Abortionist: We Invite Moms to Hold Their Babies After Abortions

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Sep 27, 2013   |   5:35PM   |   Washington, DC

A recent interview with late-term abortionist Dr. Susan Robinson has drawn significant attention for some of the ways Robinson attempts to humanize the process of destroying the lives of unborn children in late-term abortions.

Although surveys show women frequently regret their abortions and face a litany of medical and mental health problems following an abortion, Robinson attempts to make women feel better about their decision in a sick and twisted sort of way. From a report on the interview:

Jia Tolentino interviewed Susan Robinson, one of only four American abortionists who openly perform third-trimester abortions. Robinson is featured in the new documentary After Tiller, which premiered in New York last weekend:

Tolentino: I was really moved and amazed by the scene where you’re writing down a baby’s name, noting the family’s request for a memory box and a viewing, showing the little ink footprints. Do families often want to engage with their baby like this after an abortion? How many people are ready to—as you say—say hello to their baby at the same time that they’re telling it goodbye? 

Robinson: With fetal anomaly patients, we ask them right up front if they plan to hold their baby after it’s born. These patients, their emotional needs are so different from the ones who are looking at their pregnancy as an absolute disaster, who are just thinking, “Get it out of me, please, please, please.” Those patients—the maternal indications patients—they are not relating to their fetus as a baby, they’re relating to it as a problem.

But with a fetal indications patient—if she refers to it as her baby, I’ll refer to it as her baby. If she’s named the baby, I’ll use the baby’s name too. I would say that most of these patients do decide to see and hold their baby, although many of them have a hard time dealing with the idea at first. We’ll take remembrance photographs, we’ll give them a teddy bear, the footprints. I mean, imagine being six months pregnant and finding out your baby’s missing half its brain, and you’ve got this nursery you’ve painted at home, you’re so ready—I don’t want them to go home from the procedure with absolutely nothing to remember and honor the baby, and its birth.

Tolentino: Wow. You’ll say “birth?”

Robinson: Yes. I try to mirror what will be the most consoling to the patient. In general, these patients – fetal indications – do talk about giving birth, so I’ll say that as well.

LifeNews writer Sarah Terzo addressed other parts of Robinson’s interview recently.

Even many pro-choice people have a hard time understanding why a woman would wait 30 weeks before having an abortion. You sometimes hear pro-choicers say that if there were fewer restrictions on earlier abortion, there would be no late-term abortions.

Not so, says Dr. Robinson:

I think that the public perceives first of all that late abortion could be completely eliminated if people would only get their act together and have their abortions earlier, which is completely untrue….No matter how available birth control and first-trimester and second-trimester abortion is, you are always going to have the need for later abortions…the need for late-term abortions will never go away.

She goes on to address the reasons why women abort their healthy babies in the third trimester:

Well, a large percentage of our patients had no idea that they were pregnant. People go, “How could this possibly be?” Well, look at that reality show. It happens. Maybe you’re a little heavy and you already have irregular periods, or you had intercourse once, several months ago, and the guy said he pulled out and there’s no sex education in your school so you think everything’s fine. Or you never have periods because you’re very thin, or a doctor has told you you were infertile.

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I could tell you a million reasons why women who are perfectly smart—and they are, these are not stupid women—don’t come to know they are pregnant. They have no weight changes, they don’t feel sick, they don’t feel movement, or if they do they think it’s gas. Suddenly someone says, “Hmm, your stomach’s looking big, have you taken a pregnancy test?” And the person may have taken a test, and it may have come out negative—I’ve had women that only got a positive on their third test. And either way they think they just got pregnant. They have no idea they’re in their 24th week. So they make an appointment for an abortion, and it takes a few weeks, and they have their ultrasound and find out that they’re at 27 weeks, which is too far for an abortion anywhere. So then what happens? They either give up or have a baby, or they go on the Internet and they find us.

I haven’t been in Robinson’s clinic, but I find it hard to believe that so many women don’t know they’re pregnant until the third trimester that Robinson is able to make a living off aborting their babies. I am reminded of the woman who aborted her 20-week-old twins because they were girls. It still breaks down to the same thing, whether the woman knew she was pregnant or not – she wants to kill her baby simply because the baby is unwanted.

Carrying the child a few more months (or in some cases, mere weeks) and giving her up for adoption is not an option for these women. Is killing an almost full-term baby justified simply because a woman does not want her baby to live? We’re talking babies who can survive outside the mother’s body. Dr. Robinson describes performing abortions up to 32 weeks and beyond. In fact, babies have survived as early as 21 weeks.

I was born at 28-29 weeks in 1975. Even back then, when neonatal medicine was not as advanced as it is today, I was considered one of the “good” babies in the neonatal care unit. Nurses believed that I would survive, and that I would be healthy. My parents tell me that there were children there much younger than I was who went home with their parents. The fact that Robinson aborts babies older than I was at birth is disturbing.