“The abortionist knows that if the mother knew there was a heartbeat or saw the fetus (baby) on the ultrasound, she would probably change her mind about the abortion. When an ultrasound was performed at the abortion clinic, the screen was turned away from the mother and the sound was turned off so the mother could not hear or see it.”
Brenda Pratt-Shafer, David Shafer What the Nurse Saw: Eyewitness to Abortion (Mustang, Oklahoma: Tate Publishing & Enterprise, LLC, 2016) 29
Ruth Yorston told her story at the Conversion conference sponsored by The Pro-Life Action League. Here are excerpts from her testimony. Ruth Yorston grew up in a pro-choice family. Her mother worked at an abortion clinic, and Ruth Yorston took a job with her mother. Here is the testimony of Ruth Yorston:
“Three feet is not a long distance. Most of us, many of us could probably take a 3 foot step if we stretched our legs enough to do it. That is about the width of the sidewalk in front of Fort women’s health organization. And for me 3 feet represents not just a width of the sidewalk but it represents the chasm that I stepped across….
I grew up in a family that was very strongly pro-abortion and I want to share with you today a couple things. I want to share with you the background of my family and who we were in our community and I want to share with you the background of my faith and how that played a part in the choices and the decisions that I made in my early twenties. And I want to share with you a message of “what do we do now?….
I grew up in a dysfunctional household that probably doesn’t surprise most of you. I know that won’t surprise the other abortionists – abortion workers who are here today. I’m a daughter of an alcoholic who was the son of an alcoholic. My mother was the daughter of an alcoholic. My father stopped drinking when I was five years old and because of my mom’s protection I never once saw my father with a drink in his hand. But that shaped so much of our family. It shaped who we were as people. Alcoholic families keep secrets. And we kept many, many secrets even after my father stopped drinking. He was a broken man and my mom was a broken woman, like we all are. But the brokenness in our family was a brokenness that brought so much silence into our family, an inability to talk and share on a personal level… We were an intelligent family. We were the family that talked about all the things you’re not supposed to talk about over dinner. We talked about politics regularly.… We talked about politics. I was expected at a very young age to have opinions and thoughts on things that I didn’t know about. That was how we were raised. So, being thoughtful intelligent people was very important to my family. My parents were children of the depression. My mom grew up on the family farm in a little mining town just north of Pittsburgh. She was very much a child of the depression. But she did something that no one else in her family had done. She left that little town and she put herself through college and she went to school at Kent State in Ohio… My mom graduated with a degree in zoology and she worked in the medical field. She took a position working at Mount Sinai Hospital in Cleveland working with a doctor who was doing cutting-edge cancer research and she assisted him for 10 years doing advanced research and leukemia
“my mom was offered a job at Yale medical school and she turned it’s down because she would rather be my mom then work at Yale. I had an amazing mother. I adored my mother
it’s funny, we talked about all kinds of controversial subjects, but I never remember talking about abortion. And I never realized until she took a job in an abortion facility that we were pro-choice. Or pro-abortion. There was this kind of sense that we had to be strong people and we took control of our lives, made our own choices to make our own way in the world. My parents were the people who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and we were expected to do the same thing. And for my parents, an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy was something that would hold someone back. So my mom took this job working at Fort women’s health Association. I was in high school at the time. And it came about after there was a debate in my high school English class and my high school English teacher when we were studying debate invited two women’s come in and speak on the issue. And one of them was the executive director of the Fort women’s health Association and the other one… Honestly I don’t remember her name – but she was leaving some of the pro-life work in Fort Wayne. And there was such an uproar in the school about these people coming in to talk to students about life issues. That I found out that my parents were pro-abortion was when my dad wrote a letter to my English teacher saying how glad he was that his daughter had the opportunity to hear the truth about abortion and how glad he was that in his daughter’s English class that she got to learn that abortion is just fine and it’s a normal part of life. It’s a good choice and the right decision and that he wanted his daughter to have the opportunity to kill her child – of course he didn’t say it that way – to kill her child should she be given that opportunity. Then it was the op-ed article in the local newspaper with my dad’s name and picture about how abortion was a right that a woman should have.
