ClinicQuotes

College student pressured into abortion by boyfriend

A college student had an abortion after her boyfriend demanded it. Her boyfriend was older than her and wealthy. She was 5 weeks along:

“When I found out I was pregnant he told me that I was gonna have an abortion and that it was still an egg and not a baby yet it shouldn’t be hard. He said I tricked him into getting pregnant. After a week of knowing I was pregnant, I went to the women’s clinic and aborted the baby through the medical procedure.

I was given the pill that was gonna stop the pregnancy and another set of 4 pills I had to take at home the next day. After taking the pills at home, I started feeling so much pain, pain I’ve never experienced. It was as if I was in labour. I was all alone. He wasn’t there for me, the day I went to the clinic he just gave me money and sent me one of his drivers.

He didn’t care how I felt. I hate myself for allowing him to scare me, a lot of women do it alone. My family would have supported me. Now I cry everyday because I want my baby.”

The story can be found here.

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Remember: District Attorney described filthy conditions in Kermit Gosnell’s facility

Dist. Atty. Seth Williams describing Kermit Gosnell’s clinic after raiding it under suspicion that Gosnell was prescribing illegal narcotics:

“There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with bloodstained blankets.

All the women had been sedated by unlicensed staff – long before Gosnell arrived at the clinic – and staff members could not accurately state what medications or dosages they had administered to the waiting patients. Many of the medications in the inventory were past their expiration dates.
Investigators found the clinic grossly unsuitable as a surgical facility.

The two surgical procedure rooms were filthy and unsanitary – Agent [Stephen] Doughtery described them as resembling “a bad gas station restroom.”

Instruments were not sterile. Equipment was rusty and outdated. Oxygen equipment was covered with dust and had not been inspected. The same corroded suction tubing used for abortions was the only tubing available for oral airways if assistance for breathing was needed. There was no functioning resuscitation or even monitoring equipment, except for a single blood pressure cuff in the recovery room.”

James Taranto “Back Alley Abortion Never Ended” Wall Street Journal April 18, 2013

We must not forget the horrors of Kermit Gosnell, the fact that he was operating legally, and the fact that pro-choice gatekeepers allowed him to continue operating on women in his filthy clinic even after a woman had died and they knew about the conditions there.

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Former abortion worker only became more determined after murder of abortionists

Former abortion worker Jewels Green was working in an abortion facility during the time when antiabortion activists murdered several abortion providers.

These murders didn’t deter her from working at an abortion facility, but instead made her more certain that what she was doing was right and more dedicated to the pro-choice cause.

She says:

“There were other well-known murders of doctors and staff who worked at abortion facilities. I signed sympathy cards that were sent to the families of Dr. John Britton and James Barrett just a little over a year after Dr. Gunn was shot. Then, on December 30, 1994, two women were killed at a clinic shooting in Boston.

I imagine that some people left their jobs at abortion clinics after that. I didn’t quit, but I did wear a bulletproof vest to work for a week after the Boston killings. During this scary time, I had more nightmares about being killed at work than I did about the killing going on in the procedure rooms.

These terrible events solidified my pro-choice ideology into a steadfast commitment to ensuring that abortion would remain a legal option for pregnant women.”

Patrick Madrid Surprised by Life (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 2017) 55

Violence against abortion providers also sends the message to the public that pro-lifers are violent fanatics and makes them less likely to listen to pro-life opinions. This violence is wrong in and of itself, but also counterproductive to the pro-life cause.

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Former Clinic Worker: Kelly Lester

In a March 25, 2021 webcast by And Then There Were None, former abortion worker Kelly Lester was interviewed by Brandy Meeks. Here is her testimony:

Lester: I worked for a clinic here in Richmond, Virginia. I live now in Richmond, Virginia. And it was the clinic that I actually had my first abortion at when I was 15. Years later, I was working as a waitress and a bartender and was just looking for a different kind of job and saw that they were hiring. And knew them, because I had gone there.

And so I went and applied, and got hired, and worked as a receptionist and was there…for about nine months. And then left. That was about 20 years ago that that happened, that I left there. And continued in my crazy life…

Eventually [I] met my husband and I am now married and have six children…

I was very shy and insecure in school and got made fun of, bullied pretty intensely to the point where I wouldn’t wear the same outfit twice because the kids picked on me so badly. I knew what they were going to say. And so that caused me to develop into a really insecure teenager.

