Abortion Survivors and Former Abortionists Discuss How Abortion Kills Babies and Hurts Women

Two former abortionists and two abortion survivors recently had a powerful in-person conversation as part of a new video series called “Face to Face” launched by Live Action.

Live Action released the first episode, “Honest Conversation Between Abortion Survivors and Providers” on YouTube on September 30. According to a Live Action article, future episodes will include other abortion survivors, former abortionists, and women who had abortions.

In the 25-minute-long episode, former abortionists Dr. Anthony Levatino and Dr. Kathi Aultman speak to abortion survivors Claire Culwell and Melissa Ohden, in a roundtable conversation facilitated by Live Action founder and President Lila Rose.

Culwell said she survived a dismemberment abortion that resulted in the death of her twin. Doctors only realized Culwell was still alive four weeks after the abortion occurred. She was born 10 weeks premature, weighing only three pounds and having a dislocated hip and club feet from the abortion.

Ohden said her birth mother was forced to have a saline abortion when she was 31 weeks pregnant. The hospital had claimed she was only between 18 and 20 weeks pregnant.

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“On the fifth day of the abortion procedure, I was finally expelled from the womb, delivered at St. Luke’s Hospital in Sioux City, Iowa,” Ohden explained. “Not because they were intending for me to be born alive and they would provide me medical care, but simply because that’s where that late-term abortion was being performed. And the day that I now celebrate as my birthday is the day that I was accidentally born alive.”

Rose asked Levatino and Aultman about how many abortions they each had performed. Levatino estimated that he performed almost 1,200 abortions, including some saline abortions. Aultman said she performed roughly 500.

“It’s so hard to be with abortion survivors knowing that I’m the perpetrator, I’m the evil one,” Aultman said in the episode, telling Ohden and Culwell, “I’m just thankful for your forgiveness, which you’ve both given me… I’m sorry.”

In response to a question from Ohden about whether abortionists think about the babies they have killed, Levatino said, “Yeah, I think about them.”

“I lost my daughter before her sixth birthday,” Levatino continued. “My brother Mark was my closest friend in the world. He died of cancer 12 years ago. And I believe, certainly I want to believe, but I do believe that when my time comes, the two of them are going to be there. I’ll know it’s time because they’re going to be there. I believe that.”

He added: “But it scares the hell out of me that maybe those 1,200 kids are going to be there too.”

According to American Life League, Levatino stopped performing abortions in 1985 after it became apparent that it was breaking his marriage. He also viewed abortions differently after his young adopted daughter was hit and killed by a car in 1984. After her death, Levatino said he realized while performing a second trimester abortion that he was dismembering “somebody’s son or daughter.”

In an article for Focus on the Family, Aultman explained that she decided to stop doing abortions shortly after having a baby herself. The first time she went back to the abortion clinic, she said she saw the attitudes of three different women seeking abortions that “made the emotional connection between fetus and baby” for her.

“What struck me in particular was the apathy of the first patient and the hostility of the second toward the fetuses inside them – contrasted with the sorrow and misery of the third woman who knew what it was to have a child,” she wrote. “I recognized that the innocent victim in all of this was the baby. Being unwanted was no longer enough justification for me to take the child’s life. And that was the end of my abortion career.” She also became a Christian several years later.

The first episode of Live Action’s “Face to Face” series received praise in the comments on YouTube within the first hour of its launch. One commenter pointed out that “[t]he only way these four people can sit face to face is by the blood of Jesus that wiped the hurt[,] guilt[,] sin and shame away.”

At the end of the first episode, Aultman said, “Women need to know that the whole thing is a big lie, that abortion is not the answer.”

“We don’t need abortion to succeed, and it is not health care,” she said. “So much of abortion is a huge lie … and we’re telling the truth about it.”

LifeNews Note: Hannah Hiester writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

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