And then it was my mom’s trip to Washington DC to participate in a feminist March and I have a picture of my mom wearing – it was during the ERA days – wearing the bright yellow women equal rights for women, and wearing a pin of the bloody hanger. This is how I found out that oh, I guess I’m pro-choice. So like most children I followed in my parents footsteps. Parents, your job is to teach your children how to think. One of your jobs is to teach children how to think. Not surprisingly, my parents taught me how to think, and I began to think like they did. I was not that rebellious child who fought my parents in that particular area. I just went along with the ride. And I bought hook line and sinker everything that I started being taught about life, or the lack of life. And I didn’t think beyond that. I believed what I was told. But I didn’t think beyond that.
So when I graduated from high school I went away to college in Michigan for a year, ran out of money and came running home to my parents because I couldn’t figure out how to pay for college, took a job working in retail, wasn’t making enough money to move out of the house. I’m sure my parents were thinking, is this girl ever going to leave. And the abortion facility needed a receptionist. And mom came home, she knew that I was looking to pick up another part-time job, and she says why don’t you come work with me? Well my goodness, what daughter wouldn’t want to work with my mom? The woman who was breaking glass ceilings. The woman who was fighting tooth and nail for women. The woman who started all sorts of things in our community and made opportunities for many. It was an honor to work with my mom. And I took that job without thinking.
I once said I took the job without thinking twice. The truth is I took the job without thinking once. But I didn’t know what I was walking into. I went down to that building, and it was a two-story building – so much I can remember now that I think about. I remember – you know, you walk in and like many abortion facilities were on two floors so the girls would come up, and as quickly as possible, you would separate the girls seeking the abortions from their support network and we did the same thing. I was the receptionist so my job – I was the first person they see. My job was to welcome them, make sure they had a place to sit, give them something to drink, calm their nerves. And that’s what I did.
But it wasn’t too long, actually, when I started realizing that I didn’t know anything about what an abortion was, what we were doing. But I was also afraid to ask those questions. I can tell you that I worked in the abortion industry for about a year. I’ve never seen an abortion. I’ve never heard the suction machine. I left the abortion industry still not knowing really what an abortion was. The process and the procedure. Because I never asked. I just wanted to be with my mom.
So I’m working away, and I’m talking to women, taking appointments and I was kind of answering questions, not knowing what I was talking about but assuring that the counselor was going to be able to answer all their questions and that it was going to be okay. I never met the doctor. Dr. George Klopfer. Who still does abortions in Fort Wayne Indiana, over 25 years later. Who lives in Illinois, and comes to Indiana once a week, in fact more than once a week, because he does abortions in Fort Wayne and does abortions in two other cities that I know of. I never met the doctor. I never met the nurses, because I never went downstairs. I would go to the door that led downstairs and I remember thinking, I should go, really curious to know what happens down there. But I couldn’t bring myself to take a step to go down those stairs. And I remember thinking, it seems very dark down there. Now in retrospect I know the darkness that I was talking about wasn’t the lack of physical light. And I know now that God was certainly protecting me from seeing things that I would not be able to handle and knowing things that I would not be able to handle, and am really grateful that I’ve never had that experience. But I’ll tell you something – not having that experience doesn’t lessen the guilt and the problems that I have faced in making the decision, once I knew the truth, to leave that industry.
As Tony told you, I was attending church at the time. And I was not inactive in my faith. I attended a little evangelical Mennonite church. A very small church. Certainly, a church that would’ve considered itself to be pro-life. I was there every Sunday morning. I was there every Sunday evening. I was there every Wednesday night. I read my Bible every day. And I know that will surprise some people. I was not a nominal Christian at the time. I loved Jesus. I loved the Lord. And as odd as it might sound, I was growing in my faith when I took a job at an abortion facility. And why did that happen? It happened because we never talked about abortion in my church.
It was the ultimate of don’t ask don’t tell. Nobody asked, I didn’t tell. No one confronted me, or had the opportunity to confront me, and we never heard from the pulpit. Now we talked about all sorts of other things that you shouldn’t do. This is very common, I believe, in churches, am I right Father F rank? We talked about all sorts of other things that we shouldn’t do. In my tradition, don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t hang with them that do. We didn’t drink, we didn’t smoke, we didn’t swear, we didn’t dance, we didn’t play cards. We didn’t do a lot of things. And we didn’t talk about life. So I was kind of sitting duck.
