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Abortion: What the Professionals Say

Clashing views on the medical front

Changing views on the legal front

BERNARD NATHANSON, M.D., once head of New York’s now defunct first and busiest abortion clinic, did a dramatic turnabout as he said: “I became convinced that as director of the clinic I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths.” He added: “To vehemently deny that life begins when conception begins is absurd!”

Dr. Howard Diamond, of Beth Israel Medical Center, disagrees: “If I feel anything, I feel gratified. Abortion is much more important than the life of a child that doesn’t exist. . . . A fetus is nothing!”

Doctors’ reactions to performing abortions vary widely. At one extreme there is guilt and despair. The doctors admitted to heavy drinking and nightmares from performing great numbers of assembly-line abortions. At the other extreme there are doctors who claim to derive satisfaction from the operations because they feel they are saving women’s lives, both emotionally and physically.

Some doctors have mixed feelings. Dr. William Rashbaum, of Beth Israel Medical Center, once had nightmares about a tiny fetus resisting abortion by hanging on to the walls of the uterus. He learned to live with that, no longer has that fantasy, but said: “I’m a person. I’m entitled to my feelings. And my feelings are who gave me or anybody the right to terminate a pregnancy? I’m entitled to that feeling, but I also have no right to communicate it to the patient who desperately needs that abortion. I don’t get paid for my feelings, I get paid for my skills. . . . I began to do abortions in larger numbers at the time of my divorce when I needed money. But I also believe in the woman’s right to control her biological destiny.”

John Szenes, M.D., believes in the woman’s right to abortion and that is his primary consideration. However, he does admit the saline abortion takes some getting used to: “All of a sudden one noticed that at the time of the saline infusion there was a lot of activity in the uterus. That’s not fluid currents. That’s obviously the fetus being distressed by swallowing the concentrated salt solution and kicking violently and that’s, to all intents and purposes, the death trauma.” And he then adds: “So I can imagine, if I had started doing 24-weekers right off the bat, I would have had much greater conflict in my own mind whether this is tantamount to murder.”

At the Beth Israel Hospital, in Denver, Colorado, a doctor did an abortion by injecting birth hormones to induce premature birth. Hours later the baby was delivered live, cried, and some time later died. The doctor ordered no life-sustaining measures. Nurses were upset, one resigned. Concerning a similar situation, one Denver obstetrician said: “Trying to save the fetus when you’re performing an abortion is like sending an ambulance to a firing squad. The whole intent of an abortion​—on the part of both the woman and the doctor—​is to see that the fetus doesn’t survive.”

Many nurses have had traumatic experiences, especially with saline abortions. One investigator reported on the testimony of a head nurse in a gynecological ward where large numbers of such abortions were performed. “She recounted many horrifying situations,” he said, “which included babies born alive, for whom they had no facilities whatsoever in the hospital. She personally witnessed one physician who happened to be present at the birth of a live born baby, who subsequently drowned the baby in a bucket of formalin.” Another report tells of babies aborted at eight months, and says aborted babies able to live at six months “are killed by doctors through injections or suffocating them in vinyl bags.” The babies are viable, but they are killed.

The claim is often made that the pregnant woman should have control of her own body, but the fetus is not her body. It is not an appendage or part such as the appendix or gallbladder the removal of which has been likened to the removal of the fetus from the mother’s body. Dr. A. W. Liley, world-renowned research professor of fetal physiology, said: “Biologically, at no stage can we subscribe to the view that the foetus is a mere appendage of the mother. Genetically, mother and baby are separate individuals from conception.” He continues with a description of the activities of the fetus, as follows:

“We know that he moves with a delightful easy grace in his buoyant world, that foetal comfort determines foetal position. He is responsive to pain and touch and cold and sound and light. He drinks his amniotic fluid, more if it is artificially sweetened, less if it is given an unpleasant taste. He gets hiccups and sucks his thumb. He wakes and sleeps. He gets bored with repetitive signals but can be taught to be alerted by a first signal for a second different one. And finally he determines his birthday, for unquestionably the onset of labour is a unilateral decision of the foetus. . . . This is also the foetus whose existence and identity must be so callously ignored or energetically denied by advocates of abortion.”

After reviewing such amazing abilities of the fetus in the womb, Dr. Liley says: “You would think this knowledge would bring a new respect for the unborn. Instead some now are hellbent on his destruction​—just when he had achieved some physical and emotional identity.” Why has the abortion movement made such headway in spite of the obvious humanness of the baby? Dr. Liley’s answer: “The unborn is small, naked, nameless and voiceless. It is his defenselessness that makes him such a convenient victim. He has not yet reached the age of social significance and he cannot strike back for himself.”

Many doctors refuse to do abortions. One doctor said: “If there are a few doctors who seem to do more, it’s because some of us are still struggling with our Hippocratic (oath).” Concerning abortion the oath states: “I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked nor suggest any such counsel, and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.”

Dramatic changes have taken place on the legal front over abortions. English common law considered abortion a crime​—a lesser crime in the first half of pregnancy because the baby had not yet stirred, hence was not considered alive. But with the mother’s “feeling life” during the second half, the baby was alive and abortion thereafter was a felony, murder. These laws were applied throughout the early United States until after the Civil War.

