The American Holocaust

By
Caitlin Doro

Mr. Hauf
Language Arts 12
December 5th, 2014

Doro 2

A seventeen year old girl walks into the doctors office. She is 20 weeks pregnant
and scared. Her parents kicked her out, and her boyfriend left her. She now has
nowhere to turn. At twenty weeks, her uterus is up to her umbilicus 1 and she has been
feeling her baby kick for the last two weeks. If she could see her baby, it would be as
long as her hand from the top of its head to the bottom of its rump not counting the legs.
The seventeen year old is now asleep on an operating room table with her legs in
stirrups. The doctor enters the room after scrubbing, dries his hands with a sterile towel
and is gowned and gloved by the scrub nurse. The first thing that happens is the
removing of the laminaria that was placed to dilate the cervix. The doctor then reaches
for his first tool, a 14-French suction catheter. This tool is used to suck all the amniotic
fluid out from around the baby. With the suction complete the doctor grabs his next tool.
A Sopher clamp, which is 13 inches made of stainless steel. It has jaws on the ends
about 2 1/2 inches long and 3/4 inches wide with sharp teeth for grasping and crushing
tissue. The doctor then takes the clamp and reaches for whatever he can get a hold of.
Once he has grasped something inside, he squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and
pulls hard really hard. He feels something let go and out pops a fully formed leg about
4 to 5 inches long. Reaching in again and grasping whatever he can. Set the jaw and
pull really hard once again and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again
and again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart, and lungs. The
toughest part of the abortion is extracting the babys head. The head of a baby at twenty
weeks is about the size of a plum and is free floating inside the uterine cavity. The
doctor knows he has a hold of the head right when he crushes down on the clamp and
1 Umbilicus definition: the depression in the center of the surface of the abdomen
indicating the point of attachment of the umbilical cord to the embryo; navel.

Doro 3

sees a pure white gelatinous material issue from the cervix. That was the babys brains.
He can now extract the skull pieces. If the doctor has a really bad day like he often
does, a little face may come out and stare back at him. That doctor just made $600 for
those fifteen minutes. (Dr. Tony Levatino)
Life What is life and when does it start? Merriam Webster says life is; the
period of time when a person is alive. (Merriam-Webster) The debate then stands when
does a person becomes alive. This argument is nothing new. It has been in the media
for years, and many court cases debated this controversial topic. From Roe v. Wade in
1973 through 2011, nearly 53 million legal abortions were performed in the United
States an average of about 1.4 million abortions per year. (Abortion Pro Con) Abortion
is the American Holocaust and should be outlawed.
The numbers are fact but are often ignore when debating this topic. Half of the
deaths in the world are from abortion. (ABORTION COUNTER AND STATS) People are
so concerned about the other half that they forget and dont always counts abortions
and deaths. It is the leading cause of death in the world and yet it is also the most
curable and preventable. Think of all the people that lost their lives to war. 64 times
more Americans die to abortions then those lost in all of our wars combined. 589
soldiers lost their lives in our first year fighting in the Iraq War. The world loses more
than that every six minutes to abortion. D-Day was the bloodiest invasion in history and
53,714 allied soldiers died in the Battle of Normandy. The world loses that many to
abortion in just 9 hours. The clock is ticking and there is no time to waste. One baby is
aborted every 26 seconds, 137 babies are aborted every hour, 3,304 babies are aborted

Doro 4

every day, 23,196 babies are aborted every week, and 100,516 babies are aborted
every month. (ABORTION COUNTER AND STATS)
Most people think that abortions mostly happen in teenage girls, but the highest
rate of abortion is from age 20-24. (ABORTION COUNTER AND STATS) (Refer to
appendix 1) Another misconception is that most abortions are from women who have
been raped. While rape is a reason for some womans abortion it is so little in the wide
spectrum of things. (Refer to appendix 2)
Why is abortion legal today? For the longest time it was illegal to have an
abortion. This issue has been debated in court many times. The first was Griswold v.
Connecticut; this case debated the right for privacy within the boundaries of marriage.
(Haney 34)Then, in 1969 the famous Roe v. Wade case came to court. Norma
McCorvey was a 21 year old single women living in Texas. She had a five year old
daughter which her mother was raising. She then lost her job and became pregnant. In
Texas abortions where only allowed when it was necessary to save the woman's life.
Since this wasnt the case she found a lawyer, Sarah Wedington to take this case to
court. Wanting to protect her name she used the fake name Jane Roe. Wade comes
from the district attorney who was on the case. There wasn't a decision made on the
case till 1973. Seven justices voted in favor and two voted against. The ruling was
based on the idea that women should be able to choose whether or not to bear children
and that decision should remain between the woman and her doctor. This decision
came much too late for Norma and she ended up giving her son up for adoption. Later
in her life, she became active in the pro-life movement. (Haney 34-35) Today this is the
most famous case but surely isn't the only one. In Doe v. Bolton, Doe sued for her right