That’s why I ask you all to not be afraid to talk. Because people need to hear. I was preparing to study at Fort Wayne Bible college because I wanted to study theology. I wanted to learn more about the Bible. I wanted to learn more about how to study and read and understand Scripture. And I was dating a young man who went to that school who was a youth pastor at a church nearby. And after we’d been dating a while, I finally had the guts to tell him what I did for my part-time job, and we had been dating for a while before I told him, because you know, because a lot of us, at least my experience, working in the abortion history, we don’t share so much what we do for our part-time jobs, what we do for our full-time jobs. Some do, and some don’t – I was one of the ones that didn’t because somehow I knew that that was just not cool. So when I told Andy, he was shocked. But much to his credit, he didn’t turn purple and green and run out and scream… He just kept his mouth shut and said really? That’s interesting. And he dropped me off that night my parents home because I lived with my parents, he dropped me off at my parents home and he drove a half-hour away to where he lived and as he is told me the story since then, he was praying, “Lord, I really don’t think you want me dating a girl who kills children for a living, and somehow this was just not what I want to be part of my life.” And the Lord spoke to him and said, “you’re right.” I don’t want you dating a woman who kills children for a living. But you also can’t just leave without telling her why.”
So the very next day he drove a half-hour again to come and see me for maybe five minutes, spent over an hour in the car to spend five minutes with me. And he showed up on my doorstep unexpectedly and said, “I have a little book. Would you be willing to read this? I don’t want to talk about it today but would you be willing to read this and will talk about it this weekend when we go out for dinner. I said sure. I’ll read it.
And after he left and I sat down and it was a little book that just had a series of pictures, the black and white ultrasound images of life before birth. And I saw for the first time, because you know at the abortion facility no one was talking about life before birth, we didn’t talk about human development, I didn’t really understand what was happening as children grow in the womb. We didn’t talk about that at home, this was the first time I’ve seen these pictures – the first time I’ve ever understood. And those scales fell from my eyes and I was shocked and I thought what in the world have I been doing? And I was so convicted and I was so grieved that I quit my job within the next week.
Preborn baby at 7-8 weeks. Ruth Yorston say pictures like this one
I worked one and a half days a week. So the next day that I worked I went in and I said I can’t do this anymore. And it was a very interesting day at work that day because by that time a mom elevated, she was full was part-time then she was full-time and by the time that she left the industry she was the assistant administrator of the abortion facility. So I went in and I had to sit down with Dee, and with Helen, who was the assistant administrator and my mother, and explained to them “I’m not staying for work today mom, thanks for the ride in. (because we rode together) thanks for the ride in, I’ll be taking the bus home. I’m not staying for work today. I can’t do this anymore because I realize now that we’re killing children and I can’t be a part of that. And the mouths threw open. They were shocked; they didn’t see that coming. Heck, my mom and I lived in the same household and she didn’t see that coming because – that probably wasn’t very nice, I probably should’ve given her a warning – but I didn’t.
And then I got to go home and have dinner with dad that night and have that conversation all over again. And we were the family – we love to debate, and my dad was not a nice debater, he was the guy that would go in for the kill, you know the kind of debater I mean – who just – who knows how to take your words and twist them, to be whatever he wants them to be. He was really really good at that. My dad did not lose debates. And here I was, a girl who – all I knew was that life begins at conception and I couldn’t kill children anymore. But I couldn’t explain anything beyond that, so I was not going to win that debate that night. I was not going to be able to convince him. He just thought that this young man that I was dating, that I was all doe-eyed and would do anything that Andy asked me to do and that’s as far as my conviction would go. And he was convinced that if he could just wait it out until I wasn’t dating this guy anymore, that I would go back to being the normal daughter that he raised. Little did he know that I was now the normal daughter. And I was the daughter that wasn’t going to go away. To my parents credit they did not kick me out of my home. They were really angry with me. But to my parents credit, they continued to love me as they always had. We just disagreed. And it was a very uncomfortable place to live. But we lived with that uncomfortableness as I began to grow in my understanding.
So I’m going to share with you a couple of my experiences what it’s like, for me at that time, working in abortion facility. Our numbers were published in the phone book, we didn’t have a private phone number. Anyone in the community who wanted to know where we lived could know where we lived. And at that time the news was telling us that pro-lifers are kooks, that pro-life people are dangerous, that pro-life people want to kill abortion workers, that there were bombs everywhere. Some of my experiences include getting in the car in the morning to go to work sitting by my mom, and as she would turn the key in the ignition, I remember holding my breath and hoping that the car wouldn’t explode. You see, the fear in the abortion industry at that time was that great. I remember pulling away from our home and looking back and thinking, gosh I hope that’s still there when we get back because I was really that frightened of you. I really thought that you would do that to me. We parked about a block and a half away in the church parking lot, that allowed the abortion workers to rent out their parking lots so we could park there, and our clients often parked there as well. And so it was about a block and a half walk to the abortion facility and remembering that I was a Christian preparing to go to Bible study guess what I took with me to work every day? My big, floppy, leather bound new international version Bible. Marked up, highlighted, ribbons coming everywhere because I actually read it.
