Abortionist: “we are the executioners”

Pro-Choice author Magda Denes, PhD, interviewed clinic workers and observed abortions in a busy abortion clinic shortly after Roe versus Wade. Her book, In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death inside an Abortion Hospital is still valuable reading, even after all these years.

One of the doctors that Magda Denes interviewed describes his reaction to being called upon to save some unborn babies while aborting others:

You have to become a bit schizophrenic. In one room you encourage the patient that the slight irregularity of the fetal heart is not important – that she is going to have a fine, healthy baby. Then in the next room you assure another woman on whom you just did a saline abortion, that it’s good that the heart is already irregular… She has nothing to worry about, she is not going to have a live baby.

A saline abortion was performed by injecting caustic saline solution into the amniotic fluid around the baby. This salt solution would poison the baby, often burning the baby’s skin and damaging the child’s lungs as he breathed in the toxic fluid. The woman would then go through labor and deliver her dead child. This technique was abandoned for two reasons. For one, it was dangerous to the mother. For another, it often resulted in live births. For example, Gianna Jessen was aborted by saline, survived, and found a loving adoptive family. Most babies who survived being aborted by saline, however, were not as lucky. Today, the poison of choice is digoxin. Babies are still sometimes born alive.

… At the beginning we were doing abortions on smaller fetuses… And the kicking and heartbeat did not manifest itself as much. I think if I had started with 24 weekers right off the bat, I would’ve had a much greater conflict in my own mind if this was the same as murder or not. But since we started off slowly with 15 – 16 weekers, the fetus just never got consideration. Then gradually, the whole range of cases started to become larger.

All of a sudden, one noticed that at the time of the saline infusion, there was a lot of activity in the uterus. It wasn’t fluid currents. It was obviously the fetus being distressed by swallowing the salt solution and kicking violently through the death trauma. You can either face it, or turn around and say it’s uterine contractions. That, however, would be repressing, since as a doctor you obviously know that it is not. Now whether you admit this to the patient is another matter. Her distress by unwanted pregnancy is to be the primary consideration, ahead of any possible consideration for the fetus. We just have to face it. Somebody has to do it. Unfortunately, we are the executioners in this instance.

This doctor does not admit to his patient that her baby is suffering pain. I would be surprised if he told her, before her abortion, that her baby would die violently and painfully. In his own words, he is the “executioner” of the baby.

There is much to take away from this quote. There is the fact that since abortion was legalized, women have had the ultimate power of life or death over their children. In one case, doctors will aggressively fight to save the life of an unborn baby; in another, they will go to great lengths kill the child. The irony of doctors fighting one day to save a child’s life and then, later, to kill another child of the same age, is striking.

The second thing to take away is that babies suffer violently in abortions. The methods of performing an abortion today are no more humane than those of the past. Today, babies are poisoned with digoxin or, more often, dismembered in utero in a procedure called a or D&E. (You can see an illustration of how these abortions are performed here )

Finally, abortion doctors know exactly what they’re doing when they abort children – they kill babies. You could read other quotes from abortionists admitting this fact here.

These disturbing revelations should encourage pro-lifers to continue to speak out against abortion.

I believe a human body has to develop to a certain point before it can accept a soul. To me this idea makes a lot of sense, simply because we can see every day that if a body with a soul is degraded past a certain point of operation, the soul cannot remain in that body. So, likewise, the fetus has to reach a certain level of developmental operation to receive a soul.

What is going on these days, however, is so far beyond the past arguments of where that point of “soul entrance” is, that abortion is no longer debateable as an atrocity. THIRD trimester abortions, PRE-BIRTH abortions - hell, POST BIRTH MURDERS, not only happen, they’re actually COMMON.

So no matter how you want to view the subject, or what you position is on the soul-body union, it’s become a holocaust.

Note: Just because I don’t believe the soul arrives immediately upon conception, doesn’t mean that I believe early abortion isn’t harmful. The human body, contrary to liberal opinion, is not just a piece of meat. There are profound spiritual, psychic and energy connections between the mother’s body and the fetus. Simply killing the fetus, I believe, sends a traumatic shock back into the mother’s body, mind and soul, and leads directly to damage on a number of levels. There is some medical research on this, but (of course) not a lot.

Liberals and many people don’t believe in souls.... Your argument falls short.

Even if they developed a procedure where the baby felt no pain it would still be wrong.

Life is defined medically in human beings as a beating heart. When your heart stops beating then you are declared dead. A fetus develops a heartbeat around age 3weeks. Abortion after 3 weeks is technically homicide according to the medical definitions.

