The Sean McDowell Show - A Former Abortion Doctor Speaks Out (ft. Tony Levatino)

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Why would an abortion doctor quit? Dr. Levatino has been a practicing OBGYN since 1980, but in 1985 he had a radical experience that turned his life upside down. He has since testified about his experience regarding certain legal bills (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t--MhKiaD7c&t=5s). In this interview, Dr. Levatino describes the nature of a D&C abortion and what experience caused him to turn his back on performing abortions and become a pro-life advocate. WATCH: Dr. Levatino Testimony (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8szDctI9lXM) READ: A Rebel's Manifesto (https://amzn.to/3smptuw) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Why would an OBGYN who had performed over 1,200 abortions suddenly stop and then begin speaking up against the practice? Our guest today, Dr. Anthony Levitino, is a former abortionist, currently a practicing OBGYN who has also testified before Congress. I quit doing abortions in 1985. It gets nasty here. When you got a needle in, you could feel the baby move or move away. And this is when I had my first doubts about abortion.

Dr. Levitino, I first heard about you and your story at a pregnancy resource center fundraiser from our mutual friend, Lila Rose. I immediately turned to my wife and I said, I need to interview him if he's willing. My audience has to hear a story. So thanks for making yourself available and your willingness to share this part of your life. Happy to do so, Sean. Before we get to what it means to be a former abortionist, I'd love to go back and just ask you the question, when did you first decide you even wanted to be a doctor and why? Oh, golly. I was nine or 10 and woke up one day with a golf ball size lump under my left arm.

Went through a bunch of tests and had to have surgery to have that thing removed. To me, it was this great adventure. I'm going to be in the hospital. They're going to do an operation, whatever that was. My poor parents, of course, were sweating out leukemia, lymphoma, and all this other stuff. Turned out to be nothing. But when I was in the hospital, I remember talking to the doctor and saying, can I go down and see the lab?

And he'd, yeah, sure. And he took me down. And my interest in medicine really started back then. And I was always scientifically interested. And I thought about careers in all kinds of science. But to me, medicine was a practical application of science. And, you know, something where you really could, quote, help people. And it made a difference. And that was why I gravitated toward that. So by the time I got to high school, I was pretty well set on, I want to be a doctor.

What was your family background? Was there a faith background? Was it secular? What was the kind of worldview or family background you came from? Well, I was raised in a Catholic church, Italian in New York. I mean, that's where you were. And we were very engaged with that church for many, many, many years. There came a point when, and I won't get into all of it, but there came a point where there was a real conflict between the leadership in the parish and my father.

And then we tended to drift away. By the time I got to college, I was pretty well not churchgoing at that point. Okay, that makes sense. Where would you say, obviously, the Catholic Church is pro-life and one of the strongest pro-life voices today as a whole. Where did your pro-choice views come from? Well, having drifted away from the church, I suppose it's fair to say I was becoming more and more secular, although I didn't think of it as that way. I was just growing up getting my education. I was very focused on getting my education and getting my medical degree. And I don't remember, I mean, thinking about it, reading about it very much.

But as a medical student in 1973, and of course, I grew up in New York and New York legalized abortion in 1970, three years before Roe versus Wade. And I was a medical student, a student in 1973. So there was a lot of talk about it at that point. When I went to medical school, I wasn't thinking particularly about obstetrics and gynecology. My mom, I was one of six kids, and she used to joke about, well, maybe you become a baby doctor. No way, mom. And of course, you know, and then when you get into your rotations, your first two years of medical school is pretty much straight lecture. Third and fourth years where you actually really get to work with patients and learn really what it is to be a physician.

My first rotation was obstetrics and gynecology, and I loved it. I mean, it was just so much fun. It was, you know, and I thought, well, yeah, but this is my first rotation. I'll probably like all of them. Well, first rotation. I'll probably like all of them. Well, I found out I didn't like all of them. And eventually I got to a point where, and for me, a lot of people wonder why would anybody go into OBGYN, much less a male. And I can tell you, for me personally, I liked using my hands.

So I wasn't so medically oriented. I wanted to do something where I could actually use my hands. So I wasn't so medically oriented. I wanted to do something where I could actually use my hands. And I found out pretty quickly, and it sounds strange from a doctor, but I don't enjoy dealing with chronic disease. I want to be able to fix something and then next. And, you know, I found out it was a whole lot more funding saying, it's a boy, it's a girl, rather than, oh, you know, your mom's really sick, maybe you better get in here. So I, you know, after that rotation, and after getting through my third year, I was pretty well focused on OBGYN because, and it was fascinating because you had two lives, the only

branch of medicine, we have two lives that you have to balance and work to improve at the same time. And that's absolutely fascinating. Huh. That is so, so interesting to me, that back story. I never really thought about it, but it makes sense that you can fix a problem, move on, and also the joy of saying it's a boy and a girl, that makes total sense. Now, as a part of your training was learning how to do and observing abortions. Can you talk to me about was there a choice whether you could watch this or not? What was that like learning how to do so for you?

Yeah. In medical school, we really hardly even touched on it. I graduated in 1976. I don't remember if they even talked about it in medical school, but of course, being in an obstetrics and gynecology rotation, the minute you got into the rotation, for me, that was in 77, because I did a one-year internship, then you're facing the issue directly. This is a New York hospital, a very pro-choice faculty by and large. And at the hospital where I was training, where there was an abortion clinic, it met twice a week, mostly younger patients went.

