Former Clinic Workers Archives - Page 14 of 15

Allegations Against Dr. George Tiller, Former Employee Sued Him

The late Dr. George Tiller performed abortions up through the third trimester. His death was tragic, and he has been hailed a hero by many pro-choicers. However, he was implicated in the death of at least one woman.

In 1993, an employee of his, Tracy Jones, sued him. She is quoted here:

“There were no ‘training manuals’ for new employees, and there was no time (or instructions from Dr. Tiller) to develop them. Basically it was a ‘sink or swim’ situation for new front office employees. We did have a cursory telephone answering procedure sheet to follow, but generally a new employee received on-the-job training by all of the front office employees. Further, front office employees wre routinely called back to the medical area to assist medical employees with direct patient care without receiving any training in this area.” Included “washing surgical instruments and wrapping them for autoclave, operating the sonogram during surgery, explaining aftercare instructions to patients, and preparing specimins”

….

“Dr. Tiller paid ‘kick-backs’ to certain individuals who referred patients to him: [I.S.] in New York; [C.F.] in Tulsa, Oklahoma and [C.K.] in Atlanta, Georgia… Dr. Tiller required me to account for these payments (other than [I.S.], who he paid in cash) as ‘Other Advertising’ on the books.”

….

“Dr. Tiller instructed me to routinely overbill Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Kansas. For example, we billed BC/BS $786 for a first trimester procedure, while patients actually paid only $225 or $330. Dr. Tiller advised me that he ‘pioneered’ this billing procedure, and that other clinics across the country were doing it as well. The way it worked was that $786 was booked as the actual procedure fee, the patient paid either $225 or $330, and the remainder ($561 or $456) was written off in the ‘adjustments’ column. When patients questioned this, we advised that $786 was the actual cost of our service, but that in order to remain competitive we took a loss, or a write-off, to keep our prices low.”

Sorce:

Source: US District Court of Kansas Case No. 94-1138-MLB

provided by Christina Dunigan

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Former Clinic Worker: Catherine Adair

This clinic is in Boston on Commonwealth Avenue, it is all abortions all day, every day that’s what we did, Monday through Saturday, all day. I was a medical assistant, again let me remind you that I had no medical training whatsoever. And as a medical assistant you were in the abortion room with the doctor and the nurse, you bring the patient in and get them ready.… You put her on the table, get her ready and that’s the position she’s in when her “healthcare provider” comes into the room. If she’s lucky, he might use her name or make eye contact, but generally speaking, he or she doesn’t…

One of my jobs was to count these baggies, these plastic bags, because the bags had to match the number of abortions we did that day. And what they call the bags, are POCs, products of conception and the clinic workers would joke that they were pieces of children.… I know why people joke, I know why there is this gallows humor you sort of have to do that to survive and when you think about it you’re dealing with death day after day…

We did second trimester abortions there…. I went in and they hadn’t taken the baby out of the room yet and I stood there looking at this jar with these body parts in shock. And I sort of backed out of the room not sure if I had really seen what I had seen.… Because this was a baby – I could see hands, I could see feet. This was a person, this was a human being.… You would think I wouldn’t go back to work the next day but I did because who was I gonna talk to?

unborn baby’s foot at 14 weeks

…. The Iron Curtain there is very strong; you question Planned Parenthood, and boy, people really come down on you.

Before she meets with a counselor, or talk to anybody about the decision, they already have her money. When they call to make an appointment, they don’t ask “why are you thinking about having an abortion?” They ask “when was your last period, and how are you going to pay for this.”…

I think Planned Parenthood, one of its goals is to go younger and younger and younger, its name branding… They want to enter the schools, and that way, when someone is a teenager and pregnant, “oh yeah, Planned Parenthood.” They know that name, it’s the first thing that they think of.… It is a culture and a belief that… children are the enemy of women, and that’s what we’re fighting against.”

Values Voter Summit 10/8/2011,

Also:

Planned Parenthood’s mission is to pressure as many women into having an abortion as it can,” a former abortion facility worker has revealed. From Catherine Anthony Adair’s op-ed piece in The Washington Examiner:

In 1997, I began working at a Boston Planned Parenthood clinic as a young, idealistic college student who strongly believed in what I had been told about the organization, that I would be helping other young women access safe and affordable health care.

My time there was not spent providing prenatal care to pregnant women, providing counseling or basic health care services or educating women about reproductive health.

Instead, I spent my days urging women to terminate their pregnancies. My superiors constantly reminded me of our abortion-centered business model: abortions first, everything else came second.

I began to recognize their emphasis on performing abortions each time a woman would express concern or have second thoughts about having an abortion. When I notified management, though, they told me not to worry and encourage her decision to move ahead with the procedure. …

Planned Parenthood’s mission is to pressure as many women into having an abortion as it can.

The misinformation, lack of counseling and coercion extended to facility workers purposely obscuring information on fetal development, Anthony Adair wrote.

In fact, clinic workers would purposefully avoid providing information on fetal development, what the child looked like, the child’s anatomical development and the pain he or she could feel. I was continuously reminded that when referring to the baby, the appropriate terminology was “clump of cells” or “contents of the uterus.”

Then women would know what was really growing inside them: a little person with a beating heart, functioning nervous system, tiny hands and feet. The child is entirely disregarded. There is no counseling, no care, no waiting and no discussion. Once a pregnancy is confirmed, it is off to termination.

Planned Parenthood takes specific advantage of women who are too young or misinformed to know better than to trust them with their well-being. Those who know the truth have a duty to speak out.

“Planned Parenthood lies about itself” Washington Examiner November 22, 2011

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Former Clinic Worker: Clarissa

Testimony of Clarissa, January 22, 2012

“I was just finishing my medical assisting courses and my internship was at a women’s health center. I was going to be taking vital signs, answering phones, checking patients in and drawing blood. I showed up to work and I was shocked to find out they did abortions there.

When I asked to be assigned to a different location, they told me there was nowhere else to go. In the weeks that followed, I was gradually introduced to the horrors of that place. The girls that came to the door were sometimes crying, they were sometimes quiet and sometimes they were laughing. But they all had sadness in their eyes. At the end of my internship, I was offered a job. As a single mother with bills to pay, I thought that I had no choice. From there, it only got worse. The girls who were unsure were lied to and coerced into killing their babies. They were told it was safe, they were not informed of their options, and they were never told about how they would feel afterwards. The girls that were only a month or two along would be given pills that would kill the baby and told they would have heavy bleeding. They were never told that they were going to be flushing their babies down the toilet. The girls who were farther along, they were given two medications, one so they wouldn’t feel anything, the other one so they wouldn’t remember. The medications did not always work. They were held down by the abortionist’s assistants, screaming in agony, as their babies were ripped apart and pulled out with a vacuum. If they were ever to change their minds, they were told that it was too late. When the medicine did work, the abortionist and his assistants would laugh, tell jokes, and even watch TV while they were killing the babies. Afterwards, the girls were ushered out the back door in varying conditions, some barely able to walk, vomiting, confused, high and their medications, and crying hysterically.

One after the other, they would get on the table, and kill their babies. I hated going to work. I would get in the car every morning with a knot in my stomach, and go home every night, and get sick. It was an awful place to be. Many of the girls who work there did drugs in order to deal with the pain that they were experiencing from working there.”

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Former Clinic Worker: Sue Thayer

Sue Thayer, former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic, who later became pro-life:

“Every employee, who was in management in the health services part of Planned Parenthood, was required to observe a full day of abortions. The baby is extracted and put into a small little clear dish, and they look at that under a light to try to determine if they have all of the body parts, because—of course—during the abortion the baby is ripped apart and so there are little tiny arms and little legs.”

