Betrayal or Integrity

Arland K. Nichols | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

When it comes to protecting the right to life of the most vulnerable human being in our midst, the infant in the womb, there is no “middle ground” or “common ground” to be found. Human dignity must be protected and upheld.

Imagine for a moment that you are a physician or a nurse in a fairly typical operating room.  Lying on the operating table before you is a young woman who is eighteen weeks pregnant.  You are also eighteen weeks pregnant and will, in a matter of months, welcome the child within your womb into the world.  Turning to your patient, you dutifully begin the surgery that has been scheduled—an abortion.

Apparently, for at least one physician, this is no mere thought experiment.  Driven by “feminist pro-choice” ideology and desensitized by years of performing such abortions, this is the experience of a pregnant abortionist who writes for a popular pro-abortion blog.  She describes the graphic and shocking details of her experience in the following words:

I realized that I was more interested than usual in seeing the fetal parts when I was done, since they would so closely resemble those of my own fetus. I went about doing the procedure as usual…I used electrical suction to remove the amniotic fluid, picked up my forceps and began to remove the fetus in parts, as I always did.  With my first pass of the forceps, I grasped an extremity and began to pull it down. I could see a small foot hanging from the teeth of my forceps. With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick—a fluttery “thump, thump” in my own uterus…There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a “thump, thump” in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely…It was an overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics…It was one of the more raw moments in my life.

This disturbing “raw moment” is disheartening and troubling, to say the least.  Her account reveals the gruesome reality of what is happening in clinics throughout the world.  Every ounce of this doctor’s body (and her baby’s body) reeled at what she was doing and vociferated that her actions were evil.

No euphemism made in reference to abortion can completely hide the gruesome reality of the choice that is made when a physician or mother chooses abortion.  This is not “preventative health,” “choice,” “women’s rights,” “reproductive medicine,” or “health care.”  It is one thing—murder—the killing of an innocent, vulnerable, and dependent human being.  The experience of this physician has depicted in the “rawest” of terms the scientific fact that, along each of the developmental stages (zygotic, embryonic, and fetal), that which is in the womb is a human being.  But somehow, the truth has not hindered her from continuing her gruesome task.  She writes, “Doing second trimester abortions did not get easier after my pregnancy; in fact, dealing with little infant parts of my born baby only made dealing with dismembered fetal parts sadder.”

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.