A nurse identified only as “Julia” talked about her experience as a nurse at a teaching hospital that did abortions. Her story appears at Priests for Life. She says:
20 weeks
I was a nurse practicing in North Carolina. I worked on a Gynecology/tumor unit at a teaching hospital. The unit included 4 prostaglandin abortion beds. The babies who were aborted were between 18-20wks of age. Most women were young, but occasionally there were patients whose babies had life threatening defects. I assisted the doctor in the initial placement of the prostaglandin. Then the women were left on the floor to deliver.
In an abortion by prostaglandin, powerful hormones are used to induce labor and the woman essentially gives birth, but to a baby that’s too young to survive. The contractions are so violent that they can kill the baby and are extremely painful for the mother. Babies aborted by prostaglandin often have bruising over their entire bodies. For the most part, the abortion business stopped using prostaglandin because so many babies were born alive.
Julia says that seeing an actual abortion or delivery is so much different than seeing a video or pictures of one:
One thing that is often forgotten by people is that there is a big difference between a picture of a baby at a certain number of weeks pregnant, and seeing and experiencing a birth. There is a sensation of life, of a living thing. It is like the difference between a picture of a puppy and a real puppy. Even a movie does not capture the whole picture. All of your senses are involved.
It did not take many abortions before Julia realized that what she was participating in was wrong:
After the second abortion I began changing my own thoughts about abortions and after a few more I could no longer participate. After several more years, my faith began to grow and with that my guilt increased. I spoke with a therapist and my parish priest. I asked for God’s forgiveness, but it took a while before I could let go of my guilt.
Now I want to do what I can to stop abortions.
Because Julia chose not to reveal too much about her identity, I was unable to interview her and don’t know what she’s currently doing… But clearly she was affected by what she saw. Below is a picture of a baby aborted by prostaglandin at 20 weeks.
The baby was aborted at Northwest General Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Smuggled out of a pathology lab with other aborted children in 1996, the baby was given to Citizens for Pro-Life Society and given a Christian burial. Before the burial, pro-lifers took photos of all of the aborted children to document their existence. You can see the photos here.