But we know brain activity also means Life. Week 4 is when the fetal brain divides into 5 parts and a flurry of brain activity can be seen.

If Roe v Wade was decided today then abortions would be banned from Week 3/4 onward as they should be. Of course most women don’t learn they are pregnant until after this point so the Abortion Mills would be put out of business.

I say let abortion be legal in week 1/2... When science devices a way to tell that early. Woman would have to wear a pregnancy alarm 24/7.

What utter drivel:

I believe a human body has to develop to a certain point before it can accept a soul.

It's a question of biology, not your puerile stabs at theology. The developing entity is either biologically human or it is not. But if it isn't, then what pray tell is it? (If you answer a zygote or a fetus you are merely describing stages in human development similar to prepubescent or fully adult).

However if you really wish to consider your "belief" as the determining criterion, despite the fact religion is not supposed to play any role in the discussion, consider these words from a truly serious thinker, You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body'

Liberals and many people don’t believe in souls.... Your argument falls short.

It only "falls short" in the sense that we dan't have the technology (that I know of) to detect when a soul enters a human body. In India it is taught that this occurs between month 4 and month 5. Obviously an abortion just before that time would be of a fully functioning (but still immature) human body, because that is what the soul would require.

For me the soul is the point. For others, there are other thresholds they feel are most important. I'm not arguing with anyone, or challenging them. It's far too bitter a subject for that - not to mention that there is an entire abortion industry based on misrepresentation, starting with the fact that the embryo is a human body from the start, and not a "bunch of cells."

What utter drivel: "I believe a human body has to develop to a certain point before it can accept a soul."
It's a question of biology, not your puerile stabs at theology. The developing entity is either biologically human or it is not. But if it isn't, then what pray tell is it? (If you answer a zygote or a fetus you are merely describing stages in human development similar to prepubescent or fully adult).

However if you really wish to consider your "belief" as the determining criterion, despite the fact religion is not supposed to play any role in the discussion, consider these words from a truly serious thinker, You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body'

You need more coffee. Or maybe a punch in the mouth.

I'm not interested in your atheism, your thumbing through a thesaurus looking for what you believe are intelligent-sounding insults, or your child's level understanding of biology. I explained that I believe a soul would require a certain level of fetal developmet to contain it. For the biologically challenged, that means I think it's harder for a human soul to live in a rock, a tree, a bird, a monkey or a fetus that hasn't developed up to a certain point. That's called a biological threshold.

And why shouldn't (what you call) religion play a role in a discussion about abortion? I hate to break this to you, but the vast majority of human beings believe they have/are souls in a human body. But if you are in the "thinking meat" minority, then why not just go straight to the law of the jungle? It must piss you off when valuable resources are used to help the disabled, too.

The human soul is the ENTIRE issue of abortion.

ALL of it.

And if that makes you squirm with rage...

Good.

My point is that you need a more solid argument than souls or religion.

While that might be your personal reason for opposing abortion, it isn’t good enough to base public policy on. The reason that there are many different religious beliefs, your example of Hindu’s from India is a good one.

As a thought experiment, if technology could progress and in 1000 years we could block a a body from receiving a soul, for the purposes of abortion or growing body replacement parts for the parents... Under the “don’t kill it because it has a soul” basis, this would be medically ethical.

That is why I do NOT base my opposition to abortion on religion.

My point is that you need a more solid argument than souls or religion.
While that might be your personal reason for opposing abortion, it isn’t good enough to base public policy on. The reason that there are many different religious beliefs, your example of Hindu’s from India is a good one.
As a thought experiment, if technology could progress and in 1000 years we could block a a body from receiving a soul, for the purposes of abortion or growing body replacement parts for the parents... Under the “don’t kill it because it has a soul” basis, this would be medically ethical.

That is why I do NOT base my opposition to abortion on religion.

I don't know what you mean by "more solid," but what you are explaining is contradictory. "Public policy" on the one had, is something you apparently believe must be purely scientifically based. Which you state excludes the invocation of the discussion of a soul in a human body.

Okay, I get that that is your position.

But then you give an example of a human body that specifically, positively is confirmed as not having a soul, made for supposedly ethical reason of replacing damaged or failing body parts, and you reject that idea.

Well you can't have it both ways. Is the body sacred because it has a soul, or is it not? If it is, then how do you reject the inclusion of the considerations of the soul in the issue of abortion for public policy? If it's not, what is wrong with crowing human body parts if the body is known to lack a soul?

Either be consistant, or reject consistancy. Many public policies take into consideration things that cannot be measured by science (yet). That doesn't mean they aren't compelling, or even crucial, consideration in public policy matters.

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