I asked the doctor about why he does what he does and he said "I have a great job–no one else can have a patient walk in the door with a huge problem and completely fix that for them in five minutes."The one with the "great job" is "a 66 y/o male doctor who has performed 200,000 abortions in the past almost-40 years."
The one writing about him is a first-year medical student who loves baby animals—she named her blog Pudu Overload as a tribute to the world's smallest deer. She is also a supporter of legalized abortion. [The blog is now offline—see update below. It was here.]
Yesterday afternoon, the young student came home after spending the day witnessing what goes on inside a Planned Parenthood, and wrote a blog post attempting to process the experience. Beneath the cognitive dissonance, one can see a conscience struggling to assert itself. She is proud of her "pro-choice" bonafides and wants to be on the side that she truly believes is the one that is right—yet she knows she saw death and dismemberment.
Can you imagine, the first time an abortion supporter sees the "procedure" for what it is, how much mental effort it must take to try to reconcile—or just block out—the horrific reality of legalized butchery?
Since Pudu Overload may remove or alter her post after it is highlighted here, I am reprinting it in full, adding paragraph breaks:
today I watched 10 girls younger than me have abortions at the downtown planned parenthood.Please pray that this young medical student and others like her who witness legalized slaughter will receive the grace to see the truth of what is going on— and flee from it.
I was more nervous than I've been in a very long time taking the train down this morning and walking past the protesters and wondering what I was going to see and who I was going to talk to.
The morning was awkward–shadowing the ultrasound technician who didn't want me there and then hovering in the hallway for hours trying to get counselors to invite me into their counseling sessions. Finally I was assigned to a 66 y/o male doctor who has performed 200,000 abortions in the past almost-40 years. He had me sit behind his right shoulder and talked me through what he was doing and nothing seemed so horrible.
I went with the nurse after the first procedure to see the tissue that was evacuated and although that was the thing I was most scared to do, it was fine and just looked like blood and white fluff.
I asked the doctor about why he does what he does and he said "I have a great job–no one else can have a patient walk in the door with a huge problem and completely fix that for them in five minutes." I stayed in his operating room for most of the afternoon and was surprised by how okay things felt–he was friendly and respectful of his patients and very matter of fact about the whole thing.
The part that made me really uncomfortable came later on when I moved into the OR next door. The doctor there was a middle-aged woman with incredibly understanding, calm bedside manner. The first two cases I saw her perform were gentle and careful and not upsetting.
The third patient was a girl my little sister's age whose pregnancy was much farther along than the others I saw. Coming into the room, she was shaking and scared and the doctor took ten minutes (twice as long as the actual procedure) to make sure she was ready and sure about her decision. Once the patient calmed down and was anesthetized, the nurse hooked up ultrasound to help with the more difficult case. This time I could clearly make out a head and arms on the screen, and I sat down and had to look away during most of the procedure.
Afterwards, the nurse brought me to the back room again and I saw some things I can't get out of my head. Leaving the clinic through a waiting room full of upset pregnant teenagers, I felt respectful of and impressed by the doctors I met, both of whom have been stalked and threatened many times because of what they do. At the same time, I'm incredibly freaked out by the whole thing and don’t know how to think about it. It simultaneously seems like a small and an enormous thing.
RELATED: Jill Stanek observes that Sen. Barack Obama, with plenty of help from the media, is counting on voters to believe that accusations he voted to permit infanticide are too crazy to be true. In fact, Obama's stance, which is even more extreme than that of NARAL Pro-Choice America, is a matter of public record. Robert P. George and Yuval Levin lay it out in their article "Obama and Infanticide."
UPDATE, 11:39 a.m.: Pudu Overload did remove her post and in its place complains of receiving "hate-spam" from "the whole antiabortion crew." If she sends me any hate comments she received via readers of this blog, I will ban those readers from commenting here. However, the only comment she received that I know of is the one that reader Terry claims to have left, which is not hateful. [As of 5:23 p.m., the blog is now completely offline.]
Because I believe it is important to demonstrate what goes on in Planned Parenthood—butchery that will "[freak] out" even a pro-choicer who has not yet become inured to it—I took screenshots to preserve Pudu Overload's entry. Click on them for a larger image. And again, please pray for her, other medical students who witness abortions, and also, as for pro-lifers who fail in their charity.
TRACKBACK: Jeff Miller aka Curt Jester, Mark Shea, Jill Stanek, Rod Dreher weigh in and join the call for prayers.
