A recent episode of the popular show ‘Call the Midwife’ featured an impassioned plea by main character Trixie for the legalization of abortion, citing her experience caring for women suffering from botched, illegal abortions. The scene takes place during a radio show in 1966 in Great Britain, where, in real life, abortion was decriminalized the following year. Midwife Trixie advocates for the proposed bill against the testimony of two men who oppose it, claiming erroneously that abortion is only “a last resort” and that legalizing abortion would protect women. But legal abortion is neither clean nor safe.
During her speech, Trixie cites her experience caring for women “bleeding to death in dirty rooms, up back-alleys.” Trixie’s implication that legalized abortions would be clean and safe abortions isn’t supported by the facts. In reality, abortion advocates have fought tooth and nail against virtually every meaningful abortion safety measure proposed since 1973, and women have suffered the consequences.
Women’s deaths from legal abortions
Perhaps Call the Midwife has never heard of Keisha Atkins, Lakisha Wilson, Tonya Reaves, Cree Sheppard, Jennifer Morbelli, and Jamie Lee Morales, who all died in the last 10 years from complications of legal abortions in the United States. That’s not surprising since major media outlets consistently ignore abortion-related maternal deaths.
Just last year, a woman whose name has not yet been released due to an ongoing criminal investigation died mere hours after her abortion at an Alabama facility, and another died in a Baltimore abortion facility. In 2018, a hemorrhaging woman had to call 911 from the sidewalk for herself after the abortion business kicked her out because it was closing time. There are many, many other women who’ve died at the hands of abortionists, but whose names we’ll never know because of the lack of legal accountability surrounding the abortion industry. Only about half of all U.S. states are required to report abortion complications.
“Filthy” facilities
Abortion businesses are notoriously dirty, despite the legality of abortion. Women’s Medical Services in Michigan was forced to close its doors after multiple violations were cited. Photos of the abortion business showed stained medical equipment near an examination chair, trash near lab equipment, and holes in a leaky ceiling that was falling apart. The investigator also reported blood dripping in a sink in a patient room and other violations that posed a danger to “human life and public welfare.”
That facility is not alone. Whole Women’s Health is a chain abortion business that has been found to have a rusty abortion suction machine that could cause infections and that staff failed to properly sterilize equipment. And reviews by women who visited abortion businesses in New York City call the clinics “filthy,” “disgusting,” “dirty,” and “Like something out of a back alley.”
Abortionist Ulrich Klopfer died in 2019 and after his death, the remains of 2,246 decomposing aborted children were found at his residence, along with 160 more in the trunk of a vehicle. While inspecting his facility, witnesses discovered that Klopfer performed abortions in a basement described as “hideous,” “unsanitary,” and a “dungeon.”
Perhaps Call the Midwife is also unaware of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell, whose horrific practices at his Pennsylvania abortion facility were accidentally exposed during a drug raid by the FBI in 2013. At the time of the raid, aborted baby parts were found in cut-open milk jugs on shelves and next to employee lunches in refrigerators. Blood stains were everywhere, along with cat feces, and the air smelled like urine. Prosecutors learned that unlicensed staff regularly administered anesthesia to abortion patients. Gosnell was convicted of manslaughter for the sedative overdose death of a 41-year-old refugee woman who sought an abortion at his clinic. Worse, litigation for the case exposed the devastating, repeated cover-up of Gosnell’s horrific actions by the very regulatory health agencies that should have protected women and shut him down years before.
READ: Women discuss suffering forced abortions: ‘They strapped me down’
Far from being outliers, the examples above are simply a few of the most egregious, known cases of medical malpractice and deaths. A recent report from Americans United for Life found common themes at 39 abortion facilities across the country whose safety and inspection records showed a failure to use proper sanitary procedures. According to the 197-page report, “[W]omen are being killed and injured in unspeakable numbers in a virtually unregulated regime of ‘abortion on demand.'”
To this day, abortion safety numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are woefully inadequate and incomplete, relying heavily on self-reporting that assumes the abortion industry will police itself. Indeed, the abortion industry has abandoned its “safe, legal, and rare” mantra, instead prioritizing the sacred cow of “access” to abortion.
Trixie’s plea for legalized abortion may have pulled at the heartstrings of Call the Midwife viewers across the globe, but the true picture of devastation following the legalization of abortion is far from warm and fuzzy. Viewers took to social media to celebrate Trixie’s pro-abortion speech, but the legalization of abortion has been nothing to celebrate. The destruction of millions of innocent preborn children each year coupled with the countless women who have suffered severe injuries and even death after their legal abortions point to the truth — abortion is not safe no matter where it is carried out.
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