Chairmen Grassley and Graham and committee members,
thank you for inviting me to participate today.
I’ve spent my entire career as an advocate for women and women's health.
I've done first and second trimester abortions and have treated women with medical and psychological
complications of abortion I've taken care of women who decided to keep their unplanned
pregnancies, and those who aborted them.
I’ve given birth vaginally twice and I've had an abortion.
My cousin survived an abortion.
When I entered medical school, I believed that the availability of abortion on demand
was solely an issue of women's rights.
During my residency, I was trained in first trimester abortions using D&C with suction,
and I sought and received special training in the second trimester D&E, during which
the fetus is crushed and removed in pieces.
As I examined the tissue after each procedure, I was fascinated by the tiny but perfectly
formed organs, however, because of my training and conditioning, a human fetus seemed no
different to me than the chicken embryos I dissected in college.
I wasn't heartless; if a patient came to me after the loss of a baby she had wanted, I
was distraught with her and felt her pain.
What made the difference for me was whether or not the baby was wanted.
In my second year of residency, I got a job moonlighting at a women's clinic in Gainesville
doing abortions.
I felt I was doing something for the good of women, and I could make more money doing
abortions than working in an emergency room.
The only time I had any qualms about doing second trimester abortions was during my neonatal
care rotation, when I was trying to save babies
who were about the same age as some of the babies I had aborted.
When I became pregnant, I continued to do abortions without any reservations, but when
I returned to the clinic after my delivery, I was confronted with three situations that
changed my mind about doing them.
I discovered that I had personally done three abortions on a girl scheduled that morning.
When I protested, the clinic staff said that it was her right to choose to use abortion
as her birth control method and insisted that I had no right to pass judgment on her, nor
to refuse to do the procedure.
I told them that was easy for them to say, I was the one who had to do the killing.
She got her abortion and admitted that she still wasn't going to use birth control.
A second case involved a woman who, when asked by her friend if she wanted to see the tissue,
replied, “No, I just want to kill it.”
I felt like saying, “What did that baby every day to you?”
The third patient was a mother of four who didn't feel she and her husband could afford
another child.
She cried throughout her time at the clinic.
I finally made the connection between fetus and baby.
I realized that what struck me was the apathy of the first patient and hostility of the
second towards the fetus, contrasted with the sorrow and misery of the woman who knew
what it was to have a child.
I realized that the baby was the innocent victim in all of this, and the fact that it
was unwanted was no longer enough justification for me to kill it.
I could no longer do abortions.
My views also changed in private practice as I saw young women in my practice who did
amazingly well after deciding to keep their unplanned pregnancies, in contrast to those
who were struggling with the emotional aftermath of abortion.
That wasn't what I was expecting.
I assumed that those who kept their babies would be the ones whose lives would be ruined.
I will never forget one woman who saw me for bleeding problems after a late term abortion
in Orlando.
She had not recovered from the horror of delivering her twenty plus week baby boy into the toilet.
Her baby brother had died by drowning.
Another woman told me that she was seeing a psychiatrist because although she strongly
believed in the women's weight right to choose abortion, she couldn't cope with the realization
that she had killed her child.
In fact, it wasn't until after I had my first child that I regretted my earlier decision
and mourned the loss of the child I had aborted.
Few doctors are able to continue to do abortions for very long.
Physicians are taught to heal and do no harm.
They see the broken bodies and eventually the truth sinks in.
We have sanitized our language to make abortion more palatable.
We don't speak about the baby; we talk about the fetus.
The abortionist “terminates the pregnancy” rather than kills the baby.
We've moved further away from the idea that life is precious and closer to the utilitarian
attitudes that destroyed so many lives during the last century.
We have taught our young women that an unwanted pregnancy is the worst thing that can happen
to her, and that abortion is the only logical solution.
Should a baby who can live outside the womb be given no consideration, no protection,
and no rights, just because she is unwanted?
Can we not at the very least have compassion on babies at twenty weeks gestation, twenty-two
weeks from last menstrual period, which is what most women and their OB doctors would
label it, when their nervous systems are developed enough for them to experience pain?
Can we at least ensure that babies who survive abortion are not deprived of the same care
we would give any other baby at the same gestation just because someone didn't want them?
The joy of meeting young adults who I helped bring safely into the world is clouded now
by the knowledge of all those that I will never meet because I aborted them.
I want to thank you for your vital efforts to protect those who cannot protect themselves,
and thank you for your consideration of these views.