By TOM TAKASH
In her first book Boundless, writer and physician Christine Henneberg, MD, often using flowery prose (her undergraduate degree is in creative writing), treats us to a self-absorbed and judgmental story of her efforts through four years of medical school and three years of residency to reach her much desired goal as an “abortion provider.” Woven into her journey we occasionally follow her as a wife, then as a pregnant abortionist, and eventually as a mother. Along the way we get glimpses of her youth. One that seems to be that of a young woman raised in a secular and sterile household. That’s my assessment, not hers.
I found no mention of any religion among family members. At one point when Christine asked her mother if she believed in Heaven, we read of vague rambling by her mother about belief in some sort of afterlife without bodies, floating free and loving each other. Her father is portrayed as a no nonsense, all-business humanoid by his reaction to Christine’s decision to teach English for one semester in India, while she was still in undergraduate school. Her father’s “gift” to her is a small box containing a RU-486 abortion pill to take with her “in case you’re raped.” There’s no indication of any discussion between her father and Christine regarding the possible moral implications of killing an unborn.
From the information Henneberg provides, one gathers that her family was not close-knit. They appeared to lead four separate and unrelated lives. Her father, an engineer, worked at IBM. Her mother traveled most of the year in Africa and Asia doing some kind of unexplained aid work. Her sister lived and worked in China. At one point, the family did get together to vacation in Bavaria, the birthplace of her father. But after the vacation, the father stayed on to visit his sisters. (Not revealing by itself.) However, when Henneberg and her mother returned to the United States and her sister to China, her father suffered a stroke, and no family member returned to care for him. The mother decided that his sisters could nurse him until he recovered and that’s that. Not typical of a loving family.
Next, we followed Henneberg through medical school, residency, and finally to her practice as she became an accomplished abortionist. The decision to exercise a life-or-death decision over a woman’s pregnancy, whether planned or unplanned, is, in Henneberg’s opinion, one to be made by the pregnant woman. The obligation of the doctor is to always present whatever options are available, including abortion, together with the potential benefits and dangers, if any. However, I gather from some situations portrayed in the book that Henneberg leans toward suggesting the abortion option, not just presenting it, in cases that she deems will be hardships for the woman, e.g. financial problems, becoming a single mom, or she already has children.
In her “memoir,” Henneberg combines tales of her personal life with her college lover (an Indian of the Hindu religion, also a doctor, whom she later marries) along with her journey through medical school (a Joint Medical Program at UC Berkeley and UCSF). The views regarding abortion at these two prestigious medical schools are made clear to us early on, when as a first-year student she is told that when a woman presents for her first prenatal visit, before congratulating her you should ask, “Is this a planned pregnancy? Make room for a conversation about her options, in case this is not a pregnancy she wants to continue.”
In her final year of medical school, Henneberg tells us proudly of being given a “coveted” medical student spot working in the university’s hospital-based abortion clinic. As the only medical student in the clinic, she tells us that she “was surrounded by and integral to the clinic’s workings….It was the beginning,” she says, “of my training as an abortion provider.” We are treated to Henneberg’s realization that “This is it.”
Henneberg’s views on the importance of choosing to abort are evident in an encounter she describes with a young African American patient while still a first-year resident. The woman was a prenatal patient who was admitted to the hospital through the ER due to some minor bleeding. The doctor that Henneberg was working with did an ultrasound and concluded that she was approximately seven weeks pregnant and that while there was the possibility of a future miscarriage, she might be able to still carry the embryo to a successful birth. He added that the bleeding might have been from a twin whom she may have already miscarried.
(Henneberg preferred referring to the baby as a fetal pole in her description of the image on the screen, which is often used synonymously with the term embryo.)
While the woman admitted that the pregnancy was not planned, and that she already had two children, when asked by the doctor how she wanted to proceed, she decided to carry to term. She also added that her husband did not believe in abortion. The doctor said, “Okay, then, great” and booked her for another appointment.
Henneberg was not happy with the doctor’s actions. “I was horrified. I had never seen a woman make a decision like this right before my eyes. It was not the decision I had expected or wanted for her.” Her comment that it wasn’t what Henneberg “wanted for her” is revealing as to her avid enthusiasm for abortion as a preferred choice of an unplanned pregnancy.