Peter Baklin “Planned Parenthood manager gets fired, then leads 40 Days campaign at former facility” Nov. 17, 2011

Former Clinic Worker: Wendy

I came to Washington in the summer of 1973; just after Roe V. Wade. I was 19 and in the middle of a divorce with 2 small children and I needed a job. Having never worked before, but with some medical receptionist training, I went to apply at a medical office next door. The doctor was younger; mid-thirties. The interview was going well, I thought, as I didn’t have any experience. “How do you feel about terminations?,” he asked. “I don’t know what that is,” I answered sheepishly. “Well, we are a family practice office; that includes doing abortions two days a week… how would you feel about doing that?” He studied my face waiting for my answer. “Aborting babies? I’m not sure I can do that.” – fearful I had just cost myself the job. “Oh, NO!” he explained. “We don’t do that! A baby is something that weighs nine pounds, has blond hair, blue eyes and bounces on a grandpa’s knees. What we do here is simply expose tissue… Just a blob of tissue. I am the son of a Baptist minister; if this were wrong I wouldn’t be doing it! Just remember…we do what we do for the women.” I needed this job. I knew what I needed to say…and I said it. “Well, it’s better than being an unwanted and unloved child like I was. “You’re hired!” I was excited to realize I was about to earn my first paycheck. What I failed to understand at that moment is what working for this doctor was going to cost me.

Even though my training was front office skills like making appointments, transcription, etc., I was hired to work in the back office lab. The three days a week of true family practice was mundane stuff. Taking blood pressures, helping with kids exams, re-setting exam rooms after patients had been seen. The real job was Tuesdays and Saturdays. These two days always began with the doctor coming out into the waiting room full of frightened or nervous women. He would always jump up on the receptionist counter and give his “pep talk”…. always giving his “disclaimer” that he was the son of a Baptist minister…”

My training had been simple enough. The doctor’s head nurse showed me how to sterilize instruments, arrange the procedure trays to the doctor’s liking and how to set up the buckets of red liquid to soak instruments before going into the steaming chamber along with filling syringes; small and big. I was comfortable, so far. It was explained to me that first “termination day” that I was also going to be responsible for disposing of the contents of the large, white suction machine before me. I watched dutifully as the nurse wrapped the jars with a sterile drape; securely taping the ends. “We don’t want to upset these poor women who are going through enough already!” Then came the unexpected threat, “Just remember one thing; it’s your job if even one woman finds even one drop of blood on the toilet when you flush the jars!” Message received.

And so it began. The women were scheduled like clockwork. A finely-tuned operation. Five rooms loaded up with women of every description. Some looking very poor and desperate; most looking very wealthy…and very blaze’. The first abortion was in the exam room right next to the lab. When I heard the doctor turn on that suction machine and I heard the horrific sounds… a slurping, gulping…high pitched… like a vacuum cleaner with something stuck in the hose! It was shocking and awful! But, there were worse things yet to come. Soon after… the used tray was shoved at me. “Here ya go!” the nurse said, laughing…was that a snicker?

When I lifted the drape off the tray, it didn’t seem that bad. Not too much blood I thought, I can do this…but as I began to do one tray after another I quickly learned that not all trays would be the same…and I began to systematically gag. Especially when I would unscrew the vaginal speculum and “blobs of tissue” would fall into my bare hands. I was never instructed to use or offered gloves. It was beyond disturbing… I had to find a way to endure this, so I would just turn my head away and quietly whisper, “I’m just washing dishes..Just washing dishes…”

But by far, the worse part of the job was emptying those jars every day; and more than once. “Tissue” by the handfuls plopped in the toilet every time, making quite a splash. I hated having to wipe the blood off with toilet paper, so I quickly learned to lay the jar opening down close to the bowl and gently pour. The most unnerving part was spying out the hallway to make sure I didn’t run into any of the women leaving after having their “procedures.” I had been warned of that as well. They clearly didn’t want these women knowing what we were doing to dispose of the “fetuses.”

Part of my duties in setting up the trays was the preparation of the syringes. The small ones were atropine; the numbing agent for the cervix, as I recall. But the big ones? I had to press them for an explanation. Well, we also do “saline procedures,” but I was told I would have no part in those since I was “new at this.” It took some time before someone finally explained it. This doctor also did late-term abortions removing the amniotic fluid and replacing it with saline to kill the “fetus.” A small piece of some kind of seaweed was placed in the vaginal cavity to assist dilation and then these women were sent to a local motel room specially set up for my doctor’s patients. Several beds in one room. The women were sent there to get bed rest and wait until they went into labor and then they were to meet the doctor at the hospital to deliver. I tried to imagine these women (8 beds to my recollection) all lying there waiting…what did they talk about? I decided I could not let my mind go there.

So, after a couple of months of gagging… it finally stopped. I took an almost robotic attitude about what I was doing…and kept reminding myself, “We do this for the women.” But there was one part of the daily “ritual” in the office I could never quite reconcile in my mind with that statement. The “count and the amount” celebration at the end of the day. How many? How much? After all women were “done and gone,” we all met in the reception area for the day’s tally. I would always stand back in awe and watch. Piles of cash…always cash…no checks accepted. We were doing an average of 50 women two times a week. The price varied according to how far along women were: between $200-$500 a head. At an average of $350, that was $17,500 a day. Times two: $35,000/week for a total of over $150,000/month NOT including the other 3 days/week…and this was 1973!

The goal was to make enough money to pay for the new building, under construction, that was to be a full time abortion clinic, set to open at the end of the year…just in time for Christmas! The holidays were busier, they said. So, this days-end celebration always had a happy air to it…. for them. I witnessed high fives with the office manager and the doctor…and his nurse…. they were especially friendly. Later, I was told she was the doctor’s girlfriend and I should watch out and not make her mad; especially no flirting with the doctor. “You are too young and cute for your own good,” the manager warned. “Watch out!”… No problem there. There was something about this man…no, it was all “for the women.”

About six months had gone by and while I would love to say it began to get to me…it did not. I actually got very accustomed to it all. Until that day…

I am ashamed. I have forgotten her name. I will never forget her face. She was blond, blue-eyed…and probably bounced on her grandpa’s knee. And afraid. Very afraid. She had lied about her last period. She had a “tipped uterus.” The doctor failed to recognize she was not the usual 8-10 weeks. She was 17 weeks pregnant. The doctor attempted to do the usual dilation “D & C” suction procedure… It went very wrong…horribly wrong.

My first clue was that the trays that I had waiting were backing up in the lab. No new trays that always “flowed like clockwork” were coming at me. I could actually hear voices “buzzing” in the waiting room. The front door of the office was opening and closing…and often. Angry voices at the front reception desk began to drift back down the hallway to me. I stood in the open door way…listening… what was going on? The exam room at the far end of the hall suddenly flew open and the head nurse came charging down the hall at me demanding I go in and “assist doctor…” I quickly did as I was told.

My accruing complacency was summarily shattered by what I witnessed when I stepped into the room. I stepped back against the door I had just closed behind me. The nice white exam room was awash in blood…splattered blood. Like some perverted artist who had dipped his paint brush in a gallon of crimson red paint and hap-haphazardly flung it all up and down the walls and across the ceiling…and this poor girl! She was laying there in obvious shock; shaking violently…and splattered all over with her own blood…and her baby’s! Doctor was in his customary position with forceps in both hands swearing up a storm and feverishly attempting to extract, “it.”

He seemed oblivious to me. My first instinct kicked me into action. I rushed to the sink and grabbed some paper towels. I leaned down close to this girl’s hear and began to whisper comforting reassurances to her. Words truly failed me as I tried to gently wipe the splattered blood from her face. All I could muster was to simply say repeatedly, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She had no response. Save the silent messengers pooling in her eyes and running down the sides of her face into her damp, bloody hair. Suddenly now, I was in pain! The door had opened and I felt a clinched hand firmly grabbing my elbow; nails digging into my flesh. “Come with me!” came a growling in my ear through clinched teeth. I was in trouble…but for what?

