Category: Abortion Counseling

“Abortion is a hard enough thing for any woman to decide without the torture of seeing the baby on an ultrasound screen.”

Dr. L. Lacroix, Planned Parenthood, Kelowna, B.C

Kelowna Daily August 24, 2000

Planned Parenthood opposes laws that would allow a woman to see her baby on the ultrasound screen. Even when the proposed law would  not mandate that she must see her baby, but only that she be offered the opportunity to do so, Planned Parenthood opposes it.

Is it better for a woman to be in the dark about her aborted baby, and then find out afterwards that her baby was fully formed, or is it better for her to know the facts so that she can make an informed decision?

And who should make this decision for her? She or the clinic workers who get paid to convince her to abort?

 

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Abortion clinic counselor Sylvia Hampton discusses counseling sessions with abortion patients’ companions. She acknowledges the truth about fetal development if directly confronted, but tries to redirect

“Sometimes, they [the partners of those having abortions] would say ‘Have you ever seen the abortion afterward?’ and I would say, ‘Yes, I have.’ Then they would say, ‘Well, what does it look like?’ And I would say, ‘Well, it depends on the stage of the pregnancy. ”Does it have little feet and a heartbeat?’ And I would say, ‘Yes, at the early stages it does. But you have to have a magnifying glass to see it. And that’s beside the point. The point is that this is a developing embryo that is going to become a child, a teenager, an adult. Is this what this woman wants? Is this what this woman is ready for?….’ I would kind of put it back on them: Yeah, it is a developing human being, but why isn’t she carrying it to term? And then they would start to talk about that.”

Cynthia Gorney Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars. (Simon & Shuster: New York) 1998. p 267

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“When I first started working there [at the clinic], I had to sit and listen to women answering the phone for at least a month before they would allow me to answer the phone. We had to know exactly what we were doing when we were talking to these women. We had to find out very quickly what their problem was, play on that and get them in the clinic for an abortion. We were very good salespeople.”

-Joy Davis

Personal Testimony, “Meet the Abortion Providers” conventions

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“In fact many women will come to me considering abortion, and I have been personally told that I am to turn the monitor away from her view so that seeing her baby jump around on the screen does not influence her choice.”

Shari Richards

John Ankerburg Show, March 7. 1990

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“Sometimes we lied. A girl might ask what her baby was like at a certain point in the pregnancy: Was it a baby yet? Even as early as 12 weeks a baby is totally formed, he has fingerprints, turns his head, fans his toes, feels pain. But we would say ‘It’s not a baby yet. It’s just tissue, like a clot.’

Former Clinic Worker Kathy Sparks

Gloria Williamson “The Conversion of Kathy Sparks” Christian Herald January 1986 p 28

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“There was a public health center in a town not far from Denver and they sent a lot of girls to us. They told us they did all the counseling. We weren’t allowed to counsel them or even ask them about birth control. We couldn’t even tell them what could happen during the abortion. Nothing.

If we tried to discuss alternatives, we would get in trouble with the doctor because then the health center would threaten to send their business elsewhere. All we did was find out how far along they were, tell them when they were going to be finished, get their money, do the abortion, and send them home.”

Registered nurse Sam Griggs

“Abortion Clinics: An Inside Look” Last Days Ministries

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In his article “Abortion Wars” from the Ottawa Citizen, Leonard Stern quotes Canadian physician Eloise Jones.

After having recommended some 500 abortions in the 1970s (back in the days of the hospital committees), the Canadian physician Eloise Jones once remarked, “Almost all the women applying for therapeutic abortion repeated the words,

`Oh it’s not a baby, there’s nothing formed, it’s only a blob of tissue,’ or `It’s mostly placenta — nothing much to it,’ or `I certainly don’t have any feelings for it.’ Those words imply ignorance, and constitute wishful thinking, the desire to escape reality.”

He also went to another clinic and spoke to a worker named Ms. Joan Wright after an unsuccessful attempt to interview a doctor on staff. He asked Ms. Wright:

“. . . is there anyone who can talk about abortion counseling?” There was a long pause. She didn’t understand.

“Don’t you have people who explain to clients what their options are?”

“Women are considered intelligent enough to make the decisions themselves,” she snapped.

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“When a girl called to make her appointment, we’d work her in as soon as possible. If she called on Tuesday, we’d have her in no later than Friday. We wanted to avoid a long waiting period where she’d have time to think about it.

First she would fill out her forms, and then talk with a counselor. . . The counselors were trained in what areas to cover and which to avoid. They’d say, “I know this is a terrible situation you’re in. What can we do to help make this better for you? Yeah, it doesn’t sound like you’re ready for a pregnancy right now.” Their task was to keep the machinery moving – to get the woman into the procedure room as quickly as possible.”

Anonymous Clinic Worker

“Abortion Clinics: An Inside Look” Last Days Ministries

Note: Pro-Choice organization such as Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation vehemently oppose 24-hour waiting periods for women scheduled for an abortion

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“When discussing the sonogram, you are supposed to tell the client that it is a measurement as far as the pregnancy is concerned, but not a measure of the fetal head or anything like that.”

–Rosemary Petruso, on her training to be an abortion counselor

Paula Ervin, Women Exploited: The Other Victims of Abortion (Our Sunday Visitor: Huntington) 1985. Quoted from the St. Louis Review

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“We tried to avoid the women seeing them [the fetuses] They always wanted to know the sex, but we lied and said it was too early to tell. It’s better for the women to think of the fetus as an ‘it.’

–Abortion clinic worker Norma Eidelman

James Tunstead Burtchaell, editor Rachel Weeping and Other Essays About Abortion (New York: Universal Press 1982) 34

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