{"id":25096,"date":"2014-12-10T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T14:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/?p=25096"},"modified":"2014-12-17T09:41:12","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T16:41:12","slug":"former-abortionist-testifies-before-congress-about-abortion-procedure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/2014\/12\/former-abortionist-testifies-before-congress-about-abortion-procedure\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Abortionist Describes Abortion Procedure"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Dr Anthony Levatino\u00a0is an Ob-Gyn who, earlier in his career, performed 1200 elective abortions, including 200 second trimester abortions.<\/p>\n<p>He has converted\u00a0from being an abortionist to being pro life. His commitment to life has led him to the brave act of stepping forward and speaking out about his own actions in order to educate people about abortion.<\/p>\n<p>This is very important. One reason lawmakers are so easily confused and bamboozled on this issue is that they do not understand what abortion is or what it entails. Lawmakers \u2014 as well as much of the general public \u2014 seem to think that abortion is some sort of magical rewind which just poof! makes women unpregnant. They seem to think that abortion is an undoing of events that renders the baby nonexistent.<\/p>\n<p>That fantasy gives those who promote abortion and who attack pro life legislation the opening they need. For instance, pro abortionists oppose laws that require doctors to give women the option of seeing their baby on an ultrasound before the abortion. They claim that, since the laws often require a transvaginal ultrasound, that this is \u201crape by instrumentation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr Levatino\u2019s testimony makes a hash of this nonsense by the simple means of describing in detail what happens during an abortion.<\/p>\n<p>That particular lie of calling an ultrasound rape by instrumentation\u00a0infuriates me more than most because I was the author of Oklahoma\u2019s law making rape by instrumentation a crime. Before I passed that law, rape by instrumentation was not illegal except as simple assault in Oklahoma. I was the one who made this horrifically damaging barbarity that is sometimes done to rape victims a form of sexual assault and who allowed law enforcement to send those who do it to prison.<\/p>\n<p>Then, later, I was confronted with people that\u00a0I regarded as absolute fools, claiming that an ultrasound was the same thing as rape by instrumentation. There were only a couple of things that happened to me in all my years in office that offended me as deeply as this did.<\/p>\n<p>I kept asking people Don\u2019t you know what abortion is? Do you have any idea how abortions are performed?<\/p>\n<p>The public and legislative ignorance allowed them to think that abortion was an ez pz deal in which the doctor more or less waves a wand and the woman is unpregnant. In truth, surgical abortion is an invasive and painful surgical procedure, that is performed these days with an ultrasound to guide the doctor as he dismembers the baby. If people actually believe that an ultrasound is the same as rape by instrumentation, I have no idea what they might consider a full-on abortion to be.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Levatino\u2019s testimony exposes\u00a0those kinds of lies about abortion for the fantastical nonsense that they are. It also makes clear that each abortion kills a living child. He addresses a third issue which has been worn thin. That is the lie that late-term abortions are necessary to preserve women\u2019s health and save their lives.<\/p>\n<p>He says what I\u2019ve been saying all along: There is no medical reason for a late-term abortion. It would be far safer for the woman to just deliver the baby than to do an abortion.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m grateful to Dr levatino for his courage in giving this testimony. He could have chosen to sweep his past under the rug and go on about his life. He could have stayed silent. What he did instead was speak for life in the way that only those who have previously spoken and acted for death can do. He can tell us the stark truth about abortion.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Levatino gave the testimony in this video quite a while back, but it is still well worth the watch.<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Doctor Who Did 1,200 Abortions Tells Congress to Ban Them - 5\/23\/13\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/53tzMV9OmvY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Dr Anthony Levatino\u00a0is an Ob-Gyn who, earlier in his career, performed 1200 elective abortions, including 200 second trimester abortions. He has converted\u00a0from being an abortionist to being pro life. His commitment to life has led him to the brave act of stepping forward and speaking out about his own actions in order to educate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,7045,7043,7044,7046,3732],"class_list":["post-25096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortion","tag-abortion-to-save-womens-lives","tag-dr-anthony-levatino","tag-dr-levatino","tag-rape-by-instrumentation","tag-second-trimester-abortion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Former Abortionist Describes Abortion Procedure<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&nbsp; Dr Anthony Levatino\u00a0is an Ob-Gyn who, earlier in his career, performed 1200 elective abortions, including 200 second trimester abortions. He has\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/2014\/12\/former-abortionist-testifies-before-congress-about-abortion-procedure\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Former Abortionist Describes Abortion Procedure\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&nbsp; Dr Anthony Levatino\u00a0is an Ob-Gyn who, earlier in his career, performed 1200 elective abortions, including 200 second trimester abortions. 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She also passed a law allowing prosecutors to file criminal charges against anyone who intentionally causes the death of an unborn child by harming the mother. Rep. Hamilton has also authored legislation ensuring taxpayers are not forced to subsidize elective abortions Rep. Hamilton was one of six original co-founders of first rape crisis center in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma City Democrat has worked to bring a wide range of groups together to fight on the behalf of abused women, including the creation of the Annual Day of Prayer for an End to Violence Against Women at the Oklahoma Capitol. Rep. Hamilton has been married for 30 years to her husband, Rodney, and the couple has two grown sons. 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