The doctor’s girlfriend dragged me back into the lab and shut the door behind her. She erupted into an effusive, explosive rebuke. “WHAT did you think you were doing?! I sent you in there to assist the doctor, NOT the patient! Have you ever heard the word LIABILITY!?… I’m sorry!?…I’m sorry”?… was THAT your idea of assisting the doctor…talking to the patient like we had done something WRONG!?”

Just as suddenly as it had begun. It was over. The door opened and the doctor darted in. He didn’t seem interested in joining in on her verbal assault. He reached up and threw open a cupboard door grabbing a small, white, garbage bag. He opened it with one hand and in the other hand held a small “single version” of the Gomco unit suction machine…and without any hesitation or reservation, unceremoniously dumped the contents of the jar into the bag. He ordered his nurse to go prepare the patient for transport by ambulance for an emergency surgery procedure to complete her “termination.”

He scurried around the lab grabbing some instruments from one of my clean trays, I was not happy. I would have to redo that whole tray… then…suddenly… that didn’t matter. My eyes were fixed on the doctor…as he systematically began to “inventory parts”… body parts… NO!… BABY PARTS!… One perfect little leg…snapped off at the hip… then the other… one perfect little arm…snapped off at the shoulder…then the other… I could not even speak… I almost fainted with what came next! The entire spine…all vertebrae in-tack with the spinal cord and little wire like nerves dangling from both ends… no skin in sight…just bloody parts torn out of the back of this little child! “Good!” he declared with great relief. “I have everything here but the head and the trunk!” My stunned disbelief was interrupted with the doctor’s hurried instructions as he rushed to peel off his grotesquely sullied, white medical jacket and doing a quick look in the mirror hanging by the lab door and straightening his now disheveled tie, he flew out the back door to his car! “Don’t touch that tray until I call you from the hospital to give you the “all clear”…got it?” as he exited… I was clear… I waited for the call.

Over the next several minutes, I listened as women were rescheduled. Some leaving in tears…a few…a precious few, deciding not to reschedule. Where some babies saved that day? I will never know… all I remember is the waiting. I watched in disbelief as I watched the nurse and office manager enjoying the customary McDonald’s Big Macs, fries and colas that I had to get two times a week as we were so busy “helping the women.” We were not allowed to take a lunch hour. It was my job to walk the 2 blocks down the road and get take-out for us to gulp down in between each procedure. (I have not been able to eat a Big Mac since then.) My stomach that day was so nauseous I felt like I had morning sickness. Watching those two devour their food like nothing had happened was too much. But no time to indulge myself. The phone rang. It was doctor giving me the “OK” to clean up and call it a day. He sent word that all was successful.

I approached that single, stainless steel, medical tray with great trepidation. I knew this was going to be bad…messy. I reached out with my left hand and ever so slowly picked up the very soiled drape covering the instruments. I gulped with one eye closed and head turned sideways before looking… I was dreading this. As I held the drape to peer over the top of it… I felt something drop into my right hand that was resting open under the drape. I scarcely recall the gore of the instruments for the vivid, so indescribable… horrid recollection. I cast my eyes down; head tilted to the side to see what was in my hand. There…it… was. One tiny little foot snapped off at the ankle… Perfect…and with five miniature little toes! Everything suddenly went into slow motion…and I could not hear anything around me… until… there was that brash and haughty office manager grabbed the foot out of my hand and flung open one of the counter drawers grabbing a stainless steel, metric ruler. “COOL!” she exclaimed with gleeful delight! “THIS one was a whooper!”… And incredulously began to place the frail, little remnant on the ruler to measure it! All I remember is her face…eyes lit like fire… I think she said it was 5 cm. I just recall checking years later and realizing it was larger than the little foot pins pro-life supporters wear.

I thought I would vomit that day, even without lunch. I begged off completing my usual shut down procedures of the lab and said I had to get out of there and go home. I was clearly very ill. The office manager barely noticed and doctor’s girlfriend was now there in the mix engaged in the speculations of that tiny foot. I slipped out the back door and relished the fact that I had Sunday off before I had to return.

Monday came too soon. I had a physical to do on a five-year-old little boy who had just moved into the area and needed to be seen before he could go to school. My job was to prick his index finger and draw one small drop of blood to get a reading on the health of his blood. That was all it took… the room began to spin…I stepped back, leaning against the wall, shell-shocked – like I had just witnessed a horrible crime! Suddenly the doctor was at my side throwing off his latex gloves and demanding I join him in his office!

I was ready. I knew what was coming…but this time I would have a few words to say for myself! I had barely gotten in the room and taken a chair when he began his tirade rebuking me for being so “unprofessional.” I summarily interrupted and told him I didn’t think I could do this anymore after what had happened on Saturday. He was clearly disgusted and offered me part-time work for “family practice” days… Most of that conversation is a blur, but I remember ending it with this: “Doctor, you said this was for the women… you said “they are just blobs of tissue! What fell off in my hand was NOT a blob of tissue!”… I hastened to finish my point before I lost it… “I can’t do this any more!” The doctor wasted no time in getting on the intercom and instructing the office manager I had quit and she should prepare my last paycheck, totally unaffected by my euphony. He tried to get me calmed down before I left his office, but it was no use. I think because he didn’t want any scene as I left… The tears began to flow as I walked through a waiting room full of people. My last words were more to me than the puzzled spectators… “And what happened in that room was NOT for that woman!” I ran out of his office breaking into sobs as I blew out the door, not bothering to pick up my last paycheck. I wept uncontrollably all the way home.

It would be only a few more months and I fled Washington state in the midst of my own personal crisis with my children. I wanted desperately to get away and never look back! I moved to central California where I swore I would remain and never return to Washington state. I began engaging in reckless behavior of my own. Smoking marijuana… bars… going home with anyone who would have me…married or not.

I soon began to have a dreadful, reoccurring nightmare. I was in the bottom of a big, white toilet…suddenly huge amounts of bloody baby parts and buckets of blood began pouring down over my head, running down in my face; leaving me gasping for air! “STOP, STOP. STOP!!!” I would shout… “SOMEONE HAS TO MAKE IT STOP!!!!”…and then I would wake up panicked, helpless and soaking wet…and wailing… this went on for years.

I would find myself pregnant again, four years later and standing in the same desperate shoes of the tragic women who had gone before me in Washington. I was engaged. I had finally found someone to “love me”…and willing to care for my two children…even if, as I knew, he couldn’t care less about them. I walked into his beautiful home that he owned out in the countryside and gave him the announcement–I was pregnant…. and without batting an eye he said, “Hold out your hand.” As he reached for his wallet in his back pocket; clearly annoyed. He counted out $178 and told me in no uncertain terms, “Don’t let me see your face again until this is taken care of! Go to the women’s clinic on the west side of town and get this taken care of!”…funny how he knew right where to send me and with how much cash! I couldn’t get there fast enough.

The woman seemed nice. That “sweet” countenance – too sweet – like I saw in Washington. I was immediately scheduled for an abortion. But, this had a difference. They offered sterilizations with their services. Ah, but alas, I was only 23; the minimum age requirement was 25. I knew what I was doing. I knew what this meant. It was wrong. But I could not end up with 3 children with 3 different fathers! I begged. I got a call later… it was all set…they would do it all… Women’s Hospital of Oakland.

My sister, who was 25, single, and unable to have children, offered at the last minute to take my baby. What?! How ridiculous would that be?, I thought. Seeing a child I had given away all the time? What if I wanted it back and she wouldn’t give it to me? No!

