A Former Abortionist's Journey to Becoming Pro-Life (Part 1 of 2)

So let me ask you to take a second and look at your right hand and hold your index finger and your thumb about an inch apart and consider you were once that small. Even when you were that small you were perfectly made and you were seen and loved by God. Now that realization has changed one man's life forever and you're gonna hear his powerful story today on Focus on the Family. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller. John it's truly amazing to think of how detail-oriented God is. I mean he holds the whole universe in his hands and still takes the time to carefully knit us all together.

Our fingernails, our ears, our eyes, our noses. That's one of the reasons we're going to feature an ultrasound of a pre-born baby in the third trimester this Saturday evening in the premiere of Sea Life 2020. This is the online version of what we did in Times Square last year when we showed an ultrasound of a baby on the big screens. That picture of a pre-born baby is really one of the best and most persuasive arguments for life.

It really is and you can find out more about Sea Life 2020 which is our free online event this Saturday 8 p.m. Eastern by going to our website and we've got the link in the episode notes. And Jim our guests today have a perspective of the pro-life movement that is really crucial for us to understand. That's true and today we're going to share a powerful conversation that we had with a doctor who used to perform abortions, thousands of them, and I can guarantee you won't be able to listen to his story without being impacted and reminded of the amazing grace we all are offered through Jesus. And his name is Anthony Levatino and his wife Cecilia joined us in the studio as well and Dr. Levatino has 40 years experience as an OBGYN and Cecilia is a former medical professional as well. And as we get into the content there will be some tender and perhaps even graphic content in the broadcast so parents you might want to use your earbuds for this one. Let's go ahead and listen in now to the first of this two-part conversation on Focus on the Family. Tony and Cecilia welcome to Focus on the Family. Thank you. Thank you. Thrilled to be here.

So good to have you. You two had similar childhoods but you entered adulthood with different beliefs about abortion and describe what you believed and Tony let's just start with you. I graduated from medical school in 1976 and I didn't know exactly what I was gonna do when I went to medical school. My mother who had six children had always said oh maybe you'll become a baby doctor and I said no way ma. Never say never.

Yeah never say never. When I did my third year rotations as third year my first one was in obstetrics and gynecology and I learned pretty quickly that this was really great stuff. I really enjoyed doing this. It was only my first rotation.

I thought well I like all my rotations. Well turned out I didn't and different personalities go to different areas of medicine and mine was it was so much more fun saying it's a boy it's a girl rather than you know you know your mom's in bad shape maybe you better come to the hospital. So when I graduated in 76 when and had already picked OB-GYN as my specialty if you had asked me how I felt about the abortion issue I wouldn't have hesitated to for a second to tell you I was pro-choice. This was a decision between a woman her doctor and no one including the baby's father had anything to say about it. And you defended that?

Absolutely. Yeah Cecilia you were in the medical profession as well a nurse or? Yes I did renal transplants. And in that context you had a different perspective you didn't think abortion was a good thing to do? I didn't I remember very vividly abortion was legalized in New York State three years prior to Roe vs. Wade and I was in nurses training at the time and our instructor came to us that a group of us who were going into our OB rotation and said the hospital is going to start performing abortions and it's up to you as a student to decide whether you want to learn how to assist. And in my entire class there was only one other nursing student besides myself who said nope not gonna do that. Right. It took courage in that class to be one of two people to say no not for me. Did you get any pushback? No we really didn't back then I mean this was 1971.

Right. And our instructors were very supportive of the fact that we had the right to make that decision. Where was God for both of you? Just to paint the picture for the listener I mean you know you're a go-getter 70s doctor you're coming out of med school OBGYN you're the nurse you guys meet I'm assuming in a medical environment did you were you working at the same hospital? Yeah when he was a intern okay he was doing a surgical rotation on the transplant floor and that's how we met. And then spiritually I mean was there anything there what any where was the Lord in your heart at that time or was it just it just wasn't part of your life?

It wasn't. We had both walked away from the faith that we had been raised in and I think pretty much at that point we would probably have categorized ourselves as agnostics. Okay and then you get married and again you're coming from different perspectives on this issue of course you're marrying a doctor who does OBGYN he's also doing abortions at this time. How did you feel Cecilia? I mean did you ever bring it up around the dinner table? No it was not a topic of discussion and it really didn't become an issue until we decided to start a family and we were having an infertility problem and I wasn't getting pregnant and so Tony sent me to the best infertility specialist in town and after a lot of tests and some surgeries and and other experimental things he he said you know there's one more there's one more surgical procedure we can try it it'll only take about an hour and a half and when he walked out of the OR three and a half hours later he looked at Tony and he said you know I never say never but don't plan on having any children of your own.

