Parts of this video can make for chilling viewing.

But you need to see it, if you live in South Dakota and are thinking of voting against your state’s Initiative 11 to amend the state constitution to ban abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and threats to the life and health of the mother.

In the video, Dr. Patti Giebink clinically describes the life-destroying techniques she employed to kill unborn children when she worked as the main abortionist at the former Planned Parenthood abortion facility in South Dakota where the video was filmed.

“One of the reasons I’m doing this video is that in South Dakota I’m uniquely qualified to really speak to this issue,” says Giebink, who is now pro-life. “Because I’m a board-certified Ob-Gyn, and I have done abortions. I have performed abortion procedures.”

Giebink says that in order to convince herself — and the women whose babies she aborted — that abortions were acceptable, she had to deny the humanity of the unborn babies she aborted.

“And I think in a woman’s heart, she knows that that’s a unique human being, that’s not just a piece of tissue,” Giebink says. “And I was guilty of adding to that concept because that’s what I explained — I said, ‘It’s just a piece of tissue.’ I could not allow myself to think of that as a unique human being and a life. Because obviously, the next train of thought was, ‘I’m killing a life.’”

Concludes Giebink, “I can’t deny that I did the procedures here. I was the main abortion provider during those years. And it’s my desire to end abortion on demand in South Dakota. And I know that this is the time, this is the year, Initiative 11 is the law that we need to pass.”

Bishop Paul Swain of Sioux Falls, S.D., has issued a statement in support of Initiative 11 (formally known as Initiated Measure 11), although he notes it does not fully reflect Church teachings because of the exceptions its “gradualist” approach permits. Read his statement here.

And for another pro-life perspective on why to support Initiative 11, watch this testimony from a young woman who chose life when she became pregnant at 14.

— Tom McFeely