And Then There Were None, a ministry that helps former clinic workers, told the following story in one of their emails:
“Ellen” recalled her time working at Planned Parenthood. Like many others, she felt uncomfortable with her job there, but it paid the bills and offered the benefits she needed. She was hired on as a patient educator and was reprimanded for quietly giving patients information on adoption services and resource centers in the counseling rooms, because she was not pushing the sale of abortion onto women who weren’t sure what they were going to do. “It took a huge physical toll,” Ellen said. “I would always come home from work and cry.”
The majority of abortions are done at this time or laterShare on Facebook
I’m not sure whether this “Tina” is Tina Davis or a different former clinic worker. She gave her testimony at “Silent No More”
20 weeks. The clinic Tina worked in did abortions at this time
When I was sixteen, I took a job cleaning (we were called environmental control) at an
abortion clinic where abortions were performed up to five months. It bothered me, but my mother was raising my brother and I alone on a McDonald’s salary and we desperately needed the money. I wanted to escape poverty and go to school. On a good day I cleaned offices, on a bad I cleaned equipment, procedure rooms and tried to not look at the biohazard bags. I had to make myself as hard as a rock to be able to not break apart. I could not handle what I was left with at night; I developed anorexia and started to drink. I had grown up very prolife and thought I was a hypocrite. I was finally hospitalized and a girl praying a rosary outside of the sister clinic, struck up a friendship. She became a sister and I joined the Catholic Church. I know every argument in the book defending abortion and I am ashamed when I feel defensive or harsh when this subject is brought up. This is a defense because it’s too painful to look at what’s inside me and what I am capable of, if I am desperate enough. I am sorry for profiting from this.
“The picture is accurate. My job is to put the little pieces together to make sure we have not left any parts inside the mother because she would die if that happened. I work with the jars full of tiny arms and legs swirling around and around in the blood and it is just like in the picture. (She indicated this with her finger going around and around in a circular motion). You can even see every rib, spine, finger and toe – all of it perfectly formed at about five weeks.”
And Then There Were None is a ministry that reaches out to clinic workers and abortionists and helps them find employment when they leave the abortion industry. Their newsletter, told the story of a woman who left a Planned Parenthood clinic. Her clinic did not perform abortions, but, like all Planned Parenthood clinics, referred patients for them.
Here is her story:
“I was drawn to PP for the same reasons many are…helping woman and men in crisis. I live in a very high poverty area in Northern California. Offering birth control at low or no cost to these women (and female reproductive health care) seemed like a pretty smart idea. Like so many people, my brain was just thinking birth control methods and annual exams. I genuinely believed that was their goal.
From an abortion at eight weeks
That changed when I was required to go to an abortion clinic in our affiliate in order to observe abortions. I was asked by my Health Center Director what my thoughts were on my experience…what a trap. She wanted me to use the term “empowering” as I discussed my experience. Instead, I said it was disturbing. That is when it went down hill for me. Prior to that I often received employee of the month, customer service awards….I actually began refusing them.
After that conversation with my supervisor I quickly realized something…Planned Parenthood does not empower women and I have not been helping them. We were hindering them from making good choices and being responsible. We were sending the message “do whatever you want sexually, we will help you take care of any consequences.”
At the end of my time there, I had tried to suggest things that would, by their terms, reduce the number of unintended pregnancies (therefore reducing the number of abortions). That’s what we said our goal was, right? But when I suggested that we give reminder calls for birth control injections, pill refills, etc, it was quickly shot down. They said that would be “too costly in staff time.” That was too costly, but they had no problem spending $20,000 on wall art? It became very easy to see their priorities, and it was not on women’s health.
I am so thankful that there is an organization to help people like me. It is good to know that I am forgiven and that I am not alone. Thank you, And Then There Were None.
Molly Graham [pseudonym] had several abortions and then worked as an anesthesiologist for an abortion provider. She describes an incident where a baby was born alive:
“The last time I gave anesthesia for an abortion, it was to be a hysterotomy [a C-section abortion, where the baby is removed and set aside to die, seldom performed today,] because the woman was about 6 ½ to 7 months pregnant.
I put her to sleep as usual, the incision was made in the abdomen, then into the uterus, and a baby was pulled out – I mean a fully developed, moving, breathing baby. It hit me like a ton of bricks – the baby was put into a bucket of water and drowned.
