Analysis

Medical student on abortion remains: “You’ll see arms and stuff”

In 2008, the Reproductive Rights Action League (RALY) at Yale held an abortion workshop to commemorate Roe v. Wade. It was also sponsored by Yale Medical Students for Choice.  The participants received training in how to do abortions. They simulated abortion procedures with abortion instruments and papaya fruit.

One of the organizers, a medical student named Rasha Khoury, said the following in an article about the event in Yale Daily News. She was talking about the remains left in the suction device after an abortion: “It’s not as scary as it seems. It’s just blood and mucus. You’ll be able to see arms and stuff, but still just miniscule.”

These two statements seem to contradict each other. “Blood and mucus” with arms? The quote reveals the grisly truth that abortion tears apart developing babies.

Pro-life bloggers including Jill Stanek  and Ryan T. Anderson at First Things began publicizing the comment by Khoury, prompting Khoury to claim her words had been “misrepresented.” The original article soon disappeared from the Yale Daily News website.

Khoury clarified her remarks by saying:

When I was asked what the contents removed from the uterus with the aspirator looked like, I said “blood and mucus,” referring to products of conception, which are then carefully studied in a separate room to ensure the gestational sac and fetal parts (if old enough), are present, ensuring that the procedure was carried out successfully.

The more sanitized term “fetal parts” is less emotional, but essentially means the same thing. Those “fetal parts” include arms.

Also from the original article:

Evans and Khoury also explained the finer points of abortion-clinic etiquette, including some potentially sensitive terminology. Khoury said physicians performing abortions generally refer to the aborted fetus remains as “POC,” an acronym for “product of conception,” and refer to fetus’ hearts as “FH.”

Abortion providers may use whatever euphemisms they want to try to cover up the grisly nature of abortion procedures, but the fact that they even need to use those euphemisms shows a reality of abortion that is deeply disquieting.

Khoury also talked about the women who come in for abortions:

Often times, women are crying and cursing and saying they’re going to hell, It may be a quick and easy medical procedure, but it definitely is a very involved social-medical procedure.…

This doesn’t sound all that empowering for women, either. If abortion was only a “quick and easy medical procedure” there would be no reason for tears. But, as then president of Planned Parenthood Faye Wattleton said all the way back in 1989, “women are not stupid … women have always known that there was a life there.”

Additional souces: “Papaya Abortions,” Jill Stanek, January 28, 2008

Ryan T Anderson “Yale Medical Abortion School,” First Things, January 28, 2008

John Connolly Yale Daily News Deletes Article on Abortion-Teaching Presentation,” LifeSiteNews, January 25, 2008

“Yale Daily News: A Tool for Future Abortionists?” JivinJehoshaphat, January 24, 2008

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