Victim of Forced Abortion Says Practitioner Hodari "Ripped the Life" Out of Her

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Nov 24, 2009   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Victim of Forced Abortion Says Practitioner Hodari "Ripped the Life" Out of Her

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 24
, 2009

Flint, MI (LifeNews.com) — Caitlin Bruce is the victim of a forced abortion that saw abortion practitioner Alberto Hodari and a staffer forcibly restrain her as she screamed no. Now, Bruce has given an interview to a local television station where she describes how Hodari and his associate "ripped the life" out of her.

Bruce told WJRT-TV about her lawsuit she has filed against Hodari and said that she changed her mind and withdrew her consent for the abortion after seeing an ultrasound of the unborn baby.

Despite her subsequent decision, Hodari held her to her original one.

"He told his assistant, you know, ‘Hold her down.’ You know? They had my arm pinned, his weight was all on my chest, and then he took his hand and he had it so tight on my mouth that it was muffled," she told WJRT. "I was screaming and crying."

"It felt like they were ripping a life out of me," she said.

Bruce described how she was just 18-years-old at the time of the abortion and six months pregnant when she went to Hodari’s Feminine Health Care Clinic abortion center in Flint last year.

"I was nervous and I really didn’t have the moral support I needed. And I just didn’t know what to do," Bruce told the ABC television station.

She questioned herself in the waiting room about whether having an abortion was the right decision.

"They started the ultrasound. The lady turned the ultrasound toward me and said, ‘This is your baby. This is the heart flicker,’" Bruce said.

She changed her mind, but that is when Hodari did the abortion anyway.

"When he was done, he looked at me. He gave me a smirk and he left the room," Caitlin said.

Steve Weiss, Hodari’s attorney, talked with the television station about the lawsuit, which denies the forced abortion claiming "the surgical instrument was inside her uterus and she was already bleeding when she verbalized any misgivings."

"My client acted properly under the circumstance. This was an abortion that was consented to," he claimed. "When the patient first expressed misgivings about it, it was too far along for Dr. Hodari to stop."

Tom Pabst, the attorney for Bruce, who allowed her to give the interview, says a forced abortion is always wrong no matter which side of the abortion debate one supports.

"This is shockingly wrong no matter what camp you’re in," he told the station. "This shouldn’t have happened. If a woman says stop, it should’ve stopped."

The lawsuit was filed because county prosecutors are not looking into the incident for possible criminal charges.

Operation Rescue president Troy Newman has been following Bruce’s case and has exposed Hodari’s shoddy practices over the years.

"Hodari is a menace to the public and the sooner he is held accountable for his atrocities in a court of law, the better," he told LifeNews.com today.

"It is shocking and wrong that this quack is still in business. We ask that the Michigan Attorney General’s office launch a criminal investigation into Hodari’s shop of horrors, and will be filing a formal request to that effect this week,"he added.

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