The abortion industry purports to care about women and women’s health while entirely ignoring the child in the womb. However, former abortion workers frequently tell a very different story about the supposed “care” women receive at abortion facilities. For example, in a pro-abortion Ms. magazine article, an abortionist described how abortion facilities where she worked engaged in practices that made women’s abortions very painful:
I felt patients in some facilities were given suboptimal pain medication. Sometimes doctors didn’t wait long enough for medications (e.g., paracervical blocks) to work. In one clinic, extra IV pain medication was offered, but for an additional fee. I worried that women might endure unnecessary pain because they didn’t have enough money.1
Former abortion worker Shelley Guillory, who worked at Delta Clinic in Louisiana, said in a webinar that her facility did not offer anesthesia at all:
We didn’t do sedation. There was no sedation done, regardless of how far along, anywhere from eight weeks to 16 weeks. It was all done the same. No medication, nothing. You [lay] there and you took the pain, and that was that.
READ: PBS documentary failed to show painful reality of abortion pill experience
A willingness to subject women to extreme pain, whether by withholding anesthesia or rushing abortions and not waiting for painkillers to take effect, shows little care for the well-being of women, and more concern with making money.
An abortion doula who volunteers at an abortion facility says, “Some of the first-trimester patients scream and cry and shake.”
Women who had abortions also discuss pain. One woman says, “I expected to be sedated for the actual abortion, but Dr. Woods only used local anesthesia. While the whole procedure took about 15 minutes, the pain left me blanched and hyperventilating.”
Another woman revealed:
I just got a surgical abortion yesterday at 10 weeks 3 days. I didn’t have a driver so I couldn’t be sedated. The doc did give me some kind of numbing shot in my cervix but I’m not sure it did anything for me.
From the start, inserting the speculum, the shot, and the procedure itself was one of the most painful experiences I’ve ever had… I can’t describe the pain, the nurse/assistant was holding my hands and reminding me to breathe. I’m almost in tears thinking of what I went through. Near the end I broke down crying.
She remains pro-choice and says she does not regret her abortion.
A woman who gave her testimony in an amicus brief for the Supreme Court case Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt wrote:
I was informed that it wasn’t going to hurt, and it was the most painful thing I ever experience[d] to date. I remember the nurses telling me to be quiet so that I don’t scare the other patients… I was told that this was the best option for my situation, and it was the worst choice I ever made.
An abortionist who was given the pseudonym of “Clara” spoke of her own abortion in an article in The Santa Fe Reporter. She said:
I felt fine when I walked in the room, laid down, and then, all of a sudden, I had pain that I didn’t know was possible. Labor pain starts slowly and goes on and on and on. This is much shorter. You feel absolutely fine, and then you suddenly feel attacked by this person between your legs.
This abortionist who made the remark above travels from abortion facility to abortion facility doing abortions. It is ironic that she saw her own abortion as being “attacked,” yet she herself commits abortions.
Researchers Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles, who wrote a book about post-abortion complications, wrote:
Little is known about the accuracy and extent of information given to abortion patients about the level of pain to expect… Consent forms give the impression that the sensation will resemble heavy menstrual cramps. But this is not what women report. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the pain levels during abortion can reach the severe range.2
Researchers who conducted a study on women’s pain during early abortions admitted, “We were surprised to note that the majority of women reported moderate or more discomfort during the procedure; we had not expected as many women to report severe pain.”
Another study that relied on questionnaires found that “the average abortion pain ranked higher than that experienced by people suffering from fractures, sprains, neuralgia, arthritis, and was equal to that reported by amputees experiencing phantom limb pain and patients with cancer.”
The fact that so many abortion facilities allow women to suffer extreme pain is another piece of evidence that the abortion industry doesn’t care about women.
- Anonymous “I Am an Abortion Doctor” Ms June – July 1999
- Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles Women’s Health after Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence Second Edition (Toronto, Canada: The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, 2003)116
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