My name is Teri and a tragedy in my life had brought me to George Tiller's Women's Health Care Services in Wichita, Kansas. For a very long time after my abortion, I embraced all of the "pro-choice" rhetoric to the point where I did work for my abortionist. I ran a website supporting him, organized fundraisers, and defended him at every turn. I told anyone who would listen what a "great" man he was. I was in complete denial. Great men do not murder women and children for money, period. And Tiller does what only the most calloused can do, which is murder viable, third trimester babies.
I was in my early teens and I had been raped. By the time I found out about my pregnancy, I was already in my 28th week. I had gone to Nanuet, New York to try to obtain an abortion, but I was told that I was too far along for them to perform the procedure. The sonographer then handed me a paper with George Tiller's clinic information on it and she told me that he was the only abortionist who would do a 3rd trimester procedure for me. I looked at the paper, saw the prices, and I knew I had to tell my parents. Telling my parents that I was over 7 months pregnant was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I had not even told them about the rape. It took me three whole days to tell my mother and when I had finally worked up the courage to tell her, she just cried. Then, she told my father. After things settled down, my mother told me that if I chose to have the baby, I would have to quit school to take care of it. She would not hear of giving her grandchild up for adoption, so they called Tiller's clinic and the next thing I knew, we were on a plane to Wichita. And that's where my nightmare really began..
I arrived at Women's Health Care Services on a Sunday. Tiller told us to arrive on that day for several reasons. The first one was so that we would "miss" one day of protestors (He definitely didn't want me talking to people who may have convinced me to spare my baby's life) and the second reason was because I had to wait a 7 hour period before he could start the several day procedure. He "counseled" me that day, which consisted of him basically telling me that if I didn't allow him to begin the procedure Monday, I would have to wait an additional week and that would just cost my parents more money. My parents and I signed the consent for and got ready to return the next day.
There were 7 other girls in my group, for a 3rd trimester abortion at Tiller's, he always does it as a "group process" ( which really means "assembly line"). On the first day of the actual procedure, Tiller took me into the exam room and he pulled out a huge needle, with which he said he was going to stop my baby's heart with digoxin by injecting him directly in his heart through my abdomen. I was crying and Tiller very forcefully jammed the needle into my abdomen and I jumped because it hurt. He became very agitated and told me that I better not move or he'd just have to do it again. I cannot explain the sadness I felt, feeling my baby move and kick before the injection and the stillness I felt afterwards. As soon as I felt that needle, I knew I had made a horrible mistake. After that, Tiller very roughly began to insert my first round of laminaria into my cervix to dilate it and I kept squirming and again, he yelled at me. He held up his fingers and told me that he was going to give me a lesson in biology, that his fingers did not bend the way my body was bending and it would just hurt more if I kept moving. Over the next two days, he re-inserted several more rounds of laminaria, each time as painful as the first. That was in the mornings and we had group counselling in the afternoons.
The last day of the procedure was the worst. It was the day of my "induction and labor". All eight of us were taken into the basement of clinic where there were beds all lined up in a row. We were then handed hospital gowns and told to change into them and get into our beds. At that point, the nurse came down the line and put two IV's into arm, one on my hand, and the other on the side of my wrist. Then, pitocen was put into the IV to start my contractions. Immediately, I was in so much pain, I though I was dying. I felt like I had to pee really bad, so I called to the nurse to take me to the bathroom. I was in too much pain to even walk. She came over and told me that I didn't have to go to the bathroom, it was just my water. I insisted that she take me to the bathroom and she did, where I could not pee. Then, she said it was time for me to go in and see Dr. Tiller. He put me into the stirrups and I was crying and I begged him for a painkiller. He said no. I begged him again and I told him that I had never been in that much pain. He said very arrogantly that I had never been pregnant before either. At that point he pulled out all of my remaining laminaria all at once and he took a long curved scissors and broke my water. There was so much that it came back onto the exam table and soaked my gown. He became agitated and said that now he was going to have to change my gown. I told him that I didn't care that it was wet, I just wanted the pain to stop. Then, he told me that I had better not scream and scare his first trimester patients. At that point, he took the forceps and pushed them inside of me. Then, he pushed his entire hand inside of me and I just gave up. I really thought he was going to kill me right there on that table. Then, he said I wasn't ready and sent me back to my bed and told me not to push until he came back and told me to. My body could not help it, I started pushing hard in my bed and the nurses took me into the bathroom and they laid a blue covering over the toilet and told me to start pushing as hard as I could. I did and on my last push, they put something into my IV and that's how I delivered my son. Over a toilet, like he was a piece of trash.
When I woke up, the first thing I remember is not being in that awful pain. Then, I felt my stomach and it felt like squishy jelly. I knew then that my baby was officially gone and I saw my chart behind me. I grabbed it and that's how I found out that my baby was a boy. The wave of despair that came over me was crushing. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I had just gone through labor and deliver to deliver a dead baby. The finality of it was overwhelming.
I went to Tiller's clinic because I was young and I had been raped. I thought my life was over. I thought an abortion was a magic cure all, but it just made everything worse. I realized too late that having that abortion did not un-rape me, it did not make all knowledge of my pregnancy vanish, and it made my innocent son pay for his father's crime.