At 12, I snuck out of my parents’ house with some friends, went to a party, and was raped. It was by one of the boys in school. And I went and told my friends about it and they said, “Oh, that didn’t happen to you, why would he do that to you?”…

And I told my youth pastor and she said, “If you’d never gone to that party it would’ve never happened.” And so because of that, I felt like I had already sinned in a way that was unforgivable.

Now, I grew up in church. I was in the church every time the doors opened. Wednesday night, Sunday night, Sunday morning. We had small group at my parents’ house, so I knew a lot about God, but I didn’t really know God…

I felt shame, and I felt guilt. So I began to be promiscuous and was looking for love and looking for attention, and at 15 was pregnant. And that is when I went to that clinic for the first time. By myself. My boyfriend’s mom drove me there and dropped me off. And I had my first abortion.

There was definitely a progression where I wasn’t feeling good about myself even more so… After that, I just didn’t care about life anymore. I was playing tennis, was ranked in the region, was supposed to go to college and all of these things that I had planned on doing. After that, after walking out of the clinic, I just didn’t care about any of them anymore.

And so I numbed the pain any way and every way I could. Drugs, and alcohol, and men and live life like out of a movie – a bad movie… just really a wild, wild time that I’m lucky to have survived.… Just trying to numb the pain from that experience, which then led into more shame and led into more guilt and led into more condemnation, just trying to feel better – feel better about what I had done, and who I was.

Because I’d always wanted to be a mom. Growing up, I always thought I’d be a mom. I knew that what I had done was wrong, but I didn’t feel like at 15 I had any choice, and I felt like having a child was going to ruin my life. You know, was going to ruin my plans to go to college, was going to ruin all these things I was going to do. When in reality, the abortion is what ruined my life… It didn’t ruin my life, but it ruined the plans I had for my life at the time. It changed me. It changed who I was. It changed how I felt about myself. It changed how I thought other people saw me, even though people didn’t necessarily know about it.

I became hard and didn’t care about my life or anybody else’s life, really, for that matter. And that continued on for about 15 years. And finally culminated in New Orleans.

I was there with a boyfriend. It was a very abusive relationship and we decided that I was going to come back home, and we went out to party one last night. And as we were out, we were drinking and got into a fight, which was pretty typical. He came home. I found my way home later than he did, and when I got home, the fight really intensified.… We had broken the door off the hinges of the door frame, and he was sitting on top of me with a 2 x 4, and was about to hit me over the head with the board. And as he’s about to hit me, he drops the board, he punches me in the face, you know, my eyes bust open, my nose busts open – and he looks, and he’s like, oh gosh, I really hurt her – because there was blood everywhere. And the fight stops.

The next day, I had all these text messages from my father. I didn’t call him, because I didn’t feel very good after the evening and after the fight but came back to Virginia and he met me, and when he saw me, he just was crying. And I said, oh dad, it was fine, I was in a car accident.

Lester found out that her father (who is a pastor) was praying for her the night she had the terrible fight with her boyfriend. Her father told her he had a sudden, strong premonition, out of the blue, that she was about to be killed. This convinced him to pray for her. Lester believes his prayer was the reason her boyfriend didn’t kill her. Believing this was an act of God, she dedicated her life to Christianity.

Meeks asked Lester if there was a moment when she realized working at the abortion clinic was wrong, an “a-ha moment” similar to the ones some other workers have experienced.

I didn’t actually have an “aha moment.” For me, it was more of a gradual and cumulative kind of thing. During that 15 years of craziness, like I said earlier, you know, I was waitressing, I was bartending, living a party life. I was really looking for something with some meaning. Looking for a job that had some meaning, a job where I could help people. Because in that time period, I was kind of a mama, I took care of everybody. So I did want to take care of people, but I just didn’t know how. And when I got hired there, I began to see things – I call it behind the glass – that I didn’t see when I was on the other side of the glass.

