come back infected bleeding or dead.
So I soldiered on, and finished that abortion.
And I know it sounds as I said hard for people to believe, but I'm
I'm telling you straight up my experience.
You know after over 1200 abortions first and second trimester up to 24 weeks
and all the rest of it, and being very dedicated to it,
for the first time in my life I really looked.
I really looked at that pile of body parts on the side of the table
and I didn't see her wonderful right to choose, and I didn't see all the money I just made.
All I could see was somebody's son or daughter.
And I stopped doing late term abortions after that,
and several months later stopped doing all abortions.
Thank you.