Executioners (Abortionists) Speak

Bill Baird - I didn't do a good job with my kids.

"I didn't do a good job with my children, the only reason I'm up here is to be with them. But they don't appreciate what their father has done. I love them, but they don't understand their grandpa. I can't even talk to them about it." Bill Baird Clinic Owner The Republican, 06/19/2006

Baird on right. Photo: priestsforlife.org

In 1964 Bill Baird established the nation's first abortion referral center. (Well before it was legal.) He eventually ran abortion clinics in New York and Boston. He moved his then-wife and

five children to a farmhouse in Hampden County in 1971. He would see them on weekends. But they became like the people he battled against - deeply religious and conservative.

Gary Romalis - a kind of a subterranean thing

''Abortion has always been viewed as kind of a subterranean thing. (Children) don't walk around saying, My father is an abortionist,''' In addition, he said, performing abortions, "is boring, it's repetitious, it's not particularly technically or intellectually demanding and it's not very well paid.'' Gary Romlis Abortionist The Vancouver Sun, 07/12/2000

Stuart Sitzman - Just don't call me an abortionist

In the LA Times September 22, 1991, it was reported that Dr. Stuart Sitzman, a gynecologist who has performed abortions for his private patients before, told them he'd be happy to be quoted by name. But, he requested, "Just don't call me an abortionist"

Brian Finkel on Planned Parenthood

Abortionist Brian Finkel's antipathy toward Planned Parenthood dates back many years, according to the Phoenix New Times' June 17, 1999, article. Finkel criticizes Planned Parenthood for everything from the amount of Valium it gives its abortion patients (10 milligrams by mouth compared to 15 milligrams intravenously, as Finkel does) to the group counseling it offers before patients see the doctor individually. Finkel said, "I will not interact with Planned Parenthood at all." And went on to say: "That's unfortunate, but they're such a bunch of disingenuous miscreants, and I really don't want to have anything to do with their alternative-health-care universe that they run. They're taking advantage of their patients, and they're taking advantage of their taxexempt status, and I don't want to lower my health care standards to theirs."

Finkel during his trial for sexually assaulting patients

Ralph Bundy - Being an abortionist and friendship

Abortionist Ralph Bundy, medical director of The Women's Health Center Inc. in Orlando and Daytona Beach, had his face on the cover of the May 1990, Florida Magazine, labeling him: "The Abortion Doctor." In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel 09/17/1991, he said he lost a friend because of the story, "I did lose one really good friend that I'd had for 20 years. She sent me a couple of books, and the message -both from the books and from her was that I was going to burn in hell. . . . She pretty much blew me off." He had told reporters that he does not tell many of his friends that he does abortions. He tells them only that he works in a clinic. "I don't hit people over the head with it. I don't go to a party and say, Boy, I did a tough abortion today."

Warren Hern - Abortionist is a degrading epithet

Abortionist Warren Hern

In the November 21, 1994 edition of the Canadian Business and Current Affairs, Western Report, Why doctors are fleeing the carnage (What keeps doctors from performing abortions)

Abortionist Warren Hern candidly states:

"Doctors have been made to feel irrelevant, feminist abortion clinics treat doctors like technicians, and are especially contemptuous of male physicians." "Among the problems are loss of prestige and disrespect of their peers, professional ostracism, verbal confrontation with other physicians, denial of hospital privileges and difficulty in recruiting or keeping office staff." Once, abortionist Warren Hern said, that he telephoned a friend to arrange to deliver a gift. "He is one of my best friends, a medical colleague, who is strongly pro choice and who has done abortions himself,"recalled Hern. "I called him late Saturday afternoon and said I wanted to come over. He asked me where I was and I told him I was at my office. The friend replied: 'Still killing babies this late in the afternoon?'" Hern states, "What it conveys is that no matter how supportive people may be, there is still a horror at what we do." "We have reached a point in this particular technology where there is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator," he allowed in a paper he presented to a meeting of Planned Parenthood physicians in 1978. Hern continues, "It is before one's eyes. The sensation of dismemberment flows through the forceps like an electric current."

According to the Rocky Mountain News article, 'Abortionist' a thorn in thicket of issues, 10-91994. Hern has been campaigning to have the media stop calling him an ''abortionist," which, he told the Rocky Mountain News is a ''degrading epithet.'' Hern felt that the paper transgressed when it published an article with this headline: ''Abortionist / threatened / in letters.'' Acknowledging Hern's objections, the News issued a clarification that the headline was not meant to imply he was doing anything illegal. The paper said that in a telephone interview later for Molly's space, Hern explained why he was angry when The Rocky Mountain News referred to him as an abortionist:

''For me it's like a racial epithet - your editors wouldn't consider running a headline that said 'Nigger hit by car.' It's offensive. (As for the word abortion) of course that's not offensive. I'm proud of what I do. It's a straightforward description of an operation, OK? 'Abortionist' is like many terms in history laden with meanings - like 'final solution,' which will never be separated from the hideous death camps of World War II." Hern continued, "One of the reasons 'abortionist' has become offensive is that it's used as a propaganda term . . . part of the anti-abortion people's Orwellian approach to language. There's a whole range of linguistic questions that have to do with the power struggle over abortion . . . over giving women power over their lives . . ."

