One of nation’s oldest abortion practices closes
Click to enlarge the great news, from the abortion clinic’s website…
Abortionist Peter Bours will turn 69 years old this July and has announced his retirement and the closure of his Eugene, Oregon, abortion mill effective February 28.
Bours originally launched an obstetrics practice in 1974 to deliver babies at home or in a birthing cabin he constructed on his farm property. When he built an office in town, “at the top of the building he hung a bell, to ring out the news of birth,” according to the New York Times Magazine in a 1985 cover story fluff piece:
For his wife, it was an idyllic time. ”In one year,” she recalls, ”we did 350 deliveries, and that was in just 365 days. I remember thinking, ‘I have the most wonderful job in the world.”’
But in 1977 Bours, a Stanford educated anti-war liberal, added abortion to his practice.
After the protests started in 1983, Bours’ (pictured left) obstetrics practice fell off. Then there were two fizzled firebomb attempts in 1984. In 1985 Bours stopped seeing pregnant patients who wanted to keep their babies and focused solely on pregnant patients who wanted to kill their babies.
Part of this quote from the NYT piece has gone down in pro-life infamy. You’ll see the underlined section on many pro-life sites:
And an abortion on an advanced fetus, which has taken on more of a recognizable human form, takes a greater emotional toll on a doctor and his staff. Earlier that day, performing the procedure on the woman who wished no fourth child, Dr. Bours finished vacuuming her uterus, funneling the remains of the fetus into a sock of white gauze, suspended in a jar.
After an abortion, the doctor must inspect these remains to make sure that all the fetal parts and the placenta have been removed. Any tissue left inside the uterus can start an infection. Dr. Bours squeezed the contents of the sock into a shallow dish, and poked about with a finger. ”You can see a teeny-tiny hand,” he said.
At the sink and sterilizer, where the surgical instruments are cleaned, a nurse stood and turned on the faucet. ”I’ve been cleaning up after him for four years,” she said. ”We all wish it were formless, but it’s not. It has a form. And it’s painful. There’s a lot of emotional pain.”…
“There’s a 6-year-old boy that I delivered that I say hello to,” Dr. Bours says, ”and after the last newspaper article came out, he wouldn’t look at me. That’s the hardest thing for me, because I’ve always prided myself on my relationship with kids. It hurts me.”
Bours is a post-abortive father to a child conceived by his first wife before they were married. His third wife and RN partner, Joan Moss, pictured right, is a breast cancer survivor. Between them they have three living children.
Such a sad story. Bours got into the abortion business before the pro-life movement got its footing and in a sense was a guinea pig. One reason doctors today don’t get into the abortion trade is by seeing the example made of abortionists like Bours.
Troy Newman of Operation Rescue observed in an email this morning, “A bunch of the old relics that opened up right after Roe seem to be on the ropes or closing.”
A report at Lifenews.com on January 21 indicated 1,500 abortion clinics have closed since the high mark of 2,176 in 1991. The number is down to ~660:
In 2012, an average of 7 abortion clinics closed each month….
Five states; Arkansas, Mississippi, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, have only one clinic each.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I feel tremendous sorrow for Peter Bours.
Three marriages.
The abortion-death of his own child.
Kids are afraid to look him in the eye.
Having to deaden his soul so that he won’t see the little limbs or feel the murders that he commits.
Having to close the business he built because no one will buy it — he can’t even give it away.
So much sadness, from a career-start that was thriving and and promising to do so much good.
No one wins but Planned Parenthood. They get another piece of the market share in Oregon.
If so many clinics are closing, why aren’t the numbers of abortions going down? Are mega clinics replacing the smaller ones that close? I don’t get the math.
Walking backwards, looking at all the destruction left in his wake. Bours needs to turn around – his Savior has been there all this time.
Julie, generally speaking, there have been fewer abortions, however PPA affiliates have been taking over most of the business from closing private clinics.
Additionally, much abortion has moved into hospitals where it’s more difficult to monitor daily operations.
Here in Canada, so many abortions are done in hospitals and they are very secretive about it. You can’t even find the ward unless someone inside shows you where it is. Also private clinics don’t all report the stats to the govt. For instance, the province of Quebec doesn’t report the number of abortions at all. Also BC, the private clinics there don’t report to the govt. They are not made to comply in this regard.
And with more women turning to chemical abortions, surely the numbers are actually going up, not down as we pro-lifers seem to be saying. I don’t wish to be difficult, but I also don’t want to pass out false information that seems to say the culture is turning around. I don’t see much evidence of that happening actually.
