Abortionist: A 2nd trimester abortion is ‘the most horrifying procedure I can think about’

The late Dr. Bernard Nathanson once recorded a video of a D&E procedure, documenting its brutality. A D&E, which involves dismembering a preborn baby with forceps, is so brutal that even one doctor who has done thousands of  abortions won’t perform it anymore.

Former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who died in 2011, made two films showing abortion procedures. One, The Silent Scream, was a recording on ultrasound of a first trimester baby being aborted. Though somewhat sensationalized and dated by today’s standards, the film had a huge impact when it came out in 1979, a time when few pictures and videos of aborted babies were in existence. Nathanson followed it up with Eclipse of Reason, showing the abortion by D&E of a second trimester baby.

In 1996, The Daily Mail described Eclipse of Reason this way:

One moment it is a healthy `child’ with less than four months to go to full term; the next it is lying, a tangled heap of bloodied human remains, on the table beside the instruments of its destruction.

Skull, fingers and spine are crushed almost beyond recognition – but not quite. The tell-tale remains say clearly that this was a person who might have lived.

In Eclipse of Reason, Dr. Nathanson interviews abortionist Dr. Jay Kelinson, who says that although he has performed thousands of abortions, he won’t do a D&E because he finds the procedure too horrifying:

Interviewer: How many abortions do think you performed in your career?

Kelinson: I’d say I probably performed 10,000 or more. I can remember days when I would do 30, 35 abortions.

Interviewer: Would you do second trimester abortions, D&E’s even for medical reasons?

Kelinson:  No, absolutely not. That is the most horrifying procedure I can think about. There is just absolutely no way I would ever do that.

Below is a diagram of a D&E. It shows how the baby is dismembered slowly, taken apart piece by piece.

Of course, first trimester abortions also dismember preborn babies – if they don’t obliterate them completely. Done by suction, first trimester abortions pull the baby through a tube, often breaking him or her into pieces along the way. (A number of doctors who perform these abortions admit that the baby is alive during it.) You can see pictures of 9-week-old babies aborted by suction here (warning; graphic). The video below shows what happens in an early suction (aspiration) D&C abortion, using non-graphic medical animation.

In a D&E, however, the abortionist has to see each part of the baby as he tears it off and extracts it.  He is physically and intimately involved in the killing, pulling the baby apart instead of flipping a switch on a suction machine. Also, the baby at this stage is far more developed.

Kelinson is not the only abortionist who is distressed by D&E abortions. Other doctors have refused to do them. I will talk about some of these other doctors in a future article.