Abortion is back as front-page news and is once again in the forefront of the nation's concern. The nomination of Judge Samuel L. Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court's consideration of an important abortion case this week have focused attention on the issue and energized both sides in the controversy.
Nevertheless, the issue of abortion is not merely a major front in the nation's culture war. It is also a deeply personal tragedy. Every single abortion terminates an innocent human life, and each abortion represents an individual moral catastrophe. Yet the vast majority of Americans go about their everyday lives, even as the death toll from abortion continues to rise.
A poignant and chilling perspective on the issue of abortion has been provided by an article published in the November 29, 2005 edition of the Los Angeles Times. In "Offering Abortion, Rebirth," reporter Stephanie Simon takes readers into the life and logic of one of the nation's most notorious abortion providers.
Simon focuses on Dr. William F. Harrison of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Dr. Harrison has performed abortions at his clinic on College Avenue in Fayetteville for more than twenty years. Now, at age seventy, Harrison estimates that he has terminated at least twenty thousand pregnancies.
Readers of Simon's article will be shocked by Harrison's candor. He refers to himself as an "abortionist" and acknowledges, "I am destroying life." According to the article, Dr. Harrison gave up his practice of obstetrics in 1991, having delivered six thousand babies. "'Childbirth,' he says, 'should be joyous; a woman should never consider it a punishment or an obligation,'" Simon reports. As Dr. Harrison states, "We try to make sure she doesn't ever feel guilty for what she feels she has to do."
The very fact that Dr. Harrison has delivered six thousand babies and aborted twenty thousand others, coupled with his shocking candor, means that a look into his practice and philosophy of life offers rare insights into why a highly trained medical practitioner, supposedly committed to the preservation of all life, would dedicate the largest part of his professional career to abortion.
Simon takes her readers right into Dr. Harrison's clinic. She describes an eighteen-year-old with braces who has come for an abortion. "A pink blanket is draped over her stomach. She's 13 weeks pregnant, at the very end of the first trimester. She hasn't told her parents," Simon reports.
Once the young woman has been given an anesthetic, along with Valium and a drug intended to dilate her cervix, Harrison administers a dose of Versed, a sedative that "will wipe out her memory of everything that happens during the 20 minutes she's in the operating room." As Simon comments, "It's so effective that patients who return for a follow-up exam often don't recognize Harrison."
"This is not going to be nearly as hard as you anticipate," Harrison tells the patient. After the doctor has observed the fetus on an ultrasound screen, noting the curve of the baby's head, the bend of an elbow, and the ball of a clenched fist, he tells his patient: "You may feel some cramping while we suction everything out." This warning is followed by his observation, "You're going to hear a sucking sound."
According to the report, the abortion took only two minutes. "We've gotten everything out of there," Harrison assures her.
Speaking to the reporter, this young woman acknowledged that she understood that abortion is, at least in some sense, morally wrong. "There's things wrong with abortion," she commented. "But I want to have a good life. And provide a good life for my child."
Simon also provides insights drawn from other patients who have come to Dr. Harrison's clinic for abortions. One high school volleyball player "says she doesn't want to give up her body for nine months." A single mother of three "says she couldn't bear to give away a child and have to wonder every day if he were loved." As Simon reports, this woman believed that ending the pregnancy would be easier, so long as she doesn't think about "what could have been."