We were devastated. Yeah and I want to pick up on that but I want to continue to build kind of the environment you're in and we're gonna come back to and pick that part of the story up. Tony you as a doctor one of the things that I understand you're taught you have to somewhat distance yourself emotionally from your patient sometimes you have to do things that are tough and grueling and all those things but particularly in the abortion industry you have to dehumanize the baby.

Speak to that. You absolutely do. I mean that dehumanization is such a tough term okay but keeping an emotional distance from your patients is essential to our work and there is there is a certain professional distance that must be maintained professionally. On the other hand that distance can get a little bit too far and you're right and you know in terms of abortion I'm just doing a medical procedure I'm just helping this woman.

Right and you got to stop telling yourself. Well you tell yourself that but and you know I'm not actually tearing babies apart but then again at the end of even a suction D&C abortion you have to you do a suction machine there's a little stocking in there that collects parts at the end of the procedure you have to take that open that up empty it and literally take inventory to make sure that you got two arms two legs and all the pieces so you tell yourself that day in and day out but you're faced with the reality of it every single procedure you do. I think some people Tony hearing that they they can't fathom how you could get that distant from humanity that you know as you're doing the D&C which is cutting this baby apart right and pulling the baby out piece by piece. I assure you and I'm sure your audience realizes you can get used to almost anything if you do it enough.