I was shaken; I knew at that moment I’d stood silently by and condoned murder, not only this time, but many times before. I told my boss I would no longer give anesthesia for abortions and was removed from those duties.”
David C Reardon Aborted Women: Silent No More (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway books, 1987) 308
She later worked counseling women in a crisis pregnancy center.
From a woman who helped out with abortions in a hospital:
My duties were not only to care for those that were in for abortions, I also cared for the older folks having hysterectomies and so forth. I didn’t have a personal opinion on abortion until I saw how many were done and for the multitude of ridiculous reasons. Not to mention the actual procedure itself and the “aftermath”. It wasn’t until a few years afterwards that I started to feel this wasn’t right. That is when I transferred to a different department and hospital completely. . . Plus you must understand, I worked for a hospital smack dab in the middle of NYC, I got to know some of the girls getting these abortions on a first name basis, since they had them so often. That really got under my skin, seeing these girls using it as a birth control measure. And why shouldn’t they? The state paid for it anyway! Just not right!
Scott Johnston of Silent No More, did the following interview with a nurse who worked providing abortions:
What kind of nursing were you ordinarily doing around the time that these abortions took place?
“Obstetrics.”
partial birth abortion diagram
How many partial birth abortions did you personally witness?
“Two full-term abortions. They were done at nine months.”
What do you know of the circumstances surrounding these abortions? Why were they being done?
“One of the mothers already had three or four and she didn’t want any more.”
18 weeks- a little young for a Partial Birth Abortion
“The other girl was single. She didn’t have a husband and had no means of support. I asked, ‘Why don’t you put the baby up for adoption?’ She said, ‘I don’t know how it would be treated.'”
“The doctor was an O.B. doctor. I would say he was not of the highest caliber either. He had a bad reputation. He had a lot of deaths of babies that were born because he did not take care of them properly. He was sloppy. Normally, this doctor would be in the farthest back delivery room. When they did abortions, the doctors usually had their own nurse. This one didn’t. He was a sleezeball.”
How did it come to be that you were present for these abortions?
“I did not know what I was going into. I was just told to assist him [the doctor]. They just told me which delivery room to go to.”
“The reason I was in on [the first trimester abortion] is because I said to the doctor: even in the first trimester those babies have pain. ‘I’ll bet you it hurts, too.'”
Eight weeks
Did you know ahead of time for each case that an abortion was going to be done?
“No.”
Who else was in the room?
“There was one other nurse.”
What were your nursing duties during these procedures?
“I was usually there to receive the baby and take care of the baby when it was born. Their little hands–they grasp for something. They try to grab hold of something.”
20-22 Weeks
Can you describe the partial-birth abortions you witnessed? What did you see?
“He turned the baby around [in the womb] and brought it out feet first. That’s one of the worse things for the mother that you can do. I was helping the doctor hold the baby [to keep it in the birth canal]. The other nurse got the instrument [a large syringe with a large needle], handed it to the doctor, and he inserted it into the base of the skull. Then he pulled the baby out. Its little hands were grasping. When the baby quit grasping, then he delivered it. He used the syringe to suction out the brains. That’s more traumatic on the mother than if she had given a normal birth.”
“They took the [dead] baby and wrapped it up in a receiving blanket and asked her [the mother] if she wanted to hold it. She said she didn’t want to. Neither one of them wanted to see them.”
Aborted baby at 24 weeks
“They were sent to the morgue.”
What was your reaction?
“I was so sick. I was absolutely nauseous. I couldn’t believe all that was taking place.”
“I told the charge nurse I didn’t want to work with him anymore.”
“I think it’s such a horrible thing. I said a prayer for those babies.”
What was the reaction of the other personnel who were present with you at these abortions?
22 week abortion
“With the doctor, he was so nonchalant. It was no big thing.”
“I never saw her [the other nurse] reactions.”
You also witnessed a first trimester abortion. Please describe what happened.
“The doctor did a sonogram to show me that the baby didn’t feel it. On the sonogram, when he started the suction, the baby’s arms spread out. It immediately threw its hands out. Its little arms spread out. So, you know it had to feel it.
