Lisa Harris: Abortion Provider
Editor’s note. This first appeared at secularprolife.org.
The Weekly Standard [in 2010] describes former abortion providers who have converted to the pro-life cause. I found this passage particularly compelling:
“In 2008, however, abortionist Lisa Harris endeavored to begin ‘breaking the silence’ in the pages of the journal Reproductive Health Matters. When she herself was 18 weeks pregnant, Dr. Harris performed a D&E abortion on an 18-week-old fetus. Harris felt her own child kick precisely at the moment that she ripped a fetal leg off with her forceps:
[Harris wrote]
“’Instantly, tears were streaming
from my eyes—without me—meaning my conscious brain—even being aware of
what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my
body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message
seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an
overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and
unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one
of the more raw moments in my life.’
The article mentions in passing that Harris chose to stay in the abortion business; the article goes on to describe other abortion providers who were so horrified by what they witnessed that they quit and, in some cases, joined the pro-life movement. (See www.attwn.org for a campaign to help more abortion providers leave the industry.)
I’m glad to hear that even people who begin with strong pro-choice views can be moved by the fetus’s humanity. However I’m more interested in Harris and providers like her.
Not only has Harris continued to work as an abortion provider, she writes about how providing abortions can be just as much an act of conscience as refusing to provide abortions. Harris published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine called, “Recognizing Conscience in Abortion Provision.” Harris believes:
“Doctors (and, in some states,
advanced practice clinicians) continue to offer abortion care because
deeply held, core ethical beliefs compel them to do so. They see women’s
reproductive autonomy as the linchpin of full personhood and
self-determination, or they believe that women themselves best
understand the life contexts in which childbearing decisions are made,
or they value the health of a woman more than the potential life of a
fetus, among other reasons.” [Emphasis added.]
To many abortion advocates avoid or flatly deny the humanity or moral relevance of the fetus. I’ve had pro-choice people insist on using the phrase “clump of cells” even after I point out that most abortions are performed on fetuses with brain waves and heartbeats.
But (as I’ve discussed before) I find it particularly disturbing when people do accept the fetus as a human being–not just in theory, for the purposes of discussion and debate, but in reality–and yet continue to advocate for the right to kill the fetus. I’m a big believer in working to change hearts and minds at least as much–if not more–than working to change laws. But how many hearts and minds are actually unchangeable?
Source: NRLC News
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment