Raised in a Christian home, Dr. Steve Hammond’s earliest memories include teachings from his mother—the spiritual leader in his household—about sin and God’s plan of salvation. With a fairly mature understanding of God as a child, he understood His omnipresence and could feel that God was truly watching over him.
“Nothing I did was outside of God’s sight. I understood that as early as five years of age,” Dr. Hammond remembered. “I know I was not always a ‘good boy,’ and that meant that God wasn’t always pleased with my shenanigans. More than that, for me to be a part of His family, God could not accept me in the condition I was in.”
At an early age, Dr. Hammond would watch Billy Graham on TV and listen intently. He knew that Jesus was his only hope.
“I received forgiveness for my sinfulness through a child’s faith at an early age,” he recalled.
As he grew up, Dr. Hammond had great aspirations, and by the age of just 28 years old, he thought he had the world by the tail. As a young medical resident, the difficult years of medical school were behind him, and he was halfway through his residency—well on his way to realizing his dream of becoming an obstetrician/gynecologist (OB/GYN).
Dr. Hammond had decided to pursue this dream as soon as he began his obstetrics rotation in medical school. Delivering babies was particularly interesting to him, especially the final product—what he describes as a squirming, slippery, howling little boy or girl.
“It was always a joyous occasion,” he said. “It seemed to be a specialty that always brought me happiness. The long hours were only a minor annoyance at that age because part of the excitement of youth—like staying up all night when there was something fun to do—was still present. But I was certain that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
During his medical school rotation, internship, some moonlighting as an extern, and a year of residency, Dr. Hammond gained experience in both routine and deeply complicated deliveries that required forceps or breech extractions. He also learned to do Cesarean sections without the presence of a chief resident assistant, along with various gynecological surgeries such as hysterectomies and the newly emerging field of laparoscopy.
“It was exciting to be on the cutting edge of this technology,” Dr. Hammond said.
Laparoscopy was taught during his residency by a physician who oversaw residency training at the Planned Parenthood facility. It was during this rotation when Dr. Hammond was also introduced to a procedure that had been legalized in the United States four years earlier, the abortion procedure.
“With the recent change in the political climate due to the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in January 1973, abortion was now legal. And I saw no reason why I shouldn’t be a part of this cutting-edge movement.”
The logic seemed clear to Dr. Hammond. Women now had access to legal and “safe” termination of unwanted pregnancies. He felt that the arguments were compelling, and the expertise to perform the procedure was clearly part of the training that an OB/GYN should receive.
“There were some essential skills I had to develop to become good at this new procedure. First, I had to be able to determine the approximate gestational age of the fetus without a real-time ultrasound, which was not available in 1976. This was important because in the early days of abortion, the procedure was only performed during the first trimester in my institute. In fact, the Supreme Court originally only intended for early abortions to be performed,” Dr. Hammond recalled. “Second, I had to become proficient in dilating the cervix.”
After gaining a great deal of experience in performing abortions, Dr. Hammond had learned quite a bit and could even anticipate how a patient might react during the procedure.
“I came to a point where I could largely ignore the crying and occasional pleas to stop the procedure because I expected it. And at that point, we were usually past the point of no return anyway,” Dr. Hammond said. “I also learned to dissect the baby parts with the cold clinical approach that a forensic pathologist would employ while doing an autopsy—no emotion.”
Dr. Hammond became so good at performing abortions that Planned Parenthood eventually hired him to do them on Saturdays when he was not on call. He continued performing abortions at Planned Parenthood for a year until one Saturday when he encountered something that he had not witnessed before.
“Saturday procedures were usually less involved because one of the faculty members interviewed each patient the day before, took their history, inserted a Laminaria, and performed a bimanual exam,” Dr. Hammond said. “Presumably, the pregnancy terms and uterine size were both under 12 weeks. But on this particular Saturday, a young 16-year-old, who was the last patient of the morning, seemed more nervous than the average patient.”
Because the girl was a little overweight, Dr. Hammond wasn’t suspicious about what was to come. He inserted the cannula just like he had done so many times before, and the amniotic fluid began to flow as usual. Then, more and more of it came. And after a quart or more of fluid, he knew something was terribly wrong.
“It was then that I felt it,” Dr. Hammond recalled. “The baby kicked me. 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 Dr. 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 the doctor. What was he going to do now? Eventually, he arranged to transfer the patient to the hospital, and the young girl had to be put to sleep for a D&X (dilation and extraction) completion of what he had started. The baby had to be broken up into small pieces so that it could be removed.
“That was the last abortion I ever did,” Dr. Hammond shared.
As a young doctor who was just 28 years old at the time, Dr. Hammond had been convinced that abortion was just another procedure that he believed was helping his patients. And he felt that if he and his patient decided the best thing was for her to end her pregnancy, then the government shouldn’t interfere. Now, reflecting on his life 40 years later, he believes the complete opposite.
“Thinking back on all the patients I have counseled—with adverse physical and psychological consequences of a previous abortion—I realize that my conviction at that time was wrong in so many ways,” Dr. Hammond reflected. “Clearly, without my involvement, many of these abortions would have been done by someone else, but the fact that I performed more than 700 abortions troubles me to this day.”
He continued, “Speaking with conviction as well as authority, 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. However, I have also 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.”
Those painful memories and haunting questions took a heavy toll on Dr. Hammond as well.
“I went from being a Christian young person to a physician—well trained in how to care for human beings—who turned his back on his responsibility and ended the lives of more than 700 babies,” he explained. “I could blame the church for not giving me the ammunition to resist the indoctrination I received in medical school and residency. I could blame my parents for not saying, ‘We raised you better than that.’ But the truth is, I can only blame myself.”
Now, with honest reflection and full self-awareness, Dr. Hammond can see where he went wrong.
“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,” he said. “I should have had a new heart that listened to the Holy Spirit and resisted the temptation to do abortions, much less relish in them. Feeling that baby’s kick in the uterus was my wakeup call. It took that incident to bring me to the conclusion that performing an abortion was ending a life, regardless of the gestational age.”
After much prayer and repentance, Dr. Hammond returned to his Christian roots. He now has a firm desire to stand for the sanctity of human life while reminding anyone who has been involved in or affected by abortion that God’s forgiveness awaits.
“If you have had an abortion or been personally affected by one, I offer you this reassurance: the Lord Jesus Christ is rich in mercy and will forgive you, no matter what you have done, if you come to Him in repentance and ask Him to forgive you,” he said. “John 6:37 says, ‘All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.’ He forgave me; He will forgive you. He is waiting for you to come to Him.