Tom Davis, who is an ordained minister with the United Church of Christ and a chaplain and professor at Skidmore College:
“I contend that Planned Parenthood is engaged in a form of sacred work, the work, that is, of securing reproductive justice for women… Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is thoroughly secular. But when it comes to the issue of sacred work, that doesn’t matter. The scripture is clear about one thing: sacred work, the work of justice, is sacred no matter who does it.… In the biblical view, sacred work is love, and in practical social realities, sacred work is justice.”
Tom Davis Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005) 6 – 7
Below: An example of some of Planned Parenthood’s sacred work
When a bill requiring minors getting abortions to inform their parents was being considered, a blogger posted some stories from teenagers speaking out either in favor or against the bill. This young man was the father of an aborted baby. He argues against the bill, believing minors should not have to tell their parents:
“My girlfriend Jenay had an abortion and the baby was mine. I met her at John Muir Middle School in Oakland. We were both 14. She was 15 when she had an abortion….
“She had the abortion because she didn’t want her father to hate her. She didn’t actually know if he really would have hated her, but they had some talks in the past and he told her she should wait to have sex and that he would be disappointed if she got pregnant…..
After she had the abortion I felt really bad and relieved at the same time.I felt bad because we killed my son or daughter. I was relieved because I didn’t have to go through the drama that might have occurred with my family and I if they found out.”
He seems to realize that a baby died in the abortion, his own son or daughter. He doesn’t seem to care very much however. But when pro-lifers say that teenagers should get the consent of their parents or at least have to notify them before they get an abortion, pro-choicers insist that teens already tell their parents that the only teens who don’t are those in abusive families. This girl didn’t involve her parents in the decision because she was afraid they would be disappointed with her –not because they were abusive; they do not threaten her, they were nonviolent. She could’ve gone to her parents, and this may have had a different outcome if she had. At the very least, she would not have had to go through a major surgical procedure alone at 15, and been forced to handle any possible aftereffects or complications in secret.It is hard to understand how this is in the best interests of minors.
From former abortion clinic director Abby Johnson:
“Something that has always struck me when I go out to clinics, and I watch the women who come out who’ve had an abortion. I’ll see the sidewalk counselors reach out to them, and I see the compassion on their faces and I hear the compassion in their words, and it’s fantastic. It’s so wonderful to see that. They extend such love to those hurting women.
But then I see clinic workers come out, and that compassion just evaporates. And it’s wrong. 70% of clinic workers have had abortions themselves. They are in need of healing just as much, if not more, than the women who come to that clinic. No one grows up wanting to work in an abortion clinic. It’s a series of heartbreaking, regretful, painful choices that lead them there. We don’t see it because they show their hurt with anger — they yell at us and curse at us because they are hurt. Yet our compassion is somehow diminished toward them.
I want people to know this community of clinic workers have not been embraced by the pro-life community, yet they could literally be the demise of the abortion industry! There are 4 major pending lawsuits against PP, for billions of dollars, all brought by former PP employees. If these suits are successful, God-willing, these large affiliates could shut down. This could be a domino effect. This could be the beginning of the end!
These workers coming forward with information we would not have any other way. The beauty of this is these are real people with real stories of real clients and real things happening that can be brought to court and prosecuted. These clinics really can be shut down because of it. This is what the pro-life movement has been missing for 40 years.”
Lennart Nilsson, who captured groundbreaking photos of unborn babies in the womb gave the following caption on the picture of a six week old unborn baby that appeared in Life Magazine.
“Its length is only about half an inch and it weighs only 1/25 of an ounce, yet it has already begun to take on a human appearance.”
“Embryo’s Face” Life, March 30, 1950
Sara Dubow Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 115
A mother of four on welfare describes how Planned Parenthood refused to provide her with any medical services unless she agreed to be sterilized:
“Lydia Jones, a title X and Medicaid eligible welfare mother of 4, went to the Planned Parenthood clinic near her home and discovered that “free” government programs could be a good news /bad news proposition. “They told me that if I wanted to take advantage of their medical services I would have to undergo sterilization,” she said. “The counselor just kept lecturing me about how I needed to do this, and that I should’ve done it a long time ago. She told me that my children were a burden to society. Well, let me tell you, I love my children. And they are a burden to no one. My 2 oldest are in college, working their way through. The other 2 are straight A students and bound for scholarships. I may be poor, and I may be black, but I’m not going to be bullied by these people into despising the heritage God’s given me,” Lydia walked out – a rare exception.”
George Grant Grand Illusions: the Legacy of Planned Parenthood (Franklin, Tennessee: Adroit Press, 1988, 1992 )101
16 weeks – the average age at which amniocentesis is done. Her abortion would’ve taken place after this time.
