CV NEWS FEED // 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 also 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 apalled 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.
It is unknown as of now whether Dr. Braid has been criminally charged.