I saw the way the workers spoke to the women that were there. I saw the manipulation that we did to the women that were there. The manipulation that we did to the men. And I thought, “Oh my gosh, did they do this to me?”…

Knowing that I had been where these women were, and hearing how they talked to them, I thought, oh my gosh, this is bad. And it got worse, and worse, and worse, and I also dealt with the women in the recovery room.

And we saw lots of crazy stuff. Lots of women that were injured in the procedure and women that had issues. And so, I was like, something about this isn’t right. I knew that something about it wasn’t right. And finally, I just – it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. It wasn’t helping people, and so I left the clinic.…

I definitely was pro-choice, because I had another abortion after that. So, even though I had left the clinic, it still was an option I went to when I felt like I didn’t have one.

And then, once I got “saved”, those things, that I knew were not necessarily good, started coming back around, and I was like, okay, I need to deal with this. I need to think about this. But it honestly didn’t change for me, Brandy, until I began to accept God’s love for me.

She said that due to her religion, she came to see unborn babies and women the way she believes God sees them, and to see herself the way she believes God sees her. This was part of what led to her becoming pro-life.

And then, I got married, and got pregnant. And that was the end of it for me. Once I felt the baby – because you can have blinders on your eyes, which people in the abortion industry do – they’re like Paul. They’ve got scales on their eyes. Even the most hardened ones don’t really believe the reality of it, I think, because if you did, you couldn’t actually do it.

But for me, when I felt the baby move in my body, I was like, “Oh my goodness.” The reality of it all came to me – that it is actually a baby. And so there was no turning back for me at that point.

Meeks: I love something you said there, because I think it would help, especially if there – if a worker were to come across this video, were to come across this, or is hanging out with us tonight, that if you do not identify as being pro-life at point, it is still okay to leave the clinic for all of the other reasons, right?

Lester: Absolutely.

Meeks: That you can identify as being wrong… The manipulation, the sales tactics, the harm that you see done, all of these things, right, and we can be there for you. And Then There Were None can be there for someone who may not be in that boat of saying, hey I’m ready – we just need you to say, I’m ready to leave that life behind.…

Now you mentioned something earlier about some manipulation that was happening in the clinic… Can you tell us more about that, just some examples so that we can understand that a little more clearly.

Lester: Sure. So one of my jobs again, I was the receptionist, so I was in charge of all the phone calls that came into the office, making appointments, handing out the paperwork when the women came in the clinic – one of my main jobs with the actual reception area. And what I mean by that is, making sure that it was clean, making sure that it had magazines, making sure that the magazines that were in the area were edited. And what I mean by that is anything that’s in the magazine that might trigger a woman to want to continue with her pregnancy, we would remove. So that could be a diaper ad. It could be a happy couple, even, walking [or] sitting on a park bench, because those kinds of things could stir up in this woman that she wanted to be a mom, and so we didn’t want anything that would make her decide that.

The TV that we had in the waiting room was not just playing public TV. It TV with commercials that were tailored to not promote a woman to keep her child.

Meeks: How could they control something like that?

Lester: It was all prerecorded. It was like – it was a while ago, so these were all VCR tapes. We put VCR tapes in, it looked like a TV, like you were just watching TV – but it was actually VCR tapes with the recordings on it.

That – when I first heard about it, because now I think about it, and I’m like, oh my gosh, how did I even do that, you know? But when it was first presented, it was, look, these women are in crisis. And they’re struggling with this decision, for many different reasons… So we want to prevent them from feeling guilty for what they know they need to do. You know, it was always that phrase, “we’re helping them.… [We’re] protecting them, and helping them make the decision they really want to make.”

But I began to see what was happening in the back rooms and so I’m like, that’s not really – you’re saying that, but that’s not really what you’re showing me and how you’re acting.

I would also load the books. So, if it was a day when we didn’t have appointments, when women would call in – we had a phone script that we would use – it was before the day of caller ID. So we would say, “Could I get your name, you can just give me your first name, can I get your first name and your phone number, so in case we get disconnected, I can call you back?” Right? Sometimes they would give it, and sometimes they wouldn’t.