I look back now and I’m grieved to think the message that I was sending to the women that I passed on the sidewalk. I got to work in that Bible went on the corner of my desk where everyone could see it. Where every woman who came in for an abortion could see that the first woman they talked to read the Bible. So if I read the Bible and I was there, Jesus must think that it’s okay for you to be here. What a horrendous message.… Part of what I told women was that the church says it’s okay for you to be here. And it wasn’t okay. I’m really glad that God’s forgiven me of that sin.
The scariest part of my day was about the half a block that I had to walk… With the deathsorts on my left and the pro-life prayer people on my right.… On that sidewalk to the left into the right of me. And there was no way I could get to work without being confronted every day “today I lay before you life and death. Choose today.” And every time I went to work I chose death.
But I’d look at the escorts to my left and they were kind of scary. I looked to the pro-life kooks to my right and I couldn’t see that they were not protesting. I couldn’t see that they were praying. I could see it, but I couldn’t realize it because what I thought about them was so deeply implanted in me that I couldn’t see the reality that these were people who weren’t yelling at me, they weren’t screaming at me, they weren’t raising their fists to me, that they were standing there quietly praying for me. But through the veil that covered my eyes that was not at all what I saw. So I walked every week, between life and death and I chose death. Again, and again, and again. And I walked up those stairs and I put my Bible on the desk and said, “okay Lord – how many will you bring to us today?”
It’s a pretty sad life. But is the life that I lived. And I’m so glad, and I’m so thankful for my friend Andy, who had the courage to talk to me…..
I found out that my mom had a miscarriage in between my brother Ken, and I’m the youngest. After I left the industry, there was a time standing in my mom’s kitchen and still trying to talk to her about, you know, why how can you think that abortion is right? You worked in the medical field. Certainly you took embryology 101, didn’t you? You did take something that talked to you about how human life begins? How did you not get that? I didn’t take that course and I get that. And she was trying to explain to me why she looked at life the way she did, and she said, I had a miscarriage between you and your brother Ken. I said yeah, I know that. And when you were conceived, we weren’t really quite sure if you were healthy. And I was really worried that I was going to have another miscarriage. I said, okay. She said, because you stopped moving for a while. And I had a rough time in the beginning of my pregnancy with you. And I said okay, wondering what this has to do with abortion. And she said, so I had a conversation with my doctor. And I told him that I was concerned that you weren’t going to be healthy and that you weren’t going to be normal. I was born in 1964, to put this conversation into perspective. So this would’ve happened in 1963, 10 years before Roe V Wade. And I told the doctor that if you aren’t healthy, that we needed to take care of this now. See, I realized – and it took me 20 years to put that together. I understood that what my mom was saying was that she told her doctor that if I wasn’t healthy she would abort me. But I didn’t put it together in my head it’s over 20 years later. I understood that as being part of what was the makeup of my family – why we were pro-abortion. Because my mom at some point was confronted with making a decision, with making that choice. But what I didn’t put together that she was making that choice about me. See,I am beginning to understand more and more, how deceptive, how convuluted, how complicated this can become. Not because the issue’s complicated, it’s really simple. When does life begin. Answer- at conception. So what does abortion do? it takes a human life. It’s a pretty simple concept. But for my family it was not so simple at all. My dad had three children who after he had a divorce he was denied any relationship with. The reason I never knew my three half brothers was because my dad was not being given the continuing opportunity to be a dad. So he kept it secret. One of the reasons it was so simple for my mom to take that job working at an abortion facility was becasue she thought about aborting me. The reason it was so simple for me to follow in my mom’s footsteps was because she was an amazing woman. And I couldn’t imagine anyone else I would rather be like. I wanted to grow up to be my mom. Strong. Independent. Intelligent, ceiling breaking woman. and I followed in her footsteps. And this happened, yes, because of my family dynamic. But it also happened because of the silence of the church. Silence is not an option. It must not be an option for us. It must not be an option for us. You all know this, but there are people sitting beside you in church who are not pro-life, and I dont’ care how pro-life your church is. There are people who are not pro-life. And if you’re silent, if you’re church is silent, you are helping make it possible for people like me to exist and I beg of you, make it hard for people like me to exist….Speak the truth to us. Confront us in love. And help us understand that what we are doing damages us, damages society, ruins lives, ruins families and futures because if we don’t speak what we know, we’re part of the problem. And that lovely little church I went to who loved me in many many ways, who taught me the importance of obedience to the church, who taught me the importance of reading scripture and praying and loving Jesus, who called me to a higher place, called me to a higher place in many areas, but never in the issue of life. And if we dont’ speak about that issue, we’re falling down on the job and we’re not doing what Christ asks us to do and that is to love the least, the lost, and the lonely.
