I Interviewed Dr. Carhart!!

Not long ago, I read a post here on Feministing encouraging people to donate or write thank-you letters to Dr. Leroy Carhart in Nebraska. So I did just that. I wrote a lengthy letter to Dr. Carhart thanking him for the services he bravely provides to desperate grieving parents and told him a little about my own abortion experience. I also included an autographed photo of myself and an invitation to work together to protect women’s right to choose and reduce the need for abortion. (I am currently Miss Illinois US Beauties.) I wasn’t sure if Dr. Carhart would open my letter due to the high security risks he faces at his clinic everyday, but I sent it any way.
A few days later, I got a call from Dr. Carhart.
I hadn’t included my phone number in the letter, but Dr. Carhart was intrigued by my letter and searched for my phone number on the internet. He thanked me for writing him the letter and asked me questions about my own personal experience and how I got involved in the pro-choice movement. I also took this golden opportunity to ask Dr. Carhart some questions about late-term abortions so that I could finally spread the true word and put some of the myths surrounding late-term abortions to rest.

My first question to Dr. Carhart was about the procedure itself. We have all seen and heard the anti-choice crowd decry how late-term fetuses are “slaughtered” by “being stabbed with scissors in the backs of their skulls and having their brains sucked out” or “being torn limb from limb.” I asked Dr. Carhart up front how exactly a late-term fetus is aborted. To my surprise, Dr. Carhart told me that the fetus is terminated through a lethal injection. The placenta is injected with a lethal injection that painlessly stops the fetus’ heart. Then a few days later, the cervix is dilated, and the mother delivers a still-born fetus. I asked Dr. Carhart where the idea of fetuses being stabbed in the head came from, and he said that in some instances where the fetus has an enlarged head due to hydrocephalus, the skull must be collapsed and emptied of its contents so as not to cause injury to the mother’s cervix. However, he stressed the fact that in these cases, the fetus has already been dead for several days due to a lethal injection, so the fetus is not alive when the skull is collapsed. That right there puts to rest the anti-choice crowd’s claim that the fetuses are alive and suffer in great pain when their brains are sucked out. In all cases, the fetus is painlessly put to sleep through a lethal injection. I feel that this is a very important fact that needs to be made known to everyone so that people will not oppose late-term abortion based on untrue myths.
I also asked Dr. Carhart about the reasons why women have late-term abortions. He answered that the #1 reason is fetal abnormality or pregnancy complications. However, he also said that he has performed late-term abortions on women who were unable to access abortion earlier in their pregnancies due to various barriers. He told me of one woman who came to him for a late-term abortion because her gynecologist knew that she wanted an abortion and purposely withheld information from her about her pregnancy to try to prevent her from getting an abortion because he/she was opposed to it!! He has performed abortions on women who have been raped and are contemplating suicide because they have become pregnant as a result of their assaults, and he has performed abortions on girls as young as 12 who have been raped. Interestingly, Dr. Carhart told me that abortion is such a common medical procedure among women that there “literally isn’t a woman of child-bearing age that he hasn’t seen in his office”….including some of the protestors outside of his clinic. Yes, even some of the people protesting outside of his clinic sometimes find themselves INSIDE of Dr. Carhart’s office when they find themselves faced with an unwanted pregnancy. I chuckled when Dr. Carhart told me about how some of these former-protestors beg him to find a way to “sneak them into the clinic” so that they won’t be seen and harassed by the other protestors that they once stood with outside of the clinic. It just goes to show the true hypocrisy of these protestors and how they THINK they know abortion is wrong until they find themselves in the same shoes as the women who come to this clinic to have one.
After our conversation, Dr. Carhart put me in touch with a photo-journalist from the New York Times who is working on a story about abortion. I had a phone interview with this journalist and I have agreed to be a part of this future article that will appear in the New York Times. In fact, I told Dr. Carhart and the news reporter that I have decided to come forward and talk publicly about my own abortion experience in the hopes of encouraging other women to break the silence and end the stigma surrounding abortion by coming forward and talking about their own experiences as well. It is ludacris that a common medical procedure that AT LEAST HALF of all American women will have at least once in their lifetime is so stigmatized. I believe that if more and more women were to come forward and begin speaking about their abortion experiences and if the public were to discover that the majority of American women have had an abortion as opposed to a “certain few types” of women, then the stigma surrounding abortion would have to disappear. It would be pretty hard for people to continue demonizing women who have abortions once they discover that their own mothers, sisters, daughters, or aunts have had one.
I look forward to working with Dr. Carhart to help educate the public on the truth about abortion, to help keep it safe and legal, and to help end the unnecessary stigma surrounding it.