First trimester sonogram
[The instrument used for the first trimester abortion] it is a silver tube with stainless steel blades on it. He inserts it first, and then turns on the suction. The baby comes out all shredded. ‘Now, you watch this, and you’ll see how it doesn’t feel a thing.’ [The doctor said] I think it was kind of shocking to him. I looked at him and he looked at me, and then he wouldn’t look at me after that. I don’t think he had used a sonogram before during an abortion. It was over in a short period of time.”
Eight weeks sonogram
“That doctor is not here [at the same hospital] anymore. He had so many malpractice suits he had to leave town.”
What is the reaction of people you have talked to since then about what happened?
Six months – partial-birth abortions used to be done at this age. Now these babies are aborted by D&E
“Anybody who starts talking about partial birth abortion, I say, ‘Do you know what it is?’ And I tell them what it is! They just usually look kind of wide-eyed with their mouths open. And one girl said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ I said, ‘why should I stand up here and lie to you?’ Most people are just shocked.”
La Verne Tolbert never worked in an abortion clinic, but she was a Planned Parenthood board member for five years. She was the only African-American member on the board during that time. She says of her first meeting:
“I attended my first board meeting filled with anticipation. It was quite a short bus ride from the mid-town office where I worked as an editor over to the Margaret Sanger Clinic, named after Planned Parenthood’s founder. Over time I noticed that several of the board members arrived in chauffeured limousines. Who were these men of wealth, I wondered, and why were they so interested in the people who lived in the inner city?
Once in the building. I walked past the clinic that served primarily African-American and Latino girls. The elevator took me upstairs to an imposingly large boardroom, and I took my seat with the striking observation that I was the only person of color in the room. The majority of board members were male, and the handful of women appeared to be much older than my twenty-seven years.
….
Early in my volunteer service on the board, I learned about the biggest challenge that Planned Parenthood of New York City faced. For every abortion that was performed, a death certificate had to be issued by the Department of Health. They wanted to reverse this law.Death certificates? Does that mean the babies were alive?Like millions of other Americans, I debated about when life really begins. When is the fetus viable? When can it live on its own? Abortion could not be murder if, indeed, all that was aborted was a “mass of tissue.”
Part of our responsibility as board members was to become familiar with abortion procedures. We read documents detailing how abortions were performed, and for me, that’s when the viability debate ended. I learned of two kinds of abortions—saline and dilation and evacuation, also called D&E. I would later learn about a third type, late-term or partial-birth abortion.
In saline abortions, babies inhale a salt solution that is introduced into the womb. The mother experiences premature labor and delivers a dead, burned baby. In instances where the baby is born still breathing, he or she is placed into a plastic bag, which is then sealed, and the baby is suffocated.
Note: this procedure is no longer performed today because it had such a high complication rate and also sometimes resulted in babies being born alive. Gianna Jessen and Melissa Ohden are two young women who survived saline abortions and went on to be adopted.
The dilation-and-evacuation abortion literally tears the baby apart limb by limb. The instrument used, insanely called a “straw,” is actually a powerful suction device. It is inserted into the mother’s uterus, where it searches for an arm or leg of the baby. Once it latches on, it tears that limb from the baby’s body. Each limb is subsequently torn apart and suctioned, or “evacuated.” Since the head is too large to pass through the nozzle of the “straw,” the doctor has to insert an instrument that looks much like a clamp. It grasps the baby’s head and crushes it into smaller pieces, which are then evacuated. A nurse puts all the pieces of the baby onto a nearby table, reassembling the body to make certain that all parts have been successfully removed from the uterus.
I was horrified. I came to the next meeting shaking with disbelief and filled with protestations. Holding up the papers, I said that these procedures were traumatic for both the mother and her baby.
An older woman sitting directly across from me looked me coldly in the eye and said in a low, rabid voice, “It is not traumatic!” I was stunned by her insensitivity and chilled by her icy stare.
I was on the verge of resigning from the board. Now that I understood what was really involved, I wanted no part in this abortion business. But the question, “Who will speak up if I leave?” kept me in a quandary. Eventually deciding to remain, I determined to be a thorn in their side and often cast the lone opposing vote.
….
Tolbert now says:
“Abortion stops a beating heart.A person who is pregnant is going to have a baby … it is not a mass of tissue.”
Tolbert is now a minister and pro-life activist on the Issues 4 Life board.
“My job was to tell the doctor where the parts were, the head being of special significance because it is the most difficult to remove. The head must be deflated, usually by using the suction machine to remove the brain, then crushing the head with large forceps.”
