Abortion is More Than a Word

August 31, 2022

Fr. John Riccardo

In 2014, a man named Ray Rice changed forever the way most people understand the issue of domestic abuse. Ray Rice was an all-pro running back. He was one of the best players in the National Football League at the time. A video  captured this man punching his fiance in the face. That picture, once it was shown, changed everything for so many people about the issue of “domestic violence.” Before that video, it was just a term. When that video went viral, most people responded with something that might have sounded like, “That’s domestic violence? That? Oh, no. We can’t allow that.”   And suddenly something which had just been words for so many people became much more than words. And suddenly we realized we could not tolerate it.

What if people saw an abortion? Have you ever seen one? And by that I mean have you ever seen one in a movie, on television, on a cable show? Our movies and our television programs are filled with every kind of unspeakable violence. You name it, we’ve seen it. Horrific gore. Unbelievable acts of brutality.

I have personally never heard of a show that actually lets you see what an abortion is. And as a result, abortion, for many people, is just a term, much like “domestic violence” was just a term before we saw what it actually meant. Imagine what would happen if we saw an abortion.

Here is something to help you “see” it. It is the testimony of Dr. Anthony Levatino. He is an OB-GYN. He had also been an abortionist. He gave testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in 2015 and then again in 2018 because he wanted to try to help those who are involved in our political system to understand the reality behind the term. In other words, he wanted to help them to “see.”

He is holding in his hands the instrument that is used in what is called a D&E abortion, which is to say a dilation and evacuation abortion. What follows is the testimony he gave on an abortion that he performed on a 24-week-old child:

“A D&E procedure is a blind abortion. So picture yourself introducing this [a sopher clamp—a grasping instrument with rows of sharp teeth] and grabbing anything you can blindly, and pull. And I do mean hard. And out pops a leg that big [he holds up his fingers to indicate about 3 inches], which you put down on the table next to you. Reach in again. Pull again. And you pull out an arm about the same length, which you put down on the table next to you. And you use this instrument again and again to tear out the spine, the intestines, the heart, and the lungs. A head in a baby that size is about the size of a large plum. You can see it. You know you’ve done 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.”

Dr. Levatino has long-since stopped performing abortions. I pray that there are a number of us reading this who are not yet pro-life. And we simply want to ask God to help us to see reality, which is what Dr. Levatino was doing. Perhaps for some of us who fall into that category, we might be tempted to think, “well, this guy used to perform abortions and now he doesn’t anymore. How credible is that? He’s probably overstating some things. He’s probably making it more dramatic than it is.”

So let me give you a more unbiased account. This is part of a United States Supreme Court brief from 2007. The case is Gonzalez vs. Carhart. Below is part of the Supreme Court’s final decision. I would invite you to pay attention to the language the justices use and the level of detachment they have with what they are describing and how clinically we talk about this issue. Imagine them talking about domestic violence this clinically.

“Although individual techniques for performing D&E differ, the general steps are the same. A doctor must first dilate the cervix at least to the extent needed to insert surgical instruments into the uterus and to maneuver them to evacuate the fetus. After sufficient dilation, the surgical operation can commence. The woman is placed under general anesthesia or conscious sedation. The doctor often [note: ‘often.’ That is to say, not always.] guided by ultrasound, inserts grasping forceps through a woman’s cervix and into the uterus to grab the fetus. The doctor grabs a fetal part and pulls it back through the cervix and the vagina, continuing to pull even after meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For instance, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pull through the cervix and out of the woman. The process of evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues until it has been completely removed. A doctor may take 10 to 15 passes with the forceps to evacuate the fetus in its entirety, though sometimes removal is completed with fewer passes. Once the fetus has been evacuated, the placenta and any remaining fetal material are suctioned or scraped out of the uterus. The doctor examines the different parts to make sure the entire fetal body has been removed.”

“This is the most commonly practiced method of abortions on second-trimester pregnancies. To be clear, most abortions are not performed in the second trimester. They are performed in the first. They are done either with chemicals or by vacuum aspiration—using a small vacuum cleaner to remove the child, which the doctor then has to sort through to make sure that by visual evidence they have got the whole child.”

But regardless of how it is done, what is always the same is that a human being at some stage of its development ceases to live. And it ceases to live because of an act that was intentionally and deliberately performed to kill it.  This is what we are talking about.  This is what abortion is.