The scandal of DIY abortion is pushing more and more abortions into the first trimester of pregnancy. In 2020, the latest year for which figures are available, 85% of abortions in England and Wales were “medically induced” using abortion pills, which should be taken before 10 weeks. That leaves 15%, or around 25,000 abortions, which took place at 10 weeks or later.

In any abortion a baby dies, and a woman is scarred in some way. But what about the abortion workers who carry out surgical abortions? What does abortion do to them?

Late abortions are brutal and grisly. The dilation and curettage (D&C) method dilates the mother’s cervix, and a curette or sharp instrument is used to dismember the baby and scrape it out of the womb. For even older babies, dilation and evacuation is used: a combination of vacuum aspiration (a sucking procedure) and D&C and the use of forceps.

These are the abortions which involve abortion workers assembling dismembered body parts to make sure nothing has been left in the womb. This work involves extracting a severed baby’s head left “free floating in the uterine cavity”.[i] It’s hard to imagine how anyone can do this work and not be affected by it. 

The dark secrets of abortion facilities don’t often escape, but “Dangertalk: Voices of abortion providers”, a 2017 American study by Lisa A. Martin and colleagues, gives an insight into the harrowing and conflicted world of abortion workers.[ii]

Unsurprisingly, abortion workers doing second trimester abortions find it difficult to talk about how they earn a living. A clinic director who took part in Martin’s study said: “It’s the secrets that don’t get talked about outside of here… Can you sit at the dinner table and say, ‘Oh, I felt horrible when I saw those foetal parts today?’”

Abortion workers involved in second trimester abortions cannot avoid the reality of what is happening. Martin’s study included one abortion provider saying: “… abortion is life and death and I think it’s about providers saying, ‘yes we end lives here’, and being ok with that.” 

However, abortion workers can struggle with “being ok with that”, especially when they are subjected to traumatising experiences. This is how a medical assistant in Martin’s study describes her feelings when she watched an ultrasound of a doctor injecting a baby to stop his or her heartbeat: “I see the fetus’s hands start moving, and [the doctor] keeps poking this one spot and the fetus likes turns all the way round. And I’m like ‘Ohhh, I don’t know if I can do this. Like this fetus is saying, ‘Don’t do this to me.’ My emotions are going haywire… I really wanted to scream at that woman before that needle went in, ‘This is fixable’”. But despite this gruelling ordeal, this abortion worker concludes: “That’s not my place … that was my job.”

Another abortion worker in the same study describes the abortion of a 19-week baby by D&C, during which the mother began shouting that the medical team was killing her baby: “I’m just crying … this procedure seemed to take forever. I’m sure it didn’t … So we walk out of the room and have to go right into seeing other patients … we’re all like zombies … It was a terrible, terrible feeling.”

Lisa Harris, an American professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, and abortion advocate, who also contributed to Martin’s study, wrote in 2008: “… there is always violence involved in a second trimester abortion.” She points a finger at her fellow abortion supporters, saying: “The pro-choice movement has not owned or owned up to the reality of the fetus, or the reality of fetal parts.” She is dismayed that, “Currently, the violence and, frankly the gruesomeness of abortion, is owned only by those who would like to see abortion (at any time in pregnancy) disappear.”[iii] Professor Harris is remarkably open about abortion, although her motives for being so appear confused. She says: “I want to make the case that honesty about abortion work can be the basis for a stronger [pro-choice] movement.” This is an odd position as the abortion industry has thrived precisely by not disclosing the reality of abortion.

In any event, exposing what happens in a second trimester abortion is unlikely to be part of the pro-choice agenda at a time when the abortion industry is struggling to sustain its workforce. A 2017 American study looking at stigma and occupational stress among abortion workers found that nearly half of the 136 abortion workers who took part in the research reported moderate or high levels of emotional exhaustion. 83% reported low personal accomplishment, “indicating high prevalence of burnout”. The researchers saw the depletion of the abortion workforce “due to burnout and turnover” as “an especially grave threat… to abortion service delivery”.[iv]

Second trimester abortion takes its toll on workers in the industry in a way that remote or DIY abortion does not. In DIY abortion the horror is transferred to the woman who has to carry out the abortion and risk seeing her dead baby.

Anyone suffering as a result of an abortion experience deserves our support, and that includes abortion workers.  In the US, abortion workers can find a safe haven in Abby Johnson’s organisation, “And then there were none”.  Here in the UK, pro-lifers must be ready to offer hope and healing to abortion workers who want to get out of the industry. Emotional support is available for abortion workers, from organisations offering post-abortion care such as ARCH and Rachel’s Vineyard. 

Being aware of the trauma experienced by abortion workers, especially those involved in second trimester abortions, is a first step. Each of us expressing our willingness to offer sympathy and support to abortion workers should be a second.

Surgical abortions have been performed in Britain for over 50 years. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have worked in abortion clinics who feel troubled or traumatised by their experiences. 

Lisa Martin would like to see a “radical shift” in which abortion providers would routinely say: “Yes, abortion stops a beating heart and sometimes I do think of my work as killing – and yet I find it the most fulfilling work I could do.” No. Killing defenceless babies for a living is never going to be fulfilling work, let alone the most fulfilling work someone could do.

No pro-lifer is ever going to regret helping a woman to keep her baby. We can only imagine how many abortion workers live with regret: haunted by the memory of tiny, dismembered babies.