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BETHESDA, Maryland, October 23, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – A “particularly grotesque” late-term abortionist, LeRoy Carhart, has opened a new unlicensed facility in a Washington, D.C. suburb, posing many risks to pre-born babies and their moms.
“I’m protesting Carhart because abortion is killing innocent human lives and Carhart is particularly grotesque in doing late-term abortions,” Sarah Manring, one of the facility’s many protesters, told LifeSiteNews on October 17.
Carhart was scheduled to begin committing abortions in Bethesda, Maryland, that day. He cancelled all of his appointments that day after pro-lifers exposed him for opening up without a license.
Manring is 18 weeks' pregnant with her second child.
“And after feeling both of my babies move inside my belly, I just can’t imagine how anyone could abort their child,” she said.
Carhart is one of the most well-known late-term abortionists in America. He is one of several abortionists who proudly touts his willingness to abort babies even in the last months of pregnancy, when they are able to survive outside the womb. In an undercover sting video from Live Action, Carhart famously said once he has begun a late-term abortion, the dead baby inside the mother is like “meat in a crockpot.”
In the same video, he joked about using “a pickaxe” and “a drill bit” to dismember the baby.
Carhart committed late-term abortions in Germantown, Maryland, until a pro-life group bought the building in which his facility was housed.
Then, Operation Rescue discovered that Carhart was planning on opening a new late-term abortion facility in Bethesda, Maryland, less than a mile from Walter Johnson High School and next to a handful of swanky stores. He was advertising late-term abortions despite lacking a license to commit them at that location and a lab certificate.
It’s unclear if he has committed any illegal abortions at the new facility yet.
It’s “classic Carhart” to circumvent the law and open without a license, Lauren Handy of the DC-based pro-life apostolate Mercy Missions told LifeSiteNews.
The late-term abortions in which Carhart specializes are “very dangerous and particularly gruesome,” Arina Grossu, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, told the pro-life activists praying in Bethesda.
“The later in pregnancy an abortion occurs, the riskier it is and the greater chance for significant complications,” said Grossu, who has a Master of Science in Bioethics from the University of Mary.
“A woman seeking an abortion at 20 weeks is 35 times more likely to die from an abortion than she was in the first trimester,” she explained. “At 21 weeks or more, she is 91 times more likely to die from an abortion than in the first trimester. Women should not be subjected to these kinds of risks at Carhart’s new late-term abortion facility.”
Jennifer Morbelli, a 29-year-old teacher who was 33 weeks' pregnant, died from complications after Carhart aborted her baby at his Germantown location.
Halfway through pregnancy at 20 weeks, pre-born babies can feel pain as they are torn apart in abortions.
“Currently, commercial livestock in a slaughterhouse and animals in a laboratory have more legal protection from pain than do unborn children,” said Grossu. “And here is one of the main centers in America that will continue this practice unless we stop it by changing our laws.”
Gonzales v. Carhart, a Supreme Court case in which Carhart was involved, upheld a ban on partial-birth abortion.
The case also revealed the barbarity of dismemberment abortion, Grossu told LifeSiteNews, which is still legal in many states. In dismemberment abortions, babies are ripped apart limb by limb.