Ex-abortion providers: conversion
tales By PATRICIA LEFEVERE,
Special Reports Writer
NEW YORK -- The storytellers at this gathering of
antiabortion activists did not appear terribly concerned with new
inclusive antiabortion strategies.
Their stories are haunting and, at times, hard-edged, the
testimonies of those once deeply involved in performing abortions and who, for
varying reasons, were jarred by what they were doing. They felt compelled to
not only leave their practices but also to work against abortion.
They see themselves as turning, in the language of Pope John Paul
II, from the culture of death to promote a culture of life.
* Dr. Bernard Nathanson performed some 60,000
abortions and supervised another 10,000 before scientific evidence --
especially the use of ultrasound -- convinced him that he had been promoting
and participating in what he now calls the most atrocious holocaust in
U.S. history.
* Dr. Anthony Levatino had no moral qualms at
all about the 1,200 abortions he conducted as a young obstetrician
gynecologist. I was there to assist my patients; this was no different
from doing a D&C or a hysterectomy, he said, until he suffered a
terrible personal loss in 1984.
* Joan Appleton, head nurse at a Virginia clinic,
assisted at some 10,000 abortions because she believed passionately in a
womans right to choose. Outside her clinic, activist Debra Braun
used her megaphone, her arrests, her prayers, her telephone and a five-year
correspondence with Appleton to help her change those convictions.
* Dr. Marie Peeters Ney entered and left pediatrics,
hematology and genetics as she gradually observed that all three medical
specialties passed on their dirty work to abortionists. She and her
psychiatrist husband, Dr. Philip G. Ney, have examined the motivating factors
behind physicians choosing to do abortions and say they have counseled
many who suffer post abortion-provider guilt.
The stories of these abortion practitioners turned pro-life
activists filled Holy Innocents Parish hall here in November.
Youre the people who are changing America, said
Joseph Scheidler, referring to the speakers and the audience of approximately
60 antiabortion activists, many of them nuns and priests. Scheidler is
executive director of Pro-Life Action League, Chicago, which, along with the
New York-based Legal Center for Defense of Life, sponsored the gathering.
Scheidler called Nathanson a modern day St. Paul.
Nathanson, with feminist Betty Friedan and abortion promoter Lawrence Lader,
founded in 1970 the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws --
NARAL -- now the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.
Raised an atheist Jew, Nathanson lost some friends when he became
a Catholic. He was baptized in December 1996 by New York Cardinal John
OConnor. But Nathanson already felt the wrath of some in his profession
when his book Aborting America, a personal confession and an
exposé of the U.S. abortion industry, was published in 1979.
He followed it with the stark video, The Silent
Scream, the sonogram of a live abortion and later with Eclipse of
Reason, which inserts a video camera in the womb of a mother preparing to
abort a 19 and a half-week-old fetus.
The first U.S. physician to perform ambulatory abortions,
Nathanson operated a lucrative upper East Side clinic. Now 71, Nathanson has
been married three times and twice impregnated women who had abortions, one of
which he himself performed.
While scientific evidence led him to crusade against abortion, he
said his advancing years and the Christian doctrine of forgiveness led him to
Catholicism. Im entering the Catholic church to give them
warning, he said.
Dr. Marie Peeters Ney said, Abortion is changing the face
of medicine. People have begun to disrespect medicine because doctors
dont respect life.
She said that she and her husband, Philip, have worked with
scores of persons affected by abortion. Together they founded the International
Institute for Pregnancy Loss and Child Abuse Research and Recovery, based in
Victoria, British Columbia.
Peeters Ney said that some 60 million abortions occur worldwide
yearly. The Neys estimate that there are 100 million abortion
survivors, or siblings of the unborn who, she said, suffer
from survivor complex because they survived and someone else died.
Abortion has created a generation of people with no sense
of themselves, she said. If I have no value, then no one else has
value and the only thing of value is what I possess.
Peeters Ney urged compassion toward abortionists, adding,
We dont know whats been going on in their lives before they
began this work.
