Former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levantino describes this type of abortion:

"Imagine for a moment that you are a "pro-choice" obstetrician-gynecologist as I once was. Your patient today is seventeen years old and she is twenty weeks pregnant. At twenty weeks, her uterus is up to her umbilicus and she has been feeling her baby kick for the last two weeks. If you could see her baby, she would be as long as your hand from the top of her head to the bottom of her rump not counting the legs. Your patient is now asleep on an operating room table with her legs in stirrups. Upon entering the room after scrubbing, you dry your hands with a sterile towel and are gowned and gloved by the scrub nurse.

The first task is remove the laminaria that had earlier been placed in the cervix to dilate it sufficiently to allow the procedure you are about to perform. With that accomplished, direct your attention to the surgical instruments arranged on a small table to your right. The first instrument you reach for is a 14-French suction catheter. It is clear plastic and about nine inches long. It has a bore through the center approximately ¾ of an inch in diameter. Picture yourself introducing the catheter through the cervix and instructing the circulating nurse to turn on the suction machine which is connected through clear plastic tubing to the catheter. What you will see is a pale yellow fluid the looks a lot like urine coming through the catheter into a glass bottle on the suction machine. This amniotic fluid surrounded the baby to protect her.

With suction complete, look for your Sopher clamp. This instrument is about thirteen inches long and made of stainless steel. At one end are located jaws about 2 ½ inches long and about ¾ on an inch wide with rows of sharp ridges or teeth. This instrument is for grasping and crushing tissue. When it gets hold of something, it does not let go.

A second trimester D&E abortion is a blind procedure. The baby can be in any orientation or position inside the uterus. Picture yourself reaching in with the Sopher clamp and grasping anything you can. At twenty weeks gestation, the uterus is thin and soft so be careful not to perforate or puncture the walls. Once you have grasped something inside, squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard – really hard. You feel something let go and out pops a fully formed leg about 4 to 5 inches long. Reach in again and grasp whatever you can. Set the jaw and pull really hard once again and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again and again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart and lungs.

The toughest part of a D&E abortion is extracting the baby’s head. The head of a baby that age is about the size of a plum and is now free floating inside the uterine cavity. You can be pretty sure you have hold of it if the Sopher clamp is spread about as far as your fingers will allow. You will know you have it right when you crush down on the clamp and see a pure white gelatinous material issue from the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. You can then extract the skull pieces. If you have a really bad day like I often did, a little face may come out and stare back at you.

Congratulations! You have just successfully performed a Suction D&E abortion. You just affirmed her right to choose. You just made $600 cash in fifteen minutes.

Ultrasound at 20 weeks

This type of abortion is so gruesome that when it was first developed in the 1970s, a leading abortionist said:

"We have produced an unusual dilemma.  A procedure is rapidly becoming recognized as the procedure of choice in late abortion, but those capable of performing or assisting with the procedure are having strong personal reservations about participating in an operation which they view as destructive and violent...Some part of our cultural and perhaps even biological heritage recoils at a destructive operation on a form that is similar to our own...No one who has not performed this procedure can know what it is like or what it means...We have reached a point in this particular technology where there is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator.  It is before one's eyes.  The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like electric current..."

Warren Hern, M.D, 1978: (Rachel M. MacNair Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing (Westport, CT:Praeger, 2002) 73

2nd trimester

Here is another quote in the D & E procedure:

''I do D and E's because I think it is safer. It is a horrible procedure. Staff burnout is a major problem. But are you functioning in the interests of taking care of your staff or taking care of your patients?''

Dr. William Rashbaum, a gynecologist affiliated with Beth Israel

"When Abortion Becomes Birth: A Dilemma of Medical Ethics Shaken by Advances" New York Times Feb. 15, 1984

See a diagram of this procedure

Many more quotes on this type of abortion can be found in the "What is the Abortion Procedure Like?" Section.