We were not forced in any way. There were six individuals in my OBGYN and training year. One of them, an Irish Catholic from Boston, said, I want nothing to do with this. And that was the end of it. Today, we hear a lot of stories about students, really, students, residents really being pressured. But it wasn't, that wasn't the case back then. So, and that's where I was first exposed to first in the clinic and then actually doing suction DNC abortions in the first trimester up to 12 to about 13 weeks of pregnancy. That was my first real exposure to it. Do you recall at that time having any hesitancy since one of the other kind of students at that time was like, I don't want anything you do to it. Do you recall at that time having any hesitancy since one of the other

kind of students at that time was like, I don't want anything to do with it. Did you have that thought or was it like, it's just a procedure helping women doesn't bother me at all? Absolutely. The latter. You know, if you asked me how I felt, I was pro-choice. This was a decision, politically speaking, this was a decision between a woman, her doctor, and nobody, including the baby's father, had anything to say about it. It was that sterile. If you read Dr. Nathanson's biography, The Hand of God, he talks about that. And he's absolutely accurate in the description. You know, you're just, you're a technician, uh, job well done. Um, and like I said before next, um, because you're quote helping people. Um, and that was, uh, to me, that was, that was helping women. So

I learned to do abortions. It was that simple, no qualms at all. Wow. Do you recall the first time you performed an abortion either in residency or when you were a doctor? Did you have any qualms of that or, again, just a procedure? Well, I don't remember. I don't have a clear present memory of my first abortion. I mean, I've done enough of them to know exactly what happened. When you're doing a first trimester, think about, you know, for your audience, first trimester, the pregnancy is divided into three trimesters, about equal sizes. Pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, not nine months.

We don't talk months of OB. And the first trimester is up to 13 weeks from last menstrual period. We count from last menstrual period. And yes, we know you weren't pregnant back then, but that's how we count. And a 12 week baby is the width of your hand from head to rump, not counting the legs. That's the size of a 12 week baby or smaller. And you use, in fact, I have one here. You use a suction catheter. You put it up through the cervix. This suction machine is turned on. The suction is quite strong. And we'll literally tear the baby apart. And these pieces will come through the tubing into the machine.

So when you're done with the procedure, you have to open the machine and look. And then you have to check and make sure that all the pieces are there. You have to make sure that you got two arms, two legs, and all the pieces. That's important. And we'll talk more about that later when we get into second trimester abortion. That's a whole different deal. But that's essentially what a suction DNC is. And we didn't have medical abortions.

We didn't have chemical or RU46 abortions at the time. It was, you know, first trimester, suction DNC. And I did a lot of them. I mean, it's interesting when it was my turn to do them, I would do, believe it or not, we did them in the delivery room. Um, and I would do two, three, four in the morning, never thought anything of it. Wow. You know, it's somewhat telling the fact that you don't remember the first one just shows that it wasn't really a moral qualm for you. You didn't have to get over it. It was just a standard procedure. Okay, now I was going to give,

we jumped in a little bit, give maybe like a trigger warning for folks. I figured they would know if I'm talking with someone who's an OBGYN, former abortionist, that we're going to get into some of the details here. So here's their official trigger warning. We're going to start talking about in a moment, uh, some of the very procedures because people need to understand exactly what's going on. Now, before we come back, a couple of questions before we jump into that is you would do three or four a day. So how long was this span over that you performed abortions? How many years? Yeah, I was doing three or four once, maybe twice a week, uh, depending on how many, it wasn't, it wasn't an everyday thing. Um, and my, uh, my OBGYN training proper was three years. Um, so, you know, you can,

you can make a guess at numbers. Okay. So how long ago was this that you stopped and we're gonna get to the story why you stopped but how long ago was it that you stopped i'm not sure i understand what you mean how long ago i well how many years ago yeah okay i quit doing abortions in 1985. oh 1985 okay got it february 1985 was the last abortion i did february wow now so you remember the last one with clarity and we're going to get to why that was so distinct as opposed to the first one that's very very telling okay so have you ever had an abortion that was botched in other words, the baby was born alive. And how did you deal with it, if so? In my case, no. I was doing suction DNC abortions. I mean, remember, a baby this big or smaller cannot live outside the womb.

And when you're doing a suction DNC abortion, you're tearing the baby apart. The machine in that case is literally tearing the baby apart. There's no chance of a live baby coming out. The second trimester abortions. Now, let me talk a little bit about the history of abortion real quick. Prior to 1980, 1981, when we were doing beyond, as I said, first trimester up to 13 weeks, second trimester is 13 weeks to 27 weeks. Abortions were possible up to around 23, 24. They started getting too difficult after that, and they were pretty rare at that time at those much, much later stages. But of course, now let's go by comparison. We said a 12-week

baby was the width of your hand. A 20-week baby is the length of your hand, from the tip of your middle finger to your wrist. That's head to rump, not counting the legs, a 20-week baby, one that is halfway through pregnancy. And we were doing them beyond that. Mothers feel their babies kicking between right around 20 weeks, 18, 19, 20 weeks, actually feeling the baby kick at that point. So you've got a very full, fully formed charge and a child and a big one. The trimester framework was important because that's how Roe versus Wade operated. And again, I won't get into that unless you want to. Right now with the Dobbs decision, I love these news reports. Well, the majority of people are polled, say they favor having Roe versus Wade reinstated. The majority of people have no not what Roe allowed any abortion anytime for any reason, essentially. And of course, there are states and politicians who champion that today.

When you're doing a D&E abortion, so well, anyway, let me finish what I was saying. So after 13 weeks up to a little bit past 20, what we were doing initially in my training were saline abortions. You would put a 20% salt solution. It was very caustic. You would draw fluid out from the uterus. You would place a saline solution in, and I did these in my training. And then you would wait for the patient to go through labor. There was no instrumentation involved, and these women would have to labor anywhere from eight to 36 hours to deliver their almost always dead children. Now, I personally never had a live birth. There were a couple of them at my hospital, however.

And, of course, once a baby is born, that now is a person. You know, interesting. People confuse. You and I are human beings. But we are also people, you know, interesting people confuse. We are all, you and I are human beings, but we are also people, you and I, but they are not the same despite what people think. You're a human being by definition of science. You're a person by definition of law, totally different universe. And the difference is a person has rights. And when did you acquire those rights? Well, when you became a person.

And when did you become a person? When you were born. This is the legal justification for abortion. Forget the morality. That's the legality of it. Right. So once that baby was, if you did a saline abortion, or maybe we used to rarely did what are called proselytizing abortions.

