The New York Times has published an opinion piece by a practising abortionist, who gives her thoughts on becoming a mother for the first time. The article gshows a light on the mental gymnastics abortionists must practise in trying to justify their work of killing babies.
The abortionist, Dr Christine Henneberg, works in women's health and 'family planning', and performs abortions into the second trimester of pregnancy. This is the point at which, in her own words, " the fetus is well-formed and easily recognizable as humanlike, even “life”-like. Baby-like."
In the article, she tells of the need for medical professionals to be able to compartmentalise, in order to cope with the reality of intentionally taking a human life, and of how this isn't always easy to achieve.
After removing her IUD without informing her husband, in order to surprise him with a pregnancy, Dr Henneberg relates that, because she didn't conceive straight away, she felt that she was being punished for being an abortionist - bad karma, as she calls it.
However, a little baby was conceived soon after and detected by ultrasound in the incongruous setting of an abortion mill.
Her pregnancy was normal, despite her constant fear that she would experience a tragic loss such as she had witnessed when caring for her pregnant patients: a miscarriage or stillbirth, or delivering a child with a condition incompatible with life.
She relates the horror she felt when aborting a 17-week baby while in the second trimester of her own pregnancy:
The fetus, which is normally extracted in parts, came through the cervix intact. I dropped it in the metal dish and I saw it move, or thought I did. It was all I could do not to run from the procedure room crying.
And she tells of the positive manner in which her abortion patients responded to her pregnancy:
At first I was nervous about what my patients would think and say when I started showing, but they always expressed genuine happiness for me, even in the midst of their own difficulties. “Girl, you are going to love that baby,” one mother of three said to me as I prepped her for her procedure. A 19-year-old woman, ending her first pregnancy, smiled at me through her tears. “It’s your time,” she said.
There is a section of the article devoted to disparaging sidewalk counsellors, in which she claims she was called a baby-killer. This incident may truly have happened, but it is also possible that it did not happen - at least not in the way she remembers it. I say this because some women who have experienced abortions experience auditory hallucinations, such as hearing babies cry, and it is possible that those who perform abortions experience similar PTSD symptoms. Also, I know that the global campaign against sidewalk counsellors, which has led to the introduction of exclusion-zones in many jurisdictions, relies on a false narrative of continuous abuse being hurled at abortionists and their patients by pro-lifers. In short, I know that abortionists lie, and as it has been said many times, those who kill babies for a living aren't too worried about telling the truth.
The conclusion provides the greatest insight into the mind of this practising abortionist. She has found a way to reconcile her natural desire for motherhood with her occupation of killing children. She calls this a 'harmony', always being careful to make a distinction between a fetus and a child: a disctinction which doesn't exist in the field of linguistics ('fetus' means offspring, or child), or of biology (human life scientifically begins at conception), or of theology. (obviously, every child is made in the image of God, and personally 'knit together in their mothers' wombs' by Him - Psalm 139.) This distinction only exists in the minds of those who desperately need to justify abortion to themselves.
The answer is that there is a connection between my work as an abortion doctor and my work as a mother; it’s just not what most people imagine. It’s not a tension or a contradiction to be reconciled. It’s a symbiosis, a harmony.
I do not mean it’s an easy job. Of course it’s not. There is the protester on the sidewalk. There is the fetus in the dish, the perfect curl of its fingers and toes. Sometimes it reminds me of my daughter — how could it not? But that is precisely the point.
As a doctor, I can draw a distinction, a boundary, between a fetus and a baby. When I became a mother, I learned that there are no boundaries, really. The moment you become a mother, the moment another heartbeat flickers inside of you, all boundaries fall away.
Nevertheless, as mothers, we must all make choices. And we must live with the choices that aren’t ours to make. We can try to compartmentalize. We can try to keep things tidy and acceptable.But in reality, everything is messy: the work of doctors, the work of mothers, and the love of each one of us for our children.
And yet somebody has to do the work.
'Somebody has to do the work?'
I agree wholeheartedly with this statement: there is definitely a need for somebody to do the work of supporting pregnant women, offering help outside abortion mills, lobbying pro-abortion politicians, educating children about chastity and marriage, reorienting society towards seeing motherhood as a valid vocation and much more along these lines. There is, however, no need at all, for men and women to be employed in the practise of killing unborn children. This is a vocation that should not exist and which, as evidenced by the words of the abortionist above, creates such a terrible conflict of conscience, that it can only be rationalised by suspending reality in the mind of the perpetrator.