Tommy Tucker - We're . . .the lowest echelon

Abortion doctor Tommy Tucker told the Atlanta Journal Constitution in a May 16, 1993 interview: "We're perceived as being dirty, underhanded, the lowest echelon of the medical practice." In 1993, Tucker told Time Inc: "I wish I would never ever have to do another one. I don't like it. It's not fun. It's not like you're curing a cancer or fixing a broken bone. You're terminating a potential life."

Diane Derzis - We are still seen as dirty

Diane Derzis, administrator for an abortion clinic in Birmingham told the Atlanta Journal and Constitution for their article, Abortion doctor says it's the cause and the cash that keeps him driving, May 16, 1993 "There's still the shame thing, even among people who are pro-choice. We [abortion providers] are still seen as dirty, even among our own people."

Abortion consultant: Fly the Friendly Skies

Ruth Arick, of Choice Pursuits had this to say on her website:

"So, picture thisI'm boarding an airplane - my form of commuting. As I put away my suitcase, briefcase and purse and sit down the person next to me asks the universal business traveler question, "So, are you going home or heading out?" That's the opening to have a friendly chat about what each of us does for a living, how long we've been traveling, and how hard air travel has become. The next question inevitably comes - what do you do? I have several ways to answer. If I'm tired and don't want to talk I simply say, "I'm a consultant." If I'm half-ready for a conversation, "I'm a health care consultant." If I'm ready for whatever comes next, "I'm a consultant, I work in abortion and family planning clinics around the country."

Jane Hodgson - On being an abortionist

In a 20/20 interview May 24, 1991, abortionist Jane Hodgson confessed, "I used to have to steel myself to use the word (abortionist), and it was sort of my goal, I've got to make abortion respectable. So I'd startle people at parties sometimes, I think. By saying that I was an abortionist. And they'd kind of- their jaws would drop, you know, back then. We have to make choices, and this is simply a choice between the rights of an undeveloped fetus and of an adult woman who is flesh and blood, who is a real live patient that I can do something for. And it's simply a matter of weighing the balance, it's a choice."

Tina Welsh - No physician will work here

Tina Welsh of the Duluth Women's Health Center abortion clinic told 20/20 in a May 24, 1991 interview, "In 10 years we have never had a physician from Duluth that has been willing to work here. And I went right down the list, about 27 physicians, in the immediate area of northern Minnesota and Michigan and Wisconsin."

George Tiller - We're lowest on the totem pole

The Wisconsin State Journal March 4, 2001, quoted late-term abortionist George Tiller as saying this about another abortionist Dennis Christensen: The two of them, Tiller said: "very deeply need to make a difference in our patients' lives. We very deeply need to be appreciated. We're ranked the lowest on the medical-political totem pole, but the highest in terms of patient appreciation."

George Tiller

Chris Simopoulos - My wings are clipped

In the June 20, 1982 Washington Post article titled, The Doctor, the Law and a Landmark

Case, Virginia abortionist Chris Simopoulos, was barred from performing abortions. "My wings have been clipped," says Simopoulos the trim, balding doctor, one of the few physicians in the nation jailed in an abortion case since the procedure was legalized in 1973. Of his time in jail Simopoulos said, "I made some friends with the guards. I don't recommend it jail . I'd rather be in Philadelphia, as they say, " according to a June 20,1982, Washington Post article: The Doctor, the Law And a Landmark Case.

William Harrison... Abortion is birth control

In an interview on Nightline on January 11, 2006, Martin Bashir spoke with abortionist William Harrison.

Harrison comments, "I've had lots of patients who come in for second, third, fourth, fifth, even one who had nine abortions." Bashir replies, "Is that really appropriate?" Abortionist Harrison, "If she needs nine abortions, yeah." Later in the show, abortionist Harrison says this, "Basically, abortion is a method of birth control. You know, it's not the best method of birth control. But all it does is stop the birth of a baby that a woman doesn't want at a time she doesn't want it."

Suzanne Poppema- Abortion is not pleasant

In an interview with Jenn Shreve, posted in Salon Magazine, abortionist Suzanne T. Poppema, co-author of Why I am an Abortion Doctor (Prometheus Books) and a board member of the National Abortion Federation and Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, Poppema said, "Abortion procedures are not aesthetically pleasant. There's no question about it."

Poppema runs the Aurora Medical Services clinic in Seattle.

Warren Hern: Women can die from abortions

In his book, Abortion Practice, abortionist Warren Hern attempts to emphasize the medical aspects of abortion. On page 2 of the first chapter Hern states, "The context of abortion practice, while it may occur with a backdrop of social and political controversy, is eminently medical. It is medical because women can die from pregnancy, and it is medical because they can die from abortion."

Warren Hern: Abortion an unethical act

Late-term abortion doctor, Warren Hern writes in his book, Abortion Practice, "Abortion has been stigmatized in the medical profession. Until recently the public and large segments of the medical profession considered abortion to be an unethical medical act regardless of its legal status...Communities do not like to be reminded that abortions are occurring within their boundaries...Candor invites both criticism and harassment; very few abortion clinics or physicians providing abortion services include the word abortion in the title identifying the activity." ( Page 317)