I showed up, and walked through the process like a zombie! I was told it was a good thing I would be “out cold” as I wouldn’t feel a thing and there would be no emotional trauma for me being unconscious and all. What a stupid lie! I woke up to a nice looking doctor telling me all was well…well… except for one little complication….”You were a little further along than we anticipated… you were not 8 weeks… you were over 10 weeks… perhaps 13.”… My mind flashed back to that girl in Washington… and the toilet dream continued. When I showed up at my boyfriend’s home to let him know I had followed his demands and we could go forward with wedding plans, he wasted no time making it clear where things stood. “Do you REALLY think I would marry a woman who would murder her own child?” Game over.

****
She then goes on to say that she received healing through a church ministry and her conversion to Christianity.

Read her full testimony here

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Former Clinic Worker: Dina Madsen

I went to work for a Sacramento abortion mill in the first week of September 1990. Before then, the word “abortion” had seldom passed through my mind, and I had no concept of what one actually was. I had lived a “dysfunctional” life and the sacredness of human life was not something I thought of much.

My official title at the mill was “health worker.” I did various duties-lab work, leading groups (deceiving women about their abortions), “advocating” (deceiving women during their abortions), and assisting the abortionist, which included helping during the abortion and checking to make sure all the parts of the baby were there in the collection jar afterwards. I will never forget, in the second-trimester abortions, holding those little feet up to a chart on the wall to make sure of the age of the baby.

unbornbaby14w-01 — unborn baby’s foot at 14 weeks

Just like everyone else employed there I laughed at the pro-lifers outside the mill and hardened my heart against the truth. If I thought about what was really happening, it became overwhelming. So, I treated the whole issue as a joke-but somewhere along the line God started working on my heart. I started to read literature left by the pro-lifers, and pro-life books. I began to see what I was doing in a whole new light. I saw these babies for what they were-human beings. It was very hard for my heart and head to accept because I had been leaving both my heart and head at home for so long to work there.

From The Pro-Life Action League’s conference “Abortion: The Inside Story”. Dina Madsen says:

There was no medical background required for the job, you just had to be able to accept abortion. And of all the women I worked with several of those women, at least half of them had had abortions and had repeat abortions. And yet they wouldn’t let any of these guys [abortionists] touch them with a 10 foot pole. Never. And yet every day they told these other women, “they’re wonderful doctors, they won’t hurt you. They’re the best at what they do. He’s really a nice man.” And sometimes the women would ask, “have you ever had an abortion?”And of course they wouldn’t say, “yes but not by him.”

I have to admit though I didn’t really have much sympathy for them.[the women] In my view, well you got yourself into this position, tough it out.

So I was looking at these babies as something to be disposed of. I didn’t see them as important, I didn’t see life as important, I didn’t value my own life, therefore how can I value anyone else’s life. And if these women were stupid enough to get pregnant, then it was their fault. And that’s how I felt. And that was how the majority of the staff felt.

Some of the directors I worked with had eight or nine abortions, and we were the same people who would look down on these women when they came in for repeat abortions. How stupid can you get, you know?

And every time she’d come in for an abortion or a D&E, we’d stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp – some of these charts were filled in on both sides. And the doctor would take a look at them and say, “Gee, if she tries real hard she can come in again before Christmas.” And this is somebody who cares about women? I don’t think so.

I had a couple friends in high school who had had abortions, and I had a pregnancy scare myself when I was an adolescent, that was the first thing that came to my mind. I never thought about having the baby. I just took it as the general consensus, the general population does, that it is a choice, unfortunately it’s often presented as the only choice.

A woman would call, and I’d make her feel that this was her choice and that we were going to support her in this choice. Because the women are looking for someone to support their decision.”

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Former Clinic Worker: Nita Whitten

Nina Whitten, former clinic worker, discusses what she observed in an abortion clinic run by Dr. Curtis Boyd.

“I was hired by Curtis and Glenna Boyd in July 1980. The reason I went to work for Curtis and Glenna was sort of a long and complicated one. I grew up in a Christian home. My father was a preacher when I was a child. He retired from preaching and he became an engineer, and we lived a fairly normal life. I was, however, rather radical along the feminist lines. My mother was too, and to some extent I still am because I am a preacher, and there aren’t a lot of men who think women ought to be preaching, but I am preaching to you today.

When I went to work for Curtis and Glenna, they made really sure that I was all in favor of abortion. What was so funny was that I lied right through my teeth. I didn’t know anything about it, I really didn’t. I didn’t know anybody who had one; I had never seen one; I had never been around it. All I knew was the word “abortion” and that I was a liberal person. I was very liberal, and so therefore I could work there. I told them that it wouldn’t bother me and that if I got pregnant I’d probably have an abortion. That’s what I told them. They believed me and they hired me.

I was a competent secretary and still am pretty good at being a secretary. But the funny thing about it is when you’re involved in abortion, your whole perspective about life changes. At least mine did. I was really shocked at the reaction that my family and my friends had when they found out that I worked at an abortion clinic. I couldn’t tell my grandmother what I did, so I lied to her and I told her that I worked for a doctor who took care of women. She thought we delivered babies, I guess. She didn’t know and she didn’t find out until just a few weeks ago, and she sent me up here with her blessing. I think that’s wonderful.

Several of the people who I worked with were very unusual. The woman who was instrumental in hiring me, Elaine Clark, and I pray for Elaine every day… I really want the Lord to deliver Elaine because when I knew Elaine she was on her way to quitting the clinic. She wanted to leave and the reason she wanted to leave was she said, and I believe all of them will eventually say this, she couldn’t handle it any more. It was too much.

….

Elaine was hooked on Valium when I was there. I don’t know what she’s doing now; I’ve heard reports that she’s better now and, of course, she’s not working there so obviously she’s better. But she was really, really traumatized by what she saw every day. She was traumatized by the insensitivity to not just unborn babies’ lives, but to life in general. Because that’s how this clinic was run. It wasn’t good. It was hard to work there. It was hard to work for Curtis and Glenna, and it was hard to work in a place where there was no love, and there wasn’t any love. They’ll tell you that they’re doing this for the woman’s sake, and, you know, Curtis was involved in civil rights back when the black people received their liberation. He was all involved in that. But it’s a lie when they tell you that they’re doing it to help women, because they’re not. They’re doing it for the money.

Money was the big deal. We made a lot of money. Curtis and Glenna lived in a very nice home. They had another nice home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

They owned expensive things and lived like rich people do. They wanted to live that way and they weren’t embarrassed to live that way. They made all their money on abortions. When I worked there, they did abortions up to 19 weeks, and we had babies bigger than 19 weeks (in Texas at the time, you could only go to 24 weeks), Robert Crist would fly in and do our big, big babies on Saturdays once in a while when we could get him in there.

One of the most interesting things that happened when I worked there was that I was trained by a professional marketing director how to sell abortions over the telephone. This man came into our clinic and he took every one of our receptionists, all of the nurses, anyone who would be on the phone, and he took us through an extensive training period where we learned how to sell abortions over the telephone so that when the girl called, we hooked a sale so she wouldn’t go down the street and get an abortion somewhere else, and so that she wouldn’t adopt out her baby or so that she wouldn’t change her mind. We were doing it to get her money. It was for the money.

One of the things that our clinic was very afraid of was bad press. Glenna had nightmares, and it’s interesting to hear about these dreams because I’m going to tell you about my dream in a few minutes. But Glenna had nightmares. There was a woman who had died at our clinic from amniotic embolism of the brain…The woman who died in the abortion clinic caused a lot of press coverage in Dallas. They descended on that clinic. Glenna even gave a big speech at the National Abortion Federation meeting about it; how she worked it out in psychological terms, and how she was so traumatized by this, but how we all were, etc. It won her great acclaim. It in no way saved that woman’s life, and it didn’t do anything for that woman’s husband or her family which she left behind. I think that it’s time that we call it what it was. That woman was murdered, not just that baby. Amniotic embolisms can happen at any given moment, but it certainly wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t had the abortion.