We didn't like those because you got more live births. So we tended to avoid them. Now, once that baby drops out, now this is a person and has rights and you have to try to save that child, at least legally and morally you do. And that happened a couple of times in the history of my hospital. I never had a case like that myself. You didn't have a case. Okay. So you perform most were kind of the suction in the first trimester. Do we know if babies at that point can feel pain potentially? It's controversial. I don't know that anybody can

prove that they do at that stage. Now, remember I said I was doing saline abortions. Of course, the nervous system is developed. It's developing. You've got a heartbeat. You've got the baby's moving. You can see the baby moving starting at 10 weeks. So it takes nerves. It takes active living nerves to do that. And all I can tell you from personal experience is I had now the salines, most of the salines I was doing were 15, 16, 17 weeks. And remember, I said you put a needle into the uterus and you draw fluid out and put salt solution in. Well, you're putting a needle in where the baby's in there, where the needle is. And you ever gone fishing, Sean? You know, when you've got a bite, you can feel it.

If I took a needle and stuck you, you pull away. You might hit me, but the babies don't have that option. Okay. But when you got a needle in the uterus, you could hit the baby. And I'm telling you, there were times when you could feel the baby move or move away. So don't tell me they can't feel pain because at 16 and 17 weeks, I had plenty of cases where you can't tell because it's blind. You hit the baby and the baby pulls away. You can feel it. So there's a lot of controversy about that. I won't say anything more about it.

That's fine. On the other hand, you know, I'm going to editorialize here for a second. You know, people talk about, well, in a way it's harsh, but I would say, why do you, if you're having an abortion, why do you care if the baby feels pain? You're killing the baby. You're doing it deliberately. Well, you know, it's more humane that way. Interesting comment. So my take on that is, okay, imagine you're asleep in your bed and I break into your home, but I do it very quietly. You don't hear me. And you're fast asleep and I lay a shotgun next to your head and you still don't wake up. You did not hear me. And I pull the trigger. I promise you, your death will be painless. Feel better about it? That's a great way to put it. I'm glad you make that distinction between feeling pain and doing harm. The life is taken nonetheless.

Absolutely. I think that's great. Now, some of the stuff I read and I watched your kind of testimony before Congress, you described certain D&E procedures, I think it is. Are those in the second and third trimester? Can you explain what those are? And I just have to give a trigger warning. This is where it even ramps up a level for folks, how disturbing it is. It gets nasty here, but I will promise the audience that everything I'm telling you is firsthand and true. In the early 80s, as I said, saline and prostaglandin abortions were just expensive, dangerous, prolonged hospital stays, the chance of a live birth. Moms having to go through labor and seeing now, there's no joking here, this is a fully formed baby that just came out of you.

It's incredibly difficult for patients. It was difficult for staff. We were just, those of us in the abortion industry were looking for a better method of second trimester abortion. We wanted something like suction DNC. So the patient would go to sleep and when it was all, you know, when she woke up, it would all be over. And that's when D&Es were developed. developed dna abortion starts at about 13 weeks for a suction dnc that's off and remember third trimester extends to 27 weeks dna could be done effectively up to about 24 weeks um the last few weeks no because so remember i said 20 weeks was the length of your hand add a finger finger breath for every week, for every two weeks

after that. So a 24 week baby is the length of your hand plus two more fingers on top. That's, that's a big baby we're talking about. Now, in the early, in the late 70s, early 80s, babies were not viable at 24 weeks. But you see, they were more, it was more like 27, 28. That was the edge of viability. But medical science didn't stop over the last 50 years. We've gotten better and better and better at treating premature infants to the point now where even World Health Organization recognizes that viability is at about 22 weeks of gestation. So the babies, some of the kids, some of the later DNAs that we were doing, I did them up to 24. The later ones were today would be viable. They were not then at the time. So anyway, we wanted a surgical method. So I do this description because, and I do this description before giving most pro-life presentations, because I think it's really important for people to understand exactly what we're talking about. Why is this so important? Why are the pregnancy centers so important? Why does it matter who you vote for? Imagine that your patient is 17 years old and she's, as I said, 20 weeks pregnant.

Baby's the length of your hand. Her uterus is all the way up to her umbilicus. She's been feeling her baby for the kick for the last two weeks, but now she's asleep on an operating room table and you're there to help her with her problem. You walk into the operating room and on the right-hand side, there's a small table with your instruments. Now, the first thing you grab is that suction catheter I showed earlier. As I said, a suction DNC could be done 12 to 13 weeks or less. You can do pretty much the entire abortion with this one instrument. But in a D&E abortion, when you put this into the uterus and turn on the suction, all you get is the amniotic fluid. And you see this paleo fluid running through the tubing into the machine. And that was the amniotic fluid that was there to protect the baby. As I said, even though you can do the whole

abortion in first trimester with this, babies this big don't fit through catheters this size. So you need something a bit stronger. And the instrument I used for years was called a sofa clamp. This is a sulfur clamp. It's about 13 inches long. It's stainless steel. And if you can see this, the business end of this thing is about two and a half inches long and a half inch wide. It has rows of sharp teeth.

This is a grasping instrument. When it gets a hold of something, believe me, it does not let go. The way I used to do second trimester DNA abortions, they were a blind procedure. You can use ultrasound, but frankly, it's not very helpful. And it just slows things down. So picture yourself after the suction, taking this instrument, put it up through the cervix into the uterus. Now be really careful because the walls are thin and soft. And it's very easy to perforate the walls and injure one of the organs above. I can tell you about one case I had later. Wow. But just, we're not going to perforate the

uterus this time and just blindly grasp anything you can and pull and feel yourself pulling. And I mean hard and out pops a leg about that big, which you put down on the table next to you and reach into with this instrument again. Grab blindly and pull hard. Out comes an arm about the same length, which you put down on the table next to you. And you reach in with this instrument again and again and tear out the spine, the intestines, the heart and lungs. Head on a baby that size is about the size of a plum.