But leaving the abortion industry can be as painful as assisting
abortions, noted Joan Appleton, head nurse at the Commonwealth Womans
Clinic in Falls Church, Va. I, too, suffer from post-abortion
trauma, she said.
It took a five-year friendship with pro-life activist Debra Braun
of St. Paul, Minn. -- who prayed, picketed and got arrested outside the
Commonwealth clinic -- before Appleton crossed over to the antiabortion side of
the street.
In a video prepared for conferences held previously in Chicago,
the audience saw and heard from many who described their careers providing
abortions and their struggle to come out. Many of those filmed have
disappeared, Appleton said, because there are no support groups for
former abortionists.
Appleton turned to the Neys for healing. She also underwent
therapy with a Catholic therapist and spent a few years drinking, on drugs and
attempting suicide. Appleton said her reactions to coming out are not atypical
of others who have left the abortion field.
You stay in because of fear of the outside, she said.
When you come out, you move geographically (she went to Minnesota). You
do badly in relationships. You begin to get a little mentally ill.
Recently Appleton founded the Society of Centurions for
abortionists who want to leave. She named her group after the Roman soldier who
was in charge of crucifixion and crowd control at Jesus death.
Prompted by Braun and her own soul-searching, Appleton returned
to the church and to confession after a seven-year absence. But she reminded
her pro-life audience here that she was not the result of your rescues. I
would like to have some peace and go to heaven, she said.
So each morning -- in order to aid her spiritual and
psychological healing -- Appleton imagines a child. I name it. I pray for
it. I ask a life for it, she said. Ill do this for the rest
of my days.
In addition, Appleton said, she goes to abortion clinics twice a
week and talks to the babies in the womb rather than to their mothers.
I tell them Im sorry they have to die today. I hope
theyll forgive us and go to God, she said.
While she asked for forgiveness from the pro-life movement, she
also told her pro-life audience that they can be a very unforgiving
group.
Abortionists and women who have abortions arent our
enemies, she said.
Dr. Anthony Levatino of Troy, N.Y., might never have stopped
doing abortions had it not been for two mysteries, he said.
Although he and his wife, Cecelia, were married 10 years before they ever
discussed abortion, Cecelia, a surgical nurse, knew he performed such
procedures.
I also knew I was pro-life and a feminist, Cecilia
Levatino said. Therefore I could be a fence-sitter. Who was I to tell
another woman what to do with her body?
Early in their marriage the couple learned that they could not
have children. However, when a 15-year-old patient of Levatinos decided
she did not want to keep the baby she was carrying, the couple hurried to adopt
it. Eleven months later Cecelia gave birth to the couples biological
child.
Six years later the two children were playing in front of their
parents home when a car struck and killed their adopted daughter. When
Levatino returned to work, he discovered he could no longer perform late-term,
saline abortions.
Shortly before his daughters death one of Levatinos
new patients had adopted the doctor. She began praying for him and
at one point, after a gynecological examination, told him: I am a
Christian. Im here to tell you that God loves you and doesnt want
you to be doing abortions. This is not what he intended for your
life.
Levatinos wife noted the gradual and worsening disposition
of her husband after their daughters death. He was mean and angry
at home and in the office. He was cool to our friends and would pick on
everyone. Instead of emotional intimacy, there was a wall between us,
Cecelia said.
Afraid that her marriage would end, Cecelia confronted her
husband. I told him he had to stop doing abortions. Nobody is doing
this to you. Youre doing it to yourself.
That was 12 years ago. After Levatino quit the abortion field, he
added a law degree to his credentials and has been working with his wife
opposing abortion. Currently they are planning to open a crisis pregnancy
center, to be called Heathers Place -- after their daughter -- and to set
up a foundation to aid women in crisis.
Crisis pregnancy centers are the only pro-life resource that
give women a choice, Cecelia said, adding that if pro-lifers want to end
abortions they should adopt not only those who provide abortions but also the
practitioners entire family.
National Catholic Reporter, January 16,
1998
|