Well, if they gave it and didn’t make the appointment when we had available appointments, we would call them. And say, “Hey, just wanted to check on you, let you know, we have tomorrow open if you want to come in.” So we would actually recruit, almost, to try to fill the appointments, because if there were no appointments, there was no money.

The clinic where I worked at was a private clinic, and they did nothing but abortions. The only “care” that was given was as it related to abortions. So pregnancy tests for people wanting abortion. You know what I mean. There wasn’t – we didn’t do any outside service unless the people were coming there for that. So if we had open days, then we weren’t making money.

And then, the other piece was the men.… We were told to be nasty to the men. Because a woman who felt supported by her boyfriend or husband or partner was less likely to continue with the abortion. Now, again, that wasn’t the way it was phrased. It was, look, we don’t want him to pressure her to do something that she doesn’t want to do. So the best thing for us was to get him out of the waiting room. So if he came to the appointment with her, we would (now, in the state of Virginia at that time, you would make an appointment and then you had to come back the next day for your procedure. So the day of that first appointment, we would get him out the door as quickly as possible.

And we hoped that he would leave so when she came out of her initial appointment, he wasn’t there waiting for her. So again, “You’re all alone. He can’t even wait for you for the appointment. You’re abandoned.”… When the guy was probably freezing because we turned the AC on so cold that they would go and sit in their cars…

If a male called to make an appointment, we would give no information, we wouldn’t say anything to them, in fact we were rude to them, and I did a yelp of that clinic pretty recently, and that was one of the reviews that several people had said, that were men. So apparently, they’re still doing that.

But we didn’t want him in the picture, we didn’t want him in the waiting room, we didn’t want him around at all. We wanted her to feel alone. Because if she felt alone, she was more likely to continue [and have the abortion].

So it didn’t take very long of seeing through that and realizing, something about this just isn’t right. And I myself had come in alone. And so I knew how hard that was. I knew how scary it was, how hard it was to be that person, alone, sitting there.

The only specific instance that I can remember was, there was one girl that came in, and they called her a frequent flyer, because she was somebody who came in pretty regularly… It was more like, “Don’t even waste your time. She’s just a frequent flyer.” So it was like a lack of regard for her, for her care, for her getting the counseling, and all of the things that you’re supposed to do before the procedure, whether you’ve had one or you have 14 – you are still, there’s a procedure – for her they basically bypassed all of that. There were definitely comments in the back that I can remember that were – because women were sad. When this happened, they were sad.

Oftentimes, women would have regrets and they would second-guess what they were doing. But once you went through the doors from the reception back to the back, it was like, all bets were off. This is what we’re doing – you’re in the machine now, and this is how it’s going. And so, the comments were hateful. The way that the women would talk to the patients was terrible.

In the recovery room, there was no care, there was no compassion. It was more like, get up out of the seat so we can go home. And oftentimes, women left who should not have left. That had issues. That should not have left when they left.

Seeing all of that I’m like, okay, you don’t really care about these women, because if you did, when they were back in this room bleeding from the procedure, you would take care of them. When the woman says, hey, I think I don’t want to do this anymore, if you really cared about her, you’d say let’s talk about this, let’s make sure. Not, “Hey, this is what you came in for. Sit down and be quiet.”

So that coupled with the manipulation going on in the front coupled with, just things that I was seeing, I was like, this isn’t what I thought it was. This isn’t what I signed up for…

Meeks: did you ever push back with anybody or question it…and how are you treated with that?

Lester: I didn’t really, because – I mean Brandy, to be honest with you, they were paying me a lot of money. They were paying me a lot of money to do a job – I didn’t have any kind of skill, I was a bartender, you know, I didn’t have skills for this. So when they said it, it was like, okay, that’s just part of the job. So I didn’t push back. I don’t know that I ever really pushed back about anything, because the money was so good. The hours were great, because it was a short period. I was working pretty much part-time and making money like I was working full-time. So because of that, I just did what I was told.

My position was receptionist. So I would answer the phones. I would, when the women came in, I would give them their folders or their paperwork, then when they filled out the paperwork I would take it. I would then pass it off to the different people…pass the paperwork to a nurse, who would then check their weight, do their urine screen, and then go from there. Then once all that was together and done, I was in charge of the paperwork once it was done, filing it and putting it in the filing cabinet.

