Aborted babies’ faces show that they experienced pain, doctor says

Baby at 20 weeks

There is a great deal of evidence that unborn babies feel pain, at least by 20 weeks and beyond. But one doctor told a horrific story about literally seeing the pain on the face of an aborted (alive) baby.

You can tell by the contours on their faces that that aborted fetuses feel pain, said obstetrician Matthew Bulfin, M.D….he described a case of a 25 year-old woman administered a prostaglandin abortion, who expelled her fetus in the middle of the night. Before hospital nurses arrived, she witnessed “thrashing around and gruesome trauma on his face, and knew that the fetus had suffered.”

Prostaglandin is a hormone that is used to stimulate labor in women undergoing certain types of abortions. In this case, the woman was most likely given the dose of prostaglandin without an injection to kill the child. Or, perhaps, the injection failed. Whatever the case, the baby was born alive, and, apparently, in extreme agony.

The baby’s pain was most likely due to the horribly violent contractions caused by the prostaglandin. These contractions, called tetanic contractions, can be so powerful that often prostaglandin babies are born with bruises all over their bodies. The contractions alone could kill the baby.

Because live births happened often, today the babies subjected to this type of abortion are usually killed by poison before prostaglandin is used. Being injected with poison could easily be painful to the child. But since the baby dies inside the mother — hidden — neither the abortionist nor the mother has to witness the baby’s suffering.

Whether the pain of the baby discussed by Dr. Bulfin was caused by the violent contractions, some other agent used in the abortion, or just being forced into the outside world too soon, we don’t know. Nor do we know what happened to the woman who witnessed her baby convulse and die. She was probably told that an abortion would be an easy solution to her problem. She would go in and have an operation, and it would be all taken care of.

Instead, her baby died a brutal death before her eyes. The emotional trauma she experienced from this incident must have been extreme.

Priests for Life posted this video of a pro-life obstetrician explaining prostaglandin abortions, and displaying the bodies of two babies killed in this manner. In the video, the obstetrician speculates that one of the two babies shown was also born alive.

Source for quote: “M.D. Group Claims that Fetuses Suffer Pain” American Medical News, February 24, 1984. Quoted in “Abortion: A Briefing for Canadian Legislators” National Public Affairs Office, Campaign Life Coalition, Suite 100 1355 Wellington St. Ottawa, ON K1Y, 3C2

To Top