Former abortionist speaks at Celebration for Life

Dr. Anthony Levatino gives testimony of his prior life as an abortionist at the Annual Celebration for Life fundraising event. He has since become an outspoken champion of the pro-life movement.

Rebecca Esparza | for STC
 

“What do you do after a disaster? You bury your child, take some time off and try to get back to your life. I don’t remember exactly how long it was after Heather’s death, but I started to perform a second-trimester abortion…and I got sick,” he recalled. “For the first time, I didn’t see a right to choose, and I didn’t see what a wonderful doctor I was helping the patient with her problem. I didn’t even see the $800 I had made in just 15 minutes. All I could see was somebody’s son or daughter.”

Levatino was the featured speaker at the 30th Annual Celebration for Life, a fundraising dinner benefiting Birthright of Corpus Christi, The Gabriel Project and Corpus Christi Hope House.

But he had started having doubts about abortion when he and his wife Cecelia began having fertility problems of their own six years earlier. The waiting period for adopting a child was years long and Levatino said he slowly began to understand the irony of his situation.

“It was strictly selfish. I knew the reason it was so difficult to find babies to adopt were because of people like me, who were killing them in abortions,” he confided. 

It didn’t happen overnight, but by 1985 he quit performing all abortions. He said the last thing he thought of doing next was to become a pro-life advocate, but that is what eventually happened. Levatino has testified before Congress about the dangers of abortion and travels around the world speaking to pro-life communities about his story.

Earlier in the evening, Hope House Board of Directors awarded the “Life Servant Award” to Melinda Baker, a former director at Hope House and current grant administrator. While Baker was director, she assisted a pregnant woman with chronic drug abuse and eventually adopted her baby. Baker’s adopted daughter, Lauren Olson, who also received the award, is now 15 years old and plans to become a pediatric oncologist.

Hope House, Birthright and the Gabriel Project provide shelter, support, and compassion for women who are pregnant and have no place to turn. Visit cchope.org for more information or call (361) 852-CARE (2273).