"Please Forgive Me!"

Brenda Pratt Shafer said: "I am a registered nurse, licensed in the State of Ohio, with 14 years of experience. In 1993, I was employed by Kimberly Quality Care, a nursing agency in Dayton, Ohio. In September, 1993, Kimberly Quality Care asked me to accept assignment at the Women's Medical Center, which is operated by Dr. Martin Haskell. I readily accepted the assignment because I was at the time very pro-choice. ...

"I stood at a doctor's side as he performed the partial-birth abortion procedure-and what I saw is branded forever on my mind.... Dr. Haskell brought the ultrasound in and hooked it up so that he could see the baby. On the ultrasound screen, the baby's heartbeat was clearly visible. Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby's legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby's body and the arms-everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby's head just inside the uterus. The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. ... Dr. Haskell delivered the baby's head. He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw that baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he'd used. I saw the baby move in the pan. I asked another nurse and she said it was just 'reflexes.'...

"The woman wanted to see her baby, so they cleaned up the baby and put it in a blanket and handed the baby to her. She cried the whole time, and she kept saying, "I'm so sorry, please forgive me!" I was crying too. I couldn't take it. The baby boy had the most perfect angelic face I have ever seen. I just couldn't wait to get out of there. After I left that day, I never went back. ...That baby boy was only inches, seconds away from being entirely born, when he was killed. What I saw done to that little boy, and to those other babies, should not be allowed in this country." [World, May 6, 2000. This is a portion of the statement of Brenda Pratt Shafer, R.N., for a March 21, 1996, hearing of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. The subcommittee was considering the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (HR1833).]

"Tallahassee - A law requiring parents to be notified when their minor daughter seeks an abortion was overturned Friday by a judge who ruled the measure violates the daughter's right to privacy”. (AP, May 12)