Conception, the union of sperm and ovum, was first accurately described by a German scientist in 1827. Thereafter it was appreciated that life began at conception rather than at “quickening,” as previously believed. After the Civil War the new American Medical Association sent its scientists to testify before committees and state legislatures, informing them that life began at the time of the egg’s fertilization. In response to this new information, every state in the union during the 1870’s and early 1880’s passed new laws making abortion a felony from the time of conception. AMA testimony: “We were dealing with nothing less than human life.”

Times have changed. These so-called “archaic anti-abortion laws of the 19th century” have been wiped from the legal slate in the United States. In 1967 Colorado passed a permissive abortion law. In the next four years 15 other states followed suit. During the next three years 33 states rejected the permissive laws. But the struggle of the pro-life forces was defeated with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 1973 to allow abortion-on-demand during the first three months of pregnancy, during the next three months with certain restrictions for the care of the mother, and anytime before birth for the mother’s health.

Health? The Court’s decision in Doe v. Bolton defined it: “all factors, physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age, relevant to the well being of the patient.” Another of the Court’s cases, Roe v. Wade, enlarged upon the definition: “Maternity or additional offspring may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be eminent, mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. When there is distress for all concerned associated with the unwanted child, and when there is a problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically or otherwise, to care for it.”

A concurring opinion added to these “health” reasons the discomforts of pregnancy, the pain, loss of income, abandoning educational plans, forgoing a career. In short, any reason the mother might advance could end the pregnancy at any time before birth.

This changed thinking is illustrated by International Planned Parenthood. Founded by Margaret Sanger, who strongly opposed abortion, it was meant to promote the use of contraceptives and thereby prevent the need for abortions. In 1964 Planned Parenthood stated: “An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely postpones the beginning of life.”

In a dramatic about-face, today Planned Parenthood promotes abortion as a means of population control. It also sponsored the case that resulted in the Supreme Court’s decision permitting a minor to abort without her parents’ consent. Its former statement, “An abortion kills the life of a baby,” no longer appears in its literature. However, that truth does appear in an editorial in the September 1970 California Medical Journal:

“The reverence of each and every human life has been the keystone of western medicine, and is the ethic which has caused physicians to try to preserve, protect, repair, prolong, and enhance every human life. Since the old ethic has not been fully displaced, it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been the curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone knows, that human life begins at conception, and is continuous, whether intra- or extra-uterine, until death.”

Another problem that abortion was supposed to alleviate is that of battered children. The theory was that unwanted children were abused, and preventing their birth would end the abuse. Facts disprove the theory. Child battering has greatly increased, as the following press report discloses: “Looser abortion laws do not result in fewer battered children​—a five-year study by Dr. Edward Lenoski, professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California found that following the passage of ‘abortion on demand’, cruel infanticide and child battering increased three-fold​—a logical result of the concept that ‘life is cheap.’” Instead of remedying the battering of children, abortion has added to this the battering of millions of babies in the womb.

The verbal gymnastics of the courts in their abortion decisions make them fall on their faces in certain criminal trials. Two gunmen fired shots at a car carrying a pregnant woman. One bullet killed the fetus. The woman was not fatally hurt, but the men received sentences up to life for the death of the fetus. In another case, Winfield Anderson shot a woman pregnant with twin sons. By cesarean the twins were removed. One, struck by a bullet, died after three-and-a-half hours; the other died in 15 hours. The mother survived. The defense attorney said the fetuses were “nonpersons,” but Judge Wingate, Jr., ruled that fetuses wounded by a blow on the mother were, if they later died, murder victims. The jury convicted Anderson on two counts of murder.

A paradox develops. If a mother orders the killing of her viable fetus, it’s humanitarian. If the fetus is killed during a crime, it’s murder. If a mother ends the life of her baby a few days before its birth because she’s distressed that it will be a burden, it’s legal. If she does it a day after its birth because it’s a burden, it’s murder.

How does Jehovah God view all of this? Exodus 21:22, 23 states: “In case men should struggle with each other and they really hurt a pregnant woman and her children do come out but no fatal accident occurs, he is to have damages imposed upon him . . . But if a fatal accident should occur, then you must give soul for soul [life].” The original Hebrew does not limit the injury to the mother, but includes the baby also, as careful scholarship reveals.a

Other ancient codes take the same view. Laws that protect the unborn existed centuries before Christ. The Hammurabic code did, and also ancient codes of the Sumerians, the Assyrians, the Hittites and the Persians prohibited the striking of a woman that caused the death of her unborn child. These laws were punitive and also involved compensation.

In a fear-inspiring way children are made in the womb, and they are “an inheritance from Jehovah.” As for our use of this inheritance, “each of us will render an account for himself to God.”​—Ps. 127:3; Rom. 14:12.

[Footnotes]

[Blurb on page 13]

If a mother ends the life of her baby a few days before its birth, it’s legal. If she does it a day after its birth, it’s murder

[Blurb on page 14]

It is his defenselessness that makes him such a convenient victim

[Blurb on page 15]

“I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion”​—Hippocratic Oath