Live Action’s new, incredibly impactful series, “Face to Face,” brings together in conversation several individuals who have participated in or experienced abortion in first hand in different ways. The series will involve people from varying vantage points — former abortionists, abortion survivors, and women who have personally had abortions.
The first episode features former abortionists Dr. Anthony Levatino and Dr. Kathi Aultman, who sit across the table from abortion survivors Claire Culwell and Melissa Ohden. Hosting the discussion is Live Action founder and president Lila Rose.
He committed saline abortions. She survived a saline abortion meant to end her life.
Aultman and Levatino first explain their history of committing abortions, with Aultman estimating she committed about 500 abortions and Levatino saying he committed nearly 1,200. Decades ago during his training, Levatino participated in saline abortions — a now mostly-defunct procedure in which the amniotic fluid is removed from the womb and replaced with saline, chemically burning the baby to death in the process. “It’s just a horrific procedure,” Levatino explained.
The brutal saline abortion is exactly the type of procedure Ohden survived. “I soaked in that toxic salt solution,” she explained. “On the fifth day of the abortion procedure, I was finally expelled from the womb, delivered at St. Luke’s Hospital in Sioux City, Iowa. Not because they were intending for me to be born alive and they would provide me medical care, but simply because that’s where that late-term abortion was being performed. And the day that I now celebrate as my birthday is the day that I was accidentally born alive.”
A D&E abortion killed her twin at 20 weeks, but she survived
Culwell survived a dismemberment (D&E) abortion at 20 weeks, noting that her mother went to the hospital four weeks after the abortion because she knew something was wrong. There she learned that the abortion had successfully killed Culwell’s twin, but not Culwell herself.
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“I weighed three pounds. I had a dislocated hip and I had clubbed feet,” Culwell said of her birth. “And [my mother] had a ‘dry birth‘, and so she was told that those complications were due to that and due to the abortion.”
When Rose asked Culwell how it felt to hear Levatino and Aultman describe abortion, she said, “It’s hard for me to hear that the humanity of my twin was not recognized as you pieced babies’ bodies back together, because I know at 20 weeks my twin must have felt something.”
“I survived my birth mother’s D&E abortion that aborted my twin next to me and I’ve always wondered what my twin actually experienced and what maybe I experienced in the womb next to my twin. Could you describe maybe what both of us would have experienced?” Culwell asked Levatino.
“Before anesthetic…they would feel everything as far as being pulled apart,” Levatino said. “They would feel the pain of being dismembered until and unless that anesthesia kicked in, if they’re even using the kind of anesthesia that would do that.”
“In our case, there was no anesthesia, just a paracervical block, which just blocks the pain in the cervix — but the baby would not have been anesthetized at all,” Aultman added.
Regrets and forgiveness
“It’s so hard to be with abortion survivors knowing that I’m the perpetrator, I’m the evil one,” Aultman added tearfully. “I’m just thankful for your forgiveness, which you’ve both given me,” she told Ohden and Culwell. “I’m sorry.”
When asked if he thinks about the preborn children he aborted, Levatino’s answer was sobering.
“Yeah, I think about them. I lost my daughter before her sixth birthday. My brother Mark was my closest friend in the world. He died of cancer 12 years ago and I believe, certainly I want to believe, but I do believe that when my time comes, the two of them are going to be there. I’ll know it’s time because they’re going to be there. I believe that.”
“But,” he added emotionally, “it scares the hell out of me that maybe those 1200 kids are going to be there too.”
Dr. Aultman ended with a message for everyone watching. “Women need to know that the whole thing is a big lie, that abortion is not the answer. We don’t need abortion to succeed, and it is not health care,” she said. “So much of abortion is a huge lie, you know, and we’re telling the truth about it.”