Boy that's amazing. The other side of this is the profit motivation I've met with some people in Planned Parenthood and they were bold enough to simply say to me yeah it's the money abortion is very profitable. Speak to that and what you experienced in your own practice when it came to the profit incentive. As I understand something I was not running an abortion clinic so I was all of the abortions that I done in my career were part of a routine OBGYN office like probably almost every woman in the audience has been to at one time or another we did everything we did hysterectomies we did deliveries and we did abortion now there's a little bit of a different focus when you're doing that if I'm running an abortion clinic and you come in and you change your mind I don't make any money that day in my office we didn't care we really didn't care you want to have an abortion great you want to have your baby great we were perfectly happy either way on the other hand obstetrics is a very high risk specialty in terms of medical malpractice it's one of the you know it's at the highest end of the malpractice you know hit parade along with neurosurgery and maybe orthopedics so there's a lot of legal liability involved and I could at the time I could do a delivery I would see you eight or nine times during your pregnancy I would you'd call me in the middle of the night I'd show up in the hospital I sometimes I would wait for hours for the baby to be born and for all that effort I made about twelve hundred dollars say average at the time yeah or I could do an abortion I wish we were charging for a first trimester abortion we were charging maybe and again this was this was early 80s but you know 300 to maybe five hundred dollars depending on how far along you were there was more if you were if we were doing a second trimester abortion that's a whole nother story right but I could do an abortion in 15 minutes if I did three abortions I made just as much as I made with all those months of effort with the obstetrics and you know I I'm done in less than an hour and I could be on the golf course you know in no time flat and face essentially no legal liability yeah because you know things do happen to her during abortions yeah but it was relatively rare to get a lawsuit because no woman wants to sit in a court of law and talk about her abortion yeah Tony I mean I'm sure some listeners is they're hearing you you're a doctor you're a medical professional you're even speaking of this very clinically but it is what it is right this is this is the business this is the industry this is what happens in that environment Cecilia I now want to come back to that opening that you gave me regarding your family desires where you're at how long were you married when you wanted to start having children we kind of we kind of laugh now I think I was 29 or something and and we thought we were really old and needed to get started right away at 29 so we didn't wait very long we he came from a family of six I had two sisters we having kids was part of what we saw our future sure so getting back to your original question it wasn't until I was going through the infertility that the fact that he was doing abortions started to impact me emotionally what did that connection feel like to you here you're trying to get pregnant your husband's doing abortions taking the lives of babies is quite a contrast it was and that's exactly how I was processing it I can remember literally standing in the shower just crying my eyes out and and even though we weren't affiliated with any church or anything I mean I can remember vividly just crying to God and saying you know here I am trying to have a baby my husband is killing them please Lord you know it was very emotional it was because I I knew what was going on yeah but some I guess for some they wouldn't necessarily make that connection it's amazing the Lord you know allowed you to see that contrast and feel it the way you felt it a lot of people would have gone right by that you know that's just what my husband does but you were still finding it difficult to talk to Tony about it right oh yeah we we didn't talk about it so it was just off limits it was it was off limits I remember vividly bringing it up we were out to dinner with a couple of other doctors and their wives and foolishly saying something pro-life and one of the doctors went I mean he practically came over the the dinner table and said what do you want to do go back to the days of coat hangers it was like whoa okay you know my husband's just starting his practice we yeah we can't talk about these things wow it just put you in the corner it really did walk and I was totally intimidated by it yeah Tony as you're pursuing the family and you're going through infertility options was there any kind of conflict for you I mean here you're trying to have a baby and you're taking the lives of other women's babies it was not a problem initially I mean seal was going you know through the whole infertility thing and when her doctor you know walked out as I said hours after this procedure had begun and said you know I never say never but don't count on having a family of your own that's when it first hit me and very soon after that is you know we we decided well all right if these are the cards we've been dealt will adopt a baby and anyone who's tried to adopt a baby knows how difficult that is sure it's a process it's in well it's incredibly difficult and you know we went to state agencies religious agencies county agencies the best we could do after months of effort was get on a five-year waiting list to get on the actual waiting list and that was when I had my first doubts I mean they were strictly selfish but it was you know here I am I'm perfectly willing to take any child you know to love and care for as our own and that's when I had my first doubts about it I remember I remember very distinctly a particular abortion I can see the room and doing a first trimester D&C abortion and and you know opening the machine and looking at the pieces and thinking oh my gosh I'm throwing these kids in the garbage you know wouldn't even one of these women allow us to take her baby home and care for as our own but of course it doesn't work that way but that was the first doubts I had they were very selfish but that's where the doubt crept in no and I can imagine however there came a moment in that adoption pursuit where someone became available what what were the details regarding that Tony and I were talking about the adoption process one night and and he said you know I know 52 OBGYNs on a first-name basis why don't we just start advertising just go to the doctors yeah call them you see them in the hospital in the delivery room just let them know we're looking for a baby to adopt and he did and it wasn't too long after that that he was in the OR one day and the circulating nurse tapped him on the back of the shoulder and held up a little piece of paper that said call Marcia Marcia was the head of the human resources at the hospital and when he was finished in the OR he called her and she told him that there was a 15 year old girl in labor and delivery had had no prenatal care until the day before but it looks like she you know her parents had taken good care of her and and the baby was going to be a nice healthy baby and she was doing fine 15 years old 15 years old she was in labor at the time and so she said are you interested in Tony said you bet and we were able to adopt our little girl named Heather Heather and and was it relatively easy or at that point I mean the mother was really oh yeah she was willing to give to release the baby for adoption and everything went very very smoothly the so often I hear the story so a couple is deemed infertile they seek adoption with all the heartache of that you know a baby's available it's not available and even at a foster care you know if you try to adopt through the foster care which we advocate we have a program called wait no more that helps couples consider adoption from foster care but there's no guarantee those kids come to you the parents may not terminate their rights or the courts may not totally terminate the rights they fight there's all this heartache is the point and then especially for those couples that are infertile boom something happens that happened to you you got pregnant was that a joyful moment for you it was a shocking moment she was pregnant within a year we had two kids ten months apart