Dr. William Harrison was a Los Angeles abortionist who performed many thousands of abortions in his career. The New York Times paid him tribute in an obituary after his death in 2010 at the age of 75. The New York Times called him “a defender of abortion rights” and painted him as an unselfish and committed champion of women.
In 2006, Dr. Harrison appeared on Nightline, interviewed by reporter Martin Bashir. Bashir asked him a series of questions which the abortionist answered on the air.
According to Dr. Harrison:
My conscience calls me to do abortions because I consider the mother’s life much, much more important than that tiny little blob of tissue.
Martin Bashir, however, does not let that fly. Apparently, he knows the facts of fetal development and in a move rather atypical for the usually abortion supportive media, he says:
It’s interesting you say it’s a blob of tissue, but as you know after just 21 days, the heart is pumping blood. At 42 days, the child has recordable brain waves. And you are, every day, relentlessly terminating that life, and you’re happy with that?
The abortionist replies:
Am I happy with it? No, but I’m not distressed about it. I would be a lot more distressed if I could not terminate that life for the patient that that life is going to be a disaster for.
So Harrison, when challenged, goes from saying the baby is “a tiny little blob of tissue,”to admitting that abortion terminates a life.
Harrison would again make this admission, in 2007, in his essay entitled “Why I provide abortions.” He would say:
No one, neither the patient receiving an abortion, nor the person doing the abortion, is ever, at anytime, unaware that they are ending a life.
Back to the interview on Nightline, Harrison tells Martin Bashir:
I’ve had lots of patients who come in for second, third, fourth, fifth, even one who had nine abortions.
Bashir then asks:
Is that really appropriate?
Harrison replies:
If she needs nine abortions, yeah.
One wonders what kind of birth control a woman who “needs nine abortions” is using. Perhaps Dr. Harrison himself gives the answer:
Whether you have an abortion or not is relatively minor. Basically, abortion is a method of birth control. You know, it’s not the best method of birth control. But all it does is stop the birth of a baby that a woman doesn’t want at a time she doesn’t want it.
So it may seem that some of the women who come to Harrison, particularly those who have multiple abortions, are in fact using abortion as their sole (or at least primary) method of birth control. In another Live Action article, you can read about some of the reasons given by women who went to Harrison for abortions, including one who aborted because she thought her wedding dress would not fit “with a baby in there.”
Harrison goes on to say:
I’ve had one of the most emotionally satisfying careers that I can imagine anyone having. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is, when two weeks after a young woman has come in distraught and thinking that her life is ruined, and she comes back two – two weeks after the abortion and she is a new woman. She’s been given her life back.
Apparently, ripping apart babies like these ones, who were aborted at nine weeks, was emotionally satisfying to Harrison in the years he performed abortions.
The rest of the interview goes as follows:
Bashir: And for her to be born again, you’ve had to kill the fetus.
Harrison: Uh-huh. That’s right.
Bashir: And that’s a fair exchange?
Harrison:That’s a fair exchange.
The lives of unborn babies were cheap and expendable to Dr. Harrison. His words show how callous he had become after doing abortions for years. Pro-lifers must educate the public that the lives of these babies matter and that these children are not disposable.
Source: MARTIN BASHIR “THE ABORTIONIST” Nightline (ABC), 1/11/2006
