In response to Hillary Clinton’s defense of late term abortions in the final presidential debate, The New York Times published an op-ed from a woman attempting to justify the objectively brutal procedures.
In “Late-Term Abortion Was the Right Choice for Me,” Meredith Isaksen describes her experience of aborting her unborn child after she found out the child had a genetic defect. She defends Clinton’s extreme position in favor of allowing abortions to full term, and takes issue with Donald Trump’s graphic description of the procedure as pulling a baby apart limb from limb.
In fact, many second trimester abortions are done by pulling the baby piece by piece from the womb with forceps and then suctioning out the remaining pieces, and most third trimester abortions are done by injecting a drug into its brain with a long needle that gives it a heart attack, rendering it stillborn.
Here’s a version of Isaksen’s story, edited for accuracy and clarity [additions in bolded brackets]:
BERKELEY, Calif. — I was 21 weeks pregnant when a doctor told my husband and me that our second little boy was missing half his heart. It had stopped growing correctly around five weeks gestation, but the abnormality was not detectable until the 20-week anatomy scan. It was very unlikely that our baby would survive delivery, and if he did, he would ultimately need a heart transplant.
In the days that followed, after the poking and prodding, after the meetings with pediatric cardiologists, cardiothoracic surgeons and geneticists, my husband and I decided to terminate our pregnancy [direct an abortionist to rip him limb from limb out of my womb in order to end his life]. I was 22 weeks pregnant when they wheeled me into the operating room, two weeks shy of viability in the state of California [the point when the state of California determined he is a human with the right to live].
For us, the decision was about compassion for our unborn baby, who would face overwhelming and horribly painful obstacles [if we failed to suction him out of my womb with complete disregard for the pain he may already be capable of feeling]. Compassion for our 2-year-old son, who would contend with hours upon hours in a hospital, missing out on invaluable time spent with his parents, and the death of a very real sibling [killing of his brother commissioned by his mom and dad]. It [Killing our son] was about compassion for our marriage. Perhaps most important, it [killing our son] was about our belief that parenthood sometimes means we sacrifice our own dreams [kill our baby boy] so our [other] children don’t have to suffer.
As the day of my termination [the death of my baby boy] approached and I felt my baby’s kicks and wiggles, I simultaneously wanted to crawl out of my skin and suspend us together in time. I wanted him to know [before I killed him] how important he was to me, that the well of my grief and love for him would stretch deeper and deeper into the vastness of our family’s small yet limitless life. He may have moved inside me for only five months, but he had touched and shaped me in ways I could never have imagined [and soon he would feel an abortionist rip him apart piece by piece].
To Donald J. Trump and politicians like him, a late-term abortion is the stuff of ’80s slasher films. “You can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother,” Mr. Trump said during Wednesday night’s debate, a description void of consideration for women, medical professionals or the truth [of a commonly used abortion procedure]. Such politicians would have you believe that women like me shouldn’t get to make the choice I made [to kill my son]. That our baby, despite his tiny misshapen heart and nonexistent aorta, should have a chance to “to live,” not be killed by his parents, even though that [human] life might have lasted mere minutes. Even though that [human] life would have been excruciatingly painful. These politicians are ignorant of the sacrifices and blessings that come with carrying a pregnancy baby (let alone a nonviable pregnancy baby that can survive outside the womb). They do not understand that a majority of women who have late-term abortions are terminating desperately wanted pregnancies [killing babies they desperately want].
I am fortunate to live in a state that allows abortions [women to kill their unborn baby boys and girls] after 20 weeks [when they may be capable of feeling pain]. At least 13 states restrict such procedures; 15 more have moved to defund Planned Parenthood, where many low-income women go for reproductive care to get their baby killed.
Many women have made the kind of difficult decision I had to make [to kill my baby boy]. When it happens to you you decide to protect your baby from pain by having someone rip it into pieces, they come out of the woodwork. Friends, neighbors, colleagues. A friend of my mother-in-law said to me early on, “You will always carry this loss, but someday, it won’t define you.”
As the two-year anniversary of my abortion [decision to kill my baby boy] approaches, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that we made the right decision for our family — and that our government has absolutely no place in the anguish which accompanies a late-term abortion [pulling my unborn child apart limb from limb], except to ensure that women and their families have the right to make their choice safely and privately.
Saying goodbye to our boy was the single most difficult and profound experience of my life, and the truth is, it [killing him] has come to define me. Today I am a better mother because of him [my choice to kill him]. I am a better wife, daughter and friend [because I chose to kill him]. He made me more compassionate and more patient [before I told someone to drain him into a petri dish and toss him in the trash]. He taught me to love with reckless abandon, despite the knowledge that I could lose it all.
We named him Lev, the Hebrew word for heart.
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