Now, again, you can't see it, but you're pretty sure you got it if your instrument's around something and your fingers are spread as far as they will go. You know you did it right if you crush down on the instrument and white material runs out of the cervix. That was the baby's brains. Now you can pull out skull pieces. Sometimes a little face comes back and stares back at you. Congratulations. You just successfully performed a second trimester D&E abortion. You just affirmed her right to choose. Now, this is mid-80s we're talking about. You just made $800 cash in 15 minutes. That was mid-80s. $800 today, $800 in 1985 is the equivalent of $2,300 today. Holy cow. You just made that legally cash in 15 minutes.

How often is that procedure or one like it still practiced today in the U.S.? The best statistics that we have say the majority of abortions, 90% of them occur in the first trimester, 13 weeks or less. Today, those are either suction DNC abortions, which were the majority until last year or so. Now, medical abortion is the more common method of first trimester abortion. It's getting more and more frequent and suction DNCs are decreasing. Later term abortions, second trimester abortions and later comprise about 10% of all abortions. So people love talking about how rare this is. Okay. But when you're talking a million abortions a year, 10% is a hundred thousand abortions. It's a lot of kids. And the later they get,

the fewer people that perform them. Once you get, as I said, you could do this procedure up to about 24 weeks. The reason we didn't go past that is, of course, the bones are beginning to calcify, the kid's getting stronger, the tendons are getting stronger. It gets to a point where you can't just physically tear them apart with a clamp. And one other advantage of DNA, you never get a live birth ever. So now there are other methods that are being used for even later abortions that allow abortions to be done pretty much all the way up to birth. But that's a small, highly specialized area. There are not as many, nowhere near as many practitioners doing those really late abortions, third trimester, late second trimester, as there are doing first trimester suction D&C or

chemical abortion or D&E abortions. Although ACOG, the big professional OBGYN group, is extremely pro-abortion, have been their whole history. That's a whole other story. And they and the Accrediting Council of Graduate Medical Education and others petitioned the board of OBGYN to create a new subspecialty called, what do they call it? Complex Family Planning. Again, a beautiful euphemism. I mean, just how complicated do you think birth control pills and IUDs get? It's about training people to do second and third trimester abortions. So there are now people in this new subspecialty training area training specifically to learn to do second and third trimester abortions. to my high school students just of an abortion so they would understand what we're talking about. And part of it is we watch movies like The Passion. We watch things on the Holocaust to see the horror of something so we understand the reality of it. I think there's a value for that

in a time and a place. Now, you just described that you would pull the pieces out one by one of the baby, lay them out to make sure, as I understand it, none is left to the mom or becomes almost like toxic and dangerous. So every time you did this, you see this little child with a face, with hands and feet. Was that just no different than seeing a tumor in your mind at that point? I was pro-choice. This was a woman's choice and nobody, including the baby's father, had anything to say about it. Just like I said before, I was a technician. I'm there to help her with her problem. I am a pro-choice OBGYN. You know, a lot of people say they're pro-life and pro-choice, but for a lot of people, it doesn't directly affect their lives. As I said earlier, it doesn't even affect how they vote, which drives

me insane, but that's beside the point. But when you're an OBGYN and you say you're pro-choice, this isn't just some vague political position. You have to decide, you have to make that decision as to whether you're going to learn to do abortions and then do them or not. And I did. Now, interestingly, I'll just throw something else in here because this is a good time to do it. How many obstetrician gynecologists do abortions? You know, most people would say, what would you guess, Sean? Well, I had Donna Harrison on who's an OBGYN and she sent me, well, you asked and she sent me a briefing they sent to the Supreme Court. And if I remember, different studies are somewhere between 75% and 90% won't do them, if I remember correctly. But you tell me.

Exactly. Exactly. Donna's a good friend. That's why you made me laugh. Yeah, there have been three peer-reviewed studies in the last 10 years that have shown consistently that 85 plus percent of obstetrician gynecologists refuse to do abortions. Now, this is important, too, because the new mantra is abortion is health care. What exactly does that mean? Does that mean if I'm a doctor, I'm obligated to do abortions? No. And if abortion is so essential, and I've asked this question before,

still haven't gotten an answer. If abortion is such essential, and I've asked this question before, still haven't gotten an answer. If abortion is such essential healthcare, how is it that over 85% of the obstetrician gynecologists refuse to do them? That's a great question. That's a great question. When I'm asked about that, I'll say, how many patients are involved when a woman is pregnant? And as far as I understand, every OBGYN I've talked to would say two. And if healthcare is to improve the life of the patients, and this intentionally ends one's life, how on earth is this healthcare? And of course, we're not talking about exceptions where the mother's life is in jeopardy. That's a separate issue. But let's shift to your story. When did you first start to just have some

doubts or questions? In other words, when was kind of the crack in the edifice of your worldview? When and how and why did that begin? Well, interestingly, it started in my very first year of medical training after I graduated. I was doing an internship at the time, working at Albany Medical Center in Albany, New York. And I was working overnight one night. You do a lot of call as an intern and as a resident. And I went down to the cafeteria for a break and sat down to an attractive young nurse who ultimately I married a year later. We just first met. And we started dating and found out pretty quickly that we were on opposite sides of this issue. And it was then that we made the first most basic and frankly idiotic mistake any couple can

make. You know, instead of, obviously, we found out very quickly we were on opposite sides, but it was a touchy subject. So instead of hashing it out and coming to some kind of resolution, we just ignored it. And the problem with that is that if you ignore one important issue in your relationship, it gets too easy to ignore other issues as well. And that kind of grew over time. But we dated, we married a year later, like a lot of other young couples. We both came from big families who wanted to have children of our own, but found out pretty quickly that we had an infertility problem. My wife just wasn't getting pregnant. I sent her to the best infertility

specialist in town. Any woman who's been, and she went through months and months of tests, surgical procedures, everything else. And she would come home from, even though, as I said, that was a forbidden topic, but she would come home from those visits, lock herself in the bathroom and cry because two ironies were not lost on her. One, here she is married to an OBGYN and she can't get pregnant. Two, here she is trying to get pregnant and her husband's doing killing babies and abortions. But she would push that out as soon as that thought came in. And any woman who's been through an infertility workup knows that it is difficult, painful, embarrassing, just horrific.

