Today a video released by the Center for Medical Progress shows Planned Parenthood employees picking apart the body of an 11-week-old aborted baby for organs to be sold. This is one way in which abortion generates profit for clinics. But the doctors performing abortions also make a great deal of money.
In a speech at the “Meet the Abortion Providers” convention sponsored by Pro-Life Action League, former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino reveals how profitable the abortion industry is. He discusses how much easier it is to make a living out of doing abortions than trying to earn the same amount of money delivering babies.
Along the way you find out you make a lot of money doing abortions…I’ll give you an example. When I am going to deliver a baby, I’m going to have that woman in my office for seven to eight months; she will have unlimited office visits. I get calls all hours of the day and night. More often than not, I’m getting up in the middle of the night.
In Eastern New York, I can tell you, at this time of year, it’s not a particularly fun thing to do: to go out in a blizzard and drive to the hospital, sit by a bedside for hours watching somebody in labor, accomplishing the delivery, hoping to God that everything works out well, as it usually does. And then following her afterward; follow-up visits in the office. Then you wait and you expect that everything’s over. Usually it is over, but sometimes its not.
Six or seven years later you suddenly get a request from a lawyer that they want the medical records because the baby has a problem of some sort. That doesn’t mean you’re responsible, but this nation is set up in such a way that families, if they have a deformed or an unhealthy child for any reason, and health care costs being what they are…You have no recourse; you have no source of funds other than going back and suing the people who did the delivery in the first place…Or, I can do an abortion. I can work in an abortion clinic.
I work 9 to 5; I’m never bothered at night; I never have to go out on weekends; I [earn] more money than my obstetrician brethren. And I don’t have to face the liability. That’s a big factor, a huge perk.
Levantino believes that women are more likely to sue when a baby is delivered with a physical or psychological disability then when they are injured in an abortion. Often, the shame of having an abortion causes women to accept substandard treatment, without protesting or suing for malpractice when things go wrong.
So performing abortions can be easy money. Of course, abortionists have to cope with seeing dismembered pieces of babies every day and deal with opposition from pro-life activists. But if they can put up with these things, abortions can be very profitable for them. Levatino says:
In my practice, we were averaging between $250 and $500 for an abortion, and it was cash. That’s the only time as a doctor you can say, either pay me up front or I’m not going to take care of you. It’s totally elective… Either you have the money or you don’t. And they get it.
Women in a vulnerable state, panicking and frightened about the future— often without the support they need— pay hundreds of dollars to abort their children. When you consider that a first trimester abortion takes less than 10 minutes to perform, you can imagine how much money a doctor can make in one day.
This is not to say that all abortionists are in it primarily for the money. Many truly believe they are helping women go on with their lives; many are dedicated to the cause of abortion-on-demand. But the fact that abortion is so profitable for the doctors is undeniably a reason why some choose to do abortion work.