Late in the day before falling asleep, she describes her reaction: “I thought about her decision (if that’s what you could call it, I mused bitterly) and wondered whether and how we had failed her.” Henneberg had wanted to shake her and remind her of the children she already had, the 40-week pregnancy, the financial burden, and the rest of her life!
Henneberg decided that the doctor was wrong and should have been more careful about showing her the ultrasound. She decided that the patient made a hurried and bad decision. “The patient had chosen the path of least resistance. The apparently easy thing to do, stay pregnant. Everyone will be happy for you. No one can question you. No one can call you a murderer. No one can tell you you’ll regret it, even if, maybe, you will.”
Henneberg tells us, “I remembered all the women in the abortion clinic in medical school — black, white, rich, poor — how scared and vulnerable they’d seemed. But they were the brave ones, I thought. Even though they might have been cast as heartless murderers or careless girls or helpless victims, these were the women with perhaps the greatest sense of control and agency over their own lives, because they had chosen the demonized option of abortion; they had stuck to their decision; they’d done their research and found their way to the abortion clinic.”
Toward the end of her first year of residency, Henneberg began to have doubts about her career choice. The long hours, and difficulties in her home life, were wearing on her stamina. She performed very few abortions during that time, and admits, that although she still maintained a strong interest in “family planning,” she debated stepping away from her residency.
But without any details as to why, Henneberg decided to continue in the primary care program, emphasizing family planning. During that second-year residency, her resolve to learn the abortion business increased, and she performed about 200 abortions while receiving training in Planned Parenthood Clinics as part of a TEACH partnership, a program whose goal is to help primary care doctors integrate abortion into their practice.
She worked under Dr. Sarah McNeil, the medical director of TEACH, along with about six other TEACH doctors.
She was taught, step by step, how to perform a first-trimester abortion. Eventually, “. . . the procedure began to embed itself into my muscle memory, my hands undertaking the movements without conscious thought.” We’re told that by feeling the size of the uterus between your hands, you can tell the stage of the pregnancy. “. . . The size of a lemon (not pregnant, or barely pregnant) to the size of a cantaloupe (twenty-four weeks pregnant), budging just above the navel.” She describes everything coldly, precisely, and without emotion. Until reading her book I was unaware that primary care physicians were training to possibly enter the baby killing market, never mind preferring it to the usual primary care practice!
Just a few months before finishing her three-year residency, Henneberg traveled to Southern California to spend three days working with the medical director of a group of “high-volume” family planning clinics, hoping to obtain a job with the group. There Henneberg worked under the watchful eye of Dr. Rebecca Sanders, a doctor who boastfully lets Henneberg know that although she is a mother to two children, those children know that she is not the type of mother who “packs lunches” for her children. In fact, due to her full schedule, she lets Henneberg know that she and her husband have access to a 24-hour childcare center.
At first, Henneberg just observes Sanders do her thing. After relating graphic details about prepping the first patient, we learn that Henneberg watches as Sanders places a large cannula in the uterus, and having the suction turned on, breaks the amniotic sac, removes the cannula, and with forceps, watching the ultrasound screen, pulls fetal parts out: calvarium (the head), arms, spine, and thorax, one leg, then another.
I wonder how many mothers who undergo this abortion procedure know that their babies are being torn apart limb by limb?
Soon the abortion is over, and Sanders walks out of the room only to immediately show her head around the edge of the door and said, “Chris, next procedure is in the other room.” Henneberg is impressed. “I had seen D&Es before and had assisted in a few,” she writes, “but I had never seen anything like what Rebecca had just done, in any surgical procedure. It wasn’t like surgery at all, but like some athletic feat. She moved with the kind of speed and agility that made the whole thing look at once easy, beautiful, and also impossible. Shit, I thought, I can’t do that.”
Yes, to Henneberg, watching the efficient dismembering of an unborn child was beautiful, but she had doubts about her ability to match Sander’s skills.
Henneberg explains that a D&E is a more complicated and riskier procedure than a first-trimester abortion. There’s a higher risk of bleeding and using forceps means a higher risk of perforation. As Sanders performs the next procedure, she explains “Work your way up the fetus. Start with the most proximal body part and then take the next and the next….That’s how to do a good D & E.”
