Touching profile of a late-term abortionist

Leah H. Sun of the Washington Post writes what is meant to be a sympathetic profile of notorious late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart, who commutes between Nebraska and the People's Republic of Maryland striving to fill that special niche in women's "health care": the destruction of unborn babies who have been allowed to get too close to their birthdays for run-of-the-mill clinics to do the scraping and suctioning.

The "weary" Carhart labors mightily, at great risk to himself:

LeRoy Carhart travels from his home in Nebraska almost every week to perform abortions at a clinic in Germantown, Md. He rarely stays at the same hotel twice. He rolls dice to pick the route he’ll take to work, because “the biggest part of security is not being predictable,” he said.

Like the song says, the devil ain't lazy, no sirree.

It's dangerous work, though to tell the truth, it's much more so for the child in the womb. But the article doesn't mention that; in fact, it doesn't mention the word "baby" or "child," even once. Go figure.

But anyway, Dr. Carhart is a man on a mission:

The obstacles only make him more committed, he said. The women who have turned to him for abortions have had severe fetal abnormalities, he said. “We have helped them. . . . They’d rather die than have these pregnancies,” he said.

Pardon the euphemisms and obfuscating language, but going into the details of Carhart's "work" would totally ruin the whole martyr thing this profile is trying to conjure up.

Carhart, a grandfather and retired Air Force general surgeon, has an understated manner, speaking so softly that he can barely be heard.

His voice was weary at the end of a recent workday as he went over logistics with his wife, Mary, a straight-talking former schoolteacher who helps manage the clinic.

Pay attention to the writing here, kids. He's a "weary," soft-spoken grandpa and veteran, married to a "straight-talking former schoolteacher." Upstanding, benign folks. Selfless public servants.

Carhart performs about 60 abortions a month in Germantown. Many of the women have been referred by other doctors. Six to 10 per month are late-in-pregnancy abortions; he declines to specify how late.

But why not? He's a hero for saving these women from the burden of an imperfect or inconvenient child, and doing a job other doctors won't do. You'd think he'd want to take credit.

A few other questions a curious, objective journalist might ask Dr. Carhart:

- How much money do you make performing abortions?
- Do you charge extra for late-term abortions? How much?
- What is the procedure like? (Read the answer here, in Carhart's own words. NOTE: Content warning.)
- Do you perform partial birth abortions?(Yes indeed.)
- Has a baby ever survived the "procedure"? If so, what happened next?

More from the profile:

Carhart, who once dreamed of becoming a hand surgeon,

Sad irony there -- instead of putting intricately made human beings back together so they may live better lives, he dismantles and dismembers them for a living. But I digress:

said he witnessed how abortions often went bad when he was a medical resident in Philadelphia in the 1970s. In emergency rooms, he saw women who had tried to self-abort with knitting needles and coat hangers. Many required serious surgery; some died.

Really? How many cases like that did he actually see? (Note to reporter: It's rusty coat hangers. I can't believe your editor didn't fix that.)

It's interesting that Carhart became inspired by botched abortions in the same city where infanticidal maniac Kermit Gosnell provided the same legally sanctioned "health services" to women who would "rather die" than "have a pregnancy." In Gosnell's case, some women not only got rid of their "pregnancies," but lost their own lives, too.

The profile continues:

After retiring from the Air Force in 1985, he worked for a few years as a general surgeon but began performing abortions part time at an Omaha clinic at the request of a former patient, also the clinic’s nursing director.

Still no mention of money.

On Sept. 6, 1991, the day Nebraska passed its parental-notification law, his farm burned down. No family members were hurt, but the fire destroyed his house and other buildings, and killed his dog, cat and 17 horses. The next day, Carhart received a letter informing him that the fire was in retaliation for the abortions. Local officials were unable to determine the fire’s cause.

Never determined to be arson, but you get the idea, right?

“That was when I decided I would not be part time,” he said. “It’s where my tenacity comes from.” He resigned his hospital privileges. He began training other doctors. He opened his own abortion clinic the next year.

“I decided I wasn’t going to just be a provider, I was going to be an activist.”

It takes a tenacious man to go after a defenseless infant with sharp instruments and a suction machine. 

All the late abortions Carhart has done in Germantown have involved fetuses with anomalies, he said. 

Really? Did the reporter see any documentation of that? What kind of anomalies exactly? Did anyone check the remaining bits of the "fetuses" after the "procedure" to confirm the diagnosed imperfections?

One patient last week was just under 21 weeks pregnant; the fetus had spina bifida and would have been paralyzed from the navel down, he said.

Dear God in heaven. Enough. Read the whole article if you can stand it.


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