I’m going to tell you some gory details that happened at the clinic that I remember specifically. There was a woman who came in the clinic who was forcing her daughter to have an abortion. This wasn’t uncommon at all; it happened all the time. Since I was on the front desk a lot of times, filling in for the receptionist, or if they were out sick, I got to see this firsthand. I wasn’t really as adept as some of the other girls because I wasn’t always up there. I was usually in the back typing, filling out papers, and basically paying the bills, doing the things that secretaries do.

This woman forced her daughter to come in there and she was a second trimester, probably about 15 weeks. They had inserted the laminaria the day before, and she was in there and quite miserable. The poor girl was really upset and she kept going to the bathroom, and obviously there was something wrong with her physically, and when she went into the bathroom the next time, all of a sudden she started screaming at the top of her lungs. “It’s a baby; it’s a baby; mama, mama, mama!” She was screaming in the middle of our clinic. So I’m freaking out and trying to figure out what’s going on. I called Holly, her counselor, and said, Holly, she’s aborted the baby in the bathroom and you need to get the doctor right now. Well, he was in a procedure and couldn’t come then. None of the nurses knew what to do, so they got her back there real quick and took care of her.

…..

You see, when the girls come into these clinics, they don’t know, nine times out of ten, what’s going to happen to them. They get a package deal–it’s like going to get your teeth fixed or something. This is what we’re going to do to you; it won’t hurt very much; it’s going to cost this–pay cash. They don’t tell you what the baby looks like; they don’t tell you how long it’s going to take; they don’t tell you it’s going to hurt. And it hurts; it’s a baby; and it’s a waste of your money.

One of the things that happened a lot of times is that women would be referred by their doctor because they didn’t want to have that particular baby. There was one woman who came in and she was pregnant with twins. She had a family; she was a normal person; she could have that baby; there was no problem having babies; she got pregnant on purpose but when she found out it was twins she decided to have an abortion because there were twins. She did it on purpose. Her doctor referred her to us because there was twins. So she came into the clinic and I remember when they took the little fetuses, the little babies, back to the lab room and they were looking at them. Everybody came in to look. I went in to look. I wanted to see what twin babies looked like.

That was really the first time I really looked at the babies. I had never really looked; I hadn’t been in the procedure room; I didn’t know. I knew what they said. Curtis made films and stuff, but I didn’t pay much attention to that because I wasn’t a doctor and I wasn’t a nurse. I was a secretary, and I kind of wanted to avoid thinking about those little babies. Because you see, in my heart, I knew they were babies, and I knew it was murder, and I knew it was wrong.

One thing that happened at the clinic that I worked at that was incredibly devastating, right before I left. Dr. Boyd had made an agreement with a doctor, and I cannot name this doctor because I just don’t think it would be wise to name him today, but he was the Director of Fetal Research at the University of Texas Health Science Center at that time. He had made an agreement with this doctor to give him our large babies for him to do fetal research on. They did this, and I believe at the time, it was against the law. I don’t know if it is now, and I’m not familiar with the legal terms because I’m not a lawyer, but I remember we were told not to tell anyone, and they only came in secret to get the babies.

What happened in the clinic, though, was the thing that sort of made me start thinking about getting out of there. They brought their research assistant in because Curtis is so interested in technology and all these weird things he liked to do. He had them come in and they dissected a baby for us in our lab room so we could see what they were doing with the body parts. They did that right there and everybody filed in and looked. I looked at it. I pretended like I was being brave and walked out. It made me sick.

One of the things that happened as I worked at the clinic was that I became extremely depressed, extremely despondent, and basically hooked on drugs. I had done “fun” drugs before I started working at the clinic because, you know, when you’re that age, peer pressure, I thought it was fun and I enjoyed that. But when I worked there I had to take drugs to cope. I took drugs to wake up in the morning; I took speed while I was at work; and I smoked marijuana, drank lots of alcohol, and took anything else I could buy with the money that I made. This was a daily thing. I’m not talking about on weekends; I’m saying that this is the way that I coped with what I did. It was horrible to work there and there was no good in it.

In January, right before I left, I started having problems with my period, and I was on birth control pills and assumed that there was no way that I could get pregnant. Basically, what happened was that I developed amenorrhea, but I didn’t know that at the time. I thought I was pregnant. Now this nurse who I worked with was just a regular nurse; she wasn’t an OB nurse; she wasn’t trained. And the nurses did ultrasounds on the large babies before the doctor did the procedure, and he would look at the picture, and they thought they knew what they were doing. They had no idea what they were doing. You have to be a technician to really run an ultrasound machine the way you’re supposed to. They had no training in ultrasound machines other than what Glenna Boyd taught them. That was it. Glenna Boyd isn’t even a doctor or a nurse. They did an ultrasound on me and did pregnancy tests and couldn’t find out what was wrong. They decided I was pregnant and they inserted a laminaria in me. I went home with a bottle of valiums; I had 10, 10 mg. valiums, and my husband now but who I was living with at the time, said that I took the whole bottle that night. I took them one at a time. I started at 5:00 in the morning and by the time I got back to the clinic the next morning at about 9:00 1 had taken the whole bottle and don’t remember that very well because after you take a couple you don’t remember things. I was in such severe pain I could not think. It was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my life, and only by the grace of God can I even tell you about it. I went into the clinic the next morning and at our clinic they used nitrous oxide, pericervical blocks, and Sublimaze, and that’s how they did the procedures. So they hooked me up to all this and my counselor was one of the girls I worked with and she was there to help me cope with this situation. They were going to do this abortion on me. They got in there and discovered that I wasn’t even pregnant in the first place. I was just totally baffled by all this. Why did they do this to me if I wasn’t pregnant? I worked for them; they ought to know better; how come this happened? Well, when I went home that day I was still in a lot of pain, so they referred me to the little doctor that they always have on call. I went to him and he told me I had a severe pelvic infection and couldn’t believe that they did this to me. He gave me some antibiotics and told me I would be all right.

I wasn’t satisfied with his answer so I went to my mother’s doctor, and he said the same thing, that basically they did a terrible thing; they made a big mistake; I wasn’t pregnant. Why did they do this? They couldn’t imagine why and I was really sick with this pelvic inflammatory disease. They gave me some more medicine. I took the medicine and got over that, but I took off work for six weeks. While I was off of work, they still paid me and they had to call me to get the directions on how to pay the salaries. I was the only one who knew how to fill out the checks and do all the accounting part of it.

It’s funny, because the girl who was the director of the clinic at that time, named Marty, is a Catholic. I was sort of baffled by her. She was an unusual person. She called on the phone and I told her that I never wanted to talk to her again. You did this to me and I wasn’t even pregnant. Don’t you know any better? What’s wrong with you? Why would you do this to me? She just said, calm down, it’s not the end of the world. I was still taking my illegal drugs and my legal drugs, trying to cope.

I finally got back to work, and while I was there, in the spring, Marty and I were there. I came in about 9:00 and there were fire trucks all around our clinic and I couldn’t imagine why. The funny thing is that we were struck by lightning. I am serious. It burnt out every major electric appliance, including the abortion machines.

After they did this abortion on me when I wasn’t pregnant and after we got struck by lightning, my husband (who wasn’t my husband then) a mathematician, decided to go back to college and get his Master’s Degree, and I praise God because he was willing to say, okay, we’re moving. I really wanted to get out of the clinic and I said, I’m getting out of the rat race. I hated living in Dallas.