When Live Action secretly videotaped Planned Parenthood covering up the sexual abuse of minors, the abortion provider held a training for its employees. Abortion worker Ramona Trevino thought they would be trained about how to protect minors. Instead, the training was on how to prevent clinic workers from being recorded.
Trevino says:
“… Jean never said anything about how we could help our clients. Instead, she started a PowerPoint presentation offering tips on what to do in the event Live Action were to target one of our clinics, ideas on how to protect ourselves from such an intrusion.
I doodled in a notebook to release the tension over what was unfolding. Finally, feeling the need to break the silence from the workers in attendance, I spoke up. What did I have to lose?
“Jean, uh, I guess what I’m wondering is, what we do to as managers if something like this really does happen at our clinics?” I asked. “How can we be prepared so that if it does happen, we can make sure our clients are safe and nothing illegal is going on?”
An awkward silence followed, and then Jean, clearly taken aback, responded in a stern voice, “We’re not here to discuss that, Ramona. We’re here to identify whether we’re being violated by an undercover operation.” …
“There are ways to identify whether we are being recorded on the phone or Internet, and that’s what we’re here to learn,” Jean emphasized.
Throughout the rest of the meeting, my stomach churned. The unease that had accompanied me to the meeting had been bumped up a few notches.
She sent us home with a pile of papers, mainly memos concerning what to look for in identifying potential undercover operations, including certain phrases that might be used to tip us off.”
Ramona Trevino Redeemed by Grace (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2015), 73 – 74
Joan Appleton, former head nurse at the Commonwealth Clinic in Falls Church, Virginia (an abortion clinic):
“We had several rescues at our clinic. There was never any violence. One time we had 250 of them removed — there must have been more than 500 at the clinic that day. But there was no violence. I called some of my friends and asked them to come through the line of protesters, one at a time. ‘I’ll give you a Pap smear and charge you a nickel,’ I told them. That way, we could record business transactions during the days of protest and report to the media that the clinic was open for “business as usual”…..
There was no way our clients were going to come. So we planted a couple of women from NOW in a car in the parking lot. They pretended they were distraught, and so frightened by the protesters that they didn’t dare get out of the car. The media were all over, taping this whole thing.”
Lis Trouten, “It Wasn’t Supposed to Happen That Way.” Minnesota Christian Chronicle, January 19, 1995, pgs 1, 4, 5.
Former abortion worker Annette Lancaster describes how the abortionists she worked with sometimes didn’t always give women the medications they promised:
“Physicians often talked badly about patients while performing procedures on them. Sometimes physicians would not use the proper amount of sedation. They would tell the patient they were providing them with certain medications, but they were out, so the patient didn’t get it.”
Abby Johnson’s book The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories collects firsthand accounts from former abortion facility workers. The stories vary in theme, each one an abortion worker’s memory of an event that stuck with her after she left. One story, called “Frequent Flyers,” is about a young woman who had nine abortions.
The chapter’s author, who is unnamed, explains how women who came in for repeat abortions at her facility were called “frequent flyers” by the staff. Even though abortion facility workers were committed to promoting and providing abortions, some of them had judgmental feelings toward these “frequent flyers.” The abortion facility worker says:
When Angie walks through our doors for her ninth procedure, even those of us whose paychecks were funded by abortion shook our heads and said “Really? Seriously?”…
Although it went against my own ideology, I wanted Angie to show some indication of remorse. I didn’t want to feel that way about the numerous women who presented for abortions two, three, or even four times. But nine? That, I felt, deserved at least a slight show of regret or even a bit of good old-fashioned shame.