Henneberg’s admiration for Sanders is evident when she describes Sander’s actions: “She moves her body like a boxer or a ballerina — her stance wide, her arms strong, her movements precise and efficient.”
As the day went on, Henneberg did more and more of each procedure. Sanders complimented her at one point, “You’ve got good hands, Chris. Good surgical hands.” Henneberg tells us that during that procedure she was clumsy, grasping the calvarium (the baby’s head), she felt the roundness of it slip between my forceps. But Sanders encouraged her, telling her that, “You’re integrating what you’re seeing on the ultrasound with what your hands are doing. Most family doctors can’t do that. That’s excellent. Try again. Go on.” On the next procedure, Henneberg tells us that she “grasped the calvarium on the first try.”
Sanders then told her again, “You’ve got really got good hands. I’m sure you’ve been told that before.” But Henneberg tells us that she doesn’t remember anyone telling her that before. She adds, “I felt like I was flying, soaring under Rebecca’s strong and beautiful wing.” I must confess it’s hard for me to picture an abortionist described in such dazzling terms, but then I don’t have a BA in creative writing as Henneberg does.
During lunch Sanders learns that Henneberg’s husband is also a doctor, an ophthalmologist. Sanders says that at least Henneberg’s husband gets it a little. She adds, “My husband doesn’t have a clue. I mean he knows what I do. But he’s not a doctor. He’s kind of germaphobe, actually.” She laughs as she tells Henneberg, “If he had any idea of the stuff that gets all over me all day…the stuff that splashes in my face…he wouldn’t touch me.” Henneberg appreciates what passes for humor with Sanders and she laughs, too. She decides she likes Sanders. Apparently, they both enjoy the side effects of killing children.
Henneberg and Sanders did 60 abortions the second day, and by the third day, Henneberg started the first case and did 25 procedures back-to-back. At lunchtime, Sanders sent her home, telling her you have a long drive, and you shouldn’t have to fight the 5:00 pm traffic. During the three-day trial, Henneberg performed many abortions and after receiving a hug and positive vibes from Sanders, and driving back home, she excitingly told herself: “I’d found the thing I was good at, even gifted at. And finally, someone had shown me how it could fit into a whole life.”
Upon completion of her residency, Sanders offered and Henneberg accepted a job in Modesto performing abortions one day a week. “Soon after,” she says, “I found a second job at a large Ob-gyn practice doing prenatal care and office gynecology. But the abortion work is still my love and my passion.”
Considerable Pain
She goes on to describe a particularly gruesome abortion in the Modesto clinic. One that didn’t go smoothly. After thinking she had finished an abortion on a woman who was fifteen to sixteen weeks pregnant, she went into the next room to inspect the “products” and realized that the calvarium was missing. She had to return and tell the patient that she wasn’t finished. She had to go in again and at first failed to succeed, causing considerable pain to the patient. Finally, she said, “I reached in again, grasped, pulled, felt some resistance, pulled harder, harder. Something loosened and emerged, coming through the cervix. There it was, crushed between my forceps, staring straight up at me: the calvarium.” And so goes the work that is her love and her passion.
Interspersed with her development into an abortionist with “good hands,” Henneberg gives us tidbits of her younger life, her romance with her future husband, and her decision to have a child, while actively destroying the children of so many others. She devotes several pages towards the end of her book, describing the joy of her pregnancy, the difficulty of the delivery (the baby is breech). Henneberg claims to be able to balance her love for her child with her abortion work that she says she also loves and deems to be so important. She points out that many of her colleagues have children and do the same.
Unfortunately, Henneberg’s and her colleagues’ rationalizations continue to blind them to reality. Satan’s grip on the pro-abortion women’s movement has long ago taken on a life of its own. Their need to seek “careers” and to divorce themselves from admitting to any obligation to traditional family life has become an obsession for many young women like Christine Henneberg.
Boundless is one abortionist’s attempt to remove all boundaries from society. It claims to demand a woman’s right to control her own life at the expense of the defenseless and of the future of a civilized world. The freedom to choose promoted by Henneberg is not real freedom, but one that brings humanity down to the level of the animal. Survival of the strong and the selfish becomes the norm. “Me first” would be the one new Commandment, replacing the Ten given to us by our Creator.
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