Abortionists Hate the “Social Disapproval” They Get From Killing Babies

A book released in 2021 (Abortion and Mothering: Research, Stories, and Artistic Expressions) has a chapter by writer Jessica Shaw called “Abortion Providers as Mothers, with Mothers,” where abortionists discuss the stigma and “social disapproval” they feel about committing abortions.

Even Her Friends Don’t Know

One abortionist, identified only as “Kate,” admitted that most people in her life (even many of her close friends) don’t know she performs abortions. She says she has “some very close friends that have no idea what I do. They just think I’m a family physician…[T]hey just have no clue.” (Jackson and Shaw, 57)

Kate doesn’t express any shame that she, herself, feels about being an abortionist, but she acknowledges that there is a stigma about being an abortion provider.

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Kate mentions a friend whose father was a Baptist minister. While the friend isn’t “super religious,” Kate decided not to tell her what her job consists of:

I just know that for me to tell her that I provide abortions would shake her quite a bit. I think, “Does it add anything to our relationship? Or does it just put her in an uncomfortable position?” (Jackson and Shaw, 57)

She also expresses concern about how people knowing she’s an abortionist would affect her husband. She says, “I don’t really care about me, but I don’t want my husband’s relationships to be affected by what I do.” (Jackson and Shaw, 57)

Whether she keeps her chosen career a secret for her husband’s sake or her own, few of Kate’s friends know that she’s an abortion doctor. She blames this partly on the fact that there is never a good opportunity to tell them. She says, “[I]t just doesn’t come up in conversation. At what point do you say, ‘Oh, by the way, I perform abortions?’”(Jackson and Shaw, 57)

It doesn’t come up, and she doesn’t bring it up.

Kate acknowledges the stigma that surrounds anything to do with abortion. Fear of being judged and losing friendships keeps her quiet about what she does.

A “Scarlet Letter”

Another abortionist, Dr. Pratima Gupta, said something very revealing about abortion stigma. In a podcast interview, she said, “When I was first hired [to do abortions], I felt like I had a scarlet letter, a big A on my face, the A being for Abortion Provider, not for Adulteress.”

In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne, the novel’s protagonist and the wearer of the “Scarlet Letter,” is a sympathetic character, and the stigma directed at her is unjustified. Gupta seems to view herself the same way. She portrays herself as a hero, bravely helping women by killing their babies.

In an article she wrote, she even called herself “pro-life.” She says:

I am a pregnant abortion provider who is pro-life. By that, I mean that my work as an obstetrician/gynecologist in the Bay Area is conducted in service of women’s lives, not just those of their unborn children. I provide care with respect, compassion, and dignity…

When I say I’m “pro-life,” I mean that the literal [sic] sense of the word “life,” not the way it’s been twisted by anti-choice advocates who want to shame, punish, and control women, their bodies, and their choices.

It’s not every day you hear an abortionist use the phrase “unborn children.” Calling oneself “pro-life” when your career is dismembering those (in her own words)‌ “unborn children” is what’s twisted.

Gupta and Kate aren’t the only abortionists who have complained about the stigma they face.

No One Wants to Date an Abortionist

In an article in the Washington Post, a third abortionist whined about how hard it is to date when one is an abortion provider. It seems men don’t want to date her. She says:

In the past, I’ve tried every strategy: Burying references in my online dating profile; waiting until the third date to talk about the specifics of my work; carefully dropping the word “abortion” in conversation and watching for a reaction.

And there’s always a reaction. Every man I have ever dated — no matter how liberal or open-minded he professes to be — has flinched, looked away, or gone silent when I first tell him what I do….

In more instances than I’d like to recall, this has meant that a new relationship ends before it really starts. The majority of American adults support a woman’s right to an abortion, but it’s another matter to date someone who performs them.

The question here is obvious. If a person supports abortion, and feels it should be legal, why would they have negative feelings toward a person who provides them? This seeming contradiction serves to illustrate the ambivalent way many pro-choice non-activists view abortion. They may want it to be legal for women who “need” it, but deep down, they view it as wrong.

And why do they view it as wrong? Because on some level, they know it’s killing a human being.

Survey Reveals Abortion Stigma

An older survey of abortion doctors conducted by Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics (who, sadly, has now passed away) revealed how common abortion stigma was, even within the medical community. Life Dynamics found that of abortionists surveyed:

• 69% said they aren’t respected in the medical community
• 65% felt ostracized
• 20% had been denied hospital privileges because they are abortionists, and
• 64% said the non-abortion part of their practice has suffered due to their choice to commit abortions.

The doctors answering this survey didn’t know they were responding to a pro-life group, or their answers would probably not have been so candid.

