Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 3, 2022 / 16:30 pm (CNA).
NPR listeners heard the sounds of a women’s abortion aired on radio Thursday.
“You’re going to hear this machine turn on now, okay, it makes a loud noise,” someone tells the unidentified Michigan woman who is 11 weeks pregnant.
The loud whir of the vacuum aspirator machine that will suck the unborn baby out begins — followed by the woman’s moaning.
The segment aired during NPR’s “Morning Edition” in anticipation of Michigan’s upcoming vote on abortion during the midterm elections. For the program, Kate Wells of Michigan Radio spent more than a week with Northland Family Planning just outside Detroit to talk to patients — and witness an abortion.
At the beginning of the story, NPR issued a warning that some listeners would be disturbed by the story’s details. Wells, for her part, compared the abortion to giving birth.
“Most patients are partially awake during the procedures,” she describes. “They get IV medication for pain and anxiety. The lights are dimmed, there’s soothing music, it actually feels a lot like a childbirth, a medical gown, your bare legs in stirrups, and a person next to you saying, ‘You can do this.’”
In this instance, that person was a staffer named Brandee.
“Here’s my hand, just keep breathing,” she encourages the pregnant woman undergoing the abortion as she monitors vital signs. Wells called it an example of “women guiding other women.”
Throughout the abortion, Brandee kept encouraging the pregnant woman through her moans and heavy breathing.
“Blow it out, blow it out, breathe through it, breathe through it,” she says. “Keep breathing.”
At one point, Wells reports that the woman said she could not keep breathing through her painful cramps. Brandee tells her she can. The exchange is only described — and not aired — for listeners.
The abortion is done in a couple of minutes, Wells reports.
When the woman thanks everyone in the room, they start encouraging her, “You did good, you did great! You did just fine,” while laughing.
National pro-life leaders responded to the NPR segment.
“My prayer is often that the truth about abortion is ‘brought into the light’ but nothing prepared me for what this audio recording of an abortion would sound like,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini tweeted. “What’s happening here is the taking of an innocent human life. Heartbreaking. No words.”
Live Action President Lila Rose emphasized, “This is what Hell sounds like.”
As president of Students for Life of America, Kristan Hawkins added on Twitter: “I hope the disgusted NPR listeners will never forget this sound and #voteprolifefirst on Tuesday.
SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser also brought up the midterm elections in response to NPR’s segment.
“Exposure to the harsh reality of abortion is important for voters as they consider their choices next Tuesday,” she said in a statement.
“This heartbreaking audio exposes the brutal truth about abortion — the destruction of unborn children and exploitation of their mothers for profit,” she added. “We can just imagine the last moments of the unborn child, who has a beating heart by six weeks, is forming unique fingerprints by 10 weeks, and can feel excruciating pain at least by 15 weeks. And we may never know the fate of the unnamed mother, but we know abortion can result in life-threatening complications and long-term emotional and mental health impacts.”
In an October story published by Michigan Radio, Wells went into more detail about the abortion.
“It’s typical for patients to be awake during first-trimester abortions, especially when the patient doesn’t have underlying medical issues,” she reported. “It not only reduces the risk of complications and the costs to the patient (general anesthesia for an abortion in a hospital setting can cost thousands of dollars); it also means patients can go home the same day.”
She continued to describe what happens.
“Northland Family Planning gives every patient numbing medication applied to the cervix, and strong pain and anxiety medications (fentanyl and midazolam) administered intravenously,” she wrote. “Some patients also get a cervix softener a few hours before the procedure to make dilation easier, depending on how far along their pregnancy is.”
After a woman is fully relaxed, the OB-GYN “would use a speculum to view inside the patient’s vagina, then clean the vagina and cervix with gauze and antiseptic” and dilate the cervix, she added.
Wells described the vacuum aspirator, which was used on the unidentified Michigan woman, as a “machine [that] uses gentle suction to remove the pregnancy tissue from the patient’s uterus through a thin tube.”
