I dropped my daughter off at school this morning and watched as she lugged her backpack, lunch, and a few cans of food for the annual Food Drive into the school. After homeschooling her for two years, we enrolled her in the local charter school, a project-based learning environment where kids learn how to do things like build robots, produce an invention, and speak foreign languages, all starting in the 6th grade. The kids are visiting Costa Rica next year, and then Japan in 2015, journeys that were unheard of in our previous, perpetually budget-strapped school district in Oregon. The kids are making memories that will last a lifetime. Today is Picture Day at her school, which will serve to cement those precious memories into adulthood. But her school is not the only place taking commemorative photos. No, snapping photos is happening somewhere else, too, but in a grotesquely morbid way.

Only four American doctors remain who perform third-trimester abortions. One of those “doctors” is Susan Robinson. Dr. Robinson, aside from her other duties in her practice, kills viable babies for a living, what she deems “abortion medicine.” And as if that isn’t troubling enough, it gets even worse: she takes photos of the dead babies for their mothers to take home in memorial. Yep, you read that right. Dr. Robinson, after “euthanizing” infants mere weeks from being born snaps photos of them for the mother to take home to remember the dead infant. Robinson explains the method she uses to abort often completely healthy babies:

“We sedate the patient and euthanize their fetus, their baby, with an injection. The fetus passes away, doesn’t feel anything.”

So in one breath, she utters the term “euthanize”—which brings to mind what happens to millions of animals every day in shelters across America—and “baby.” Now last I checked, “euthanizing” (aka killing) human beings is also known as murder. Were the infant outside the womb, it would most certainly land her in a federal penitentiary next to the likes of Dr. Death himself, Kermit Gosnell. But in this country, at least for now, it’s legal in several states. How killing a viable infant, simply because it lives inside the womb, whose death warrant is issued by the mother, does not rise to first-degree murder really is mindboggling.

Rationalizing her work, Dr. Robinson insists that many of the women who enter her practice requesting third-trimester abortions had no idea they were pregnant:

“I could tell you a million reasons why women who are perfectly smart—and they are, these are not stupid women—don’t come to know they are pregnant. They have no weight changes, they don’t feel sick, they don’t feel movement, or if they do they think it’s gas. Suddenly someone says, “Hmm, your stomach’s looking big, have you taken a pregnancy test?” And the person may have taken a test, and it may have come out negative—I’ve had women that only got a positive on their third test. And either way they think they just got pregnant. They have no idea they’re in their 24th week. So they make an appointment for an abortion, and it takes a few weeks, and they have their ultrasound and find out that they’re at 27 weeks, which is too far for an abortion anywhere. So then what happens? They either give up or have a baby, or they go on the Internet and they find us.”

Now if you’re anything like me, the third trimester of pregnancy is pretty darned noticeable, sorta like a Weeble Wobble trying to keep itself upright. Seriously, I needed a forklift to get off the sofa, and was downing milkshakes like a competitive hot-dog chugger at the county fair. Not to mention the aggressive jumping jacks my daughter performed every night at 10:00 pm sharp, followed by a healthy round of hiccups. The thought that it was just an un-comfy bout of gas never crossed my mind. Sorry, but I’m not buying the “I didn’t know I was pregnant” at 30+ weeks argument, even given the presence of obesity.