From one patient who had an amniocentesis to find out if the baby she was carrying would be disabled. She intended to abort if anything was wrong with the baby:
“If something turns out to be wrong, maybe I’ll be happy I’ve had it. But in some ways, I wish it wasn’t available, I wish I didn’t have to know… I’ve had a couple of abortions before, so it isn’t that. But there’s something about this that’s like playing God.”
Rayna Rapp Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America (New York: Routledge, 1999) 117
Ted Merrill, who has performed some abortions himself, talks about how students in one of his classes started to rethink their views on abortion, just because they were able to witness the development of chicken embryos. He says:
“Extreme positions may be easier when the argument is intellectual. But they don’t hold up at close range. I noticed this in my interactions with college students in an anatomy and physiology class I taught. The nine students in this all-female class were unequivocally in favor of abortion rights when we started the section on reproduction. But something changed when they studied live chick embryos.
I had explained to them that all vertebrates closely resemble one another during early development. Then we open fertilized eggs at various stages. Under a microscope, eggs that have incubated for 36 hour show the first rudiments of an embryo, and a crude tubular structure rhythmically twitching in the center. At 48 hours, you can see an elementary – but definitely formed – heart pumping red blood cells through a looped network of tubes. You can recognize an eye. Just a day later, there are limbs, a face, and a brain that looks like linked sausages.
As the young women looked at these early-stage embryos and watched that amazing little heart beating, they were moved. “If we closed up the shell and put it back in the incubator, would it still grow?” one of them asked me. Another said, “It’s going to die in a little while under the microscope, isn’t it?” A third student declared, “I don’t think we should be doing this.” And while some of my students couldn’t wait to see how the embryo progressed through the later stages of development, others became upset and refused to open any more eggs.
When I brought the talk around to abortion again, I noticed that their feelings were no longer clear-cut. They all upheld a woman’s right to choose, but felt that other factors had to be considered, too.”
Ted Merrill “Abortion: Extreme Views Ignore Reality” Medical Economics, July 15, 1996
So often, people have views on abortion based on impersonal sound bites and slogans they have heard. They do not consider the reality of the unborn baby. Even seeing the embryos of chickens started these students thinking about the reality of life in the womb.
One female lawyer made an interesting comment back in 1990. Commenting on how many of the female lawyers in the American Bar Association have had abortions:
“I’m practically the only one of my friends who hasn’t had an abortion. We’re talking about lots of women in this room…”
Sandra J P Dennis
Richmond Times – Dispatch August 11, 1990
It’s true that this quote is dated, but it makes one wonder. how has the high abortion rate affected the way these lawyers argued about cases relating to abortion? Are the statistics similar in 2014?
Dr. Leroy Carhart, who sends women to his Germantown, Maryland clinic to evade late-term bans in other states, was caught on tape speaking to the frequency of elective late term abortions. The women who was asking the questions was 26 weeks along:
WOMAN: [Seeking elective abortion at 26 weeks] So you don’t see a lot of women like me?
CARHART: Well, saw four this week, so.
WOMAN: Ok. At 26 weeks?
CARHART: Yeah.
WOMAN: Wow.
CARHART: Or more.
WOMAN: All right.
CARHART : Or more.
WOMAN: So I’m not unusual?
CARHART: No not at all.
“There was a window of time when we decided to have the child. It was beautiful, I felt so at peace, I had never felt that way before. I had always struggled to take care of myself, and suddenly that was 2nd to this child. A child by a man who I love very much, so it was a real beautiful thing. It lasted about a week and half, and then reality began to set in. I had to decide at that point that if I am going to keep this baby, then I have to start making changes in my life. I have to start telling my work and my family and the university and on and on. I began to see the implications of keeping the baby, that I would continue to work for low wages, if I could work at all, and he would continue to work for low wages.
What helped me make the decision the most was we literally put it down on paper. We said this is what we want, if we keep the baby, if we don’t keep the baby. We decided it would be much better if we could wait. Waiting was a much better choice. It just seems that obvious. It’s been a very difficult thing, because of my feelings for him and my feelings for the baby. But I don’t regret it. In the long run it has been good. I will finish my program and we’ll buy a house…”
Patricia Launneborg Abortion: a Positive Decision (New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1992) 35 – 36
It is a pity that this woman had an abortion even though she acknowledges that she was pregnant with a “child.” The reason she gives, are they really reasons to kill a baby? The baby below is 8 weeks old, right around the time when most abortions are performed. Was her abortion justified?
Below is a picture of the foot of an 8-week-old aborted baby, left behind after the suction tore the child apart:
