Category: Former Clinic Workers

Former Clinic Worker: Kathy Sparks

This is the speech Kathy Sparks gave at the convention “Meet the Abortion Providers.”

“Right after the birth of Shannon, [her daughter] I knew that I needed to go back to work. We were in very bad financial shape and one of the people who lived in the apartment downstairs worked at the abortion clinic on the other side. At this particular abortion clinic there are two sides: the OB/GYN side where women go in to have babies, and on the other side they abort them. Let me tell you, it is very contradictory. She told me that there was an opening for a medical assistant on the abortion side of the clinic down at Hope and suggested I go down and apply for the job. I thought about it and talked to Mike about it, and when I asked her how much money they paid, she told me it was excellent. I thought this was great; I’d be in the medical field; I didn’t necessary have to have my degree.

So I went down and had a very intense interview. Let me tell you, as all of the former abortionists will tell you, that they really want to make sure that you are pro-choice before they hire you, and I really was. I did not have to convince them; it was obvious. They did put me through a second interview, however; they wanted to make doubly sure that they were hiring someone who was pro-choice.

….

eight week-old unborn baby

In the beginning, they trained me to answer the telephones and to make appointments…In this particular abortion clinic, when the girl set up her appointment, if the girl sounded even the least bit anxious to make the appointment for that day, they did not want her to have an opportunity to change her mind or to have someone talk her out of it, or the possibility of her going to another abortion clinic.

As you will see as I tell you about this clinic, I believe the love of money was the root of evil that happened at this particular abortion clinic (this is only my opinion).

We did between 40 and 60 a day at this one clinic; they were very busy and they did abortions approximately four days per week. We would just stay there late and work sometimes two hours overtime to get those extra girls in. Sometimes they were more than content to wait until the next day, or perhaps the next week; other times they had to have it done then, and, indeed, they would get their abortion that day.

So, I answered phones and set up trays in the morning. We would put the instruments in a big sterilizer and set them all up; about ten at a time; then we’d set more up.

Then I was trained to do all sorts of fun medical things, like take blood pressure. I just really loved it; I really liked it; I liked my job. I got to wear a white uniform. All the desires in my heart to be a nurse were being somewhat fulfilled, as evil as it was. I did not see how evil abortion was. It did not bother me at all. When I saw my first abortion procedure, I didn’t see it any differently than dissecting a frog in biology. I had blinders upon my eyes, as I believe many people involved in the abortion industry do. I believe that many of them, giving them the benefit of the doubt, didn’t really see the evil that they were partaking in.

In my opinion, the most important part of this particular abortion clinic was the counseling. I was able to sit in with one particular worker who had eight years of college; she was so very good. She could sit down with these girls during counseling and she could cry with them at the drop of a pin. She would immediately start drawing them out, asking them all kinds of good questions. She would find out what their pressure point was. What was driving them to want to abort that child, and whatever that pressure point was, she would magnify it. If it was the fact that her parents were going to “kill” her, and she didn’t know how she was going to be able to tell her parents; then the counselor would proceed by telling her, you don’t have to do this; that’s why abortion is here; we want to help you; this is the answer to your problems. Oftentimes, if it was money, she would tell them how much baby items cost. You know, it does cost $3,000 to have a baby now, and, you know, baby shoes are $28; sleepers are $15. You know, that’s what’s wonderful about abortion; we can take care of this problem and you don’t have to worry about it until you are financially prepared to have a child. So that’s what the counselors would do.

The counseling at this particular abortion clinic was so effective that 99 out of every 100 women would go ahead and abort. So that’s very effective counseling; a very important part of that abortion clinic.

After they were counseled, they were put back in the waiting area to wait for their turn to go and have the procedure.

I do want to interject here about sidewalk counseling because some people have talked about that. Dr. Hill said that he did not see picketers; we did have picketers. But back then, and this was ten years ago, we didn’t have very nice picketers. So I would like to share a little bit about what I believe might be a good and effective way to picket, because I believe picketing is very, very important; it’s essential; very important. The type of picketers we had did things like egg the cars and put garbage on the doorstep, and threw broken bottles in the parking lot. The people who worked inside the abortion clinic, as well as the women who were waiting to have the abortion, they all think they’re “nuts;” they think they’re “loony” because of this criminal damage they’re doing. A few times they would take a car key and scrape up the sides of the car; this was before they had security guards to protect the parking lot and all of our vehicles.

So I would suggest that is not a good form of picketing. It’s not very effective. At that time, abortion had only been legalized for approximately four or five years. It was relatively new and I think the Pro-Life Movement was just getting on its feet, and we didn’t hear a whole lot about the Pro-Lifers, other than the fact that they all thought that we were murderers. I’m just telling you how I felt about Pro-Life people back then.

 

After a while, I would sit in during the recovery room phase before I learned how to assist the doctor in the procedure room. The recovery room is an incredible place at this particular clinic. I don’t know how it is now, but back then they would do so many abortions. They had recliners, like most abortion clinics do, and some girls, if they were far along in their pregnancy, would be on a stretcher. But oftentimes, there were so many girls and not enough recliners that they would be sitting on the floor. After this medical procedure, here they are sitting on the floor with a blanket around them. They would be given a couple of cookies and perhaps a soda, and as soon as they were even somewhat ready, they were out the door because they had more patients to get through. It was really sad.

During that whole time, I didn’t think a thing about it. It didn’t bother me at all that they were sitting on the floor. We would keep moving out of the recliners and move more in, and just keep going.

I worked in the clean-up room, in my opinion the worst part of the clinic because it was so messy. You had to wear rubber gloves and it was like washing dishes. That’s where the babies were brought back. At the time I worked there, they only did first trimester abortions; they didn’t have facilities to do second trimester. But, oftentimes, second trimester abortions were performed and these babies we would not put in the little jar with the label to send off to the pathology lab. We would put them down a flushing toilet. They had a toilet that was mounted to the wall, and it was a continually flushing toilet; it didn’t have a lid or a handle. That’s where we would put these babies. They knew that they couldn’t turn them in or they were going to be found out that they were doing abortions which were too late term. This is what I participated in while I worked there

13 week-old unborn baby

The ones that were small enough, which would be 12-13 weeks or less, we would put in a jar, label them, and put them in a big box to go off to the pathology lab. I want to share this with you that this is the type of person that I was. As far as moral convictions, I might have had them way earlier in my life, maybe at 17 or 18. But here I was, 21 years old, and very much into the world. I did drugs, I drank; I was just a very, very bad sinner. When the babies would be put in the jars, we would hold them up and kind of twirl them around and look at the little arm and little leg float up, and we’d put them back in the box. As sick as that sounds, that’s the way it was, and that’s the way it is at a lot of places right now.

I think that there are two sets of people in these abortion clinics. We have the ones who have been there for a long time, since the first day, and they’re more like Dr. Brewer in the fact that they’ve just become hardened. After a while it doesn’t bother them at all. Then we have the other set who don’t stay there very long, and that was me. They stay for three or four months, and they can’t take it any more and they have to get away. That was basically the two types of people that I came in contact with during my short stay at that abortion clinic.

legs of an unborn baby at 12 weeks

Then, of course, I worked the procedure room where we assisted the doctors. We handed them their instruments, took the blood pressure, made sure that the girl was okay. They did have two registered nurses on staff there that would administer a drug called Sublimaze, which was kind of like a relaxing drug. This drug was given to the girls who were farther along, 12, 13, 14 and farther to help her become relaxed. But, oftentimes, it didn’t really help. A lot of times people think that these girls are put to sleep. I’ve never seen an abortion where the girl was put to sleep. I do know that they do take place, of course, but not at this particular abortion clinic.”

******

Sparks then describes how miserable she was, how she became suicidal, and how she went on to have a religious conversion.

******

The next day I went into the abortion clinic. It was so completely different than the very day before. It was freezing cold. I could not get warm. I was chilled all the way down to my bones. I just couldn’t get warm. I had a sweater on, and it was incredible because no one else seemed to notice. There was a smell, a stench in the air that I couldn’t get away from. I kept breathing it and breathing it and it was making me nauseous. One of the first abortions done that day was on a woman who was 23 weeks pregnant. This woman should have had a saline or a laminaria abortion, or even a hysterectomy. Anything would have been better than to try to do a D&C on a woman who was that far along.

22 to 24 weeks sonogram

You have to realize that in this particular abortion clinic, what would be done was she would be examined one side; a pelvic exam by one doctor; then she’d come over and go through all the blood work and sign a release paper, etc. Then, by the time it was time for her abortion, she would be examined a second time. So we’re talking about two different doctors doing a pelvic exam who knew this lady was farther than certainly 12 weeks along. She lay on the table. She was a regular-built person, and she had a belly. And I thought, no way! That couldn’t be the baby! So the doctor did the pelvic and sat down on his chair and mouths up to me, “very big.” I’m thinking, very big, what are you going to do this for? I was trembling and getting a little bit nervous. But he began the procedure. He started to dilate her with the dilating rods and the water broke. He began to do a procedure that normally would take five to eight minutes, and we were in there for an hour. This woman was in so much pain, she was coming off the table. Every medical assistant and nurse was in that room. The nurse had to give her three doses of Sublimaze to try to calm her down. She was screaming; the nurse was yelling at her because everybody else was getting quite upset in the waiting area, as you can imagine, from this woman who was screaming. The doctor was trying to do the abortion, and the baby’s bones were far too developed to rip them up with this curette, and so he had to try to pull the baby out with forceps, which he brought out three or four major pieces. Then he scraped and suctioned and scraped and suctioned. There this little baby boy was laying on the tray. I took the baby and I took him to the clean-up room, and I set him down, and I began weeping, uncontrollably sobbing for what I had been a part of because God showed me that was a baby, they were all babies, and I had been a part of murdering probably nearly 1,000 babies, and I cried and cried. His little face was perfectly formed, just like the sign you saw, perfectly formed; little eyes were closed, little ears and everything was perfect about this little boy.

unborn baby at 20 weeks

So the recovery nurse was wondering what was taking me so long and she walked in and looked at me. She left, didn’t say a word, shut the door, and went and got the director of the abortion clinic. This woman walked in, shut the door behind her, put her hands on my shoulders and grabbed me. She began to rebuke me; pull yourself together; you’re a professional. She shook me. I was a limp rag and crying and crying, this baby was 23 weeks. The doctor himself had told me how far along she was. She said, when did you get your medical degree? She took the baby boy over the toilet and put him down the toilet. I was crying and crying. Finally, when she was finished, I told her I couldn’t work procedure anymore, that I’d stay in cleanup. She said, fine. We worked it out and the other girls went in to work procedure for the rest of the day.

That night I went home and I told Mike about the entire experience. I said, Mike, I don’t know what to do. We had thousands of dollars worth of debt. We had all the debts from his first marriage, a new baby, so much financial debt. And at the time we were such new believers in Christ that we didn’t know that He was our God who would provide every need according to His riches and glory. We didn’t know that yet. Apparently, Mike must have skimmed over that in the Bible, we didn’t know that yet. He said, let’s just pray about it. Okay, Mike, let’s pray. He went to work that night and I lit two candles at the side of my bed and sat down and prayed a very childlike prayer: Lord, if you want me out, just speak to me, and if I know it’s going to be okay, I’ll leave, Lord. I will leave. Just tell me.

I went to sleep that night, got up, and went to the abortion clinic the next morning and experienced the same smell, the same cold chills. I worked the cleanup room and at 10:00 in the morning, the director, the same lady who rebuked me the very day before, walked in and closed the door behind her. Only this time, she’s very bothered. She’s very troubled. “Kathy, I had a dream last night and it was so real that I don’t know if I dreamed it or if you told me this, or what.” I’m kind of looking at her and said, “What did you dream?” She said, “I dreamed that you walked into my office and you told me that you had to quit this place because of your religion!” I had not told a single person that I had made a commitment to the Lord. You know how you have to grow in that before you tell anybody, and I just didn’t tell anybody yet. So I knew that God had given her a dream to come in and tell me to get out. So I told her, “You did have a dream; I did not tell you that, but I am going to quit. I do have to leave, and it is because of my religion. What you’re doing here is wrong and I must leave.” She left then. She thought I had lost my marbles the day before and now I was crying.

It’s amazing how Satan works, because if you don’t think he’s real, he sure is. She walked in later on that day and offered me $2.50 an hour more to stay and work tubal ligations. She said, “Certainly birth control isn’t against your religion.” I said, “Well birth control might not be against my religion, but this place is. I’ve got to leave. So I quit.”

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Former Clinic Worker: Jewels Green

Like many who work in abortion clinics, Jewels Green had an abortion herself, which had led to emotional trauma, including suicidal feelings and a psychiatric hospitalization. She worked in the abortion industry for five years, witnessing the aftermath of many abortions, before leaving her job.

Recently, she began speaking out about her experiences in the clinic. She says that a kind of “gallows humor” pervaded the clinic, in which the workers made jokes about the dead bodies of the babies they saw and the other distasteful aspects of abortion. For example:

“I vividly remember the cleaning lady who quit after finding a foot in the drain of the one of the sinks in the autoclave room (where the medical instruments were cleaned and sterilized after abortions) and how we all laughed and joked about it in the staff lounge for days and weeks afterward…”

She goes on to mention:

“But one thing about the clinic never sat well with me, and maybe this is because in my heart I always knew it was wrong. All of it was wrong. Especially this: the dead baby in the refrigerator in the lab. It was touted as a “teaching tool” and a “medical anomaly that this perfect 10-week-old fetus “survived” the suction abortion procedure perfectly intact. So he (I thought I could tell it was a he) was given the dubious honor of being preserved in formalin in a translucent plastic jar in the laboratory refrigerator. I think we called him Charlie, but I can’t really remember…. Occasionally I peeked in on him, fascinated by the bizarreness of it all, but also with a scientific curiosity—every other abortion resulted in parts, bits and pieces of human in the jar—but this miraculous little creature was perfectly formed and complete in every way, with the heartbreaking exception that he was dead. There was no amniotic sac, no placenta, just teeny-tiny perfect little baby. Floating in the jar. In the fridge. Forever silent witness to the march of death of his immature brethren. How I now pray his soul rests in peace, and that someday he is given decent burial—or at the very least tossed out with the rest of the bio-hazardous waste—for that would be far more merciful than where I knew him to be.”

10 week-old unborn baby – from a miscarriage

She also says of the abortions she participated

“Abortion ends life. Period. This is not in question nor should it be. This is a fundamental truth. I worked in the autoclave room where the “products of conception” (as so many pro-choice proponents—and abortion clinic counselors—call the fetus and placenta) were rearranged and counted to make sure “we got everything.”…. For abortions from about 8 1/2 – 12 weeks, this meant counting hands and feet, making sure the spine and ribcage and skull were present, you get the idea. For the abortions where the gestational age of the fetus was in question, especially if there was a chance it was an “oops,” meaning a pregnancy terminated beyond the clinic’s legal limit of 14 weeks LMP (from last menstrual period), the feet were measured to determine a more accurate gestational age.

14 week sonogram

Working in the autoclave room was never, ever easy. I saw my lost child in every jar of aborted baby parts. One night after working autoclave my nightmares about dead babies were so gruesome and terrifying and intense I met with the clinic’s director to talk about my feelings.

She was very understanding, open and honest, and painfully forthright when she told me, “What we do here is end a life. Pure and simple. There is no disputing this fact. You need to be OK with this to work here.” After a few days rotated out of the autoclave room, I felt I was OK with this, and God help me, I went back.”

Green eventually did leave and is now a pro-life activist.

Sources:

“Former abortion clinic worker breaks silence, speaks out for life” BY KRISTEN WALKER Lifesitenews.com Thu Jul 21, 2011

“ Laughing at the baby’s foot in the sink: for us abortion clinic workers, the macabre was the normBY JEWELS GREEN LifeSiteNews.com Thu Sep 08, 2011

 

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Former Clinic Worker: Paula Sutcliffe

One time clinic worker Paula Sutcliffe

18 week-old unborn baby

“I found much distress in the clinic, but it involved not only the women. I saw the pain of the babies who were born burned from the saline solution used for late-term abortions. I saw the bits of feet, bits of hands, the mangled heads and bodies of the little people. I saw pain and felt pain.”

Paula Sutcliffe “Precious in My Sight” Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices Gail-Garnier-Sweet, editor Life Cycle Books (June 1985)

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Former Abortion Worker from Chula Vista Abortion Clinic Tells of What She Saw

12 week sonogram

“When they’re about 12 weeks, then the doctor takes the baby out with forceps. He takes the baby out in pieces. He checks each part and he places each one in a tray down below. When he finishes the procedure, I have to drain everything. We drain it to separate body parts from blood. We place all the parts in a jar that goes to the laboratory. It’s impressive how well-defined they are. You can’t believe what you are seeing. You see perfect little hands, tinier than those of a Barbie doll. You can see intestines, tiny ribs, their little faces, and their tiny squashed heads. You can distinguish among the parts if the baby was a boy or girl…. It makes me so sad to see the jars. It’s very hard for me to do all this. To see all that falls on the floor, or for example, to remove a tiny foot from the instruments. A girl who worked here told me that she came home with a tiny foot stuck to her uniform, close to her shoulder.

12 weeks foot

She, of course, hadn’t noticed until her husband told her…When the patient is more than three months pregnant, we have to prepare her so that she can come back the next day when she is dilated. The really large terminations are impressive. I have seen three fetuses come out whole. In one instance, you could see the little hand coming out of the uterus. The little hand was moving. But the most impressive thing was the baby that came out breathing. That time, the doctor got sick. The girl lived in Tijuana. They put dilators in her for two days. The baby was five and a half months.

five months

She didn’t have a car and came walking to the clinic. Then it seemed like she was going through labor. When the doctor started to work on her, the baby came out without any help. The child came out breathing and died right there….Since a few days ago, a substitute doctor has been coming in. He’s younger and has a different technique. He doesn’t scrape the uterus, he just uses the vacuum. Last Sunday, he couldn’t take it any more because we did some rather large terminations, around four months. He used a technique I hadn’t seen. He divided the ultrasound screen in two parts and used an apparatus during the entire procedure. Usually, what you see with the ultrasound is the child sucking his finger, or playing, but on this occasion when the doctor began vacuuming, you could see the baby was moving as if he hurt because it was pulling him or tearing something off. It was horrible, horrible.”

Clinic Worker

Miguel Vasquez “It was Horrible! Horrible! A First-Hand Account of What Goes on Inside a Chula Vista Clinic” San Diego News Notes

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Testimony of a Medical Student

This is from a student who preferred to remain anonymous:

“To begin, I must say that until yesterday, Friday, July 2, 2004, I was strongly pro-choice. I am a pre-medical student, and being very scientific, I understood that the mass of cells that forms the fetal body is not often capable of survival before 24 weeks in the womb. I am also somewhat liberal, and I believed that every woman should have the right to choose what she did with her body and one that could potentially be growing inside of her. This summer, I was accepted into a pre-medical program in NYC in which we are allowed to shadow doctors and see all sorts of medical procedures. When given the opportunity to see an abortion, I did not hesitate to accept the offer. It was something new, edgy, and exciting that I had never seen. When I entered the operating room, it felt like any other I had ever been in. On the table in front of me, I saw a woman, legs up as if delivering a child although she was asleep. Next to her was a tray of instruments for the abortion and a vacuum machine for suctioning the fetal tissues from the uterus. The doctors put on their gowns and masks and the procedure began. The cervix was held open with a crude metal instrument and a large transparent tube was stuck inside of the woman. Within a matter of seconds, the machine’s motor was engaged and blood, tissue, and tiny organs were pulled out of their environment into a filter. A minute later, the vacuum choked to a halt. The tube was removed, and stuck to the end was a small body and a head attached haphazardly to it, what was formed of the neck snapped. The ribs had formed with a thin skin covering them, the eyes had formed, and the inner organs had begun to function. The tiny heart of the fetus,obviously a little boy, had just stopped — forever. The vacuum filter was opened, and the tiny arms and legs that had been torn off of the fetus were accounted for. The fingers and toes had the beginnings of their nails on them. The doctors, proud of their work, reassembled the body to show me. Tears welled up in my eyes as they removed the baby boy from the table and shoved his body into a container for disposal. I have not been able to think of anything since yesterday at 10:30 besides what that baby boy might have been. I don’t think that people realize what an abortion actually is until they see it happen. I have been tortured by these images – so real and so vivid – for two days now…and I was just a spectator. Never again will I be pro-choice, and never again will I support the murder of any human being, no matter their stage in life.”

Sat, Jul 3 22:29:15 2004

nine week-old unborn baby
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Former Clinic Worker Joan Appleton

Joan Appleton was a head nurse at the Commonwealth Clinic, she states,

“I was very active in the National Organization for Women (NOW). As a registered nurse, I thought that I had a wonderful opportunity as a nurse and as a firm believer in choice to be able to actually practice my political beliefs.

I looked at it as a gift, so I went about working hard at the (abortion) clinic for four years and remained active within NOW.

The doctors that we used were primarily physicians who were starting out in practice and would do abortions until they had enough money to open their own private practice. Or they were physicians who didn’t have such a hot practice and did abortions to pay for their medical malpractice insurance.

I never, ever had a doctor in the five years I was there who did abortions because he believed it was the right of the woman. It was not what was foremost in his mind. I’m not saying that they don’t exist, but you certainly can’t prove it by me or by my clinic.

I have come to the realization that there is a great deal of diversity among abortion clinics in different states. My clinic, in Falls Church Virginia, we were primarily nurses. I was head nurse at the clinic. My entire staff were nurses or lab technicians, and we really didn’t have any type of secular personnel outside of the secretarial work. Upon moving to Minnesota, unfortunately the freestanding clinics that I have found, there are no medical personnel outside of the doctor who is performing the abortion.

The differences in these clinics have to do with state regulations. The state of Virginia is regulated. Medical staff is required. In many, many states, there are no state regulations. So what they end up being, actually, are legalized back alley abortions.

12 week ultrasound

The doctors that we use are, were primarily physicians who were starting out in practice and would do abortions to earn enough money until they had their own private practice going. Or they were physicians who didn’t have such a hot practice and use working at abortion clinics to pay for their medical malpractice insurance, which for especially OB/GYN’s, is extremely high, all across the country.

I was convinced that pro-choice was indeed the best thing for women. I began to work more with organizations like Planned Parenthood, NARAL and NAF on certain projects, and began to learn even more. I was issuing birth control pills after an abortion and this is where I learned the real business, the real work of the abortion industry.

She goes on to describe how clinic workers handed out low dose birth control pills (with a higher failure rate) and neglected to tell women that taking a birth control pill while on antibiotics interferes with the action of the pill and makes it useless. This way, they were able to get more women to come in for abortions, when their birth control failed

I often saw women who were injured emotionally by abortion. However, my supervisor told me, “if she’s having a problem after her abortion, it’s because she was having a problem before her abortion.”…

One of the things that kept bothering me even while I was head nurse in the clinic, was why it was such an emotional trauma for a woman and such a difficult decision for a woman to make, if if it was a natural thing to do. If it was right, why was it so difficult? I had to ask myself that all the time. I asked myself too, I counseled these women so well, they were so sure of their decision, why are they coming back after me now, months and years later, psychological wrecks.

We deny, we in the pro-choice movement and in the abortion industry, deny that there is anything like postabortion syndrome, yet it is real, and they do come back, and I couldn’t deny their presence, and the numbers were increasing, and I kept asking, why?

I started out in the pro-choice movement believing I was helping women, believing that women had the right to choose, they had a right to life, they had the right to go on. I thought when I was counseling women, I was preparing them. I was preparing them, I was helping them through a difficult situation so they could go on with their lives. I told them that they were the most important person on this earth, that nothing was more important than them. And once we see you through this difficult situation, once this is over you can go about your life, you now have the freedom, you can go to college. Guess what folks, it didn’t happen. And I had to stop and say, what’s going on? Why isn’t this happening? Instead you’re going out, you’re getting pregnant again, you’re getting diseases, how am I helping you? And those are the questions that were gnawing, gnawing, and gnawing on me.

If it was right, why are they suffering? What have we done? We created a monster, and that we don’t know what to do with it. We created a monster so that we could now be pawns to the abortion industry, those of us women who really, really still believe in women’s rights. Those of us who still believe in care and are pro-woman, who still believe that we are worth something, we are intelligent, we aren’t doormats, we aren’t something to be used, and we used ourselves. We abused ourselves. And most of us won’t accept it, most of us can’t accept it. Most of the people, those who work in the abortion industry, those who really care and believe, can’t accept the bad part, can’t accept the flaws.

And I too had seen an ultrasound abortion. It was, we did first trimester, this was late first trimester, probably early second trimester, really we could look to 13.7 weeks. Give or take. I can’t remember offhand what the specific problem was, but we wanted to do the abortion by ultrasound, to make sure that we did indeed get the entire, all the baby. The terminology was that we wanted to make sure we had the entire pregnancy. I handled the ultrasound while the doctor performed the procedure, and I directed him while I was watching the screen. I saw the baby pull away. I saw the baby open his mouth. I had seen Silent Scream a number of times, but it didn’t affect me – to me it was just more pro-life propaganda. But I couldn’t deny what I saw on the screen. After that procedure, I was shaking, literally, but managed to pull it together, and continue on with the day.

My way of getting out of NOW was that I was a guest speaker at a Virginia NOW dinner. I got up to the podium and I said, “Folks, I can’t do this anymore. There is something wrong here and I can no longer be a part of the abortion industry or a part of the pro-choice movement and so I can no longer be a part of NOW.”

1st trimester sonogram

Pro-Life Action League: Meet the Abortion Provider

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Former Clinic Worker Deborah Henry

Deborah Henry was hired at an abortion clinic after working at a clinic that did not do abortions. She gives her testimony at the Meet the Abortion Providers Conference in 1993.

“We had quite a few women coming through the clinics who would be referred for abortions.

Three of the doctors that I worked for in that clinic had their own practice and they had four different offices throughout the area. This is where our referrals [were] to.

After a while, I wanted to get out of the clinic because they just weren’t paying enough money. A doctor offered me a position in his own private practice in Livonia, so I took the position. He explained to me that they did the abortions, but again, I didn’t think too much of it. At that time, I was pro-choice, or pro-abortion as now I would say it, and I didn’t really think much about what abortion was. I used to think of abortion as eliminating a problem, instead of killing a baby.

The women who would come into the office mostly came in for an abortion. We only did about four a day–it wasn’t like a typical abortion clinic, but we did more than our share. The women would go through routine exams, blood work and blood pressure, and then we would confirm the pregnancy with a urine test. I did not experience any of the women having abortions who were not pregnant, although this may have happened. I just was not aware of it.

The reasons that women had for having an abortion were totally unreal. I can see this now; but at that time, the brainwashing helped me to understand why they had to have these abortions. We were told as medical assistants that we were there to help the women, no matter what the reasons were. Many women could not afford to have babies, so we would use examples–like the price of babies’ shoes, the price of clothing, how much it cost to raise a baby. If they weren’t finished with their education, the hindrance it would have on their education, how they would have to find a baby sitter, who was going to take care of that baby for them? We would find their weaknesses and work on them. After the basic questions, they were told briefly about what was to happen to them after the procedure. All they were told about the procedure itself was that they would experience slight cramping similar to menstrual cramps, and that was it. They were not told about the development of the baby. They were not told about the pain that the baby would be experiencing or the physical effects or the emotional effects that it would have on them. They had no idea who was going to be there to help them when they fell apart afterwards. They were taken into the room then, and, as I said, there was no counseling done. These women basically had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They were just told to lay on the table; they were undressed.

Some of the women were a little apprehensive about it. We were told that in explaining to them that we could never use the word “babies.” It was always tissues, tissues of cells or clusters of cells or products of conception. We would then start the procedure.

unborn baby at eight weeks

There were three basic procedures that we would use, and I will go into a little bit more detail about them. The first one is the most common procedure that is used–that is the vacuum curettage. From some research that has been done, it was explained that the suction on these machines is 49 times stronger than that of your home vacuum cleaner. I realize that many of you are familiar with many of the procedures that we do, and some of you may not be. But for those of you who are, please bear with me and just think about what I am saying. I have seen this, and I am here to reaffirm what you have heard, because everything you read about is the truth. None of this is lies. We don’t exaggerate any of it.

The vacuum curettage is normally done between 6 and 8 weeks of pregnancy. The instrument is inserted into the woman’s uterus, and then the baby is sucked out of the uterus. She experiences the pain and the baby is then pulled into the jar. We would take it out of the little sac, lay it in the pan. The doctor would then come in and examine it. If he felt that it was adequate enough tissue, we would take the baby, put it into a jar and send it to the lab if the mother had insurance. If she had no insurance, the baby was simply put down the garbage disposal.

14 weeks – early D&Es are done at this stage

The second common procedure that I have assisted in is the D&E, which is dilation and evacuation. This is normally done between 9 and 16 weeks of pregnancy. I noticed many times that the laminaria was brought into the description. But in my experience, we did not use laminaria all the time; sometimes, we did. A laminaria would be inserted the day before and then the next day, the women would come back in to have the procedure done. However, on the ones that did not have the laminaria, we would use instruments, that are like long metal rods and each end is a little wider than the last one which were inserted into the cervix to help dilate it. of course, through this procedure, the woman is going through a lot of pain. She is given an IV of Valium and Sublimaze to help make her relax, but she is awake during the whole procedure.

The procedure starts with an aspiration of the fluid, and then the doctor uses his forceps to go in and literally break the limbs off of the baby. There was one incident where a white piece came out and I asked the doctor later on what it was, and it was the baby’s skull. I can still, to this very day, hear the crushing noise of that baby’s skull being crushed. The women are feeling pain. It is not until after the procedure that they realize what is happening to their baby or to themselves. Ninety percent of these women start crying afterwards and it is not because of the pain.”

….

20 weeks – candidate for D&E

“The women were never given any type of alternatives to the abortion. It was just automatically assumed that they knew what they wanted. They were never told about adoption agencies. They were never told about people out there who were willing to help them–to give them homes to live in, to provide them with care and even financial support. The euphemisms that are used — clusters of cells, products of conception, or just plain tissue — are all lies.

10 weeks

I have been there, and I have seen these totally formed babies as early as 10 weeks, a couple of inches long with a leg missing, or with their head off. These are things that I have to live with now. I know the Lord has forgiven me, but I can never erase those things from my mind. The sounds of those bones breaking, The sight of those babies. It seems like the longer I go on working with the Pro-Life people, the more it is affecting me. I can understand the reality of a baby inside of you–a full baby growing.

One of the famous lines that the doctor’s wife used to use after the procedure, when she would come in and the women were crying–she would pat them on their shoulder and say: “It’s okay, honey, everybody makes mistakes–that’s why pencils have erasers.” How can you erase that thought from your mind? Where is she going to be when that woman is threatening suicide because she realizes that she killed her child, and there is no bringing that baby back. Where is she going to be then? She is off, counting her money and buying new cars, or whatever. She doesn’t care.

When I was in Nuremberg, I came across an interesting story I always repeat this when I speak–about little Josh. His mother went through a divorce and had an affair shortly afterwards. She got pregnant and she was forced to have an abortion. Afterwards, she kept experiencing pain, so she went to the doctor. She had not had any relationships since this one. So, she knew that she could not have been pregnant again because she had had the abortion and had not had any relations. That doctor had told her that what had happened was that because of the abortion, she developed a tumor, and that they were going to have to perform a hysterectomy. She was on the table, just about ready for the surgery, when the doctor did another exam and found that it was not a tumor. She was, in fact, still pregnant. She continued on with the pregnancy and little Josh was a miracle in himself. At the program, he had a sweatshirt on that said: “I Survived the Abortion Holocaust.” Unfortunately, because of the procedure, he did have a scar on the side of his head, and slightly impaired hearing and vision. What they think happened was that he might have had a twin that was, indeed, aborted.

…

10 to 12 weeks

We had a rather interesting group of people outside of our clinic–the picketers. They were out there almost every single day, with their signs, walking back and forth, really looking ridiculous out there. We were told to ignore them because they were silly. They didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t understand the justification for these women, and, of course, I believed it. So when I would go to my car every day they were out there. I would look down–I wouldn’t look at them at all. I was afraid that they would say something to me. But I found out that they were all very loving people. One of them in particular is Lynn Mills. She is the Director of the Michigan Pro-Life Action League. We have since become best of friends.

…

One day we decided to meet at a local restaurant with one of my other co-workers, and she had taken along one of her friends. We debated all of these questions that I thought meant that it was okay to have an abortion. Lynn had a reason or an answer for every single question that I had for her. I went back. It took a little while longer, but eventually it hit home. More than that, I think it was the Lord working on me then. I really think that he has given me the strength to endure everything that I saw in that clinic. I was only there for six months, but I think there was a reason for it because now I can go out and tell everybody what I experienced.

…

16 weeks

There are a few more experiences that I want to go into before I forget. There was one incident of a baby who was about 16 weeks. One of the girls had called me into the lab as she was cleaning up, and on the end of the cannula, which was the instrument at the end of the hose, was a little baby’s foot. It was about half an inch long. This foot was perfectly formed. I couldn’t believe it. I was so amazed by the sight of it. It was all black and blue. When you drop something on your foot and your foot becomes bruised, it is usually because of pain. This baby’s body was completely ripped apart because of the abortion.

In another incident, the hose popped off of the machine, and we had blood splattered all over us. This poor woman just lay there and cried. It was too late for any of us to do anything about it. That baby was dead.

I was told that one of the Pro-Life problems is that we talk too much about the babies being ripped apart. We show terrible pictures–we dwell on these too much. What are we supposed to do? This is the reality of abortion. Are we supposed to say, Oh, don’t go into that abortion–your fetus, or tissues, will become deceased? It doesn’t make sense. You tell them the truth–the facts. We are not there to lie to them. I am there to tell them the truth. Babies are being ripped up. Yes, babies do look like this after an abortion. And yes, it does hurt your baby, and most of all, it does affect the woman.

There was an incident of a 14-year-old girl this past spring, who was pregnant. Her mother forced her to have an abortion. The doctor botched it up and now she’s sterile. How is that mother going to answer to that girl when she grows up and understands later on that she will never be able to have a child?

We had a lady who came into the clinic who was married to a foreign man. This was really interesting because still, to this very day, I don’t understand how this marriage was existing. He could not speak English, and she couldn’t speak his language. I guess there was some communication, but not enough. She told him that she wanted to make a baby. He didn’t know what he was doing and she ended up pregnant. So when she told him they were going to have a baby, he was upset. He didn’t want a baby. He didn’t know this was what he was doing. So, she went in and had an abortion. Just like that–for no reason. She didn’t want a baby now. That was it.

five weeks

We had another woman who came into the clinic who was on her ninth abortion. She was about 40 years old. Nine! There is no justification for it. I just don’t understand it. I get dumbfounded sometimes just thinking about it again.

….

Our doctors used to also work with surrogates, which is becoming a very popular thing now for infertility patients. I couldn’t understand how he could go in one room and kill a baby, and go in the next room and give his full effort in trying to impregnate another woman for a couple who could not have a baby. It was even stranger because every once in a while, we would get a letter from, for instance, a couple in California who couldn’t have any children. They were sending letters out to different offices, hoping that they would get a response from a pregnant woman who was willing to give up her baby for adoption to them. The doctor wouldn’t consider that at all. I mentioned it to him. I said that this couple was so nice–a nice picture, a nice home, and they made nice money. They could offer a baby everything. I asked the doctor why we couldn’t refer one of our women to them? He said that we couldn’t do that–the women were here because that is what they want to do and we were not to interfere with their decision. That was all of the answer that we would ever get.

Probably the most effective thing that converted me over was a nightmare that I had one night, shortly after I had met with Lynn. I had this dream that I was in the examining room with the doctor, and we had just completed an abortion. Alongside her table was another little table and we had a little baby that was about so long. I had never really experienced this, but this baby was born. He was just laying on the side of the table. His little leg was dangling off the side and his body was covered with a paper towel. The mother looked over and said, “Do I have to lay here and look at this baby?” The doctor asked me to take the baby into the lab. I picked up the baby, It was one of those dreams where there is an endless hall, and you are walking on and on and on, and you are never getting to your destination. All I could feel in my hand was this big baby. I woke up and I was crying and in a sweat. I was never so shaken by anything in my life. It was the most horrible experience that I have ever had. For the first time in my life, I realized that what I had been involved in was killing innocent babies. I didn’t do the abortion itself, but I might as well have. I handed those instruments to the doctor. I still have nightmares–not as often and not as much, but I think it is a reminder to tell me that I have to keep going on for these babies, and with the love and support that I get from all my new Pro-Life friends, I am able to do this. I hope that there are some people here infiltrating our convention because you know what I am saying is true. I want you to think about this. When you go home and you have nightmares about those dead babies, it is because you are killing them. That is all there is to it. Abortion is murder. There is no other way to put it. Hopefully, you will call one of us, and, I guarantee, we will be there with open arms to greet you and to help you through this ordeal.

This testimony came from a conference held by The Pro-Life Action League

Please also visit the Pro-Life Action League’s abortion providers page for more info. 

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Former Clinic Worker Carol Everett

Carol Everett with the administrator of four abortion clinics and the owner of two. After becoming pro-life and leaving the abortion business, she speaks about her experiences. This is the testimony she gave at the Meet the Abortion Providers Conference in 1993 sponsored by the Pro-Life Action League

“Thank you all for coming. In 1973, when abortion was legalized, I was married, had an 8 year-old daughter and a 10 year-old son. Two weeks later, with abortion very much in the news and everywhere we turned we were still talking about abortion, I found myself pregnant. When I told my husband, I was excited. But his initial reaction was, you’ll just have to have an abortion. Because I really didn’t want to deal with that with him, I decided I’d look for someone to help me. I went to my friend, my doctor, and cried out to him, and said, “Harvey, Tom doesn’t want me to have this baby.” And he said, “Oh, that’s easy, we’ll bring Tom’s urine in, the test will be negative, we’ll do the abortion in the hospital, and your insurance will pay for it”.

What I’m telling you is that this man offered to do an illegal abortion in the State of Texas and, yes, indeed, we did it. I was looking for someone to tell me not to have the abortion and I ran into an abortion salesman. And that’s what happens in our nation today. We’re going to talk a lot more about that, but let’s go back to my story and what happened to me.

When I woke from that abortion, I picked up the telephone, and literally started working from my hospital bed, not realizing that I was already running from that decision. Within a month I was having an affair, and that had not been one of my patterns prior to that time. Very soon I started drinking; I’d not ever drunk in my life and I would go out and just get drunk once a month. It was almost like on target; once a month I had to do it. Very soon I asked my husband to leave, and then I started seeing a psychiatrist daily.

At the rate of $125.00 an hour, I could not go on with this very long. So I decided to do what I called, “get hold of myself.” I changed everything I could in my life, except my children. I got away from the job I’d had; got away from my husband, and decided I would make it on my own. What I’m telling you is the story about how my life went along at a pretty good level for a while, and the moment I had that abortion, it went straight downhill. And I think that’s what happens to every woman who has an abortion.

One of the things that I want to impress upon you today is, yes, we do have to save the babies; they’re important. But we’re saving the mother, and, yes, we’re saving the father. My ex-husband has been in counseling all this year trying to deal with this abortion. And we’re saving all those family units in our entire nation. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.

When I did get hold of myself, I went to work for a nice Catholic man who had a medical supply business. At about this time abortion became legal in the State of Texas, and very soon we had an account on-line that was very profitable for us. We were making over $1,000 a month profit out of this account. So he decided that he wanted to look into it to see exactly what sort of business they were, and yes, indeed, they were an abortion clinic. So this great Catholic man who told me he never wanted to see an abortion, never wanted to know what an abortion really was, opened his first abortion clinic, and soon he had four. All this time he kept inviting me to join. He kept saying, come over and do this, come over and do that; if you’ll go out and sell abortions for me, I’ll pay you $10 an abortion, and on and on and on. I kept selling medical supplies, and finally the day came when I needed to make more money, and I went in and said, hey, I’m quitting my job; I want to go with another company. And he said, give me some time; let me come up with something. So, he got me on the fringe of the abortion industry by asking me to go out and set up referral clinics all over Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. And I did that for a while and it was quite profitable. Then one day the call came: Come into the clinic; I need you to work in here for a month.

seven week unborn baby

When I got in the clinic I had to decide whether to get involved in the abortions over here (and I am a scrub tech, so I have been involved in the medical industry for a long time), or if I was going to get involved with the numbers. And since I had that option, I got involved with the numbers. With just a very few small changes, his abortions went from 190-195 per month to over 400 per month. So then he sent me to another clinic. I went to his Fort Worth clinic, and yes, we were soon doubling his abortions over there. The last month I was with him in those two clinics (by then he had split with his partner), he was doing something over 800 abortions a month.

I went in and said, hey, look, I’ve doubled your business, come on, give me an equity interest in the business. And he politely said no, and I politely scheduled my hysterectomy, the kids teeth being fixed, everything his insurance would pay for, and, by the way, I placed my Yellow Page ad to come out in six months for my own abortion clinic. We opened and the first month we did 45; 65; 85, and the last month I was there, with two clinics functioning in the Dallas area, we did over 500 abortions a month in that clinic. I was compensated at the rate of $25.00 per case, plus one-third of the clinic’s, so you can imagine what my motivation was. I sold abortions. I had made $150,000; was on target in 1983 to make about $260,000; and when we opened our five clinics, I would have been taking home about a million dollars a year. I expected to make more than that after we were really functioning.

All of this sounds neat. I had two kids in college, and I was alone and I was making plenty of money. But that money went absolutely nowhere. Taking home that much money a month, I literally couldn’t even pay my utilities… That money literally ran through my fingers so that my motivation was to do more abortions to make more money, and on and on and on.

….

Now what I do is just go around and tell people the truth about what really happens inside one of the abortion mills. There are all sorts of experiences with the abortion. I want to walk you through my experiences in an abortion clinic.

Let’s just step back. How many of you have children 14 and under? How many of you have seen a number, unsolicited, that you think you could call that said, “Problem Pregnancy,” “Abortion Information,” or “Pregnant?” in your area where you think you could call for abortion information? Let’s talk about those kids when they find out that they are pregnant. They may not want an abortion; they may want information. But when they call that number that’s paid for by abortion money, what kind of information do you think they’re going to get? Let’s remember, they sell abortions. They don’t sell keeping the baby. They don’t sell giving the baby up for adoption. They don’t sell delivering that baby in any form. They only sell abortions.

In the State of Texas, a girl can come in to have an abortion, and the abortion clinics are not required to have parental consent. Most of the abortion clinics in Texas do require it for 14 and under. However, let’s paint this picture: The girl comes in, has an abortion, she can sign for it. But when the doctor rips her uterus out and they take her to the hospital, they won’t admit her until her parents get there and are told she had this abortion without their consent. And they will not repair the damage or try to save her life until the parents sign on the dotted line. And that happens. It’s terrible.

So the girl calls this number and says, I’m pregnant. How far along are you? What’s the first day of your last normal period? They’ve got their wheel there and they figure it out. This counselor is paid to be this girl’s friend. She is paid to be the authority for this girl. She is supposed to seduce her into a friendship of sorts to sell her the abortion. Every problem this girl has: I don’t want to tell my parents. You don’t have to tell your parents. They don’t have to know. You’re old enough to come in and have it without them knowing. And then the money, and they ask them to go get their money and pay the people back in a year.

6 to 7 weeks

Then the two questions they ask are: Does it hurt? Oh, no. Your uterus is a muscle, and they hold their hand up if they’re seeing them; if not, they tell them over the phone: It’s a cramp to open it; a cramp to close it; it’s a slight cramping sensation. Everybody’s had cramps; every woman in the world. So they think that’s no problem. I can stand that; I’ve been through it before. And then they say: Is it a baby? No, it’s a product of conception; it’s a blood clot; it’s a piece of tissue. They don’t even really tell them it’s a fetus, because, you see, that almost humanizes it too much. It’s never a baby. They can’t admit it themselves when they go in the back and have little 6-week fetuses, babies that they put down disposals, and that’s how we did it in our clinic. The clinics in Dallas use disposals so none of those crazy Pro-Lifers will come and get them out of the trash anymore and bury them the way they did. So, they lie to her. You know, if you look at abortion from the face, I cannot tell you one thing that happens in an abortion clinic that is not a lie. They tell the counselors, and I told the counselors, not to rock the boat; not to answer any questions that they didn’t ask. Get them in here; the faster you can get them in here, the easier it is on them. You concentrate on the woman; you tell them to help her, and you don’t deal with the baby at all.

So they get this girl to come in the clinic, and many times they just get her to come in for a pregnancy test, and if that’s the case then they greet her at the door and they say, Oh, Linda, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been waiting for you. This girl doesn’t know they have an appointment book and each counselor has to schedule their appointments an hour apart so she has plenty of time to spend being their “friend” while they’re there. She takes them back; she does the pregnancy test; it doesn’t really matter. If there’s any way they can convince this girl she’s pregnant, she’s going to be pregnant. But they go through this test anyway. She tells her she’s pregnant, and the girl might cry. She may get upset. But they take her into a separate room; they don’t want anyone to see anyone crying in there; it’s supposed to be a great place; we’re supposed to help people in the abortion clinic.

If she has the abortion that day, she goes through one procedure, but if she comes back another day, she just comes in the front door, fills out some forms (very minimal information). Most of the information on that form is name, address, telephone number, and your financial status. So they can find out to what group they need to appeal with their $250,000 per clinic Yellow Page budget.

Then the girl goes back, has some lab work, and then she pays, up-front, for what they have decided the term of pregnancy she is. Cash, Master Card, or Visa–get a Master Card, Visa or American Express. You might consider sending them back because they do charge for abortions, and tell them why you’re sending them back. They will accept those charges. Then the girl goes into this room for counseling and they give her a 6 to 12-page form. This form is written by an abortion attorney. Ours was written by one out of New York, and it was written to confuse the girl to death. It had every possible complication of an abortion you could imagine, and it would take [a doctor] two hours with a medical dictionary to go through it. Words two inches long that no one could possibly understand, and it does its job. It confuses her and she doesn’t ask any questions. She goes back to the two questions: Does it hurt? Is it a baby? And when you have convinced her again and lied to her again that no, it’s not going to hurt, and if she doesn’t have her money–in the State of Texas you have to pay extra to be put to sleep–it’s an extra $100 to $250, depending on how far you are into the pregnancy.

Then she goes into this holding room, waiting for the abortion. And it depends on the day of the week, of course, as to how many people are in there. Saturday is the big day, but it could be a day in the week when there are only five or six people in there waiting. And soon, if there are 30 or 40, especially, they kind of number each other so they know what order they are going to be going out in. They kind of laugh and joke. And if there is one crying in there, you get that one out. You don’t want that one affecting the rest of them.

She is taken back to the procedure room, put on the table, and draped. Her chart is put in the door. Each chart in our clinics was handled with a little coupon on the front. The coupon was for the doctor, because when he walks up to that door for the first time–if you have two or three doctors working, you don’t know which one is going to do the abortion–so, they don’t collect the doctor’s money with the clinic money, they collect it separately and do not show it on any of the records in those clinics. In the four clinics I’ve been in and worked in, they never showed that they collected the doctor’s money at any place. That way, they are independent contractors; you don’t have to be concerned with their malpractice insurance, and you don’t have to report it to IRS. He collects the coupon, puts it in his scrub suit pocket. At the end of the day he goes up and presents his coupons. This is how many I’ve done. And each doctor presents them separately. The girl counts the coupons, figures out how much she owes him, and pays him in cash.

As I said earlier, I have seen doctors walk out after three hours work and split $4,500 between them on a Saturday morning. More, if you go longer into the day, of course. The doctor walks in, sees the patient for the very first time, pats her on the leg, says, Hi, baby, how are you? You call them “baby” so you don’t have to remember their name. And she says, Oh, I’m scared, or, I’m cold. Never anything positive. And he doesn’t really ask her any questions. It’s just get the abortion done. If he discovers that she may be farther along than anyone thought she was, they stop right there, collect the money, and then finish the procedure. If abortion is such a good thing, why don’t they give them away? If abortion is such a good thing, why don’t they go ahead and do the abortion then, and trust you to pay the extra $200 when they’re finished? That’s not the way it is. I’ve never been able to come up with the words to describe the abortion procedure, because, you see, you’re educating people about abortion. You know more about it than the average person. However, no matter how bad you think abortion is, there are no words to describe how bad it really is. It kills the baby. And, yes, I’ve seen sonograms with the baby pulling away from the instruments that are introduced into the vagina. And the woman, the mother, is hurt if she doesn’t have the extra money to be put to sleep, and I’ve seen D&Es through 32 weeks done without the mother being put to sleep.

28 weeks – a month earlier than the latest abortions done a Carol Everett’s clinics

And, yes, they hurt, and they are very painful to the baby. But, yes, they are very, very painful to the woman. I’ve seen six people hold a woman on the table while they did her abortion.

But, they have the abortion and they go to the recovery room, and then there are two reactions in the recovery room. The first one is: I’ve killed my baby. And even then, it amazed me that that was the first time they called it a baby and the first time they called it murder. But, you know, as bad as that sounds, that’s probably the healthiest reaction. That woman is probably going to have the ability to walk out of there and deal with it, and perhaps be healed and go on.

early first trimester

And now, in Europe, where they’ve had abortions for much, much longer than we have, there are some authorities in the Netherlands who are alluding to a spiritual healing that women have to go through before they can completely deal with their abortion. So they’re getting closer day by day by day. But the second reaction is: I am hungry, you kept me in here for four hours and you told me I’d only be here for two; let me out of here. Now that woman is doing what I did. She’s running from her abortion. She’s not dealing with it; she’s choosing to deny it, and she’s the woman that we read all the statistics about, post-abortion syndrome. They say now it’s an average of five years before people actually deal with the fact that, yes, they did kill their baby. And yes, they do have to deal with that. You know, I go back to my own personal healing, which just started a year ago. I was making deals with God. I didn’t want to talk about my own abortion. Then when I finally did deal with it, I cried nonstop for five months because, you see, I killed my baby, and I’m still not through that. And how difficult it is for all these women because, you see, I believe that every woman, even if she’s not physically harmed, is harmed by abortion.

Then what the recovery room personnel do is resell it. They resell them on their next abortion. They don’t say, hey, I’m reselling you so you’ll go out and get pregnant and come back. But they make subtle innuendos that say, you know, this isn’t going to happen again, but, you know we’re always here. And when you leave here you’re going to have a couple of days when you won’t feel so good. You’ll have a couple of days of depression, and that’s just your hormones realigning, and everyone who has a baby has postpartum depression, and don’t worry about it. And there they are encouraging them to suppress their feelings about that abortion.

So they go through this whole gamut of reselling abortion, encouraging suppression, and say, call us if you have a problem. And the girls leave, and they do have problems. The girls that walk out of there, though, are the lucky ones. We were seeing over 500 abortions per month; we were doing the only one-day second or third trimester abortion in the state of Texas. (We didn’t call it third; we called it second.) Meaning that we didn’t use the laminaria. We did all the dilation on that day, and that’s why we were seeing such a tremendous number of complications. We saw complications in the second and third trimester, but we were seeing one per 500 abortions for over a year. Yes, we had a death. A 32 year-old woman with a 17 year-old son and a 2 year-old son. Never made the papers. Her boyfriend felt guilty for his part in the abortion and he didn’t want to deal with it. Her family thought, yes, she had probably had an abortion, but they didn’t want to deal with it. It never came out. No lawsuit.

The 21-year-old that danced in, and I’ll never forget her for as long as I live. She was my son’s age. Danced in to get her “problem” taken care of. Had the extra money to be put to sleep. And you see, my job with two of those doctors was to put my right hand on the baby and hold it while they did the abortion so I could tell them where the head was and where the legs were, and all of that. And I had my hand on that woman’s stomach, and that baby was perfectly inside her uterus; she had been examined by the doctor; and he said, yes, the baby was inside her uterus and everything was fine and she was 24-weeks. And he went in one time, and he pulled out placenta, and he went in the second time and he went through the back of her uterus and pulled her bowel out through her vagina. We put her in the car because we didn’t want an ambulance in front of the abortion clinic and we took her to the hospital. Seven doctors worked on her and they did a colostomy on her. When the reports came back, they said that it was an abdominal pregnancy that had not been in the uterus, and seven doctors and a pathologist concurred with that, and then the hospital wrote off her bill, and there was no lawsuit, ever. She was told that had been a normal complication; it was just amazing that she’d made it that long. And she didn’t know any better. And then the girl that the doctors decided had a fibroid tumor at the back of her uterus. That’s a highly common tumor that’s very rarely malignant. And the two doctors decided they were just going to pull this out after she had her abortion, and they didn’t know they were pulling on the back of her uterus, and they pulled the uterus out wrong-side-out of a 21- year-old; she had a hysterectomy.

Those are the ones that I remember. Those are the ones that bother me. Those are the ones that I have to go through and deal with and be healed of constantly. Because, you see, it was like the mothers were presenting their babies to be killed. And it was okay to kill 500 babies a month. But when we started killing or maiming a mother for each 500 babies, even I couldn’t handle that.