Doro 5

to have an abortion. In 1986, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services made Missouri

law makers enacted a series of laws designed to reduce abortions. The law stated that,"
Life of each human being begins at conception." In 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey
took back some of the laws they had made in the Roe v. Wade case. They decided that
each state could create their own requirements on the circumstances in which women
could have an abortion. (Berne) Those are just a few of the many cases that have been
taken to court over this issue.
No matter what those laws say abortion is murder. The bible states in Isaiah, I
am your creator; I made you and formed you from the womb. When a woman is
pregnant and in a car accident with another driver, the driver that committed the crime is
charged with double murder. When a woman kills her own baby she is charged with
nothing. What would make people think that a baby is not a human life and doesn't
deserve the chance to live?
Murder isnt the only effect of abortion. There are physical and emotional effects
on the mother. The physical effects include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and
severe bleeding. The physical damage compares nothing to the emotions damage. In a
study of post-abortion patients only 8 weeks after their abortion, researchers found that
44% complained of nervous disorders, 36% had experienced sleep disturbances, 31%
had regrets about their decision, and 11% had been prescribed psychotropic medicine
by their family doctor. A 5 year retrospective study in two Canadian provinces found
significantly greater use of medical and psychiatric services among women with a
history of abortion. Most significant was the finding that 25% of women who had
abortions made visits to psychiatrists as compared to 3% of the control group. Women

Doro 6

who have had abortions are significantly more likely than others to subsequently require
admission to a psychiatric hospital. At especially high risk are teenagers, separated or
divorced women, and women with a history of more than one abortion. (American
Abortion Pregancy )
Pamela was 20 years old when she aborted her child and this is the impacted it
had on her. She says,
Now that it's all said and done, I mad at myself for listening to others instead of
my own feelings. I cared about people who could not even try to care for me.
Now that it's over, everyone's acting as if it never even happened, but every night
I go to sleep crying, and wake up the next morning, put on my brave face and try
to convince myself everything's going to be OK. What hurts the most is thinking
I'm never going to go back to that person I was before. It is now part of my story
and I have to live with it. I'm mad at myself in a way because I always told myself
I'd never be that ''person''. I have to carry these regrets on my shoulders, and
every day I wish this has not been a life-changing experience for me, but it was...
This abortion changed so much in my life, and in my perception of how I want to
live it. Now I am being a little more selfish, thinking about my own feelings first
and I guess being that depressed has its reasons... Everything happens for a
reason. I guess when I'll get pregnant again, this feeling of emptiness will go
away, but until then, I know I still have a lot to go through. Unfortunately, this
experience really did change my life, and now everything seems so blurry. I am
slowly going to heal, and I know it, I know I am grieving, and eventually, the guilt
will also go away, but I wish I could just fast forward my life, and make it all go

Doro 7

away... Women are regretting it and children are losing their lives over irrational
decisions. Once it happens it cant be taken back. (Johnson)
Abortion is 100% preventable. Well, what about those extreme cases of rape and
incest. The mother has other options. When a woman becomes pregnant and it wasn't
planned, they are too young, or can't financially support this child they have options.
Many people cannot have children that would like children. Adoption might seem like a
hard thing to do. To carry the baby to term and then having to give that child up is
heartbreaking. Ultimately, this child didn't choose to come into the world that was the
mother and fathers choice so they need to realize in this sinful world actions come with
consequences.
Holding Wesley when he was just 3 hours old was an amazing experience. To
think that just 4 hours ago he could have been aborted is preposterous. Human life is a
gift from God and should be treated as such. The world has lost way too many children
to this murderous crime of abortion. It may be legal, but it isn't right. Choose life not
death. Stand up for those without a voice.

Doro 8

Appendix
Appendix 1 (wicked shepard)

Appendix 2 (wicked shepard)

Doro 9

Works Cited
"ABORTION COUNTER AND STATS." Abortion the American Holocaust (2014).
Abortion Pro Con. 1st December 2014. 2014 <<http://abortion.procon.org/>.>.
American Abortion Pregancy . 2 Dec 2014.
<http://americanpregnancy.org/unplanned-pregnancy/abortion-side-effects/>.
Berne, Emma Carlson. Abortion. Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale, 2007.
Dr. Tony Levatino, M.D. "A Medical Doctor describes the Dilation and Evacuation
Procedure." Priests for Life 2000.
Haney, Johannah. The Abortion Debate. Berkeley Heights: Enslow Publishers, 2009.
Johnson, Ben. "I regret my abortion: post-abortive parents tell heart-breaking
stories at March youth rally." Life 26 Jan 2012.
Merriam-Webster. n.d. 20 Nov 2014 <<http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/life>.>.