A Texas abortionist admitted to aborting a child whose heartbeat could be detected after the passage of a law banning such abortions.
The Washington Post published Dr. Alan Braid’s confession as an opinion piece. Braid wrote that “on the morning of Sept. 6,” nearly a week after Texas’ law banning abortions after six weeks of gestation, “I provided an abortion to a woman who, though still in her first trimester, was beyond the state’s new limit.”
“I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care,” Braid wrote.
As some commentators have noted, Braid presented his criminal act as ‘brave’ and ‘heroic’.
“I fully understood that there could be legal consequences,” he wrote, “but I wanted to make sure that Texas didn’t get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested.”
Braid’s essay contained a number of other passages which pro-life advocates found disturbing. He suggested that, along with many others in the medical establishment, he was fully pro-abortion well before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling made abortion legal in all 50 states.
“In medical school in Texas [in the 1960’s and 70’s], we’d been taught that abortion was an integral part of women’s health care,” Braid wrote. “When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973, recognizing abortion as a constitutional right, it enabled me to do the job I was trained to do.”
Braid further admitted to working in other ways to make sure babies continue to be aborted, often planning involved and circuitous ways around the new Texas law.
Disturbingly, he presented the presence of an unborn child’s heartbeat as a “fate” he dreads having to tell expectant mothers about:
“I tell them that we can offer services only if we cannot see the presence of cardiac activity on an ultrasound, which usually occurs at about six weeks, before most people know they are pregnant. The tension is unbearable as they lie there, waiting to hear their fate.
“If we detect cardiac activity, we have to refer them out of state,” Braid wrote. “One of the women I talked with since the law took effect is 42. She has four kids, three under 12. I advised her that she could go to Oklahoma.” He also offered to help arrange “funding” for the trip.
Dr. Braid is helping gather women to sue Texas over its pro-life law in an effort to make most abortions legal again in the state.
Pro-life advocates were appalled by Dr. Braid’s criminal abortion. “He slaughtered a baby. He should go to jail,” wrote Lila Rose of the pro-life organization Live Action.
“He killed a child with a heartbeat,” wrote journalist Jack Posobiec.
“And brags about it,” added the Capstone Report.
The above comes from a Sept. 19 story on the site of Catholic Vote.
“I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care,” Braid wrote.
I think “Doctor” Mengele said something very similar…
A simple act of reparation would help… I hope.
He confessed to murder, an uncoerced admission of guilt. Let him be arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced. Earthly justice will be nothing compared to divine justice. Another baby dead, and it’s mother paid for it’s killing. For shame!
The law isn’t unconstitutional. It doesn’t ban abortions. It makes them prohibitively expensive ($10,000 plus litigant’s attorney fees). Just like the left adds taxes to gasoline and other things they don’t like and want to discourage, Texas has added costs to getting an abortion in order to discourage that behavior. It’s not unconstitutional.
The abortion itself is the same gross price it always was, the penalties of being caught are the wages of sin. Can’t compare trying to save lives with leftist schemes to take more money out of the pockets of taxpayers because in this case, it’s only the law breakers who must pay up.
I truly understand and believe it or not respect the view and belief of many who write here and read the replies are sincere and good people. I’m not here to change your minds about your views on abortion. I am dismayed that so many use the soundbites and stereotypes that justify a feeling of pious righteousness. It is a fallacy to believe or advertise that only liberals (let’s add “sinful”, since so many here are rather judgmental on who is sinning and who is not) are the ones getting abortions. The law IMHO is unconstitutional just as Jim Crow laws were: it’s an attempt to use the letter of the law to dissuade and work around something that is now a right. Whoever came up with the fetal heart beat needs to know the difference between a heart that is beating and an electrical discharge in a forming heart of a fetus. Knowing that this heartbeat comes at six weeks, sometimes well before a woman is aware that she is pregnant, so by the time she IS aware, it’s too late to get a legal abortion in the state of Texas. Jim Crow laws acknowledged black suffrage, but prevented those people from voting by creating artificial barriers, such as constitution tests, showing receipts from previous elections, etc. Beyond the fetal heart law, raising the cost of an abortion is again simply trying to create barriers, and thus puts an undue burden and therefore again unconstitutional. No one is mandating abortions for all – it’s a woman’s choice (Or are some here going to advocate that a man, ANY man (woman’s father, child’s father, brother, minister) has the right to stop an abortion when the woman is going to do so – rather sexist and patriarchal, eh?). If someone wanted my vote to get rid of RVW, the answer is simple: public education, sex education in schools, and free birth control. This stops or at least slows down the rate of pregnancy, thus preventing proactively the need for an abortion. Incest and rape: definitely allow the abortion IF the mother desires it, and the rapist is charged for the abortion and must spend some time in prison as a deterrent to others. Texas created this conundrum, now they live with the consequences.
The consequences of what you call a conundrum is that Texas babies will live.
What an outrage! How dare you compare outlawing killing children in the womb, abortion, to Jim Crow laws. Where to begin with your confusion. First Jim Crow laws were state and local laws than enforced racial segregation. These laws were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Southern Democrat-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by black people during the Reconstruction period. Don’t you see that killing off the black race through abortion is just as bad or worse? Where is the Black unborn child’s right not to be killed? Jim Crow has nothing to do with murdering another human being. Distortion and obfuscation is your game I see. And also the good old fallback of “racism”! It is not a woman’s choice to destroy another human being and that’s your mistake. And how about the hundreds of women and men alive today because their mothers choose life instead of death when the sins of the father prevailed and their mothers were raped by their fathers. 60 million abortions are the result of your so-called sex education in schools and so-called free (no self control) birth control.
It’s hard to believe your reasoning confusing Jim Crow laws with and I might add the elimination of Black and minority babies through abortion, over 50%, and most abortion clinics are located in minority areas too I might add. The real racists are those who support abortion. How some are so blind…
Killing a baby is always wrong.
Michael Dremel’s pro contraception/pro abortion posts are that of an anti Catholic troll.
These pro-abortion people are in for a very horrible eternity.
“I tell them that we can offer services only if we cannot see the presence of cardiac activity on an ultrasound, which usually occurs at about six weeks, before most people know they are pregnant. The tension is unbearable as they lie there, waiting to hear their fate.
Waiting to hear THEIR fate?
Their fate? Apparently it is a choice between killing a baby in Texas or killing a baby in Oklahoma.
The baby has no choice.
Abortion is never safe for the baby.
The sign those women are holding is a new low.