Dr. Steve Hammond recently retired after 45 years as a board-certified OB/GYN. And while he delivered an estimated 4,000 babies in his career, the former abortion provider also aborted 700 children.
He now shares his story of conversion and advocates for the pro-life cause.
Hammond was halfway through medical school when Roe v. Wade was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973.
“I was 24 years-old, and hadn’t given abortion much thought,” Hammond said. “Since abortion was illegal up until then, even growing up in my Christian home, the topic just never came up.”
The church he attended as a child never mentioned abortion or the sanctity of human life. He recalls the attitude at his medical school being that abortion was necessary and that women would finally, with Roe, have access to this as a right.
“Medical technology was, by current measure, antiquated,” Hammond recalled. “There was no ability to diagnose pregnancy by a 2-minute urine test like we do today. A reliable at-home pregnancy test was not available until after I graduated from medical school.”
Looking back, he speculates whether he would have gone down the abortionist path had technology at the time afforded a more accurate view of life in the womb.
“Real-time ultrasound that we are all familiar with did not exist and was first introduced while I was in residency,” he said. “By today’s standards, the images were worthless and had such clear images of life with such details of fetal life been available then, I wonder if I would have ever done my first abortion.”
Hammond chose obstetrics and gynecology as his specialty in 1976. It was in his fourth month of residency that he first encountered abortion as a medical professional in training.
“I first saw and then performed my first abortion,” he told Pregnancy Help News.
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“Why did I not see the dismembered babies I aborted as evidence that I was killing a child and be convinced that it was morally wrong?” Hammond asked. “I would have called them POC or “products of conception” then, a term used even today by the abortion industry to dehumanize the preborn child. I can still see the images of those little babies in pieces to this day. I can only say that I really thought that I was performing a needed service.”
“I viewed the POC much like a pathologist would view a corpse upon whom he is performing an autopsy,” Hamond recalled. “He, like I was then, is more interested in the job-at hand than the fact that a few hours before, the corpse he is working on was a living human being.”
Only once does he remember anyone confronting him about performing abortions, when a fellow intern told him he thought abortion was murder.
“I thought he was a ‘kook,’” Hammond said. “Later none of my residency peers and faculty viewed abortion negatively; hence, I was not confronted with an opposing view.”
Additionally, he said, “The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists was becoming more an abortion advocacy organization, so I became more convinced that I was performing a needed service.”
From April 1976 to July 1977, Hammond performed an estimated 700 abortions.
His residency program had a strict policy that “moonlighting” doing abortions outside of the local Planned Parenthood facility was forbidden.
Nonetheless, “A couple of fellow residents asked me to join them in performing abortions in a facility in a nearby city,” said Hammond. “It was worth the drive since they paid $10 more per abortion than the local Planned Parenthood. Once a month I went there and performed abortions.”
Later after he’d stopped doing abortions Hammond’s mother told him that he had shared with her that he had to pass a group of nuns praying on the sidewalk outside that abortion facility.
“Though I don’t remember that, perhaps it was the beginning of the end,” he said. “I think that was only a month or two before I experienced the final event that convinced me to stop. Other than my intern friend, that was the only time that I can remember being challenged in my belief that abortion was amoral and unnecessary.”
It was a summer morning in 1971 when Hammond did his last abortion.
“A terrible mistake had been made in estimating a young woman’s gestational age,” he said. “Remember there was no real time ultrasound then.”
“Shortly after starting the abortion, it became clear to me that the baby was far beyond the 12-week limit for abortions in our facility,” he said. “She was probably 20-23 weeks pregnant.”
“After instrumenting the womb, the baby kicked me,” said Hammond. “I had a 1-year-old little boy at home, and I knew what a baby’s kick felt like. Every time I changed my own little boy’s diaper, I experienced the powerful thrust, and this was exactly the same.”
The kicking didn’t stop, so Hammond put his hand on his patient’s abdomen for the first time, felt the uterus, and confirmed that the baby was squirming violently inside of her. She had lied about how far along she was, and the faculty member had missed the fact that she was at least 22-24 weeks pregnant.
