David C. Reardon interviewed many women who had abortions for his book Aborted Women: Silent No More. This powerful book contains heartbreaking testimonies from women who regretted their abortions, as well as the most extensive survey of post-abortion women I’ve ever been able to find. Among the many testimonies in the book, Reardon presents the story of “Molly Graham,” who worked in a hospital and assisted in abortion procedures.
According to Aborted Women Silent No More, Graham had had several abortions and was not troubled by them when she began working as an anesthesiologist at an unnamed hospital that performed abortions. She assisted in numerous abortion procedures, but eventually become pro-life and would go on to counsel women at a crisis pregnancy center.
Graham’s epiphany was similar to Abby Johnson’s in that one pivotal incident caused her to realize, all at once, how wrong abortion was. It was a late-term abortion in which the baby was born alive.
In Graham’s own words:
“The last time I gave anesthesia for an abortion, it was to be a hysterotomy [a C-section abortion, where the baby is removed before viability and set aside to die, seldom performed today,] because the woman was about 6 ½ to 7 months pregnant. I put her to sleep as usual, the incision was made in the abdomen, then into the uterus, and a baby was pulled out – I mean a fully developed, moving, breathing baby. It hit me like a ton of bricks – the baby was put into a bucket of water and drowned. I was shaken; I knew at that moment I’d stood silently by and condoned murder, not only this time, but many times before. I told my boss I would no longer give anesthesia for abortions and was removed from those duties.”
Unfortunately, I was not able to track down more information about Graham because David Reardon used a pseudonym for her. But her experience is, sadly, not an isolated one. I wrote a series of articles on cases of babies born alive at clinics which can be found elsewhere on Live Action’s site.
Source: David C Reardon Aborted Women: Silent No More (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway books, 1987) 308
