Yes, an Arkansas doctor says, he destroys life. But he believes the thousands of women who have relied on him have been ‘born again.’

Born again only after the life of their baby is taken. A soul for a soul?

“Oh, God, doctor,” the woman said. “I was hoping it was cancer.”

This was in 1967. Harrison was a medical student and his wife was expecting their third child. It had never occurred to him that a woman would be anything but happy to learn she was pregnant.

The next year, he trained on a maternity ward. In a 24-hour shift, it was not unusual, he said, for four or five women to come in feverish or hemorrhaging from botched abortions.

Harrison opened an obstetrics and gynecology practice, but after the Supreme Court established abortion as a constitutional right in 1973, he decided to take on an additional specialty. Now 70, Harrison estimates he’s terminated at least 20,000 pregnancies.

This is baloney. Botched abortions numbers are hyperbole to say the least; the real numbers of problems associated with this are much lower. Usually when women tried to perform abortions on themselves. 20,000 lives.
He’s proud of himself. 20,000.

Harrison warns every patient he sees that abortion may be illegal one day. He wants to stir them to activism, but most women respond mildly.

“I can’t imagine the country coming to that,” says Kim, 35, in for her second abortion in two years.

A high school senior says the issue won’t weigh heavily when she evaluates candidates. “There’s other issues I see as more important,” she says, “like whether they’ll raise taxes.”

Patients asked to be identified only by their first names or, in some cases, by their ages to protect their privacy.

Harrison is beyond such concerns. For several years in the 1980s, his clinic was picketed, vandalized and once firebombed. Protesters marched outside his home and death threats became routine. Harrison responded by making his case.

He doesn’t have to stir these women; they are complacent with their idiotic lives; using abortion for birth control is simply a fact of life for them. They cannot contemplate a world where it might become illegal. Besides, they have many representatives who will fight for them. As for this doctor, he’s an old fool who will meet his maker one day. Along with those estimated 20,000 souls.

He answered every phone call, replied to every letter in the newspaper and appeared at public forums to defend abortion rights. Eventually, the protesters in this college town left him alone. (Arkansas Right to Life focuses instead on educating women about alternatives to abortion, Executive Director Rose Mimms said.)

In the years since, Harrison has become more outspoken.

He calls himself an “abortionist” and says, “I am destroying life.”

But he also feels he’s giving life: He calls his patients “born again.”

“When you end what the woman considers a disastrous pregnancy, she has literally been given her life back,” he says.

Before giving up obstetrics in 1991, Harrison delivered 6,000 babies. Childbirth, he says, should be joyous; a woman should never consider it a punishment or an obligation.

“We try to make sure she doesn’t ever feel guilty,” he says, “for what she feels she has to do.”

He is a mad man. He who brags about such work. He who makes excuses for those seeking abortion. He who uses his hands to operate the equipment that ends life.

“This is not going to be nearly as hard as you anticipate,” he tells her.

She smiles wanly. Keeping up a constant patter — he asks about her brothers, her future birth control plans, whether she’s good at tongue twisters — Harrison pulls on sterile gloves.

“How’re you doing up there?” he asks.

“Doing OK.”

“Good girl.”

Harrison glances at an ultrasound screen frozen with an image of the fetus taken moments before. Against the fuzzy black-and-white screen, he sees the curve of a head, the bend of an elbow, the ball of a fist.

“You may feel some cramping while we suction everything out,” Harrison tells the patient.

A moment later, he says: “You’re going to hear a sucking sound.”

The abortion takes two minutes. The patient lies still and quiet, her eyes closed, a few tears rolling down her cheeks. The friend who has accompanied her stands at her side, mutely stroking her arm.

When he’s done, Harrison performs another ultrasound. The screen this time is blank but for the contours of the uterus. “We’ve gotten everything out of there,” he says.

Gotten everything out? Can’t you call it what it is? You’re so blunt with all your other terms and phrases.