There’s a Fortune in Abortion

Most pro-lifers have heard of the late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a pro-life icon who was once an abortionist and pro-abortion activist.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson

After performing or overseeing over 60,000 abortions, Nathanson became pro-life. His conversion was inspired by seeing a preborn baby aborted on ultrasound for the first time.

Ultrasound was a relatively new technique when Nathanson became pro-life. Even though he had spent decades providing abortions and promoting legal abortion, he never realized how a preborn baby reacts in the womb.

Nathanson recorded the video The Silent Scream in the 1980s, which showed footage of a baby at 12 weeks being aborted in real time, recorded on ultrasound. Although somewhat dated and sensationalized by modern standards, the film was a powerful tool for pro-lifers.

Nathanson was the cofounder of NARAL, which has changed its name several times over the years but has always been extremely active in promoting abortion and fighting pro-life efforts.

The Abortion Song

Nathanson wrote his first book, Aborting America, while he was still developing his views on abortion. In it, he revealed some lies and dirty tactics he and other abortion promoters used to convince the public to support legal abortion.

I’ve read Aborting America several times over the years, and it is still worth a read, but one thing I wanted to share from the book is “The Abortion Song.”

Dr. Nathanson went to medical school during a time when abortion was illegal throughout the entire country—before Roe v. Wade. Decades before abortion became legally available, Nathanson and other students had a made-up song they would sometimes sing among themselves when goofing around.

Nathanson published the lyrics in his book. Here they are:

There’s a fortune….in abortion
Just a twist of the wrist and you’re through.
The population…. of the nation
Won’t grow if it’s left up to you.

In the daytime … In the nighttime
There is always more work to undo.
Oh, there’s a fortune … in abortion
But you’ll wind up in the pen before you’re through.

Now there’s a gold mine … in the sex line
And it’s so easy to do.
Not only rabbits … have those habits
So why worry about typhoid and flu?

You never bother … the future father
and there’s so many of them too.
Oh, there’s a fortune … in abortion
But you’ll wind up in the pen before you’re through.¹

Doctors could make a great deal of money by doing abortions in the 1960s and 70s. And that hasn’t changed.

Abortionists Make a Lot of Money

In 1997, Dr. Nathanson wrote:

Why, you may well ask, do some American doctors who are privy to the findings of fetology discredit themselves by carrying out abortions? Simple arithmetic at $300 a time. 1.55 million abortions means an industry generating $500,000,000 annually, of which most goes into the pocket of the physician doing the abortion.

According to Planned Parenthood, a first trimester abortion in an abortion facility now costs about $600-800. Planned Parenthood advertises the abortion pill at $580 and claims other places charge more, up to $800. And later abortions can be far more expensive.

In 2023, there were an estimated 1,026,700 abortions. (This does not, of course, count abortions by pills obtained through the mail from outside the US instead of from an abortion clinic, i.e., “self-managed abortions.”)

Without data on how far along in pregnancy these abortions took place, and where, it is hard to determine the exact amount of money the abortion industry raked in that year. But it is likely more than $500,000,000.

At $700 per abortion, obviously an estimate, the amount would be $718,690,000 a year.

But whether abortion is a $500 million industry or a $700 million one, or even more, it is the doctors, along with the owners of the abortion facilities, who are taking home the bulk of that money.

Peter Korn wrote the book Lovejoy: A Year in the Life of an Abortion Clinic in 1996. He interviewed abortionists and abortion workers at Lovejoy and witnessed abortions there.

Korn described how one abortionist at Lovejoy worked a 20-hour work week committing abortions and made over $300,000 a year.²

For perspective, in 1995, the average monthly rent for an apartment was $655, and the average new home cost $158,000.00. An abortionist could easily afford a new home a year, and still have over $140,000 annual income to spare.

Uta Landy, then the executive director of the National Abortion Federation, said in 1983. “Abortion certainly is profitable … Making money is not a bad thing.”

Claims from Abortion Providers, Former and Current

Many former abortionists and abortion workers have spoken out about how making a profit was a priority for abortion facilities where they worked, often more important than providing good care.

For example, former abortionist Dr. Robert Siudmack, who once committed abortions for Planned Parenthood but is now pro-life, said in an interview with Coral Ridge Ministries:

I worked at the Margaret Sanger Center in downtown Manhattan for about a year before moving to South Florida, and it was all about the money and how many abortions we could do in a short period of time.

There was a set price, and obviously the more abortions one did, the more money they would make…. Abortion is big business.

The Margaret Sanger Center was owned and operated by Planned Parenthood.

These claims, however, have also come from people still in the abortion business.

Wendy Simonds is a pro-abortion feminist who interviewed abortion workers for her book Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic. She quotes one abortion worker saying:

I think the fact that the Center is losing that primary focus on being a feminist [workplace] is because of the almighty dollar … It’s about business, and the Center doesn’t want to say that, and that’s what they [the administrators] should say…They shouldn’t say other things to contradict that because that’s what they’re about.³ 

Other Researchers Weigh In

Other researchers not motivated by pro-life sentiment have commented on this as well.

Eyal Press, the pro-choice son of an abortion doctor, quoted an abortion worker in his book saying that the primary motive for the doctors she worked with was money:

[M]y sense is that many of the doctors were doing this to make money while their practices were growing. This was a check they knew they were going to get.⁴

Feminist Carole Joffe wrote a book where she interviewed clinic workers and discussed the way abortion clinics were run. At one point, in the book, she said:

Besides ongoing frustration over salaries, the [abortion] counselors felt that there was no real understanding of the pressures and demands of their work. They believed, for example, that the agency director and board were always devising ways to increase the patient load (and hence generate more revenues) without considering that more patients applied a need for additional staff.⁵

Selling Abortions

It isn’t the rank-and-file abortion workers who are taking home large paychecks, but the owners, administrators, and doctors at the abortion facilities.

Abortion workers, then, are less likely to become involved in abortion work for financial motives than doctors and those who set up abortion facilities. When they do get involved in the abortion industry, however, many are expected to maximize revenue by selling more abortions.

If an abortion worker doesn’t do this, often he or she doesn’t last long.

For example, Annette Lancaster, who once managed an abortion facility for Planned Parenthood, spent extra time with pregnant people who were uncertain about having abortions and sent some home with refunds. Those above her took her to task for this:

I was told, “Why did you only do 25 procedures today? Why did you send this many women home?” …

When I sent women home because they’re unsure, or I could see in their faces and their answers, their responses to the counseling questions, they were just not certain about their decision – what was I expected to do?

[W]as I expected to just go ahead and let these women go through with a procedure?

I believe they really wanted me to… [T]he women that were already there in the clinic were expected to have those procedures.

Lancaster resigned.

Another abortion worker, Laurel Guymer, resigned from her abortion facility because the way her colleagues pressured women to abort troubled her:

What if [the person having the abortion] said “no” when entering the operating room? In this instance, I felt compelled to reassure them they didn’t have to go through with it and walked them back to the change room. This was not welcomed by my colleagues at the clinic. I was reminded that this is a business and any slowing in the production line costs money.⁵

Ultimately, abortion facilities are money-making operations with doctors and administrators taking home large paychecks.

1. Bernard Nathanson, M.D. with Richard N Ostling. Aborting America (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1979) 17
2. Peter Korn Lovejoy: A Year in the Life of an Abortion Clinic (New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996) 59
3. Wendy Simonds Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996) 147
4. Eyal Press Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America (New York: Henry Holt & company, 2006) 63
5. Melinda Tankard Reist Giving Sorrow Words: Women’s Stories of Grief after Abortion (Springfield, IL: Acorn Books, 2007) 170