Kathi Aultman was six weeks postpartum when she returned to work at an abortion clinic in Gainesville, Florida. She performed abortions on the weekends to earn money while in medical school.
“I felt really strongly that abortion was a woman’s right,” Aultman told in an interview on September 17 interview. “I mean, I bought the whole thing: hook, line, and sinker.” “I even did abortions when I was pregnant — very pregnant. But I didn’t see any contradiction. My baby was wanted, theirs wasn’t. If they wanted to abort their baby, that was their right.”
But Aultman remembers something was different about that first abortion she performed after delivering and caring for her own baby. For the first time in her life, Aultman made the connection that the unborn child she was aborting was, in fact, a child. Not dissimilar to her own child.
Aultman completed the abortion, and she continued to perform abortions in the weeks that followed. But she said her experience that first day back from maternity leave marked the beginning of her journey toward be-coming a pro-life advocate.
Today, Aultman has testified on pro-life issues before state and congre-ssional bodies and state courts, and has assisted various state attorneys and the Justice Department in considering cases related to abortion. She was a speaker at the 2019 March for Life in Washington.
Most recently, Aultman was one of 240 of pro-life women to sign an amicus brief in support of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case out of Mississippi that has the potential of overturning federal protection for abortion in the United States.
“I was fascinated,” she said. “I thought they were so interesting. I love[d] sending foetal parts down to pathology so I could look at the slides and see what the embryonic tissue looked like. I did not see them as people.”
Suddenly, Aultman saw herself as a mass murderer. It happened to be within a few years of the arrest and execution of infamous serial killer Ted Bundy, and Aultman remembers thinking that she had probably killed a lot more people than Bundy had.
“That was the point when I understood that abortion was wrong, and I became pro-life.”