Julie, we also must take the US population into consideration. For instance, when the number of abortions peaked in 1990 at 1.6 million, the U.S. population was ~250 million. Now the number hovers at 1.2 million, but our population in 2012 was 313 million. Someone has to help me with the math from here on out to figure rate and percentages. Normally I’d call my engineer husband in situations like this, but he’s at lunch…
Of course kids won’t look you in the eye Peter. Kids don’t like adults who kill other kids. REPENT while you still have time. God is gracious to forgive those who seek His forgiveness.
Jill, by those numbers in 1990 that would have have been 6.4 abortions per every 1000 people. In 2012 that would be 3.8 abortions per every 1000 people.
“We all wish it were formless, but it’s not. It has a form. And it’s painful. There’s a lot of emotional pain.”…
How about instead of wishing preborn babies weren’t babies, you wished that you didn’t do this horrible thing? And then stopped doing it!! Spare yourself the pain.
It is much easier for me to think abortionists don’t feel conflicted at all.
I feel pity for them – yes, I really do.
Thank you, LifeJoy!
In 1985, he describes painful feelings resulting from his practice. Yet, he continued to abort living, growing children in 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993…approximately 27 years. Twenty seven (plus a few months) years, he kept it up.
Painful? Apparently not too painful.
The cheerful, thriving practice must have been a fond memory in the mid 80′s, but the memory wasn’t fond enough. The pain wasn’t enought to stop killing until he became too old to keep up the schedule. The happy memories not inspiring enought for him to stop killing for an additional 27 years after he realized that many other people found his practice loathesome.
Yep, that IS one of the saddest things I’ve contemplated this week.
His total time delivering babies was 11 years, his total time killing babies was 36 years, with an 8 year overlap where he did both. Sad. What a waste of medical training. What a waste of time spent. Sad. Sad. Sad.
and a waste of life – the children and his….
Too bad he succumbed to the dark side and now refers his patients to the evil empire.
While I feel bad for him personally, as far as his practice goes — good-bye and good riddance. I can’t imagine the disconnect that allows one to help bring new life into the world on one hand and destroy another new life on the other hand. I’m glad there are fewer physicians willing to step into your shoes.
I don’t know how else to feel except sick to my stomach after reading about such a wasted, evil life.
I have prayed outside of that clinic and I could FEEL the evil. It was such a terrible and yucky place. I was so happy when I saw the signs gone. I still cannot believe he used to do home births and such. How does someone go from home birthing babies to murdering them?
sarah,
I wonder if abortions were more lucrative? Greed.
I am praying. The whole family is not beyond the reach of God.
The whole concept of an actual doctor doing abortions remains mind-boggling to me (though I could ‘get it’ while reading Dr. Nathanson’s extraordinary memoir “The Hand of God”. I guess it’s just hard to remember how/why because it seems so foreign, as opposed to the more inuitively understood situation of a girl or woman in some crisis or another resorting to an abortion in the naive hope that it would solve her problems a la Maaco (“like it never even happened”)).
I guess the reality is often that some personal trauma/psychic wound in the would-be abortionist’s background leads him or her into doing them or at least allows it and then the longer they continue in this dark trade, the more deeply entrenched they become – and hard-hearted, in part to protect themselves. Once Bours became known as an abortionist, his practice fell off and instead of taking that as a sign to correct his course, he tragically seemed to have doubled down. Wonder if that was due to ego, wifely pressure, flattery and entreaties from the abortion cabal, financial calculations, a naive belief that abortion helps women more than it deeply and irrevocably hurts them, spite (against women, a wife or ex, God if ever a believer, etc)
May God give him clarity as he extricates himself from the grim environment in which he’s operated for the past 36 years.
I don’t feel sorry for him, but I know the Lord’s compassion is greater than mine. I pray Dr.Bours and his wife find forgiveness someday. Such destruction….makes me sick and sad. I cry for all the ‘teeny, tiny hands’ of the teeny, tiny people he sent to heaven before their time. Such a loss to the world and why? So they could make lots of money pretending that they were ‘helping’ women? What a sad joke. Part of me wants to wish that their retirement is a living hell but truly they have already been living it and if they don’t repent for their sins to our all knowing, all loving, all forgiving God they are headed to hell anyway. If they turn and repent, accept the saviour Jesus Christ they have the hope of heaven and the chance to hold all those ‘teeny, tiny hands’ in a place with no more sorrow and no pain.