Angie showed no trace of guilt or any kind of distress when she came to the abortion facility. She had laughed through her first abortion, and every abortion since. It was not at all different when she came in for her ninth. The abortion facility worker described Angie’s demeanor:
[S]he seemed to regard her visits to our clinic as an opportunity to perform her improv comedy act. “Could y’all just xerox my chart and I’ll fill in the dates?” She would jest. Once the paperwork was in order, Angie would attempt to banter with the girls in the waiting room. “It’s no big thing,” she assured them. “I’ve done it 8 times before, and I have no regrets.” Although I couldn’t help but like Angie, her flippancy appalled me.
She showed no guilt or remorse of any kind:
Over the years, I had consoled and held the hands of scores of women who approached that same table with much trepidation. Some would weep, their knuckles white as they gripped my hand until it ached. Others would clutch Bibles to their chests and mouth prayers begging for forgiveness, even before the abortionist had begun his work and when their babies were still safe in their wombs. Many times women would climb onto the table and remain limp and unresponsive during the procedure. Mentally, they were a million miles away. And then there was Angie… Angie never even attempted to explain herself. When we would talk to her about birth control and try to set her up with an appointment to explore the matter further, she would just smile and politely refuse with a wave of her hand.
Angie was using abortion for birth control, not bothering to learn any other method. She may have gone on to have nine more abortions – but something happened.
Angie had no doubt heard pro-abortion rhetoric. She had certainly been told that abortion is only removing a ball of cells, a piece of tissue, or an undeveloped mass. But after her ninth abortion, she was curious and wanted to see the “tissue” for herself. She asked the abortion worker to show her the remains of the abortion, and the abortion worker complied. At 13 weeks, her baby was fully formed.
I debated about how to arrange the pieces. Would it be best to throw them all together in a clump so that none of the parts would be recognizable, or should I piece it back together as we normally did to ensure that none of the parts were missing. There was no protocol on such things, so in the end I opted to piece the parts back together.
Angie’s reaction was not what the abortion worker anticipated:
“Thanks,” she said, her trademark smile still fixed on her face. When her eyes traveled to the container, she gasped sharply, and for the first time since she had arrived, Angie was utterly silent. A few moments later her entire body shuddered and gooseflesh was raised on her smooth brown arms.
When she reached out her to touch the baby, I tried to pull the dish away. She grabbed my wrist and stopped me. We were both silent for a few moments as she continued to stare at the contents of the dish. I stepped back and Angie fell forward to her knees, her fingers still wrapped around my wrist. The other girls in the recovery run began to take notice, and my discomfort level rose exponentially.
Realizing her mistake, the abortion worker tried repeatedly to take the dish containing the bloody body parts away. But Angie held tight to the remains of her child, and wouldn’t let the abortion worker pry it from her hands. The abortion worker said:
[Angie] remained frozen on the clinic floor. “That’s a baby,” she said, barely audible at first. “That was my baby,” she said. Her volume steadily increased as a torrent of words poured from her mouth, words that made everyone extremely uncomfortable. “What did I do? What did I do?” she said over and over and began to sob. Some of the girls in the recovery run began to weep along with her. Some covered their faces with their arms or buried their heads in the arms of the recliners.
Finally, the abortion facility workers were able to tear away the dish. Angie became hysterical. Other abortion workers tried to calm her.
Fellow workers rushed to my side to calm Angie down. After a few minutes, it became obvious that she wasn’t going to calm down. We couldn’t even get her off the floor. After discussing it hastily, we decided to drag her to the bathroom. At least the heavy door would stifle her sobs to until we figured out what to do.
Angie flailed her arms and legs and her screams reached a fever pitch as we dragged her down the hall. We must have been quite a spectacle for the other girls in the recovery room. Finally we managed to place a still panicked Angie in the bathroom and closed the door. I suggested that she splash some cold water on her face and “pull herself together.” Her cries, although muffled, were easily distinguished through the door.
Angie began begging the abortion workers to take her mutilated baby home with her. She did not want to part with her child, even though her child was dead. She pleaded with the workers to give in and let her have the baby. They refused. She continued to sob and wail in the bathroom, disrupting the entire facility.
The abortion workers finally went to her paperwork and found her emergency contact – the number the facility was supposed to call in the event of a life-threatening complication. They dialed the number and got her current boyfriend. He arrived at the clinic. It took him 45 minutes to coax Angie out of the bathroom. They both left the abortion facility in tears.
