-
This investigation of Planned Parenthood,
-
who's based on false premises,
one after another after another.
-
Time to stop wasting time,
get on with meaningful work.
-
And stop picking on women and trying
to take their choice away.
-
I yield back the balance of my time.
-
The time of the gentleman has expired.
-
We welcome our distinguished
witnesses today.
-
Do you and each of you swear
-
that the testimony that you are about
to give shall be the truth,
-
the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you God?
-
And I'll now begin by introducing
today's witnesses.
-
The first witness is Dr.
-
Anthony Levatino.
Dr.
-
Levitino is a board certified
obstetrician gynecologist.
-
Over the course of his career, Dr.
-
Levitino has practiced obstetrics
-
and gynecology in both private
and University settings,
-
including as an associate professor
of OB GYN at the Albany Medical College.
-
And Dr.
Levitino will begin with.
-
You welcome.
-
Thank you, chairman
and members of the committee.
-
I only have five minutes,
so I'm going to get right to it.
-
Second Trimester D any abortions perform
-
between roughly 14 and 24
weeks of gestation.
-
Your patient today is 17 years old.
-
She's 22 weeks pregnant.
-
Her baby is the length of your
hand plus a couple of inches.
-
And she's been feeling her baby
kicked for the last several weeks.
-
But she's asleep on an
operating room table.
-
You walk into that operating room scrubbed
and gown, and after removing laminaria,
-
you introduce a suction
catheter into the uterus.
-
This is a 14 French suction catheter.
-
If she were twelve weeks pregnant or less.
-
Basically, the width
of your hand is smaller.
-
You could basically do
the entire procedure with this.
-
But babies this big don't fit
through catheters this size.
-
After suctioning the amniotic fluid out
-
from around the baby, you introduce
an instrument called the sofa clamp.
-
It's about 13 inches long.
-
It's made of stainless steel.
-
The business end of this clamp is about
-
two and a half inches long
and a half inch wide.
-
There are rows of sharp teeth.
-
This is a grasping instrument.
-
When it gets a hold of something,
it does not let go.
-
A DNA procedure is a blind abortion.
-
So picture yourself introducing this
-
and grabbing anything you
can blindly and pull.
-
And I do mean hard.
-
And I'll pop the leg about that big
-
which you put down on the table next
to you, reaching again, pull again.
-
Pull out an arm about the same length
-
which you put down
on the table next to you.
-
And use this instrument again and again
-
to tear out the spine,
the intestines, the heart and lungs.
-
Head in the baby that size is
about the size of a large plum.
-
Can't see it, but you pretty good idea.
You've got it.
-
If you've got your instrument around
something and your fingers are spread
-
about as far as they go,
you know you did it right.
-
If you crush down on the instrument,
white material runs out of the cervix.
-
That was the baby's brains and you
can pull out skull pieces.
-
You have a day like I had a lot of times.
-
Sometimes a little face comes
back and stares back at you.
-
Congratulations.
-
You just successfully performed
a second trimester denied abortion.
-
You just affirmed her right to choose.
One more question,
-
doctor levitino. Why did you end
your practice of doing abortions?
-
I did over 1200 abortions over a four
year period in private practice.
-
Now counting the ones that I
did during my training.
-
I met my wife during my first year
of training at Albany medical center.
-
We got married about a year later and
found that we had an infertility problem.
-
After years of failed infertility
treatment and several years trying
-
to adopt a child,
we were blessed with adopting a little
-
girl that we named Heather
in August of 1978.
-
As sometimes happens in those situations,
-
My wife got pregnant the very next month
and we had two children ten months apart,
-
two months short of my daughter Heather's
6th birthday, she was killed in an auto
-
accident and literally died in her
arms in the back of an ambulance.
-
Anyone who has children might think they
have some idea of what that feels like,
-
but unless you've been through it
yourself, you have no idea whatsoever.
-
I know people find it hard to believe,
but what do you do after disaster?
-
You bury your child and then
you go back to your life.
-
And I don't remember exactly how long it
-
was after my daughter died that I showed
up at Albany medical center or number nine
-
to perform my 1st 2nd
trimester DNA abortion.
-
I wasn't thinking of it
as anything special.
-
This was routine to me,
-
but I reached in, literally pulled
out an arm or leg and got sick.
-
Earlier on, I described stacking up
body parts on the side of the table.
-
It's not to gross people
out using a simple term.
-
When you do an abortion,
you need to keep inventory.
-
You have to make sure you get two
arms and two legs and all the pieces.
-
If you don't, Your patient's going
to come back infected, bleeding, or dead.
-
So I soldiered on and
finished that abortion.
-
And I know it sounds like I said hard
for people to believe,
-
but I'm telling you,
straight up my experience
-
after over 1200 abortions,
first and second trimester up to 24 weeks
-
and all the rest of it,
and being very dedicated to it.
-
For the first time in my life,
I really looked I really looked
-
at that pile of body parts on the side
of the table and I didn't see her
-
wonderful right to choose and I
didn't see all the money I just made.
-
All I could see was
somebody's son or daughter.
-
And I stopped doing late term abortions
-
after that and several months later,
stopped doing all abortions.
-
Thank you.