The striking thing about this survey is that Life Dynamic conducted it over thirty years ago. It seems like not much has changed since then, despite pro-abortion activists’ decades-long crusade to normalize abortion and convince everyone it’s perfectly fine.

They may have convinced many people to oppose laws restricting abortion. But they haven’t been very successful in making people comfortable with abortions—or with those who make their living doing them.

Why Not Many Doctors Commit Abortions

In the book mentioned above, Shaw also quotes an abortionist, whom she identifies only as “Sally,” expressing frustration that many of the doctors she trained to do abortions don’t end up becoming career abortionists. Some of those she trains never go on to perform abortions, and others do so only for a short time and then quit.

Sally blames this on the “social disapproval” around being an abortionist. She says:

I have trained a tremendous number of young physicians who thought they wanted to be abortion providers, and of that number, it is a much smaller number who have actually become providers and an even smaller number who have continued to be providers over the long-term.

That has made me wonder: Why can some people become abortion providers, and others who might be pro-choice don’t want to do it? Why is it that some people do it for a while and then burn out and don’t want to do it anymore?…

I’ve seen some doctors who are providers and then just quit because there is social disapproval of them in their communities for being abortion providers.

I have had a couple of colleagues who quit, I think, because they are just not clear in their minds that this is the right thing. They thought for a while that this might be okay to do, but then they have been told that the community looks down on them. (Jackson and Shaw, 61)

Pro-abortion groups insist that abortion is just removing tissue; that it is no more morally problematic than pulling a tooth. But obviously the public isn’t buying what they’re selling. If they were, this “social disapproval” wouldn’t exist.

Sally also says that many female abortionists quit when they have children. She speculates:

I guess that is about buying into this idea that somehow abortion isn’t as pure as having babies. Or maybe it is hard to look at the fetus while you are mothering. (Jackson and Shaw, 61)

Looking at an aborted baby doesn’t bother Sally, even though she’s a mother. She even committed abortions when she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. She explained why being pregnant and committing abortions wasn’t a problem for her:

I look at a fetus, and I don’t think of it as a piece of junk. There are cells, and they are reproducing, and if you let them reproduce long enough, they will produce a human being. But I don’t have any connection to it emotionally. (Jackson and Shaw, 61-62)

Somehow, Kate has anesthetized her conscience to the point that she can look at an aborted baby and feel absolutely nothing.

Kate concedes that there is an emotional burden to doing abortions, at least for some, when she says, “Unless you are very firm about what your ethics are, about why you are doing what you are doing, and you have some support from somewhere, it is hard.”(Jackson and Shaw, 62)

Kate focuses on the “social disapproval” surrounding abortion rather than the nature of abortion itself, as the reason performing abortions is hard. She seems to believe that others’ disapproval, not seeing dismembered body parts, is the reason so few doctors become career abortionists.

Other abortionists, however, have written about the emotional toll the abortion procedure itself takes on them. One Planned Parenthood abortionist who was given the pseudonym “Ed Jones” said in an interview with author Nancy Dey:

This can burn you out very, very quickly…not so much by the physical labor as the emotional part of what’s going on. When you do an ultrasound, particularly if you have children, and you see a fetus there, kicking, moving, living, doing things that your own child does, bringing it’s thumb to its mouth, and things like that- it’s difficult.

Then, after the procedure, sometimes we have to actually look at the specimen, and you see arms and legs and things like that torn off…It does take an emotional toll. (Dey, 49)

Kate doesn’t experience any of that unease. She has succeeded at completely anesthetizing her conscience in a way “Jones” has not. To Kate, the only reason not to commit abortions is judgment from others.

Notably, both Kate and Jones are parents. Jones was troubled by the similarities between his own child and the children he aborts. Kate is indifferent to it, despite the common framing of women being more nurturing toward their children than men.

Dey’s interview with Jones took place decades ago. She revealed that he had been committing abortions at Planned Parenthood for several years at the time of the interview. Because she didn’t reveal his true identity, there is no way to know how much longer he continued working for Planned Parenthood.

Did he eventually harden his heart and get used to doing abortions? Or did he, like Doctors Patti Giebink and Kathi Aultman, leave the abortion industry and reject abortion? Unfortunately, there is no way to know.

Ultimately, “social disapproval” only exists because abortion is much different from extracting a wisdom tooth or removing a tumor. And most people realize that, even though pro-abortion activists have spent over five decades trying to convince them otherwise.

Sources: Jessica Shaw, “Abortion Providers as Mothers, with Mothers,” Heather Jackson and Jessica Shaw, eds., Abortion and Mothering: Research, Stories, and Artistic Expressions (Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press, 2021)

Nancy Dey, Abortion: Debating the Issue (Springfield, Illinois: Enslow Publishers, 1995)

LifeNews Note: Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 850 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies. This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.