Angie never came to the facility again. The writer of the story does not know what happened to her. The road ahead of her, once she realized her responsibility for the deaths of nine of her children, would be agonizing to travel. We can only hope she found healing.
From then on, the abortion facility had a strict rule never to show the aborted babies to women. Ultimately, another scene like Angie’s would slow down abortion facility operations and affect the facility’s profits. More women would learn about fetal development, and there would be a decrease in the number of abortions. In order to keep everything running smoothly, quickly, and profitably, the facility banned all women from seeing their aborted babies.
Sometime later, the abortion facility worker who showed Angie her aborted baby left the abortion business. She does not give her reasons why, but the story of Angie and her emotional agony no doubt influenced her.
How many women go into abortion facilities not knowing how developed their children are? How many repeat abortion patients have no idea their babies were pulled limb from limb and then thrown out with the trash or sold for parts? All of the abortion facility workers that day discovered that the truth is the ultimate enemy of abortion. They were reminded how vital it is to keep the facts away from vulnerable women if abortion is to be sold to them. It was the only way to continue making money off them.
Source: Abby Johnson The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2016) 71-77
Former abortion worker Sally Nunezsa tells her story:
“I had worked at a GYN doctor’s office where abortions were performed. I also helped set up appointments for abortions.
I worked there for about three weeks. About a week into working I found out that there was a doctor there who performed late-term abortions up to twenty-six weeks.
Ultrasound of baby at 26 weeks
That didn’t sit well with me since at that time I really thought it was “just a blood clot.”
We had just moved to Florida from New Jersey and my husband didn’t have a job yet. As soon as he found a job I quit. In fact, I remember leaving around the middle of the day. I left crying and told the office manager I couldn’t do it anymore because the “late term” abortions tore my heart apart.
At the retreat, then and only then, I realized the depth of the pain I had caused not only for myself, but also for many other women. As I heard and saw the extreme pain these women were in, and how many babies I helped murder, I felt like all the women that I set those appointments for were there next to me and I could hear them crying and suffering and I could see the babies I helped murder.”
Nilda Sepulveda-Green and Sally Nunezsa “God’s Mercy” Testimonies Priests for Life
Former Planned Parenthood worker Ramona Trevino says:
“As for healthcare, the services offered at Planned Parenthood are limited at best. It is not the same as visiting a gynecologist’s office. If women have any serious gynecological concerns, there isn’t much help available. If a woman is pregnant and doesn’t want an abortion, Planned Parenthood can’t help. If women have suspected fibroids, ovarian cysts, or PCOS, for example, there’s no help available.
There were countless times in which our advanced practice nurse suspected these types of gynecological problems but was unable to diagnose anything because our center was a non-abortion facility, so we had no ultrasound machine available. Those are only available at for women who are having abortions at abortion centers.”
Former Planned Parenthood manager Ramona Trevino says:
“Medicaid patients are like mini cash cows for Planned Parenthood. And when I worked there, we milked those patients for all we could get away with… and we did get away with it….
If a Medicaid patient at Planned Parenthood chose pills as her birth control method, then we “sold” 13 packages of pills to her and billed Medicaid for it all. (Don’t ask me how that’s possible, because I have no clue, but we did it and were told that was the way it was done.) But if a month or so later that same patient decided that the birth control pills weren’t working out for her and she now wanted the Depo Provera shot, we administered that and billed Medicaid again.
(meaning months worth of Medicaid-purchased birth control pills sold to the patient went unused)
Former abortion worker Jewels Green describes the nightmare she had while she was working abortion clinic:
“After an abortion, the instrument tray was passed through the window in the wall into the autoclave room. The other thing that passed through was the Jar. It held the precious contents that just moments before had comfortably resided inside the mother’s womb.
It looked like an oversized glass pickle jar. It was emptied next to me on the countertop: teeny tiny hands and feet and arms and legs and a rib cage and a spine and a hollow, flattened, misshapen, torn head.
I saw it all.
I smelled it all.
Every time. Up to 30 times a day, four days a week…..
I started having nightmares, haunted by tiny, limbless phantom babies. I was floating down a narrow stream with miniature body parts strewn on either shore – and then I’d begin to sink. I’d flail and gasp and go under.”
Patrick Madrid Surprised by Life (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 2017) 52