There were a lot of medical things that they did that I don’t agree with. Like Dr. McMillan brought out, if they’re such good doctors, how come they don’t report their complications? How come they don’t turn it in to pathology? I moved to Nacagdoches, Texas and God put me where I went. I got a job at the hospital there, at Nacagdoches Memorial Hospital, praise God! It’s funny because I told them where I worked and I had this funny notion that good patient care was what I had seen. There wasn’t good patient care, but I thought it was, sort of, in my mind. I couldn’t justify what they did to me, but I thought this was just the way it was.”

Q. If a girl had a problem and came back what would happen?

A. That’s the saddest thing you could have asked. Basically, if there was something really serious they sent them to the little doctor on call. But other than that, they didn’t do anything, and they certainly didn’t do anything to help her emotionally or mentally. There weren’t many cases of that happening because most of the women, like has been said, wanted to forget it. They didn’t want you to know that they had had an abortion, and they weren’t about to do anything about it. I believe Curtis was involved in some sort of litigation where he was being sued for some sort of malpractice deal. I don’t know whatever came of that, but I do remember filing the papers for it. There were always instances where something could happen because it was bad medical care, especially at that clinic. It was pretty pathetic.

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Former Clinic Worker: Lorraine LaNeve

LaNeve gives her testimony:

“I started my job functioning in all the duties of a nurse. First, by preparing the clients in the waiting room by medicating them with Valium and then influencing my captive audience to write letters to the elected officials pleading that abortion should remain a woman’s right.

Then into the procedure room where I assisted the physician with the gory practice of killing the unborn child while demeaning the client. Upon completion of the procedure, I placed a sanitary napkin on the client and walked her to the recovery room where she sat in the chair, was given medication, and was timed to leave in approximately 40 minutes or sooner depending on the case load and the demand for the chair. As a surgical nurse I had the responsibility to prepare the room for the next client then take the fetal parts to the lab and check and count them. This was called a GROSS and afterwards I prepared them for disposal. I started working two days a week but became so engrossed with the feminist lie that abortion on demand was an entitlement, having been indoctrinated into my weakened psyche as “my body my choice”. I was sent to various seminars and conferences sponsored by NARAL, (The National Abortion Rights Action League) and NAF (National Abortion Federation).”

Soon afterwards. I graduated and added to my resume that of vigorously engaging in public relations with the help of the blossoming abortion industry. From there, I went on to lobbying elected officials in Washington and many states. I was sent to several states to set up new clinics and train personnel in the art of legally killing. Eventually I wound up with a full-time position in the management office in New York.

Having been employed in this malevolent industry for 5 1/2 years and sharing the responsibility to help to legitimize the abortion industry gives me the responsibility of bearing guilt for the deaths of many future citizens. We all are the losers because we will never know how greatly these murdered children would’ve contributed to the well-being of society.”

The full testimony can be found here.

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Former Clinic Worker:Jennifer Eastberg

Jennifer Eastberg, who worked at one of the biggest abortion clinics in the country, Lovejoy Surgicenter, testified before a committee in favor of a proposed law requiring parental notification of minor’s abortions. Eastberg, who has seen many young women come in for abortions at Lovejoy and who also has a degree in mental health, is uniquely qualified to know about minors and abortion. Here is her testimony:

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, for the record my name is Jennifer Eastberg. I am a LCSW, been have been in the mental health field over twelve years and I am currently in private practice.

I truly appreciate this opportunity to share my experiences and repeated observations which will illustrate why I am a strong proponent of this parental notification bill. Because feelings run so deep on both sides, it has become extremely difficult to have rational discussions regarding these issues. Assuming that helping and protecting women, especially adolescents, is the ultimate goal for all of us, then we must be willing to listen to each other.

I am a former employee of Lovejoy Surgicenter, one of, if not the largest, abortion facility in the Northwest. I came to Lovejoy after graduating from college and after years of exposure to numerous circumstances, through which I developed an intense feminist perspective. One particular, horrific experience during college, solidified this conviction. I was determined that no man, and especially the government, was ever, ever going to tell me what I could and couldn’t do with my body!!! I was on a mission to do whatever I could, to change what I saw happening to women.

This is important for you to know, because when I say I’ve seen this issue from all sides, I really mean it. While working at Lovejoy, I was exposed to the truth – the grim realities of abortion – that broke through and shattered my belief that I was protecting and helping women. Over time, my conclusion was that I was not helping, but was actually participating in a deceptively, exploitive phenomenon of women today.

Let me qualify this statement, however. I am not implying some conspiracy against women is occurring in the abortion industry. I do believe that most people who work in the industry are genuinely caring, well-intended and genuinely committed individuals. My point is, however, as a front line mental health therapist, my original suspicions and conclusion about the short and long-term effects of abortion have been reconfirmed repeatedly. I continue to see an escalating number of women (especially adolescents) who are struggling with physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational repercussions of having an abortion. I don’t go looking for this stuff. On the contrary, this is an in-my-face reminder of the phenomenon I participated in, that has produced what I am now attempting to remedy.

No one told me to quit. There was no political change or religious conversion. I left the industry because of what I saw. I left because of the creeping realization to abortion’s insidious implications.

Let me address a few of the reasons why passing this bill is so important …. First of all, adolescents face much higher psychological risks than adult women tend to experience from receiving an abortion. To fully grasp the psychological and emotional implications of a young girl having an abortion, one must understand the specific developmental state the teen is working through. Adolescence is a time of intense change- a time of marked physical and internal development – internal development including emotional, intellectual, academic, social and psychological. It is also a time of massive cultural indoctrination. This cultural pressure comes from schools, magazines, music, television, advertisements, movies and peers. They are struggling with the critical challenge of forming their identity. They’re grappling with developing a healthy self-concept and of finding intrinsic value within themselves. Girls are making choices that will have implications for the rest of the lives.

Almost any references regarding adolescent development would include the emotional intensity and fluctuations of this stage. Given the likelihood of increasingly more volatile emotions, a major task is to gain an understanding and tolerance for one’s emotionality. This is a tremendous task in and of itself – not to mention superimposing a traumatic abortion experience onto this fragile period of development. Also, keep in mind, a child’s ability to process and integrate this experience is contingent on how successful she was in working through previous developmental tasks.

The probability of an adolescent internalizing feelings of guilt, shame, confusion and aloneness due to an abortion is overwhelmingly evident. In addition, many of these internalizations are left untouched, without any opportunity for appropriate intervention from family or professional counsel. This will likely lead to (at minimum) some degree of sadness and depression.

Other symptoms may include anger, flashbacks, delayed or long-term grief or anniversary reactions. They may experience memory repression, recurrent, intrusive distressing memories or dreams of the event. They may also struggle with feelings of detachment from others, difficulty keeping close relationships and even suicidal ideation and/or attempts. Pro-choice advocates often claim, as was stated in the April 16th hearing, that C. Everett Koop had issued a report there were no adverse psychological effects of abortion on women. This is simply not true! Dr. Koop stated after the report, that as a physician he knows abortions are dangerous to women’s mental health. What he said in the three page letter he sent to the president, was that the available studies were flawed because they did not examine the problem of the psychological consequences over a long enough period. Based on his own knowledge and personal experience, he said, any long-term studies will add more credibility to those people who say there are serious detrimental health effects of abortion. The realities often remain unnoticed by those not on the front lines.

It is also critical to consider that this adolescent girl will probably struggle with this experience in isolation. Our current laws contribute and actually sanction this. This isolation and secrecy lends credence to the adolescents’ feelings that they have done something wrong. Whether this comes from the mixed messages in society or from her intrinsic feelings about abortion – intervention must happen!!! I consistently hear, “I was all alone … I went through this all by myself … Telling a close friend or two didn’t even cut it … I can’t describe the loneliness I experienced.”