12 weeks

There are two problems that are going on that we might be able to do something with, too. That is, that abortion clinics, if they have someone that does present themselves thinking they’re pregnant and of course the test show they’re not; that they’re going to sell that abortion to that non-pregnant woman. And every time that you are standing in front of an abortion clinic, you are holding a light on inside that clinic. You are holding those people accountable and that day they are less likely to do the woman who is not pregnant because they’re scared of you. They think these crazy Pro-Lifers are going to run in, chain themselves to the table. We had seven locks or something from the front door to the back. They are less likely to do that woman who is too far along that day too, because, you see, when the babies are so big they don’t come apart like the others. Their muscle structure is strong that the heads come off from the body, and you can’t dispose of those in the disposal. You have to put those in the trash. And we used to take ours over to opposition abortion clinics’ trash and hope they’d be found there.

second trimester

But every time you’re in front, you’re holding that light on. They slow down. An abortionist who brags and thinks he can do eight to ten, maybe even twelve abortions an hour, with a picketer in front of him, will slow down. Do four, six, three, something–but he’ll slow down. He’s afraid of you.

If there is good medical care inside an abortuary, the day you’re standing out there is the day it happens. And you asked me how I feel about what you do? First of all, in Dallas, Texas, we have a guy named Winston Wilder, and thank you, Lord, for Winston. When I finally got over the right side… That’s another thing, you don’t see the defectors from the Pro-Life side to the abortion side, did you ever notice that? The defection’s this way, and there are a lot of them. Winston and I sat down and I gave him all the names, addresses, telephone numbers, business offices (because many times their partners do not even know they do abortions). We had one guy called in from the Bahamas because they suddenly started picketing his office, and his partner didn’t know he did abortions in the clinics. At their private homes, many times their wives do not know they do abortions. Many times their mother-in-law doesn’t know they’re doing abortions. Many times the maid doesn’t know they’re doing abortions. Their neighbors, of course, rarely know. But that’s the most effective thing.

Picket them where they live. The clinics, yes, because it is my firm conviction that every day abortion is done and we’re not standing in front of the abortion clinic, that we are held accountable. We must be there doing what they say that we should do.”

Also from Carol Everett:

Q.: did you operate the clinic seven days a week?

A.: yes. Sunday was our most profitable day. Most women want to get in and get out quickly. They know abortion is wrong, especially on Sunday, so they hurried through. Women don’t ask questions on Sunday. You can work with a skeleton staff because the women who come in for an abortion on Sunday mean business. We would do 15 to 20 (abortions) on Sunday in 2 to 3 hours! While everybody else was at church, we were doing abortions!”

…

Q.: was there any follow-up counseling?

A.: we told them that it would be available, however, we used some techniques in the recovery room to discourage further contact except for future abortions. We told them, ” in about 7 to 10 days you are going to feel depressed for a couple of days. Don’t worry about that. When a woman has a baby, she has a couple of days of postpartum depression. You will have that, too. It’s just your body figuring out that you are not pregnant, and your hormones are realigning.” So when the woman starts to deal with the reality that ” I killed my baby”, she thinks it is normal because of the hormone activity. She is encouraged repress these natural feelings. Yet, a 13-year-old girl came in for a two-week checkup. The checkup is not as much to check them, as it is to make sure you didn’t miss a pregnancy. She didn’t come out of the room for a long period of time. She was slitting her wrists.

From “what I saw in the abortion industry” by Carol Everett Easton publishing company 1988 (pamphlet)

Please also visit the Pro-Life Action League’s abortion providers page for more info. 

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Former Clinic Worker Brenda Shafer

Nurse Brenda Shafer said:

“I took the assignment because I was at that time very pro-choice. I had even told my two teenage daughters that if one of them ever got pregnant at a young age, I would make them get an abortion.”

“It was one of these cases that especially haunts me. The woman was six months pregnant (26 1/2 weeks). The doctor told her that the baby had down syndrome, and she decided to get an abortion…

Dr. Haskell brought the ultrasound in and hooked it up so that he could see the baby (then 26 1/2 weeks into pregnancy.) On the ultrasound screen, I could see the heart beating. I asked Dr. Haskell and he told me that “Yes, that is the heartbeat.” As Dr. Haskell watched the baby on the ultrasound screen, he went in with forceps and grabbed the baby’s legs and brought them into the birth canal. Then he delivered the body and arms, all the way up to the neck.

At this point, only the baby’s head was still inside. The baby’s body was moving. His little fingers were clasping together. He was kicking his feet. All the while his little head was still stuck inside. Then Dr. Haskell took a pair of scissors and inserted them into the back of the baby’s head. Then he stuck a high-powered suction tube into the hole and sucked the baby’s brains out. I almost threw up as I watched him do these things.

24 weeks

Next, Dr. Haskell delivered the baby’s head, cut the local court in delivered the placenta. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he’d used. I saw the baby move in the pan. I asked another nurse and she said it was just “reflexes.”

The woman wanted to see her baby, so they cleaned up the baby and put it in a blanket and handed it to her. She cried the whole time, and she kept saying, “I’m sorry, please forgive me.” I was crying too. I couldn’t take it. In all my professional years I’d never experienced anything like this.

Another case I saw on that third day was a six-month-old (approximately 25 weeks) baby. The mother was over age 40. There was nothing wrong with this baby, she just didn’t want it. The doctor used the same procedure… This baby was also alive. I saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound. (Actually every baby that they still have a heartbeat at the time of the procedure.” The second baby was a little smaller than the first baby. I remember thinking how perfect this child was. The mother did not want to see it…

I also saw third case that day (I was only assisting in one operating room.) This was a 17-year-old girl. She was approximately 25 weeks. The same procedure was done on this baby.

The Down’s Syndrome baby was the only baby that had a defect. And that baby with Down Syndrome had the most perfect angelic face I have ever seen. I never realized how perfect these babies are at this point. When you hear the word “fetus,” I think a lot of people think is I did of just a blob of cells, or a mass of something. It was very revealing to me. I don’t think about abortion the same way anymore. I still have nightmares about what I saw.”

24 weeks

Brenda Shafer, “What the Nurse Saw,” National Right to Life News, July 18, 1995: 23

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Testimony of Allison Baker, RN

From a summary of the hearing for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which can be found here, Library of Congress Report 107th Congress House of Representatives Allison Baker, a registered nurse, testified about several live birth abortions she witnessed:

20 weeks

“The first occurred on a day shift. I happened to walk into a `soiled utility room’ and saw, lying on the metal counter, a fetus, naked, exposed and breathing, moving its arms and legs. The fetus was visibly alive, and was gasping for breath. I left to find the nurse who was caring for the patient and this fetus. When I asked her about the fetus, she said that she was so busy with the mother that she didn’t have time to wrap and place the fetus in a warmer, and she asked if I would do that for her. Later I found out that the fetus was 22 weeks old, and had undergone a therapeutic abortion because it had been diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome. I did wrap the fetus and place him in a warmer and for 2 1/2 hours he maintained a heartbeat, and then finally expired.”

The second baby was 20 weeks old.

“[d]uring the time the fetus was alive, the patient kept asking me when the fetus would die. For an hour and 45 minutes the fetus maintained a heartbeat. The parents were frustrated, and obviously not prepared for this long period of time. Since I was the nurse of both the mother and the fetus, I held the fetus in my arms until it finally expired.”

Also in the document:

“The third incident witnessed by Mrs. Baker involved a 16 week-old fetus with Down’s Syndrome. `Again,’ Mrs. Baker testified, `I walked into the soiled utility room and the fetus was fully exposed, lying on the baby scale.’

16 week unborn baby

Mrs. Baker then found the nurse who was caring for the mother and the baby and offered her assistance.

`When I went back into the soiled utility room,’ Mrs. Baker said, `the fetus was moving its arms and legs. I then listened for a heartbeat, and found that the fetus was still alive. I wrapped the fetus and in 45 minutes the fetus finally expired.’

The summary also reveals more of Nurse Jill Stanek’s testimony.

“Mrs. Stanek testified about another aborted baby who was thought to have had spina bifida, but was delivered with an intact spine.”

And

“On another occasion, an aborted baby `was left to die on the counter of the Soiled Utility Room wrapped in a disposable towel. This baby was accidentally thrown in the garbage, and when they later were going through the trash to find the baby, the baby fell out of the towel and on to the floor.’

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