Leta Gerber was a young nurse working at Munson Health Care in Michigan when she was asked to help an OBGYN perform an abortion. Growing up, she would have considered herself against abortion, but this invitation to join an obstetrician she greatly admired at the bedside in a patient room one day challenged those beliefs. It was 1970 — three years before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion throughout America — and in Michigan at the time, abortion was illegal except in the case of the health of the mother. Health could be defined as mental or physical well-being, and on the maternity ward where Leta was employed, she occasionally heard of cases where abortions were carried out.
That day, Leta's patient was a woman in her thirties. Upon opening the patient's chart, she and the other nurses on the unit found that the medical record had very little information. The reason for the abortion was not clear from the documentation, but the legal process at the time required two psychiatrists to sign off on the abortion as medically necessary for the mother's health. Having received confirmation from the psychiatrists, this woman was admitted to the hospital unit for a saline infusion abortion. The patient shared with the staff that this was her third or fourth abortion and that this was her chosen form of birth control — a surprising comment considering that several physicians had concluded together that these abortions were necessary to save her life. When Leta carried out her normal patient assessment and obtained vital signs, she did not find any apparent signs of physical or mental distress. The woman was not actively suicidal or attempting to harm herself. Her vitals were stable and did not show any signs of medical decompensation.
The OBGYN walked up to the nurse's station and asked, "Which one of you nurses wants to help me with this abortion?" Leta had never assisted with an abortion before, but she had great respect for this obstetrician who was not only a colleague, but also her own primary care physician she saw for regular OB care. At these office visits, the OBGYN showed Leta compassion and shared knowledge with her that built strong trust. She felt a compulsion that day at the nurse's station to please this OBGYN, and quickly agreed to be the one to help.
Off they went into the patient room, where they started the process of the thirty-year-old woman's third or fourth abortion. Her fetus was said to be twelve weeks gestation. The OBGYN inserted a long needle into the woman's abdomen and withdrew the amniotic fluid. Next, they inserted a saline infusion, which worked to slowly burn the preborn child.
When Leta returned to work the next day, she heard that the woman had gone into labor overnight. When Leta went into the hospital unit's utility room, she found the child who appeared to be closer to twenty or twenty-four weeks along.
"When I came back to work the next morning, the little boy was in a bucket — in a stainless steel bucket in the utility room because the lab wasn't open yet, waiting for the lab to get this child. And he was burned. Parts of his body was black from burning. But they die because they no longer have the amniotic fluid, and they have a foreign fluid, and then the saline burns them" (Leta Gerber).
It was then, when she laid eyes on this burned baby boy's body, that she knew her participation in the abortion was morally wrong and contributed to his death. Leta spent the next several years wrestling with feelings of guilt — wondering if God would ever forgive her. One day, while attending a women's Bible study group, Leta found the courage to share that she had helped perform an abortion. When the women in the group responded with an attitude of mercy, Leta began to sense God's forgiveness. When asked what she would tell other abortion workers about how to heal after participating in destroying a child's life, Leta shared this: "Jesus will forgive you. When they come to realize that it was wrong, and they ask for forgiveness, they need to ask God's forgiveness because it's a sin against God."
This abortion took place approximately fifty-five years ago, and Leta is still telling people about it because she wants to see abortion ended. Although she considers it one of her greatest mistakes, Leta tells her story boldly — sharing about the baby boy who was killed under a "health of the mother" abortion law exception, even when his mother was physiologically stable throughout her hospital stay. The baby boy was worthy of full legal protection from violence, and the law is supposed to play a role in protecting the vulnerable.
Pro-life lawmakers should consider this story when exceptions are written into abortion laws — exceptions always make room for destroying some babies, which is unjust. All abortion bans allow for medically necessary separation of mother and baby in medical emergencies. This can be carried out through an emergency C-Section in which the baby is delivered about two minutes from the time of the incision in the mother's abdomen. Therefore, abortion is truly never medically necessary. "Health of the mother" exceptions in abortion laws are not necessary, and lead to situations like this one — where unethical physicians join together to create unreal diagnoses of "suicidality" in non-suicidal patients to justify procedures that will kill living babies. Of course, maternal mental health is of the utmost importance, and there are interventions available during pregnancy when carrying a child is too mentally distressing to a mother — such as early delivery and NICU care for the baby. But it is still not justified to destroy a living human being in the womb in such cases — the mental illness of a parent never justifies violence against their children.
May Leta's courage to tell her story help shine a light on the darkness of abortion, which is executing over 3,000 preborn babies every day in America.
You can hear Leta's full interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, watch it on YouTube, or read the transcript here.
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