Category: Abortion Counseling

“If a woman we were counseling expressed doubts about having an abortion, we would say whatever was necessary to persuade her to abort immediately.”

–Judy W., former office manager of the second largest abortion clinic in El Paso, Texas

.Quoted by Last Days Ministries

“They [the women] are never allowed to look at the ultrasound because we knew that if they so much as heard the heart beat, they wouldn’t want to have an abortion.”

former abortionist Dr. Joseph Randall

“Pro-Choice 1990: Skeletons in the Closet” New Dimensions October 1990

“I was trained by a professional marketing director in how to sell abortions over the telephone. He took every one of our receptionists, nurses, and anyone else who would deal with people over the phone through an extensive training period. The object was, when the girl called, to hook the sale so that she wouldn’t get an abortion somewhere else, or adopt out her baby, or change her mind. We were doing it for the money.”

–Nina Whitten, chief secretary at a Dallas abortion clinic under Dr. Curtis Boyd

Personal Testimony at “Meet the Abortion Providers” conference

“Sonography in connection with induced abortion may have psychological hazards. Seeing a blown-up, moving image of the embryo she is carrying can be distressing to a woman who is about to undergo an abortion, Dr. Sally Faith Dorfman noted. She stressed that the screen should be turned away from the patient.”

Editorial on Abortion

Obstetrics and Gynecology News February 15, 1986 p 28

“It is when I am holding a plastic uterus in one hand, a suction tube in the other, moving them together in imitation of the scrubbing to come, that woman ask the most secret question. I am speaking in a matter-of-fact voice about ‘the tissue’ and ‘the contents’ when the woman suddenly catches my eye and says ‘How big is the baby now?’

These words suggest a quiet need for definition of the boundaries being drawn. It isn’t so odd, after all, that she feels relief when I describe the growing buds bulbous shape, its miniature nature. Again, I gauge, and sometimes lie a little, weaseling around its infantile features until its clinging power slackens.”

–abortion worker Sallie Tisdale

Sallie Tisdale “We Do Abortions Here” Harpers Magazine Oct 1987 p 68

From an article on the psychological effects of abortion by a researcher who conducted a study:

“Several empirical studies in the U.S. have indicated the deficiencies of current abortion counseling practices with the majority of respondents reporting insufficient information provided by the abortion counselor; insensitive, unhelpful abortion clinic personnel, with respect to providing assistance in decision-making, and the provision of misinformation, thereby contributing to increased anxiety, confusion and levels of post-abortion depression and hostility.”

Barnard, C. (1990), The Long Term Psychological Effects of Abortion, Portsmouth, NH: Institute for Pregnancy Loss; and Vaughan, H. (1990), Canonical Variates of Post-Abortion Syndrome, Portsmouth, NH: Institute for Pregnancy Loss.

However:

In Georgia, legislators put forth an informed consent law which stated that a woman must receive accurate information about her pregnancy and the abortion procedure, and then wait 24 hours before her abortion. Planned Parenthood adamantly opposed this law. From Kay Scott, the executive director of Planned Parenthood of Georgia:

“Supporters of the Woman’s Right to Know bill say it would allow time for reflection, but this bill is really about deception. Under Georgia law, women already receive full informed consent before having an abortion….”

Editorial by Kay Scott “ABORTION: 24-HOUR-WAIT SUPPORTERS TRY TO DECEIVE” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, GA), Jan 21, 2005 pA15)

In her book Why I Am an Abortion Doctor, abortionist Susan Poppema describes what she says to women who are ambivalent about having an abortion:

“We tell them that we honor them for making their decision and that we regard it as a moral, responsible decision made in the best interests the patient perceives for herself and her family. Often I’ll add that it’s too bad making a good decision isn’t always easy and that even the fact that it may not seem right at the time doesn’t invalidate the decision over the longer haul.”

Suzanne P. Poppema, Mike Henderson “Why I Am an Abortion Doctor” (Prometheus Books, 1996)  p 125

Pro-Choice author Melody Rose discusses how abortion providers view and talk about unborn babies when she says:

“Where pro-life activists refer to “unborn babies” and pro-choice advocates refer to “fetuses,” physicians [abortion providers] speak of the “products of conception.” For doctors, abortion is neither “murder” nor an abstract “right” but is instead a simple medical process of “emptying the uterus.”

Melody Rose “Safe, Legal and Unavailable? Abortion Politics in the United States” (Washington DC: CQ Press, 2007) 188

One abortion clinic worker said the following in an interview:

“After the mother had aborted my job was to take the fetus and weigh [it], put it in a bag, like a lunch bag…After everything was weighed and bagged and a disposal card was signed for the fetus I took everything downstairs to the morgue. I took it down in a grocery cart, which was pretty gory, and I just put it in another laundry bag and from there it was thrown in the incinerator.

….I see more of murder the further along they get. Although inside me I know it’s murder from the beginning…”

Yet when asked about what she says to the women she counsels before abortions:

“We have personal biases about a lot of things in our life and these are just things you don’t let conflict with another person’s interest….I’m not there to change her mind.

[Question: Does one ever suggest that a child is killed by abortion?]

I’ve never asked them that question, but from my standpoint from just talking to the girls it’s just something that’s there that’s got to be gotten rid of because it’s in the way, and it is an “it.” It’s not a human being… No, you never throw that out to them. You just use “abortion” and a lot of times I don’t even use the word “abortion.” I use the word “terminate.” When I tell people I do counseling I don’t say “I do abortion counseling or problem pregnancy counseling.” No, it’s just “counseling,” just to lessen the impact of “abortion.”…You don’t say to a girl who’s going through an abortion that it’s murder. Just like delivering the fetuses in the hospital back at —-, I used to get a mother who would say, “What sex is it?”… But I say, “Lay back, you really can’t tell.” These are things you do to relieve the anxiety within the mother.”

James Tunstead Burtechaell, C.S.C. Rachel Weeping: the Case against Abortion (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row Publishers, 1982) 135 to 136

She hides from the mothers the reality of the abortion procedure.