Taxpayer-Funded PBS Airs Late-Term Abortion Propaganda

Arina Grossu Director, Center for Human Dignity, FRC

Taxpayer-funded PBS aired a controversial documentary on Labor Day highlighting four late-term abortionists. This documentary glorifies the sordid work of those who perform abortions up to the ninth month. Its goal is clearly to generate empathy for late-term abortionists and paint them as heroes.

The four abortionists who were highlighted in the film are LeRoy Carhart (Germantown Reproductive Health Services in Germantown, Maryland), Shelley Sella and Susan Robinson (Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico) and Warren Hern (Boulder Abortion Clinic in Boulder, Colorado).

The trailer can be viewed here. The film’s outreach partners include NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women. One PBS affiliate in Mississippi chose not to air it.

To be clear, the film addresses the “specialty” of aborting babies that are able to live outside the womb. Late-term abortion involves the gruesome practice of injecting an unborn child with poison to stop his or her heart, and having the mother deliver a dead child after the abortionist stabs the child’s head and suctions out the brains. By airing a documentary that sympathizes with the abortionists who perform these brutal and barbarous acts, PBS is lending support for continuing them.

That’s why the documentary would be more aptly called “The Other Gosnells.” Operation Rescue detailed some of the complications these abortionists have found themselves in, concerning botched abortions and abortion-related medical emergencies:

“Carhart, Sella, and Robinson continue to subject women to substandard patient care. In Albuquerque, Sella and Robinson sent at least 14 women to the emergency room before city officials decided to stop releasing 911 calls to the public.

In one case, Sella botched an abortion on a 35-week pregnant woman that resulted in a life-threatening ruptured uterus. In action reminiscent of the political corruption that protected Tiller in Kansas, Sella was inexplicably exonerated from wrong-dong in that case even though it was admitted during the disciplinary proceedings that the late-term abortion process fell below accepted obstetrical medical standards and that the patient’s risk factors were completely ignored that should have contraindicated the outpatient surgical abortion process used by Sella.

In just the past two years, Carhart has been responsible for eight abortion-related medical emergencies in Nebraska and Maryland, including the death of Jennifer Morbelli from complications to a 33-week abortion. Carhart was earlier involved in the abortion-related death of 19-year old Christin Gilbert in Kansas…

Then there was the time a former clinic worker confessed in our office that Sella had, in the same form as convicted murder Kermit Gosnell, intentionally killed a baby born alive during a late-term abortion. Unfortunately, she recanted when questioned by police saying, she “didn’t want to get involved.”

In addition to the brutal killing of the child, late-term abortion is dangerous and poses serious health risks to women including death, hemorrhage, infections, incomplete abortions, organ damage, subsequent pre-term birth, placenta previa and increased mental and psychological issues such as depression, suicide, and drug abuse.

The memo that PBS did not get is that late-term abortion does not resonate with the American people.  In fact, a January 2014 Marist Poll found that 84 percent of Americans believe abortion should be restricted (within the first three months of pregnancy, in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother) or never allowed at all.

Further, America has the most liberal abortion laws in the world and is one of four countries that allows abortion for any reason after viability up to the day of birth. The United States is also one of only nine nations that allows abortion after 14 weeks of gestation.

Late-term abortion needs to be ended in the land in which the right to life is seen as primary, especially given the science revealing that unborn children can experience pain by 20 weeks post-fertilization.

The practice of late-term abortion can never be accepted in a civilized society and any support for it is intolerable. Please reach out to PBS and express your disapproval of their decision to air a documentary that glorifies the killing of unborn children at the hands of abortionists who do late-term abortions. PBS can be reached at (703) 739-5000 or can be messaged here.
