Pictures of aborted babies: Are they accurate?

One of the first pages that pops up on Google when you look up “abortion picture” is this blog, which presents a photo that was allegedly taken in an abortion clinic by a woman who aborted a six-week-old unborn baby. The picture, which is taken from a considerable distance away, shows what looks to the untrained eye like a jar of blood. The blog owner claims that this is a “true” picture of an abortion, and that pro-lifers’ pictures of aborted babies with hands, feet, faces, etc. are fake.

The blog accuses pro-lifers of lying:

The blog goes on to say:

Is the picture of the jar of blood really representative of the majority of abortions in America? Well…not so much.

First of all, the blogger’s numbers are way off. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s abortion statistics for 2009, (the most recent year that such statistics are available) the percentages are as follows.

• 6 weeks or less 35.2%

• 7-8 weeks: 34.6%

• Over 9 weeks: 31%

• Over 13 weeks: 10% (down from 12% a few years ago)

• Over 22 weeks: 1.3%

So we see that the number of abortions taking place at six weeks is much lower than the blogger claims it is. In reality, almost two thirds of abortions take place after six weeks.

A six-week-old baby has a beating heart and functioning brain, but she does not have developed fingers and toes, and her fragile body is often obliterated by the powerful suction machine. But at just seven weeks, you can see in this video from The Endowment for Human Development an embryo’s tiny hands moving while he hiccups. By 8 weeks, very few people could look at an unborn baby and not see him or her as a miniature human being. Here you can see an eight-week-old baby moving her arms, and the site describes how, by the eighth week, she shows signs of being right- or left-handed. Keep in mind that almost a third of all abortions take place after this time.

We know that many of the babies who are aborted look human (of course, the humanity of an unborn child is not based on how she looks – but that is a topic for another article.)

So are the photos accurate? To give further evidence, I would like to turn to a book written by pro-abortion feminist Wendy Simonds called Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996). You can acquire the book on Amazon. Simonds describes what she observed at a busy abortion clinic, and she shares interviews with the clinic staff.

Simonds is no friend to pro-lifers. In her own words, on page 229 of Abortion at Work, she states:

Simonds does not mince words – in her mind, people who oppose killing unborn children are no better than rapists. Later in the book, she goes on to describe how clinic workers bravely fought off “antis” (her term for pro-life demonstrators, from the word “anti-choice”). It is an understatement to say that Simonds is unlikely to be biased toward the pro-life viewpoint.

Yet Simonds includes in her book quotes from clinic workers speaking very candidly about what they do in the clinic. She quotes a clinic worker saying:

Another clinic worker speculates as to why the use of ultrasounds is controversial:

Another clinic worker, identified only as “Sarina,” describes a 21-week abortion. (Although only a small percentage of abortions take place at this time or later, there were over 11,000 in 2009.)

Another clinic worker, identified only as “Karen,” describes an abortion even more graphically:

Since the abortion she describes was done using forceps, it was probably a D&E abortion, done in the second trimester. You can read a former abortionist’s detailed description of such an abortion here.

A clinic worker named “Nell” explains why abortions can be so traumatic to perform:

One worker describes the difficulty of cleaning up after abortions and reveals that unborn babies look human even in the first trimester:

The clinic this abortion provider works at performs abortions up to 26 weeks.

So we see that the clinic workers at this unnamed but very busy abortion clinic saw the bodies of aborted babies on a daily basis, with arms, legs, feet, etc. But what did they say to their patients, the women who came in considering abortions? Wendy Simonds says:

The pictures of aborted babies shown by pro-lifers are representative of most (though not all) of abortions that happen in clinics today. While pro-lifers do need to acknowledge that not every abortion leaves behind a tiny, identifiable corpse, most do – and pro-lifers can use the pictures knowing that they are portraying the reality of abortion accurately.