BERNARD NATHANSON, M.D., once head of New York’s now defunct first and busiest abortion clinic, did a dramatic turnabout as he said: “I became convinced that as director of the clinic I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths.” He added: “To vehemently deny that life begins when conception begins is absurd!”

Dr. Howard Diamond, of Beth Israel Medical Center, disagrees: “If I feel anything, I feel gratified. Abortion is much more important than the life of a child that doesn’t exist. . . . A fetus is nothing!”

Doctors’ reactions to performing abortions vary widely. At one extreme there is guilt and despair. The doctors admitted to heavy drinking and nightmares from performing great numbers of assembly-line abortions. At the other extreme there are doctors who claim to derive satisfaction from the operations because they feel they are saving women’s lives, both emotionally and physically.

Some doctors have mixed feelings. Dr. William Rashbaum, of Beth Israel Medical Center, once had nightmares about a tiny fetus resisting abortion by hanging on to the walls of the uterus. He learned to live with that, no longer has that fantasy, but said: “I’m a person. I’m entitled to my feelings. And my feelings are who gave me or anybody the right to terminate a pregnancy? I’m entitled to that feeling, but I also have no right to communicate it to the patient who desperately needs that abortion. I don’t get paid for my feelings, I get paid for my skills. . . . I began to do abortions in larger numbers at the time of my divorce when I needed money. But I also believe in the woman’s right to control her biological destiny.”

John Szenes, M.D., believes in the woman’s right to abortion and that is his primary consideration. However, he does admit the saline abortion takes some getting used to: “All of a sudden one noticed that at the time of the saline infusion there was a lot of activity in the uterus. That’s not fluid currents. That’s obviously the fetus being distressed by swallowing the concentrated salt solution and kicking violently and that’s, to all intents and purposes, the death trauma.” And he then adds: “So I can imagine, if I had started doing 24-weekers right off the bat, I would have had much greater conflict in my own mind whether this is tantamount to murder.”

At the Beth Israel Hospital, in Denver, Colorado, a doctor did an abortion by injecting birth hormones to induce premature birth. Hours later the baby was delivered live, cried, and some time later died. The doctor ordered no life-sustaining measures. Nurses were upset, one resigned. Concerning a similar situation, one Denver obstetrician said: “Trying to save the fetus when you’re performing an abortion is like sending an ambulance to a firing squad. The whole intent of an abortion​—on the part of both the woman and the doctor—​is to see that the fetus doesn’t survive.”

The claim is often made that the pregnant woman should have control of her own body, but the fetus is not her body. It is not an appendage or part such as the appendix or gallbladder the removal of which has been likened to the removal of the fetus from the mother’s body. Dr. A. W. Liley, world-renowned research professor of fetal physiology, said: “Biologically, at no stage can we subscribe to the view that the foetus is a mere appendage of the mother. Genetically, mother and baby are separate individuals from conception.” He continues with a description of the activities of the fetus, as follows:

“We know that he moves with a delightful easy grace in his buoyant world, that foetal comfort determines foetal position. He is responsive to pain and touch and cold and sound and light. He drinks his amniotic fluid, more if it is artificially sweetened, less if it is given an unpleasant taste. He gets hiccups and sucks his thumb. He wakes and sleeps. He gets bored with repetitive signals but can be taught to be alerted by a first signal for a second different one. And finally he determines his birthday, for unquestionably the onset of labour is a unilateral decision of the foetus. . . . This is also the foetus whose existence and identity must be so callously ignored or energetically denied by advocates of abortion.”

After reviewing such amazing abilities of the fetus in the womb, Dr. Liley says: “You would think this knowledge would bring a new respect for the unborn. Instead some now are hellbent on his destruction​—just when he had achieved some physical and emotional identity.” Why has the abortion movement made such headway in spite of the obvious humanness of the baby? Dr. Liley’s answer: “The unborn is small, naked, nameless and voiceless. It is his defenselessness that makes him such a convenient victim. He has not yet reached the age of social significance and he cannot strike back for himself.”

Many doctors refuse to do abortions. One doctor said: “If there are a few doctors who seem to do more, it’s because some of us are still struggling with our Hippocratic (oath).” Concerning abortion the oath states: “I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked nor suggest any such counsel, and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.”

However, that truth does appear in an editorial in the September 1970 California Medical Journal:

“The reverence of each and every human life has been the keystone of western medicine, and is the ethic which has caused physicians to try to preserve, protect, repair, prolong, and enhance every human life. Since the old ethic has not been fully displaced, it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been the curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone knows, that human life begins at conception, and is continuous, whether intra- or extra-uterine, until death.”

Another problem that abortion was supposed to alleviate is that of battered children. The theory was that unwanted children were abused, and preventing their birth would end the abuse. Facts disprove the theory. Child battering has greatly increased, as the following press report discloses: “Looser abortion laws do not result in fewer battered children​—a five-year study by Dr. Edward Lenoski, professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California found that following the passage of ‘abortion on demand’, cruel infanticide and child battering increased three-fold​—a logical result of the concept that ‘life is cheap.’”