It's just an awful experience. Well, her doctor came to us and said there was one more procedure he could try. It should take about an hour and a half. He walked out of the operating room. I can very vividly remember the room, him. I can see it in my mind today. He walked out four and a half hours later and told me, he said, look, I never tell anyone that they can't have their own children, but don't count on it. So we were devastated. As I said,

we wanted children of our own. So after getting over that shock, we decided we would adopt a child. I mean, perfectly happy to adopt a child. Well, anybody who's tried to adopt a child knows how difficult that is. We went through, you know, we went to religious agencies and county agencies and state agencies. And the best we could do after months of effort was to get on a five-year waiting list to get on the actual waiting list. And again, anybody who's been through that knows how trying that is. Now, and this is when I had my first doubts about abortion. It was strictly selfish. I was pro-choice. This is still the right thing to do. But I'm not an idiot. I know why there are so few babies to adopt. And I remember very vividly,

even a particular abortion I was doing myself, the patient in that delivery room as a resident and doing a suction DNC abortion and going through the bag and looking at the pieces and thinking, gosh, I'm throwing these kids into garbage. Wouldn't even one of these women just allow us to take her baby home and care for it as our own? Of course, it doesn't work that way. And that's the way it was. And that's the way it remained. After months of frustration, we were getting absolutely nowhere.

And finally, we sat down and talked about it. And I said, you know, this is ridiculous. I know we're getting nowhere through the normal channels. I know 50 obstetricians in this town on a first name basis. Let's advertise. Let's just let them all know that we're looking for a baby and maybe, maybe we'll get lucky. Some kid will fall between the cracks and we'll be able to adopt a baby privately. And that's exactly what we did. And it was August of 1978 that I was working in the operating room with an attending physician doing a surgical case. And the scrub tap tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and she was holding up a piece of paper that said, call Marsha as soon as you're done. Well, Marsha was the head of social services at our hospital. And it's all the message said,

but I knew what it meant. And she's one of the people we had talked to. So when I got done with the procedure, I gave her a call and she said, she informed me there was a 15 year old girl in labor in the delivery room. She had had no prenatal care. The first time she saw a doctor was the day before, but her parents had taken good care of her. Sheal care. The first time she saw a doctor was the day before. But her parents had taken good care of her. She's healthy. The baby appears healthy. She wants to give her baby up for adoption.

Are you interested? Of course I was interested. I remember staring at the face of the telephone to call my wife with this news and know that I was just seven digits away from becoming a father. And literally, by the grace of God, we were able to adopt a little girl that we named Heather in August of 1978. Fantastic. We finally have a baby after all that effort. And after all the years and after all the tears, we have a daughter and my son, excuse me, my wife got pregnant the very next month with our son. Wow. Yeah, it happens that way sometimes. It does. And our son, Sean, was born in July 1979. Did you say Sean or John?

Sean, spelled just like you spelled it. Okay. Spelled the proper way, the way you spelled it. Good answer. Good. That's what I thought. Just making sure. Keep going. Sorry. Absolutely. Not at all. Well, Sean and Heather were fit, you know, physically, you know, literally close. I mean, they were only 10 months apart in age. And anybody who didn't know that Heather had been adopted would look at the two of them and go 10 months apart. Man, you didn't give your wife much of a break, did you? But hey, I've got a proverbial millionaire's family. Now I've got a son and a daughter. and any doubts I had about abortion simply evaporated and I went back to business as usual. But that was the first doubts was when we were trying to adopt Heather and to adopt anybody. And the fact that I knew that I was contributing to the reason why

there's so few children around to adopt. Well, as you highlighted and folks watching this show can tell my name is sean and i have an adopted sister named heather wow so i'm going to ask you to share a little bit more of the story and to be honest with you i know where the story's going and it's kind of hitting home a little bit for me personalizing it i did not know when i first heard you tell the story that that was her name uh so if you will tell us what happened that ultimately got you to stop performing abortions. Well, you know, we've got our two kids. I'm finally in a private practice. We're, you know, finally making some money. We can afford a home. We can afford some furniture. The kids are growing. Everything's just lovely. And it went on for years until June 23rd of 1984. Heather was exactly two months away from her sixth birthday.

Sean was just a few days away from his fifth birthday. June 23rd, 1984 was a Saturday. It was a beautiful day in Albany. I was on call, but it wasn't too busy. I'd made rounds in the morning and I got to spend the rest of the day with my family. We took the kids to an amusement park. We had dinner together. And that evening, the kids were playing in the backyard when we had friends come over for cake and coffee. We were talking with our friends. And at 725 that night, we heard the screech of brakes out in front of the house. And we ran out, of course. And the kids had gone out in the road and Heather had been hit by a car. She was a mess. I'm a doctor.

I'm supposed to be able to save people's lives. I mean, my wife was an intensive care nurse. This was our work. Obviously, we did everything we could. It made absolutely no difference. And she literally died in our arms in the back of an ambulance that way. Now, if you have kids, you may think you have some idea of what that would feel like. If you haven't been through this yourself, you have no clue. I hope you never find out.

But what do you do after a disaster? You bury your child, you take some time off, and then you try to get into your life again. And I don't remember exactly how long it was after Heather's death, but several weeks later. But I showed up at OR number nine at Albany Medical Center, just like I had over 100 times before for a second trimester DNA abortion. I wasn't thinking of this as anything special. I had other things on my mind. I went in, I started that abortion. I put that sofa clamp in, I ripped out an arm or a leg, and I just stared at it in the clamp and I got sick. But you know, when you start an abortion, you can't stop. I remember I talked about even suction PNC ones, looking at the pieces, and you pointed out correctly, you've got all those pieces and you're putting them on the side of the table

because you have to keep inventory. You have to make sure that you get two arms, two legs, and all the pieces, because if you don't, your patient will come back infected, bleeding, or dead. So I finished that abortion. And I know it sounds, it's difficult to hear and maybe for some people difficult to believe, but I promised you earlier, everything I'm telling you is firsthand and true. For the first time in my career, after all those abortions, I looked, I mean, I really looked at that pile of body parts at the side of the table. And I didn't see her wonderful right to choose. And I didn't see what a great doctor I was helping her with her problem. And I didn't even see the equivalent in today's money of $2,300 I just made in 15 minutes. All I could see was somebody's son or daughter. And it occurred to

