With my first pass of the forceps, I grasped an extremity and began to pull it down. I could see a small foot hanging from the teeth of my forceps. With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick – a fluttery “thump, thump” in my own uterus. It was one of the first times I felt fetal movement. There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a “thump, thump” in my abdomen.
I noticed a certain amount of angst in the combox about 'the antis reading this' and the usual assumption that pro-lifers are out to get women. I wonder whether these people genuinely fail to recognise how evil their actions are? For all the talk about 'honesty', does it not occur to them that the reason people oppose abortion is because there is something so obviously evil about tearing a tiny, helpless baby limb from limb? The old defences of 'sentience' or 'consciousness' simply do not ring true when we all know that dismembering a newborn baby would be regarded as an unspeakable crime and a newborn baby has no more consciousness than a baby who has yet to pass through the birth canal.
There was a survey at the side of the blog, but I didn't fill it in because the only option for a pro-life campaigner was 'I am anti-abortion and I am reading this to make myself mad.' Well, to be honest, reading accounts of people killing babies does make me incredibly angry, but I read it because I was interested to see what an abortionist had to say on the matter. And yes, it did strengthen my belief that tiny human lives are entitled to protection from the violence of abortion. The most nuanced arguments in the world cannot conceal the raw horror of abortion.
