Category: Women’s Stories of Abortion Counseling

Lifesitenews tells the story of a woman who was pressured into having an abortion by her Planned Parenthood counselor. Lynn Zent, who is now a dedicated sidewalk counselor, tells the following story:

“I just wanted to make it all go away, and the only way to do that was to just do it. Originally it was a wanted baby, but the counselor said ‘why don’t you come back in a few weeks and we will talk?’ When I went back she proceeded to fill my head with things such as ‘You are so young’, ‘You have your whole life ahead of you’, and  ‘You have a young child already’. She convinced me how difficult it would to be in school with a new baby and going through a then divorce from my first husband.”

Lynn made the appointment, but at the last second she changed her mind. She had been given a twilight sleep shot, and she said it did not work very well.  “I tried to get up off the table and the nurse held my shoulders down and told me to just lie there and shut up. The experience was horrible.”

“I remember the doctor walking out and telling the nurse ‘It’s all there’, and I remember thinking, ‘what is all there?’ I thought it was just a blob!” Lynn as she recalls friends telling her that baby development and graphic pictures on the Internet were all fake. ….

“I was okay with the abortion for awhile because I joked about it to get through it. The experience was just so horrible.  I even remember the nurse who held me down had short curly red hair,” said Lynn. “I don’t even know her name or the doctor’s name who performed the abortion.” …

Lynn also sent off to Planned Parenthood for her abortion records because she had read somewhere that you have the legal right to collect them within seven years. While it helped her tremendously with closure to her painful past, it angered her to see the documents. They had falsified her records stating that someone was with her and had checked the box that said she was firm in her decision to abort.

“They purposefully made an appointment when they thought so-called protestors would not be outside, because they knew I might change my mind,” Lynn recalled.

STEFANIE LEWALLEN “An abortion and a miscarriage” LifeSiteNewsOct 07, 2013 

Sue, who had an abortion at 15, says the following:

“I was sent to the Family Planning Center for help; well, they helped me all right, so much so they had me booked in for an abortion the next day.

Their reasons were I could not take care of myself let alone a baby. I had no permanent home, and to even think of keeping “it” was totally selfish on my part. They gave me no options and no information; my rights as a human being were not valid because of who I was, just another stupid teenager who got pregnant.

I wanted so much to talk to someone, maybe someone would say, “Don’t do it, I will help you through,” or maybe, “You can keep your baby, there is help available and there are people who care,” but instead I was herded into a room with about ten other girls like cattle and spoken to like I was a piece of dirt and treated as such.”

Melinda Tankard-Reist “This Wasn’t Really Counseling At All” Raising Questions About “Choice” and Pre-Abortion Counseling”  From Giving Sorrow Words: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion

One woman who became pregnant in difficult circumstances had her baby but describes how hard saying no to abortion can be:

“When I was 21 I became pregnant. I was unmarried, a university student and I supported myself by working at night… I fit your description of a woman who should qualify for an abortion exactly. Very busy and very poor. However, I did not want to have an abortion on moral and dare I say it… religious grounds. I believe abortion is murder… My belief is heartfelt and therefore when I became pregnant, although I was completely ambivalent about my condition. I could not seek abortion as an escape route.

The first doctor I went to assumed I wanted an abortion before I said anything to him, and I had to tell him very firmly that I did not need his “help.”

The Planned Parenthood worker who first diagnosed my condition was incredulous at my decision, and in a manner bordering on hostility said to me, “Didn’t you always secretly want to have a child so that you could have someone to love?” Sitting there, literally shaking with terror at the disastrous news, I was subjected to the amateur psychology of a proabortion advocate who simply could not believe that my reluctance to have an abortion was based on private scruples. And that was the beginning of a very long and painful trial by fire. I lost my friends because they could not “tolerate my stupidity.”…

At one point I was offered a large sum of money so I could go to New York and get it done “quietly”. I had pictures of the vacuum machine used for abortion shoved in my face, and a detailed account of the whole procedure outlined for me, until I cried. Every time I sat down in the student pub someone would start: “Why don’t you have an abortion?” And later, “Why did you?”… I caused anger, too, I believe, because my refusal to have an abortion was based on moral and religious grounds. My answer was not an excuse, it was a judgment, and it was probably seen as a judgment on all those who disagreed with me…”

Now older and married… I often sit and wonder about the future of women like me who say no. I think about the fact that I was 21, and telling everyone to go to hell was infinitely easier for me than it must be for a very young teenager, who, although she feels the truth of her unwanted fetus’s humanity in her soul before she ever feels the first life movement in her belly, must face outraged parents, social workers, with seen too many tragedies to care anymore, and terrified boyfriends. Authority figures can be overwhelming when you’re only 15. I wonder, and my heart reaches out with all compassion to every woman who has had an abortion against her wishes. True, nobody can legally drag you on the operating table, but they can certainly use social and financial cattle prods to get you there.”

