I recently stumbled across the testimony of Dr. Grant Clark. Dr. Clark performed abortions many years ago in California. In an interview with Oregon Right to Life, he described the two cases that convinced him to stop doing abortions.
One was a case where a woman remained pregnant after he had aborted her child and, several months later, gave birth to a healthy baby. (The woman had a rare condition in which she actually had two uteruses). She adopted the child out and sued the doctor for emotional distress and child-rearing costs (even though she didn’t keep the baby). Her greed and selfishness made him rethink his commitment to performing abortions.
The second case happened when he started doing late-term abortions. From the interview:
There were 2 cases that were significant in my life, and one of them was the beginning of acceptance of 2nd trimester abortions, which were accomplished by putting a needle into the uterus, draining off some fluid, to make sure that you were in the uterus, not the bladder or somewhere else with your needle, and injecting into the uterus a very strong salt solution, which would cause a: the baby to die, and contractions to begin, very shortly after the salt solution was in there, and the mother would then abort the baby.
Interviewer: She’d deliver a dead baby.
Doctor Clark: Deliver a dead baby. But in one case, she did not deliver a dead baby. It was a live baby that she delivered.
Interviewer: Do they not have their skin burned?
Doctor Clark: The skin was burned, it was hard to look at, and hard to realize that I killed a near-term baby. The dates that the mother had given me were wrong, and we had no real way of checking it at that time. Ultrasound and stuff has come in since then, so we can date a baby’s age fairly well, but not, not back then. And the baby was born alive and lived for an hour.
Interviewer: Was it a girl or a boy?
Doctor Clark: I don’t remember, and I didn’t want to remember.… But at that point I said, “No more 3rd or 2nd trimester abortions…”
Interviewer: was the mother aware the baby was born alive?
Doctor Clark: Yes, she was, and it was just a bad scene all the way around. I mean what was I supposed to do, smother it? Strangle it?… It was just, what do I do, so I took the coward’s way out and did nothing, and the baby died. As it probably would have anyway.
Rather than helping the badly injured baby, Dr. Clark admits he “took the coward’s way out” and let him or her die. Could the baby have survived if given help? There is no way to know, but babies have survived saline abortions and gone on to be adopted. For example, Gianna Jessen, whose story was the inspiration for the movie October Baby, was aborted in the same way as the child in this article and survived. She is now an internationally known pro-life speaker and activist who lives a full life despite having cerebral palsy as a result of the abortion.
Could the child Dr. Clark aborted, whose short life was full of pain, have been another Gianna?
Dr. Clark is now at peace with his time as an abortionist and says, “I know God has forgiven me.” He contacted Oregon Right to Life to tell his story in order to reveal how brutal and violent abortion is. He wanted to make his story public in an attempt to prevent abortions and encourage pro-lifers. He decided to contact Oregon Right to Life after seeing a billboard saying, “the score of abortion: one dead, one wounded.” In his own words:
And I thought, no, one dead, and a whole bunch of people wounded, including the doctor, the nurses involved, the anesthesiologist, the grandparents, you know, the father of the baby… all of these people have been wounded.… Knowing that I’ve been wounded, and knowing that I’ve wounded others, talking about it and bringing it out is something that is not good at all, is useful. It’s time to make a decision, and say, “this has to change.” Our society can’t go on this way, of pretending it’s hunky-dory. It’s not. It’s murder…
In his interview, he also describes first-trimester abortions done by suction:
… that was probably the most difficult part of the abortion procedure with the suction abortions, you had to go through what you suctioned out of the uterus and identify perfectly formed little arms and legs and little hands, skulls were usually crushed. Eyes and cute little noses – you just killed a baby. And I don’t care what you do, you can’t bring them back.
