Hysterotomy abortion is a form of abortion in which the uterus is opened through an abdominal incision and the fetus is removed, similar to a caesarean section, but requiring a smaller incision. As major abdominal surgery, hysterotomy is performed under general anaesthesia, and is only used in rare situations where less invasive procedures have failed or are medically inadvisable (such as in the case of placenta accreta). It is used between the 12th and 24th week of pregnancy.

This method has the greatest risk of complications out of all the abortion procedures. Health officials in the United States warned practitioners against performing hysterotomy abortion in an outpatient setting after it led to the deaths of two women in New York during 1971. The rate of mortality for abortion by hysterotomy and hysterectomy reported in the United States between 1972 to 1981 was 60 per 100,000, or 0.06%.

Cheryl Deann Sullenger (born 1955) is an American pro-life activist and convicted federal felon.

Sullenger and her husband, Randall, both pled guilty in 1988 to conspiring to blow up the Alavarado Medical Center abortion clinic with a gasoline bomb She served two years in U.S. federal prison. After her release in 1990, she relocated her anti-abortion activities from California to Kansas.

In 2009, she drew attention following the trial of Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist indicted for the murder of Dr. George Tiller of Wichita. Sullenger initially denied any contact with Roeder, but when her phone number was discovered on the dashboard of his car, she subsequently stated that she had kept him informed regarding Tiller's scheduled court dates.

Sullenger currently serves as a senior policy advisor for Operation Rescue under Troy Newman. She also serves as director of Kansans for Truth in Politics, a social conservative activist group.

Rachel Maddow ran an expose covering an alleged "unholy alliance" between Sullenger and Roeder.Jacob M. Appel has highlighted Sullenger's violent history in his efforts to enact mandatory lifelong registration for perpetrations of crimes against abortion clinics.