A North Carolina abortionist was recently featured in the News & Observer, decrying the state’s new law that will protect preborn children from abortion after 12 weeks. The article, which calls Dr. Matthew Zerden’s work a “vital resource,” describes the new law as “onerous,” and uses the word “care” numerous times to describe the act of killing the preborn child.
However, it fails to describe the reality of what the law actually sets out to do: protect preborn human beings from a brutal, deadly procedure.
The most common abortion procedure committed during the second trimester is the dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure. This is a brutal process in which the preborn child is ripped apart limb by limb with a sopher clamp. Once the abortionist removes all the pieces, they are reassembled so that the abortionist can ensure nothing is missing. Former abortionist Dr. Kathi Aultman describes the process in the following video:
Dr. Anthony Levatino, another former abortionist, previously described in graphic detail the effect of committing this procedure. “The head of a baby that age is about the size of a plum and is now free floating inside the uterine cavity,” he explained.“You can be pretty sure you have hold of it if the sopher clamp is spread about as far as your fingers will allow. You will know you have it right when you crush down on the clamp and see a pure white gelatinous material issue from the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. You can then extract the skull pieces. If you have a really bad day like I often did, a little face may come out and stare back at you.”
Dr. Levatino is not the only one to describe being impacted by this gruesome form of abortion.
Registered nurse Brenda Pratt-Shafer previously worked in a late-term abortion facility, and later wrote a book in which she discussed the trauma she experienced after witnessing a D&E procedure. “[The abortionist] clamped down hard and with a twisting and tearing motion, ripped the leg from the little body. He brought it out and threw it in the pan beside me. I stood in horror, as I looked at that little leg in the pan with perfectly formed toes! I had never seen such a small human body part,” she wrote. “The next time he went in, he tore off an arm with hands and little fingers! I could see the fetus on the ultrasound screen trying to get away from the forceps!”
One abortionist, Susan Wicklund, described being so horrified by D&E procedures that she refused to commit abortions after 14 weeks. “Seeing an arm being pulled through the vaginal canal was shocking. One of the nurses in the room escorted me out when the colour left my face… Not only was it a visceral shock; this was something I had to think deeply about,” she said.
Many abortionists have gone on record to admit that D&E abortions are “destructive and violent,” and will refuse to commit them because of their graphic nature. Some states have outlawed the procedure altogether.
While the News & Observer article goes to great pains to evoke sympathy for an abortionist who will no longer be able to commit a brutal procedure on preborn humans after 12 weeks, in understanding the reality of what the law is doing — protecting innocent humans from a particularly ruthless way to die — it is clear that the law is a victory for the preborn children who will be spared this gruesome death.