“One Woman’s Story” Pro-Life News/Canada, April 1978, reprinted from a letter in the Lakehead University (Thunder Bay, Ontario) paper Argus, February 3, 1978

This is an old quote, but it shows that Planned Parenthood was ALWAYS giving biased and coercive pregnancy “counseling.” Read more stories of abortion clinics and/or Planned Parenthood putting pressure on women to abort here. 

Read quotes from former abortion workers on this.

I had a surgical abortion when I was 20 years old. I don’t remember many details. But what I do remember was not pleasant.

I don’t remember how far along I was in my pregnancy. I do know that I paid $500.00 for my abortion.

I went through a group counseling session with several other women. My “counselor” told me that she had 9 previous abortions. I think she said it to make us feel better somehow…and it worked.

Abby Johnson “Abby Johnson: Counselor for My Abortion Had 9 Abortions” LifeNews.com 4/23/12

Abby would later go on to have another abortion, then become an employee at Planned Parenthood and the director of one of their largest abortion clinics for a number of years. She would eventually leave and become a pro-life speaker. Read about why she left here. 

A woman was counseled at an abortion clinic and told that her baby at 3 months was “just a clump of cells.”

“When I saw that a 3-month-old “clump of cells” had fingers and toes and was a tiny, perfectly formed baby, I became really hysterical.

I’ve been lied to and misled, and I’m sure thousands of other women are being just as poorly informed and badly served. To prove it, John [her husband] and I visited most every clinic in Cleveland. I pretended I was pregnant and asked for guidance.

What we heard was incredible. One counselor told us the fetus did not begin to resemble human being until 7 months, another said 5 months, and so it went.”

Rockmore, “Are You Sorry You Had an Abortion?”

David C Reardon Aborted Women: Silent No More (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway books, 1987) 250

A pregnant woman tells the following story, which is very revealing of the way Planned Parenthood counselors feel about those who carry their babies to term.

When Darla was 17, her mother took her for an abortion. She tells her story:

“I didn’t want to do it, but it was like I was being dragged. The first thing they did was an ultrasound, and I think I was 24 weeks pregnant. So I had a week legally left. I saw her [the baby] actually on the ultrasound, of course. I was 17 years old, I wasn’t going to say, “Turn the machine around; I don’t want to see.” And when I saw her, I knew that I wasn’t going to do it.

So we spent the whole day over there, crying and arguing with the doctors and staff like that. When it came down to signing the piece of paper that said I could die during the procedure, I said no, I wouldn’t do it. We went all the way up to the director of the clinic. They were saying it was best for me, because I was young. My mom was really pushing for it too, so they stood by her. Maybe she was trying to get people to convince me. …They were trying to convince me that it was safe, that in years nobody had died or whatever, that it was relatively safe.

I went in thinking that I was going to do it, but when I saw it on the ultrasound, I couldn’t do it.… So what ended up happening was that they wanted me to sit in on a group where they explained stuff. I guess they thought they were going to trick me and take me in and do it. I don’t know, I remember a lot of stuff that just doesn’t seem right now. So I sat through the group and they said, “Okay it’s your turn; the doctor’s waiting for you.” And I said, “No I’m sorry, I’m just sitting in on this group and I’m not going to go in.” And I asked where my mother was. They stalled for a minute, and I just got up and walked out and said, “I’m not going to do it.”…

So we sat outside for about an hour and a half, and three or four nurses came out at different times and said, “The doctor’s waiting, you’re ready, let’s go in, come on,” and they would take my hand and try to pull me in. And I said no, that I could not do it.”

Rita Townsend, Ann Perkins Bitter Fruit: Women’s Experiences of Unplanned Pregnancy, Abortion and Adoption (Alameda, California: Hunter House Inc., 1991) 39-40

Darla had her baby. It’s easy to imagine most 17-year-old girls caving in to that kind of pressure.