She also lets them hold their dead baby after they have been “born.”
There are only four American doctors left who openly include third-trimester abortion in their practice. They’re profiled in the new documentary After Tiller, which opens in New York tonight. All four of these doctors were close friends and colleagues of Dr. George Tiller, who was assassinated in Kansas in May 2009, and they take on significant personal risks in their fight to keep late abortion available; they believe in their work deeply, while understanding that many people view it as murder. Fewer than 1% of abortions in this country are performed in the third trimester. It’s illegal in all but 9 states, and according to a 2011 Gallup poll, only 10% of Americans are in favor of the practice. […]
I was really moved and amazed by the scene where you’re writing down a baby’s name, noting the family’s request for a memory box and a viewing, showing the little ink footprints. Do families often want to engage with their baby like this after an abortion? How many people are ready to—as you say—say hello to their baby at the same time that they’re telling it goodbye?
With fetal anomaly patients, we ask them right up front if they plan to hold their baby after it’s born. These patients, their emotional needs are so different from the ones who are looking at their pregnancy as an absolute disaster, who are just thinking, “Get it out of me, please, please, please.” Those patients—the maternal indications patients—they are not relating to their fetus as a baby, they’re relating to it as a problem.
But with a fetal indications patient—if she refers to it as her baby, I’ll refer to it as her baby. If she’s named the baby, I’ll use the baby’s name too. I would say that most of these patients do decide to see and hold their baby, although many of them have a hard time dealing with the idea at first. We’ll take remembrance photographs, we’ll give them a teddy bear, the footprints. I mean, imagine being six months pregnant and finding out your baby’s missing half its brain, and you’ve got this nursery you’ve painted at home, you’re so ready—I don’t want them to go home from the procedure with absolutely nothing to remember and honor the baby, and its birth.
Wow. You’ll say “birth”?
Yes. I try to mirror what will be the most consoling to the patient. In general, these patients—fetal indications—do talk about giving birth, so I’ll say that as well.
What is it like watching these patients say goodbye?
It is very difficult. It’s the saddest thing on earth, I think sometimes. They cry, and I cry, and sometimes they’ll ask for a baptism or a prayer. I’ve got some little non-denominational prayers that I’ll say with the families.
To simultaneously sustain these ideas—that you desperately loved and wanted this baby that’s here in your arms, and also that you just committed yourself to ending its life—it’s one of the most complicated emotional situations I can imagine. In these cases—I am sorry for this macabre question—the baby is dead, right? They never meet their baby alive?
That’s not macabre! That’s a good question. Yes, that’s the first part of the procedure. We sedate the patient and euthanize their fetus, their baby, with an injection. The fetus passes away, doesn’t feel anything.