me in that moment that this patient had come to me figuratively, never literally, and said, here's $2,300, kill my son or daughter. And I was the kind of person that would look right back with no compunction and say, sure, I'll do that. So obviously we were in a crisis. I told you earlier that the problem with not talking about one important issue is sometimes you get in the habit of not talking about other important issues. And we had been drifting apart over time. But with Heather's death, everything broke wide open. We were almost mourning separately as husband and wife. I didn't just stop doing abortions. I knew that I felt bad and I knew why, and I'll get over this. I told you, I was dedicated. But my wife always knew when I had an abortion scheduled the next

day because I was an absolute bear, and that's a kind word to be around. I got into a blame. I was hurting. And I got into a blame game. You know, it's a girl's fault for getting pregnant. It's the nurse's fault for scheduling. And it's the hospital's fault for allowing it. As usual, it's everybody else's fault. But mine, isn't that the way it always is? And after a few, and you know, and it's not like we never talked i mean i'm my my my heritage i'm full-blooded sicilian she's full-blooded irish trust me we could have great discussions at times but and after a few months of this she'd had it up to there and unbeknownst to me she packed a bag and she was minutes away from walking out of the house with our son but she was going to have her say, and she broke our unspoken rule and started talking about

abortion. And basically, her opening salvo was, you know what? It's not the girl's fault. And it's not the nurse's fault. And it's not the hospital's fault. If you're feeling so bad about this, you stupid idiot, why don't you just quit? Wow. That was the opening. That was the beginning of a two hour conversation about abortion and lots of other things. I'm happy to say she didn't leave. And the next day I went to my partners and told them I would no longer do any more second trimester DNA abortions. It was just too painful. I would just do the little ones, the suction DNCs we were doing in the office. I told you I was dedicated. And for a few more months, I soldiered on doing those.

Wow. But a change had occurred that I couldn't take back. I know people think doctors are so smart, but no different than anybody else. When you finally figure out here, not here, that killing a baby this big for money is wrong, it doesn't take you too long to figure out. It doesn't matter if the baby is this big or this big or even this big. It's all the same. You know, when I go to colleges, it's a very different kind of presentation than, say, for a pregnancy center. And I remind them of something because it's so easy to talk about

someone else's life. So easy. You know, and I say, you know what, today you're an adult. Once you were a child, you didn't look anything like you look today. Once you were a baby yourself, once you were this big, but it was always you. And it was February of 1985. I'm the same to say it was that long when I finally did my last suction DNC abortion, went to my partners and said, that's it, I'm done. I went to my board and then I went to my partners and said I would no longer do any more abortions and I never did another one after that. I believe I heard you say in an early interview that you were the abortion doctor in the movie Unplanned, the story of Abby Johnson. Did I hear that correctly? Yes. There were two doctors in that movie. I was in the first scene, the most important one, I'm glad to say. It was really interesting. Yeah, I love that movie. And one of the scenes that I kind of get emotional thinking about it is the scene where Abby

Johnson, of course, was an abortion doctor, but she was a director of Planned Parenthood, witnesses an abortion for the first time. She's really brought in to observe it, and it rocked her. And she ended up leaving and now is one of the most outspoken pro-life advocates on the planet. She's amazing. She's a fireball. I've been on her show.

Like, she's just, she's incredible. Well, one of the scenes in that movie, the girl who's playing her wakes up in the middle of the night after she's left. And the husband wakes up and finds her just in tears because she's coming to grips with the guilt of what she had done. How did you come to grips with that? Did you come back to your faith? If you're willing to talk about that, I'd love to hear how you've processed some of that. Well, you know, how do you make up for killing? I know I'm not counting the abortions I did in my training, which were quite a few. I did just under 1200 abortions in private practice, both first and second trimester, and totally

consistent with the statistics, 10% of them were the section, the second trimester D&Es, about 120 of them. You can't make up for the killing of any child. You just can't. Not on your own, there's nothing you can do. Now, it was a long journey. It really was. Pull back a little bit. And God put a lot of people in front of us that made all the difference in our lives. Go back to 1983. I'm still doing abortions on a regular basis. I arrive at my office and I see something no abortionist wants to see. We're being picketed by one of the local Christian churches. And people always ask us, you know, what's it like when you're being picketed? What are you thinking? I said, I'll tell you what I'm thinking. We get a siege mentality.

It's us against you kooks outside. Um, and it's not like we never darken the inside of a church, but I was very uncomfortable with people who were very demonstrative about their faith. Well, at that time, I got a new patient. Her name was Susan. She was in her mid-30s, didn't even come up to my shoulders. Came in for a routine GYN exam and pap smear, nothing special. And when it was over, she said, can I talk to you? And doctors know this is not that unusual. A lot of patients, I think particularly women,

new patients, won't tell you what's really on their mind until they've developed some level of trust. So that wasn't that unusual. And I asked her what I could do for her. And this woman blew me away when she said, I've been sent here to give you a message of Jesus loves you. He cares about you. This is not what he had intended for your life to be an abortionist. Please stop. As I said, no patient had ever spoken to me that way. And doctors do listen to their patients.

And I had one overwhelming thought when she said this, and that was, I've got to hustle this kook out of my office as fast as I could. And I did. A year later, she showed up for her GYN exam in Pabst, Maryland. When it was over, she said, can I talk to you? And I, oh, no. And she delivered the same message again, almost world for word. I've been sent here to give you a message that Jesus loves you. He cares about you.

This is not what he had intended for your life to be an abortionist. Please stop. Well, believe me, I remembered what she had said. But in the intervening year between those two visits, I had received at least three personal greeting cards from this woman marked confidential, mailed to my office with the message written in the card. One time during the intervening year, I arrived at my office and there was a plate of brownies sitting on the desk with the message tied to the brownies. Now, yeah. Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League, who's passed a few years ago, used to call this adopting an abortionist. And I don't know that she was consciously doing it because she thought she was adopting anybody, but she just stepped out in faith and did this. How long would you evangelize?

