Testimony of a Mind Changed by Truth

If a picture is worth a thousand words, it goes without saying that a video is worth far more. 

At the beginning of September, I was at York University with my colleagues, talking to students and other people in the community about abortion. As usual, we were displaying large images that show ultrasounds of healthy pre-born children, and images of the victims of abortion to contrast, and show evidence of how abortion violently ends their lives. This time, however, I also brought video evidence. 

I interrupted a conversation that my colleague Leire was having with a young man who was pro-choice. He was saying that abortion is sometimes justifiable, depending on the circumstances of an unexpected pregnancy. I asked him if he had ever seen what abortion actually looks like and offered to show him an animated depiction. He had never seen, and agreed to watch.

He quietly watched, as former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino described the most common procedure, aspiration (suction) abortion.

When Dr. Levatino showed the suction machine being turned on, the young man gasped in disbelief and horror, as he watched the 11-week fetus’ head torn off by the machine, and sucked through the cannula, then the arms, legs, and torso ripped apart and also sucked through. He shook his head in shock and disgust, as he watched the abortionist go back into the uterus to retrieve the parts left behind – an arm, some tissue, and scrape them out. 

When the short video ended, I asked him if what he had seen had changed his opinion about abortion. He said, “Yes, that is horrible, and no circumstance justifies doing that – ever.”

While Leire had built great common ground with him and had a sign in front of her with an abortion victim on it, for him, that picture didn’t tell the full story. When he saw with his own eyes what abortion actually does – decapitates and dismembers a living human being, he decided that was something he could no longer justify, no matter the circumstance. He became pro-life, because he saw the truth for himself. 

We often tell people that we don’t actually protest abortion, we simply bring the truth of what it is to the public, and abortion protests itself. For this young man, he went from holding pro-choice beliefs, to being completely against abortion, in under 4 minutes flat. The video may end up saving a life one day.