yeah well after the infertility ups and downs I mean there's a lot of emotion wrapped up in that so it must have been quite a jolt to your system to not just adopt but then find out you're pregnant all within such a short space of time it was it was it was pretty overwhelming at first and I mean it was wonderful but it was overwhelming yeah exactly you know back to the adoption one thing in in taking a look at that history that you have you mentioned in speeches that you've given in other venues one of the reasons people struggle with adoption is the number of abortions that are occurring eliminates obviously a pool of children where a loving home could be found for them and that was part of your struggle right oh absolutely I mean I'm not an idiot I knew why it was difficult to find children to adopt you know a big part of it was people like me doing abortions I mean but connecting those dots it just this for some reason the culture struggles the elites in the culture seemed to struggle connecting those dots as you did that you know when we eliminate children through abortion there's nobody for adoption that I think that's very much the case I can just tell you when you're pro-choice and you are dedicated pro-choice a lot of what might seem like obvious facts to other people aren't so obvious to you right so you have Heather you're pregnant with your son right and he's born what's his name Sean Thomas so Sean is born and how are things going at this point now you have a dead adopted child you're naturally born child and you're still taking the lives of children with any conflict for you guys at this point well I said earlier I mean and my conflict came when we were trying to adopt a child and we're having so much difficulty now all of a sudden I have a son and a daughter and any doubts I had about doing abortion simply evaporated and I went back to business as usual huh that's really something and then you just continued no further conflict spiritually what was happening either of you kind of coming to a greater awareness of God at that time it took a couple of years but there there became a point when the kids were toddlers that I really wanted to start going back to church I wanted them to have the experience of having a faith foundation and so we joined a Presbyterian Church and started attending and getting involved and teaching Sunday school and all the things you do it was a PC USA Church which of course under their Creed there were no zero problem with my being an abortionist so yeah and that was it now the tragedy this is you know something we have to cover but Heather after you adopted her and Sean is born life's going along pretty well and then one day you experience something horrific what happened June 23rd 1984 was a beautiful day in Albany was a Saturday I was on call not very busy I got to make browns and got to spend the rest of the day with our kids we took them to an amusement park that day we had dinner together and the kids were playing in the backyard when we had friends come over for cake and coffee and we were speaking with our friends and at 725 that night we heard the screech of breaks out in front of the house and ran out and found out that the kids had gone in the road and Heather had been hit by a car she was a mess and you ran out to find her well I'm a doctor I'm supposed to be able to save people's lives my wife was an intensive care nurse I mean this was our living we did obviously what we could but it made no difference and she literally died in our arms in the back of an ambulance that is a tragic moment I mean I'm sure some parents have experienced something similar and it's hard to even talk about I mean all these years later the tears are there in your eyes and yeah she was exactly two months away from her sixth birthday at the time yeah when you when you feel that when you go through something like that tragic loss how did you cope especially being who you are as a doctor well I wasn't even thinking of it in terms of the abortion industry or what I was doing anyone in the audience that has kids may think they have some they know how much they love their children and they may think they have some idea of what it's like to go through that and I promise everyone that if you haven't been through this yourself you have no clue and I hope you never ever find out yeah you know what do you do I mean the problem for us as a couple was that you know as seal talked about earlier we made a decision early on in our relationship that this was a you know a forbidden topic the problem when a couple stops talking about one important topic they suddenly may find out that it's a lot easier stop talking about other important topics as well it becomes just something you do and we've been drifting apart in in more than one way sure and it didn't really hit me until and we were almost literally mourning apart it was incredibly difficult it's almost impossible to describe yeah but it didn't hit me till I don't know how long it was after Heather died just a few weeks you know what do you do you bury your child you take some time off then you try to get back in your life and it was just a few weeks after her death and I showed up at OR number 9 at Albany Medical Center and I was doing second trimester abortions up to 24 weeks at the time and I arrived at the hospital do a second trimester DNE abortion and these are absolutely gruesome procedures I mean because you're not talking about a baby an inch long anymore 20 week baby is the length of your hand from the tip of your middle finger to your wrist that's head to rump 20 weeks not counting the legs and you're tearing these kids apart literally bit by bit with the instruments I wasn't even thinking of this as anything special this was routine I obviously had other things on my mind so I went in and I started the abortion and I literally ripped out an arm or a leg as I had over a hundred times before in second trimester abortions and I just stared at it in the clamp and I got sick but when you start an abortion you can't stop I said earlier 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 the abortion and now we're talking a big baby here not some little tiny one and you literally stack parts on the side of the table so you can keep inventory and for the first time in my career and I know it sounds strange to people but we always promised telling people that everything we're saying is firsthand and true for the first time I looked I mean I really really looked at that pile of body parts and I didn't see her wonderful right to choose and I didn't see what a great doctor I was helping her out and I didn't even see the $800 cash it just made in 15 minutes all I could see was somebody's son or daughter and it occurred to me in that instant you know that this patient had come to me figuratively never literally and said here's $800 kill my son or daughter and I was the kind of person that would look her right in the eye and with no compunction whatsoever say sure I'll do that yeah I mean Tony that's a heavy burden to carry and we're right at the end of the program today but I do want to come back next time and pick up the discussion Cecilia I want to hear your heart as mom going through that tragedy with Heather and the loss of her life at just before sixth birthday so can we do that can you come back and continue let's do that well we've covered some really heavy ground today and some difficult topics on focus on the family and I'd like to remind you that we have caring Christian counselors on staff here and it would be our privilege to schedule a time for one of them to talk with you completely free of charge and you can just call 800 the letter a and the word family and request that service or we have a counseling request form the link is in the episode notes and I do also want to let you know about our option ultrasound we've talked about it a number of times here on the broadcast it's our ministry to women with unplanned pregnancies who are considering an abortion we've got the statistics and research and $60 saves a baby's life through option ultrasound you can join that support team and save a life literally by giving us a call or donating at the website on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team thanks for joining us today for focus on the family I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we continue the conversation with our guests and once more help you and your family thrive in Christ