She reported that the woman, after her abortion, said, “I hope I didn’t do too bad.” Wells added: “Brandee leaned close to her, their faces only inches apart. ‘Don’t you ever tell yourself what you can’t do again,’ she said, smiling.”
NPR and Michigan Radio did not immediately respond to requests for comment by time of publication.
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This illustrates why I don’t listen to NPR and have never supported them nor PBS.
NPR stands for National Propaganda Radio. Well, not really but it might as well.
What a disgusting exploitation of the violation of a mother and the destruction of her poor child.
I heard that story yesterday when I was driving and no other radio was available. Otherwise I don’t listen to NPR. It was disturbing to say the least. I was shocked and disgusted.
One might ask producers at NPR: Will you encourage those who listened to this “story” to view Bernard Nathanson’s 1987 documentary Eclipse of Reason? After that, how about a roundtable discussion with those who experienced both to express their feelings about what they heard and saw? I’m sure Mary Louise Kelly would jump at the chance to host that one.
Establishment sophisticates and wanna-be-sophisticates listen to NPR. I’m sure they all approvingly nodded when Brandee “consoled” the mother.
Let us pray that this blows up in their faces.
For they know not what they do.
How could they?
Just another example of the leftist evil descent. The leftist embrace of abortion is truly scary.
Politics Politics Politics……..For the GOP, christianity is a trojan horse used to further an agenda that is in stark contrast to the character and message of the person of Jesus as described in the gospels.
……and I’m not saying the Democrats are any better! It is the character and person of Jesus who we emulate, who we follow. I’m reminded of the attitude Jesus had to the woman, prostitute I think, caught in adultery.She was about to be stoned by the angry mob. Now I’m thinking what did pmrostitudes do with inwanted pregnancies back in the time of Jesus? I know various indigenous people hav ways of dealing with the situation. Anyway, it’s just a few thoughts…..
Jesus tole the woman that he did not condemn her. They he told her to go and sin no more. People conveniently forget that part.
Thomas who’s they? If you referring to what I emphasise, I most certainly do not conveniently forget that part, that of the instruction to sin no more. However, for my personal testimony I will say that the knowing of the embracing attitude of Jesus love for me, despite my being enmeshed in the human condition of sin and sinfulness was what gave me the desire and power to change the course of my life. Real power has its epicentre in Love as in the reality that God is Love. It is love that we as followers of Jesus emulate and project towards a world lost in the sin and sinfulness of the human condition. This is how people come to kn ow God for who God is and come to follow God.
I find the story’s embedded narrative that this abortion is similar to giving birth to be both shocking and interesting.
Are they saying that this is like child-birth; therefore, it must be a good thing?
Or, is this merely a bold-face lie whereby the truth is obscured so as to ease the conscience of the perpetrator?
Or, is it that the pro-aborts can no longer look to the law to justify their evil view and that they’re delusional fantasy is beginning to fray.
If this last explanation is true, I think it may mean that “the tires are about to fly off the pro-abort car.” If true, we should be ready to offer Christ as the reason for their hope and as a bridge back to life.
Atheism is the conclusive term to which rationalism must necessarily arrive at the extreme point of its coherence.
It is an atheism that, unlike the nineteenth-century one, makes it impossible to find any morality; In the final analysis, we are faced with a philosophy that self-destructs and destroys the very foundations of human life.
Contemporary society is the daughter of the unnatural union between communist atheism and bourgeois ideology, united in fighting the truth of the Christian religion and devoted to leading humanity toward the abyss of nihilism.
“What’s happening here is the taking of an innocent human life. Heartbreaking. No words.”
When you’re a national spokesperson, you must always have words. It’s not optional. We can never assume the evilness will speak for itself. Those with a commitment to evil have deeply ingrained rationalizations and will often reinforce the lies with which they live when confronted with just a jab if there is no follow up with mental combination punches.
The time is long overdue that Biden and Pelosi are forced to don a set of scrubs and see an abortion first hand in the operating theatre. And make sure it is a late term abortion where the can see the little muscles quivering in a bloody kidney dish.