An Eyewitness Account of Partial Birth Abortion

In September, 1993, Brenda Pratt Shafer, a registered nurse with thirteen years of experience, was assigned by her nursing agency to an abortion clinic. Since nurse Shafer considered herself "very pro-choice," she didn’t think this assignment would be a problem. She was wrong. This is what nurse Shafer saw:

"I stood at the doctor’s side and watched him perform a partial-birth abortion on a woman who was six months pregnant. The baby’s heartbeat was clearly visible on the ultrasound screen. The doctor delivered the baby’s body and arms, everything but his little head. The baby’s body was moving. His little fingers were clasping together. He was kicking his feet. The doctor took a pair of scissors and inserted them into the back of the baby’s head, and the baby’s arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. Then the doctor opened the scissors up. Then he stuck the high-powered suction tube into the hole and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. I never went back to the clinic. But I am still haunted by the face of that little boy. It was the most perfect, angelic face I have ever seen."

6 month candidate for PBA

Here, Dr. Carhart, famed Partial Birth Abortionist, puts things in perspective:

"We're not asking for the right to suck the brains out of every child that walks down the street, we need to continue to offer safe abortions to women who need them to be done."

Dr. LeRoy Carhart, addressing the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Omaha World-Herald, 1/2001

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