Without some help, ideally parental involvement, the loss of wholeness, self-confidence and self-direction can last well into adulthood. It is important to consider that adolescent’s surface behavior often conveys very little about the struggle within. In fact, these behaviors are often designed to obscure that struggle. Another statement made in the first round of testimony was that these PAS symptoms I just mentioned virtually do not exist. If there really isn’t the existence of PAS, then it would seem reasonable for the abortion industry to incorporate into their informed consent form, something like this: “In the event you experience at least three of these psychological symptoms within one to five or ten years of your abortion, then we will provide some type of appropriate professional counseling/intervention as needed.”

The schizophrenia about our current parental involvement laws has been presented repeatedly in the first Senate hearing. How can we expect any young girl, by herself, listening to adults who don’t even know her, make a good decision about this crisis?

Not to mention the likely possibility of not being fully informed about this procedure and without the guidance of parents who are generally far more sensitive to their child’s physical and emotional well-being. (Can you imagine your daughter, without your knowing, having a surgical procedure that even you may not be fully informed about?!)

These adults, of whom I used to be one, will talk to her for approximately 30-60 minutes prior to scheduling an abortion. In most cases which I observed, the adolescent will not meet the physician prior to the abortion. Most likely, the doctor will never have consulted with this child’s pediatrician – a standard and critical practice of performing good, quality medicine.

As our current laws reflect, we appear to understand how crucial parental involvement is in most areas of an adolescent’s life. Whether this child has shoplifted, received an M.I.P., skipped or is failing in school, has possession of a weapon or is dealing with a crisis pregnancy – in all these cases, we are talking about an adolescent in serious trouble. An adolescent in crisis. If we think about the need for parental involvement regarding abortion the same way we do with the other potentially damaging and destructive adolescent behaviors and activities just mentioned, then this bill would be a moot point- parents involvement would be an assumed expectation.

Conversely, if we are to follow the logic of our current abortion laws (not requiring parental involvement in adolescent antisocial behavior) then the absurdity becomes obvious. For example, the school would not contact you if your child had been absent for a week without your knowledge. The police would not notify you if your son or daughter had been arrested for burglarizing or driving while intoxicated. The legal right to secrecy regarding abortion reflects abortion is being treated as a unique circumstance of an adolescent in trouble/crisis. You can’t logically advocate this position without also including parental involvement in abortion issues as well. Parents who do not have sufficient information about their child cannot adequately know how to guide them.

Will there be parents who will potentially abuse their daughter as a result of finding out about this crisis pregnancy? Yes. (You can be sure, however, the abuse has gone on long before this crisis pregnancy.) Will a child experience more stress as a result of the parental involvement? Yes. However, the same reasons for which parents could be abusive in this abortion circumstance, are no different than how they could react to other adolescent troubles. I don’t deny the reality of increased stress a teenager would experience as a result of a parent knowing the truth. As I just mentioned, there are other situations that could create even more of a potentially abusive reaction from the parent finding out about the circumstances. Parents should have a negative reaction. However, they must intervene with love, adequate communication and, if need be, professional counsel.

Dr. Elizabeth Newhall testified that she had never seen nor heard of a death related to a safe and legal abortion. She had heard of two deaths as a result of parental involvement (parental notification laws). The death of Becky Bell and Spring Adams are horrible, tragic deaths.(Webmaster’s Note: The Becky Bell Story has been debunked- see article here- apparently Eastberg is not aware) They should have never happened! Neither should the deaths of hundreds of women who had safe and legal abortions (see here.) I have in my hand copies of numerous newspaper articles about women who have died from abortions. One death as a result of abortion is too many! It concerns me however, that apparently physicians aren’t aware of these deaths as well. This is crucial to know because this could provide the necessary opportunities, information for physicians to improve the quality of their medical procedures. Examining all these cases to understand what went wrong is good medical practice.

As was stated in the first round of testimony on April 16th, apparently 75% of adolescent girls do actually involve their parents. This was reported as the norm – which is great even if it was half that percentage. Therefore, we cannot allow the exceptions to this norm (the dysfunctional families) to dictate how we are going to shape/develop our laws. Laws need to be based on the norm of how families are supposed to function.

Because some parents are failing, are we going to maintain laws that can actually enable their dysfunction to continue? What brings dysfunctional families into counseling or to seek some appropriate type of intervention, is crises. It could be a crisis resulting from a mother’s alcoholism, a father’s unemployment, an acting out teenager or their daughter’s crisis pregnancy. The dysfunctional family needs to be given the opportunity to function as they should at least be given the chance to explore this crisis in an appropriate, safe forum. While the goal of not mandating parental involvement is to provide protection, this will most likely enable the dysfunction to continue. By not structuring abortion laws to be conducive to family or other appropriate involvement, we are also directly contributing to the potential impairment and fragility of the adolescent’s continued development.

There is so much more to be said that supports the passage of this bill. I do though, very much appreciate this opportunity to share my observations with you.

Credit: Eternal Perspectives Ministries Summer 1995 issue

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Former Clinic Worker: Joy Davis

Davis went from working at one abortion clinic to directing six clinics and eventually began to perform abortions without a license. She originally got into the abortion business to help women. Here is her story:

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“Fourteen years ago, I was offered a job in an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. I thought about the offer for some time and came to the conclusion that it was a good opportunity to help women and the money was real good (keep in mind I was a single parent of two children, Jeff and Allen). So I accepted the job.

A very short time after working there, I realized one thing — we were not there to help women. We were a business — a money-making organization….The conditions in the clinic that I worked at were very, very poor. We had no life support systems. Our people were not very well trained — most of them did not even have a medical background. The doctors rotated in and out. We never had the same doctor…

It was a real bad experience. But because the money was good and because I had two children to take care of, I put it all out of my mind. I didn’t let it make me feel guilty. I met a doctor at the clinic. His name was Tommy Tucker, and he came up to me one day and said that he wanted to open his own clinic. He said he wanted to do things right. He wanted to have the best equipment possible. He wanted to have highly trained and qualified people working at the clinic. He wanted to do general anesthesia and have anesthetists come in and put these women to sleep so they wouldn’t suffer, because in the clinic we worked at they did suffer a great deal.

I thought that this was a wonderful idea and I accepted Dr. Tucker’s offer. I became the regional director of six abortion clinics in Mississippi and Alabama. We had the best equipment, a highly trained, qualified staff, and we would only see a very few women a day because we didn’t want to rush them through like cattle. We wanted to take time and give them the kind of medical attention that they needed.

But we still lied to the women, it was just something we had to do to make money.

But that didn’t last long. After just a few months, his greed took over. He wasn’t making enough money, so the first thing to go was the anesthetist, because they made a lot of money. Through just the few months of watching them put patients to sleep, we started putting patients to sleep ourselves and we had no idea what we were doing. We just knew what we had seen them do, so we started doing it.

Then our registered nurses that worked in our recovery room were the next people to go. Then our lab technician and on and on.

I started interviewing people that had no medical background at all, bringing them in to do the job of anesthetist, lab technicians, nurses and even physicians. The people that I looked for when I was interviewing would always be one thing and that was a single mother. If they had a husband that made a good living, I wasn’t interested in them. I wanted the women that needed us and needed the money. That way I knew that I would have their loyalty and that they would stick with it no matter how tough it got. So I brought in people off the street with no medical background and trained them.

We were seeing approximately ten women a day in the clinics, but that wasn’t enough. We started seeing as many as we could get in every clinic.