And she's not an idiot. She knew what I thought. How long would you evangelize someone who thought you were crazy? She kept it up for seven years. Wow. Seven years. But when I stopped doing abortions, the partners were very understanding. All of them were doing first trimester

abortions. Only one other one was doing the second trimester abortions. And when I quit doing those, they all dumped on him. Um, but they were very understanding when I stopped doing abortions, it was, you know, they knew what we'd been through, but you know, it was about nine months or 10 months after I stopped doing abortions, my wife and I were invited to a pro-life potluck dinner. And I, you know, I was typical in the abortion industry. Pro-life people are crazy. Everybody knows that. CNN tells me so.

They would never lie to me. And we ended up going to this pro-life potluck dinner and found out pretty quickly these people weren't kooks. They understood the medicine. They understood the law. We spent an hour and a half there, talked to quite a few people and ended up joining that pro-life organization in Albany, New York, Citizens Concern for Human Life. And it was sometime after that, that I started speaking. When we got involved in the pro-life movement, this was not cool. My wife and I lost every friend we had. Phones stopped ringing, invitations dried up, phones stopped ringing. And it was kind of a lonely time for a while, but God was very good and filled it in with pro-life people, mostly

Christians, although not all of them. The first person that walked up to me at that dinner and started talking is an incredible, he's a dear friend of mine named Dennis Walterding, who is a, he follows the Baha'i faith. You don't have to be Christian to be pro-life. You don't even have to believe in God to be pro-life. That's right. And we've been very close friends ever since. But God filled in the void with pro-life people and mostly pro-life Christians who became a model for us of what a Christian life was like. And it was, as I said, many years later. I left my practice. I left my practice. And God kept putting people in front of us. And this went on for years. It

was no quick and easy conversion. The story I always tell, I could tell hundreds of them, but the one I most remember, I left my, I left that practice in 1990. And abortion was, the abortion conflict was still rubbing raw and there were other things going on, but it was time to go. And very soon, just within a week or two after leaving the practice, I crossed over the state line into Vermont and gave a presentation, a pro-life presentation for a group of people in a high school gymnasium on a Saturday morning, maybe 50 people showed up. And this woman came up, she was in her seventies, short again, being very gracious, chattering away at high speed, you know, and think, oh, thank you so much for coming and giving us a presentation. And isn't

it beautiful what Jesus is doing in your life? And I'm going, oh God, another one. And I didn't want to make this lady think it was something that I wasn't. So after what I hope was an eloquent presentation, I stemmed and stammered like a fool and looked at her and went, well, ma'am, you know, I don't feel about Jesus the way you do. And I'll never forget, she stopped chattering, looked up, got a big smile on her face and said, he knows you, sweetie. He's going to get you sooner or later. And she walked away.

Oh, my goodness. Well, we joined, we finally joined. Right after that, we finally joined what I will call a Bible-believing church and accepted Christ as our Savior. And interesting, the minister who brought us the last bit of that journey knew nothing of any of this. But he'd been around a long time. He said, you know, in my experience, a lot of people help you on the road to Christ. He had no idea. And the first person I thought of was Susan. She'd been keeping up her one woman war for seven years at that point. And he said, wouldn't it be nice to go and thank them? Well, I invited Susan out for lunch, told her what had happened. She was very happy. And then I found out something I hadn't known before. She's one of those people who was picketing my office in 1983. And I would have never understood it then, but I understood it now. She said, I can't explain it to you. I just felt very strongly called to go to you specifically and deliver that message.

Even though I knew what you thought of me, I just had to do it. And she kept that up for all those years. It's amazing. So, you know, how do you feel about it? How do you get over it? Only with the blood of Christ is the only way you're going to get over something like this. And my wife and I are privileged to speak for pregnancy centers and other organizations. And it's not unusual for us to meet somebody who's had an abortion.

They're still struggling with it. Many of them are Christians, and they know that Christ has forgiven them because they've repented and they've asked for forgiveness. But they're still hurt. The reason is because there's one person that hasn't forgiven them themselves. Wow. And that's the hard part. Have you had other former abortionists or practicing abortionists reach out to you and want to talk?

Not often. It's happened a couple of times, but not frequently. You know, Susan's story is important for another reason. You know, you're never going to get someone to change their mind about abortion by standing outside their office and screaming murderer. You change someone's mind by having a relationship with that person and talking to them and being extremely patient and extremely, if I can say, Christian and kind. It's not going to happen right away. It's not very likely going to happen that way. There are a lot of, I mean, there are so many stories about doctors who have left abortions. One of my partners at the medical center, he's still pro-choice politically,

but he won't do abortions anymore. He did them for years. And again, one day just, and he didn't have his daughter die or anything, but he was looking through that, that little bag with all the baby parts in it one day. And just after years of doing them and said, what the hell am I doing? And he stopped. Another one, really interesting. We used to have a woman in our pro-life organization in Albany. She was a pro-life jack of all trades. I mean, she would do anything. She was a widow and she just did anything that needed doing. But

she had two projects that were her own. One was she loved to go into schools and give presentations to students. And the other one was she had, she had been the unusual step of taking a, picking one abortionist in Albany. There were multiples of them, but for whatever reason, she picked this one particular one and began to pray for this person by name every day. And she also found the name of his wife and children. And she used to pray for them by name every day. She did this for a very long time. One day she was supposed to be giving a presentation at a junior high school, woke up sick as a dog, tried to find a replacement, couldn't. So she dragged herself out of bed and she went to that junior high school and she gave the presentation. That night, one of the young

ladies who had been, was 13 years old, had been in the class. She was in eighth grade and sitting around the dinner table and her mom and dad asked her the eternal question, what happened in school today? And she proceeded to describe how this woman had given this pro-life presentation, which obviously touched her. And she looked at her mother and father and she said, I just don't understand how anyone could do that to a little baby. Well, unbeknownst to her, her daddy was an abortionist. Not only that, it turns out her daddy was the abortionist that that woman had been praying for for all those years. Wow. That little girl was a little girl that she had been praying for for a very long time. And God put her in front of that child who then innocently went home and witnessed to her daddy.

