During his career as an abortionist, Dr. Anthony Levantino aborted some 1,200 babies over just five years of practicing, which averages out at about one every single day. One life, cruelly taken at the hands of a man who believed he was simply providing women with a healthcare service.
But like many others, Levantino could not escape the horror of what he saw during his time committing these acts — babies born alive and the unmitigated shame of taking an innocent young life. Quickly, the moral repugnancy of his career choice began to weigh heavily upon his shoulders.
Then, something utterly tragic made Tony and his wife reevaluate their very understanding of the sanctity of human life. When she was just 6 years old, Levantino’s daughter, Heather, was struck by a car and killed outside their home.
“We heard the screech of brakes out the front of our house. Heather had been struck by a car,” Mrs. Levantino explained in a video produced by the makers of the new pro-life movie, “Unplanned.”
“Tony rushed over and started doing CPR. An ambulance was called, they continued to try to resuscitate her, but she was dead on arrival,” Levantino recalled through tears. “That’s something you never recover from.”
At this point, as Tony explained, after taking a couple weeks off to deal with the grief of losing a child, he headed back to work.
“I showed up at … Albany medical center just like I had over 100 times before to do one of these late-term abortions,” he explained. “And I wasn’t thinking of this as anything special.”
However, as Anthony reached for the clamp used to “rip out an arm or a leg” during a dilatation and evacuation abortion, he was stopped in his tracks.
“I literally stared at that limb sitting in the clamp,” he said. “When you do a D&E abortion you have to stack parts up on the table and when you’re done — it’s gruesome. You have to reassemble the baby to make sure you’ve got everything.”
“I finished that abortion and I really looked at that pile of body parts on the table,” Levantino explained. “For the first time in my life, I didn’t see her wonderful right to choose, I didn’t see what a great doctor I was helping her with her problem, and I didn’t even see the $800 cash I just made in fifteen minutes.”
“All I could see was somebody’s son or daughter,” he said.
In that moment, Levantino said, “it hit me all at once.”
“I had just buried my daughter and here someone came to me and offered my money to kill their son and daugther, and I said ‘yes,’” he said.
From this point, Levantino knew that he would never commit the act of late-term abortion again in his lifetime. A few months later, he quit doing abortions altogether.
“I came to the realization that if I shouldn’t be killing children in the second trimester, then I shouldn’t be killing them earlier, either,” he wrote in a column at Life Site News.
From abortionist to pro-life advocate
Tony has become a compelling pro-life advocate and champion for the unborn and has delivered damning testimony about the brutal realities of abortion before various committees. His 2015 address before the House Judiciary Committee for a hearing surrounding Planned Parenthood’s medical procedures has garnered over three million views on YouTube.
“I became involved with the pro-life movement and that has helped me heal and to find forgiveness. How do you make up for the 1,200 dead kids? You can’t,” Levantino wrote. “As an abortionist, I was at the epicenter of the earthquake but since I stopped doing abortions and became involved with pro-life efforts, I can clearly see how abortion affects everyone connected with the child who dies.”
“Unplanned,” the highly anticipated film about former Planned Parenthood director-turned-pro-life activist Abby Johnson, hits theaters March 29.