A feeling of dread swept over Hammond. What was he going to do now? He had the patient transferred to the hospital, where she had to be put to sleep for a D&X (dilation and extraction) to complete what he had started. The baby had to be broken into small pieces so that he or she could be removed.
“That was the last abortion I ever did,” Hammond said.
“I think I was becoming more and more ill at ease doing abortions, but I believe that that event finally convinced me that I was taking a life,” he told Pregnancy Help News.
“Perhaps the Holy Spirit had been prompting me to stop in those months leading up to that moment, as the procedure itself was becoming a bit sickening,” he said. “Some of the young women would sob loudly or beg me to stop, making me wonder if I was doing the right thing.”
Though he’d ceased doing abortions, his support for the pro-life movement was gradual.
It was not until he returned to the Lord that he went from neutral to staunchly pro-life. Hammond says that both God’s Word and medical science confirm that abortion ends a life, as demonstrated with ultrasound showing the living, developing baby inside the womb.
“The abortion industry has tried to redefine or spin the reality of what is known and seen,” said Hammond. “That industry invented the word, “misinformation” and they specialize in promoting it.”
Tweet This: The abortion industry has tried to redefine what is known and seen. They invented the word misinformation and specialize in promoting it.
Of all the disturbing aspects surrounding abortion, one stands out as especially hypocritical and egregious for Hammond.
“Informed consent is required in all medical procedures,” he said. “A patient must know the pros and cons of any given treatment or therapy before it is undertaken. Yet the abortion industry still calls their position “a matter of choice” while not informing the patient of the options available to her as well as educating her on the reality of the life inside her womb.”
“You cannot have choice without being given informed consent,” Hammond said.
“These same institutions denounce pregnancy resource centers which provide that very thing,” he said. “Nor do they provide or even encourage the support and loving counseling that pregnancy resource centers provide.”
Hammond says he never counseled the women before aborting their baby or followed up with them afterward, and that this is standard in the abortion industry.
Hammond estimates that he delivered at least 4,000 babies during his career. This longevity has allowed him to follow some patients for years and in some cases deliver two and three generations of babies into a family.
Over the years, patients who were unaware of his prior abortion work would sometimes share their abortion experience.
Women generally don’t share their abortion history, he said, whether due to shame or simple privacy, but he had many break down in his office once they realized he would treat them with compassion and tell him of their abortion experience, often having hid it from family members.
Thinking back on all the patients he has counseled with adverse physical and psychological consequences of a previous abortion, Hammond said he realizes that his conviction at that time was wrong in so many ways.
“Abortion may seem like a solution in the short term, when there seems to be so many reasons to end a pregnancy, and when the prospect of continuing a pregnancy seems so insurmountable,” he said. “However, I have learned something significant from the experience of caring for women for more than 40 years, many of whom have shared their stories with me. The painful memories and haunting questions that persist after an abortion take a heavy toll.”
It took a toll on Hammond as well.
He says he could blame the church for not giving him the ammunition to resist the indoctrination in medical school and residency or blame his parents for not intervening.
“But the truth is, I can only blame myself,” Hammond said. “I should have been a better student of what the Bible says about the sanctity of human life. I was the one who put those little baby parts back together again after each abortion without flinching.”
Having come full circle, Hammond has immersed himself in the pro-life movement.
He has coauthored a book, The Christian and Abortion—A Nonnegotiable Stance, serves on the board of a local pregnancy center, The Abortion Survivors Network, and the VITAE Foundation, and often speaks at pregnancy center fundraisers around the country. He’s also spoken to college student groups and medical school symposia.
Hammond is a strong opponent to the chemical abortion pill, calling mifepristone “the greatest holocaust in history,” and advocating for it to be taken off the market.
Since his conversion, Hammond has had numerous one-on-one discussions with friends and acquaintances about abortion.
“I have won over a few and some I’m not so sure of,” he said.
“But what is most important to me is sharing that even though I am guilty of ending over 700 innocent lives, Jesus Christ has freed me from the guilt and shame I deserve,” said Hammon. “It gives me the chance to share the gift I have been given and that it is available to all who repent and seek His forgiveness.”