And he was so afraid his little girl would find out what he did that he quit. He never did another one. So there are stories like that out there. I think that's amazing. Your story is really one of patience, kindness. I think of Romans too, that talks about your kindness leads to repentance, just persistence and her willingness to be considered a fool, led to some powerful change in her life. I want to respect your time, but last question. There's a shift we mentioned before we started towards the over-the-counter abortion pill. What are your thoughts on that shift? There is a really big push to increase the accessibility of abortion. You can see it in a lot of pro-abortion states,

like California, for instance. California mandated recently by law that all colleges must offer medical abortions. And if they aren't equipped to do that themselves, well, then you can do it on the internet. This is not a good idea from a medical standpoint. And there are also, you can get in many states, you can get the abortion pill on the internet. And I don't mean just buying it over the internet, although even that's possible. But no, you can, you can go to certain websites and they will counsel you and talk with you and send you the abortion pill so that you can get this abortion pill and you can get your abortion done. Well, when a patient comes in pregnant, there are several things that have to be done. First, the abortion pill is only approved up to 10 weeks of gestation. One of

the first things you do on your very first visit with a pregnant patient is you're getting their history, when was your last period, and you're doing a physical exam of that patient to establish how far along their pregnancy actually is. Last menstrual period alone is not reliable. Upwards of 40 to 50% of patients will be off if they rely only on their last menstrual period. So it's important to know the length of gestation when using that abortion pill. And you cannot establish that on a video link. You cannot do it. Because if you do that exam and something doesn't feel right, you're going to order an ultrasound and then you're going to know exactly how far along that patient is.

Second, one of the first thing you do on the first visit of a patient in your office who's pregnant is you do a series of blood tests, including looking for syphilis, you check their blood count. There are several things you do, but you you check their blood count. There are several things you do, but you also check their blood type and their RH status. Are they RH positive or RH negative? Because if a patient is RH negative, if she's RH negative, her baby, because if her partner was RH positive, her baby could be RH positive. And it is possible through the process of birth or miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy or a lot of other things that can happen is that the baby's blood will add mix with hers and she can become sensitized to Rh

it's usually usually not going to affect that pregnancy but can affect all of her future pregnancy other you cannot doing a video link talking to somebody on a video screen know what their blood type is. Got it. The other problem, of course, is patients can have, you know, their sweats, flushes, diarrhea, headache, nausea, vomiting, bleeding, sometimes heavy. All these things happen with the abortion pill. It's like you talked about implant. And the clinic goes, well, you know, you'll have some cramping, you'll have some bleeding. Yeah, they did. Gently expel the baby. Yeah, right. And you saw what happened to

Abby in the shower, bleeding, dropping, you know, clots into the drain. Bleeding can be very heavy and upwards of 8%, upwards of one in 12 patients that take an abortion pill are going to either show up in an emergency room for heavy bleeding or need is, and, or the procedure will fail and they will need a surgical abortion to complete it. This is the reality of the statistics. There are varying studies and everybody cherry picks the one they like, but those are the numbers. So what happens? I'm in New Mexico and I, I'm in Arizona actually, but I'm going to pick New Mexico as an example because it's free and open abortion there. And I call this website that's in New York, get my counseling, pay my money. They send my abortion pills and then I get into trouble.

Well, what happens when they get into trouble? Well, counseling is available 24-7. Although, if you read the website carefully, the doctors are only available from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. But the counselor is available 24-7. Okay. So when you call them at two o'clock in the morning with severe cramping and bleeding, what do you think they're going to say? Go to the emergency room. This in the medical profession is called dumping. This is patient dumping. And it is not good healthcare. It is not ethical. So there are serious problems associated with this, but the push is on, and especially, and COVID only helped, and helped this situation. And the push is on now to increase the abortion pill availability and abortion availability in general all across the country.

Dr. Levittino, really appreciate your willingness to come on, your courage to speak up, and humility to share your stories and what you've been through. It means a ton. Do you still do presentations if people are interested in having you come present on this? I do. I do. And let me, I apologize. I'm going to backtrack this a second. I forgot the most important thing with medical pregnancy. I forgot the most important thing. Upwards of, and this is well established, upwards of 2% of all pregnancies are ectopic pregnancies. They're in the tube, they're non-needlers. And you cannot diagnose an ectopic pregnancy on a video link either.

You try to, and so one in 50 patients calling these websites is carrying an ectopic pregnancy. You try to terminate an ectopic pregnancy with the abortion pill, it won't work. And women have died from undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies that were treated with medical abortions. Anyway, to answer your question, yes, we do speak periodically. Anybody who's interested can get a hold of me. I'll give you my email address. It's a lowercase TonyLev, T-O-N-Y-L-E-V, at gmail.com and get a hold of us. And I'm happy, we're happy to help out my wife and I both. All right. Please, my viewers, do not

spam him with tons of emails and questions. Just quick questions, or maybe not even questions. You're so busy, but just if you wanted to speak, use that email would be great, but respect that he was willing to share that publicly. Dr. Levitino, this is amazing, so encouraging, so powerful. I cannot wait for my viewers to have a chance to see this. Before I let you go, I want to just remind viewers to make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other shows coming up on this topic, a range of other apologetic and cultural topics you will not want to miss. And if you thought about studying apologetics, you made a lot of philosophical arguments today and even scientific ones. And that's a lot of some of the underlying work in

that area. We teach people to think about and ultimately even focus, do classes sometimes distinctly on pro-life. So if you thought about getting a master's degree, look below. We'd love to have you fully distance program, top rated in the country. And if you thought, I want apologetic training, not rated for a master's, we actually have a certificate program below where we will walk you through this and a significant discount below. So hope you'll join us. Dr. Levittino, can't thank you enough.

Really appreciate it. God bless you and your ministry and family and your practice. Same to you, Sean. God bless.