A doctor’s path to redemption

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, February 19th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: from darkness to life.

It’s been one month into President Trump’s second term, and he’s already followed through on several pro-life campaign promises.

He shut down an HHS website meant to facilitate abortions. He pardoned nearly two dozen pro-life demonstrators. And just this week, he ended a Biden-era policy that funded abortion travel.

MAST: Vice President JD Vance attended this year’s March for Life and offered his own experience.

VANCE: There was a point when I would get frustrated with people who didn't see what we saw. I would get frustrated that people could look at a picture of a baby on an ultrasound and see not a human being but just a clump of cells. But one of the things that being a father has taught me, and one of the things that being in politics has taught me over the last couple of years, is that it is a blessing to know the truth. And the truth is that unborn life is worthy of protection.

One of the women at the March was Catherine Wheeler.

She’s a retired OB/GYN. And although she’s pro-life now, all through medical school, she was not.

EICHER: Dr. Wheeler stopped by WORLD’s Washington bureau around the time of the march ,and told Washington producer Harrison Watters her story.

WHEELER: The first time I ever really thought about fetal pain, the memories came back about the babies trying to get away from me with the instruments, but somehow I blocked that part out until things trigger the memory.

Catherine Wheeler says she doesn’t remember much from the roughly 20 abortions that she did back in the 19-80s.

WHEELER: I would say, if you take a human life, one is too many, you know? And there is something about it. I can remember a lot of things, but I specifically block that out.

MAST: During her 24-year career in Salt Lake City, Dr. Wheeler was one of very few OBs who performed abortions.

WHEELER: We're talking somewhere around 87 to 93% of OBS don't do them. And back then, it was even more of an outlier thing, and especially if you think about Utah's primarily, at least then, was primarily a Mormon culture, and they're very clear about life and when life begins, more so than the Christian, the Christians that I knew.

At the time, Wheeler wasn’t a Christian. If anything, she says she was some sort of a feminist.

WHEELER: Not overly in your face kind of feminism. I guess I believed too much in women's empowerment.

EICHER: So given the choice to perform abortions, she did. Though not often. Typical for her were second trimester babies with what she described as “fetal anomalies.”

WHEELER: I was at the University of Utah, which is a major genetic and anomalies center. And so it came up as it's a choice a woman gets to make, and you don't have to do them. … And you know, if you really care about women, and you're surrounded by the first real wave of female residents. And we love women, you know what I mean. So without really thinking about it, I opted into it. It's a very twisted compassion.

MAST: Wheeler grew uneasy, but it wasn’t until an experience with an established patient that her mind began to change.

EICHER: The pregnant mom came into Dr. Wheeler’s office with her own mother, both insisting on an abortion. They specifically wanted Dr. Wheeler.

WHEELER: You do feel awful for these people and I think there's this really weird compassion, where you feel bad for people, and you really do, and you have to block out the baby, but you feel bad for that woman, and you get the wrong answer when you're not grounded and when you don't believe in God, you know. So I did relent finally. I went in to do her abortion that day, and I can't even tell you what happened. All I know is sitting down, starting the abortion and realizing that there was just some kind of evil presence in the room.

MAST: She says she felt a darkness in the room.

WHEELER: And all of a sudden it was like, I saw the baby for what the baby was. I realized, I mean, in that moment, I'm like, I am about to murder a human being, and just sitting there going, Okay, now what do I do? I either can stop, but then she's at risk because I've already started the abortion, or I can actually kill a human. It was just shocking.

It was around this time that Wheeler believes the scales fell from her eyes and she began a journey to faith in Christ.

WHEELER: Now I can look back and go, well, that was a moment that God allowed me to see the evil, but I did end up completing the abortion, but going, I am never doing this again. And I wish I'd had somebody to talk with about it, but you just kind of push it away, like that's so dark. Who are you going to tell you know, who to understand that?

EICHER: She also began to grapple with her past.

WHEELER: I don't know anybody who's murdered anybody. And then I think about how many people I've murdered, and you just go, how do you even get up from that?

Remembering that pain is hard, but Wheeler prays God will never let her forget.

WHEELER: You've got to keep that in the forefront of what that grace is that Jesus would die for somebody who takes the life of the people who are so precious to him, these beautiful gifts of children.

MAST: Today, Wheeler faces head-on the reality of abortion by speaking with abortion survivors. She remembers one meeting in particular, an event featuring survivor Melissa Ohden.

WHEELER: And so I went up to I waited till people were like, away from her afterwards, and I just went up crying. I'm like, I just want you to know I'm so sorry. I'm an abortionist, and I'm so sorry for what happened to you. And she cried with me and hugged me. And my hope in that was that some like, probably they'd never met an abortionist who told them I'm sorry, and now I know they probably actually have met some of the people who went before me. But I'm like, they need to know somebody feels sorry about that.

Wheeler hopes her story offers others a way out of guilt and shame.

WHEELER: Sometimes they'll hear me, and then they'll share their stories. So I think with me, it's a little bit safe, because they know, like, what am I going to throw you know what I mean? So you know, they know that I'm going to understand, but I do try to be incredibly careful because I don't want to do anything to turn them from God, but I want to offer hope and help, because I know it's a long process, and you have to confront everything that you believed.

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