The doctor’s schedule would start out in Birmingham, Alabama, on Monday morning. Monday afternoon he was in our clinic in Montgomery. Monday night he was in our clinic in Tuscaloosa. Tuesday morning he was back in the Birmingham office, then he would catch a plane, fly to South Haven, Mississippi. He would see patients there, then fly to our clinic in Jackson, Mississippi. And it would just keep going on and on.

We soon ran into another problem: there was not an airline fast enough or efficient enough to get the doctor to all of the clinics. So he trained me to be a physician.

I never spent the first day in medical school. I was just an ultrasound technician. I really knew nothing about medicine, other than what I had seen other doctors do, but

I started doing abortions. I started actually performing surgery on women. I did norplants, cryosurgery, pap smears, pelvic exams — anything he did, I did.

And I was real proud of that because I felt I did it better than he did. All of the employees would say, “Oh you need to see Dr. Davis today,” because they felt that I was better than he was. I never had any problem patients. I never put a woman in the hospital, and he was putting them in the hospital almost every month, in very critical condition — hysterectomies, retained tissue, everything that could go wrong with his patients, did go wrong.

So I really had a big head. I thought I was great, because I didn’t have those problems. I took my time and I gave all this love to those patients. So they really loved me. But the truth is, I wasn’t giving those patients love. I was risking their lives very negligently. Out of the thousands and thousands of patients we saw, I couldn’t remember one name or a face because they were just a number to me. I would refer to them by how much money they paid, “Oh, that’s a $400 case,” or “Oh, that’s a $5000 case.”

Then one day a young girl came to us for a late second trimester abortion. You see, we did pregnancies all the way up to term. We’ve terminated up to 38 weeks of pregnancy. And this young girl came to us and she wanted an abortion. She was a single mother, working, going to school and she found herself pregnant again. She was ashamed of what had happened to her and she did not want to tell her family or her friends that she was pregnant again. So she came to us. I evaluated her and realized that she was very sick. She was running a fever. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what was wrong with her, but one thing I did know was that she was not healthy enough to go through a late second trimester abortion.

So I turned her down. I told her that we couldn’t do it, that she needed to go to a hospital where they could take care of her and find out what was wrong with her. Dr. Tucker found out that I turned her down and came in and insisted that I put her through. He said she had paid an $1800 deposit and that he was not going to give her the money back.

I argued with him. I told him my reasons for turning her down, but it just wasn’t good enough. He insisted that I put her through.

Her procedure took two days and in those two days, I grew very close to her. Not because I really wanted to get to know her, but because I was mad at Dr. Tucker for overriding my decision. And I felt sorry for her. I found out that she was so much like me. She was struggling so hard, being a single parent, working a full-time job, going to school, trying so hard to make it in this life and she just couldn’t handle another child.

The doctor came in and did her abortion. I monitored on ultrasound while he was doing the abortion. And as soon as he was through he walked out of the room. She was still under general anesthesia, that a non-qualified person had administered As she started coming to, she started having difficulty breathing. Her blood pressure bottomed out. Everything was going wrong. I sent for the doctor to come back in the room. There was a lot of panic, a lot of confusion. We were running around, trying to resuscitate her, trying to do everything we could to stabilize her. And the other patients that were waiting to have abortions were in the very next room.

When the doctor walked in the room, he got angry, because we were making so much noise. He told me to get that patient out of the room and take her to the back recovery room so the other patients could not hear her or us.

I took her to the back recovery room. I stayed with her and did everything I could do to stabilize her, but then she started bleeding. She was bleeding uncontrollably, I couldn’t stop it. I ran back to the doctor and I said “You’ve got to help me. She’s bleeding and I don’t know what to do.” He said to take her to the examining room, examine her, find out why she’s bleeding and stop it. “It’s that simple.”

So I did. I took her to the examining room and tried to find out what was going wrong, but there was so much blood. I did everything I had been trained to do. I used petosin, petresin, I packed the uterus. I did everything that I knew to do, but she kept bleeding. I then called an ambulance so we could get her to the hospital and they could help her.

When the doctor found out that I called the ambulance, he was furious. He canceled the ambulance. He told me, “I’m the doctor here. I’ll make those decisions. We cannot send this patient to the hospital in this condition. They’ll hang us. Now try to stabilize her.”

And I did. I tried. At this point she couldn’t talk. She was in such serious condition that all she could do was just look at me with very frightened eyes — just look at me. And I tried so hard to help her. Blood was just pouring out of her like a faucet and I couldn’t stop it.

So I ran back to him and said, “Please help me. If you don’t help me she’s going to die.” He said, “Fine. Call the ambulance. I have a plane to catch.” And he left the building.

I called the ambulance. It took twenty minutes for them to get to the clinic. During that twenty minutes I realized that I was not a doctor and it scared me to death to realize that I was put in that position — that I let myself be put in that position — to try and save a life that I was not qualified to try and save.

The other thing that ran through my mind was the doctor. He was my hero. He brought me up from nothing to making approximately $100,000 a year and doing real well. But at that moment I finally saw him for who he really was. He was a coward and he had run out on a patient that needed him.

So they transported her to the hospital. I felt relieved that she was just gone and that the responsibility had been taken off of me. I then received a phone call from the hospital, which informed me that she had died. At that point I started having nightmares. Every time I would close my eyes I would see her face. The guilt and the anger that I was experiencing was overwhelming, it almost destroyed me.

The medical board then subpoenaed her records. Tucker went one step further and change her records to make it look like he was not as negligent as he really was. He gave me the original records and ordered me to go to the basement and burn them. He said, “We can’t go to court like this. They’ll hang us. We’ve got to cover this up. Go burn those records right now.”

I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t burn those records. I put them in my briefcase. I couldn’t lie for him on this one. I couldn’t cover for him any longer…I went to the medical board; I went to the D.A. — I turned over all the information of all the negligence that we had done. I turned myself in for practicing medicine without a license and gave them the proof that I was doing so.

They told me that they wanted me to stay employed with him. They wanted me to continue to gather information for them. They said they had a clear-cut case of negligent homicide, but they wanted more. So I continued to work for him and continued giving them information. But this kept going on and on, nothing was being done.

Then one day, Dr. Tucker came back to Alabama, where I was. He had been working in Mississippi. He said, “I had a real hard time in Mississippi, we had a problem and you need to go out and try to calm down the employees.”

I said, “What happened?”

He said, “There was a girl who came in for an abortion. I thought she was eighteen weeks. She ended up being closer to term. I inserted the laminaria and she went into labor. She went into labor and delivered a live, healthy baby.”

I said, “What did you do?”

He said, “What could I do? I killed the baby. But all the employees are really upset, so you need to go and take care of this.”

I caught a plane and went to Mississippi. But before I caught that plane, I called the District Attorney in Mississippi and told him what had happened. Before I could get to the clinic, he was there questioning the employees. The case went to the grand jury, but they couldn’t prove that Tucker had killed the baby, because they did not have a baby. The baby disappeared and they couldn’t prove it. So the case did not go on any further, even though the employees testified that it did happen. They still couldn’t prove the case.

I went back to the medical board in Alabama and I said, “Why aren’t you doing anything? Why haven’t you done something about the death of this girl?” They said abortion was a hot political issue and they really didn’t want to touch it…You see the abortionists don’t care about the women and they certainly don’t care about the baby. Women and babies are dying. Fr. Pavone showed me a list of women who had died in this country form abortions. And as I looked at that list, I couldn’t believe the names of hundreds of girls that have died.

And you know what I found right beside each name? It was a number. And that’s how we used to see them, as just numbers. The girl that died in our clinic. I will never, ever forget her. I’ll never forget her face, her smile. She was not a number. None of them are just numbers. I encourage you to get a copy of that list from Fr. Pavone and just read the names. And know that they were just like you and I.”

This is the story of just one abortion death due to negligence. There are many more. Read about a few here.

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