There was a time when Democrats would say that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Now they simply say it should be “safe and legal.”
In October 2015, Dr. Anthony Levatino, an obstetrician/gynecologist who said he had performed over 1,200 abortions, testified during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Planned Parenthood’s medical procedures. He described in excruciating detail the abortion of a 22-week-old fetus.
“Your patient today is 17 years old. She’s 22 weeks pregnant,” Levatino told lawmakers. “Her baby is the length of your hand plus a couple of inches.
“And she’s been feeling her baby kick for the last several weeks. She’s asleep on an operating room table.”
He then provided a step-by-step explanation of the sickening, barbaric procedure.
Warning: Just the description is enough to turn one’s stomach. It did mine. The following text and video are not for the squeamish.
Levatino said he’d first use a suction catheter to remove the amniotic fluid from around the baby.
He then picked up a Sopher clamp and described it to lawmakers.
“It’s about 13 inches long,” he said. “It’s made of stainless steel. The business end of this clamp is about two-and-a-half inches long and a half-inch wide. There are rows of sharp teeth. This is a grasping instrument. When it gets a hold of something, it does not let go.”
A dilation and evacuation procedure, he said, is a “blind abortion.”
“So picture yourself reaching introducing this and grabbing anything you can blindly. And pull, and I do mean hard, and out pops a leg about that big,” the doctor said, holding his thumb and forefinger a few inches apart, “which you put down on the table next to you. Reach in again, pull again, pull out an arm about the same length, which you put down on the table next to you.
“And use this instrument again and again to tear out the spine, the intestines, the heart and lungs.”
“The head on the baby that size is about the size of a large plum. You can’t see it, but you’ve a pretty good idea you’ve got it if you’ve got your instrument around something and your fingers are spread about as far as they go. You know you did it right if you crush down on the instrument and white material runs out of the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. Then you can pull out skull pieces.”
Levatino closed by saying, “Sometimes a little face comes back and stares back at you. Congratulations. You have just successfully performed a second-trimester D&E abortion. You just affirmed her right to choose.”
This portion of the video begins at 34:30. At 36:26, a collective gasp can be heard from those in the room. A transcript of his testimony as it was prepared can be viewed here.
Levatino explained that he stopped performing abortions after his 5-year-old daughter had died in his arms in the back of an ambulance after an automobile accident.
“For the first time in my life, I really looked — really looked — at that pile of body parts on the side of the table. And I didn’t see her wonderful right to choose, and I didn’t see all the money I’d just made.
“All I could see was somebody’s son or daughter.”
It is breathtaking that Democrats are fighting so desperately to maintain the right to continue this atrocity.
Pro-abortion activists, particularly those who advocate for late-term abortions, may be surprised to learn that most European countries have far stricter laws than the United States.
A Wall Street Journal editorial noted that abortion is banned in Poland and a “handful of small, majority-Catholic countries.” In Italy, following a seven-day waiting period, a woman may have an abortion in the first 90 days of pregnancy.
In Denmark, Germany and Belgium, abortions are allowed up to the 12th week on demand. In France, the limit was just extended to 14 weeks. In Portugal, it’s 10. Germany and Belgium require counseling prior to the procedure.
The editorial said that based on European standards, Mississippi’s attempt to ban abortions after the 15th week, which “America’s pro-choice left claims to find intolerable,” is on the more liberal end of the scale.
In Sweden, abortions are legal through the 18th week, and “after that only with medical permission if the fetus isn’t viable,” the editorial said.
Denmark and the Netherlands require parental consent for minors.
Britain has the most liberal abortion laws in Europe. Abortions are allowed until the 24th week and they are fully paid for by the National Health Service.
But even its permissive laws aren’t as extreme as those in New York. In 2019, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Reproductive Health Act, the most expansive abortion legislation in the country. With some restrictions, abortions are legal beyond 24 weeks in the Empire State.
The Democrat was so excited over this “triumph” that he ordered One World Trade Center and other city landmarks to be lit up in pink to celebrate.
So much for this sickening, barbaric practice being safe, legal and rare.