And then on days when we were doing procedures, it was intake, making sure that the files were ready, because at this point they were already pretty much completed with all that stuff, and then the release. So I would go into the recovery room and give them their cookie and their little thing of Kool-Aid and their stuff, and gather them up, and they’d go into a changing room. So I’d give them their stuff, they’d go into the changing room, and I would get them out the door.…

I was never in a procedure room. I was never in the POC room. But every other aspect of it I had my hands in.

Meeks: Definitely, the before and after, that I’m sure can still give you memories that might not be so pleasant, especially if you had women that you’re having to dismiss before they may be even ready to go.

Lester: Yeah, that was the biggest thing for me, because I went through the healing retreats with And Then There Were None, and this was 20 years after leaving the industry, and having gone through lots of healing for lots of different things, and thinking, I’m good. I’m going to go because this will be fun and I’ll get to meet some people – but I wasn’t good. And I realized at that retreat that for me… I always detached abortion with the baby. So even as a pro-lifer, I always have been focused on the mom. You know, always on her. And not so much on the baby in her belly. And part of that is because, for me, I couldn’t even think about that, you know, when I was going through those things.

But partly, what I have realized is because when I was working at the clinic there were women who not only left that day not being a mother because they had terminated their pregnancy and killed their baby, but there are women who now still, 20 years later, are still not mothers. Because they perforated their uterus, or something happened in the procedure that now has prevented them from being a mother. And many of them, in fact all of them, don’t know it. Because we didn’t tell them, hey, we did this, you need to be checked out by your OB, you need to go get a follow-up appointment.

We didn’t let them know that something happened. And so there are women who can, to this day, not be mothers because of what happened in the clinic.
And so that, for me, was something that I had to deal with. And at the retreat, that was what really impacted me. Because I wasn’t – I mean, I was dealing with the babies by proxy, but unlike some of the other women who were in the procedure room and in the POC room, I never saw the baby. But I did very much see the women.

And so that is where my heart lies. That is where my heart now, as somebody who’s pro-life, I want to see these women empowered and encouraged… Why didn’t I tell them, you can do this, you know? And I know why. I didn’t tell them that because I didn’t think I could. And so, if I couldn’t do it, why would I think you could?…

At the March for Life, she went to a “Coffee with Quitters” event and met people from And Then There Were None.

And that I went over to the Coffee with Quitters and I listened to the women, and I was like, those are my people. Because they were strong and they were beautiful and they were vulnerable, and the way that they were interacting with each other, there was just – there was a preciousness. That’s the only way I can explain it. These women were a tribe. We say that, and it sounds so clichéd, but you could see it with these women. There was that common bond and I was like, those are my people.

Then COVID happened, and I got delayed from going to the healing retreats.
But the first healing retreat, the people that were there were all in different stages of their life, were different ages – one girl had been out of the clinic for three days. I think she just left. And one had been out 40 years. And we all had different roles and different jobs. But as soon as we got there, we’re sisters. We had a commonality that I’ve never had with anybody else.

And everything I’ve gone to, it’s been really fun meeting the other workers. The quitters. Sharing our stories, just being able to be real with each other. You don’t have to put on any pretenses, you don’t have to make it sound a certain way or worry that it’s going to come off crass, or worry that it’s going to come off sarcastic when it’s such a serious topic…

There’s ways you have to deal with stuff, and sometimes it’s humor, unfortunately, and sometimes it’s being cold. And we can do that with each other, and know why. Know that it’s not because you’re hardhearted or you’re an evil person, it’s because you suffered a trauma. Every day that you walked into that clinic, you were suffering a trauma…

It’s been unlike anything I’ve ever been a part of.

The workers, we are human. And we are flawed. And most of us, if not all of us, have suffered trauma in our lives, which is what brought us to the clinic. It’s hard to understand how someone could go in there every day and do what we did, or doing currently. And it’s really hard, when your eyes are open, to understand that. But when you’ve suffered trauma and when you are blinded to the reality of God, and the reality of hope, and the reality of life, you do things don’t make sense.

So these women and men who are in those clinics, they need a loving face. They need a smiling face, they need a word of encouragement. They need to know that you are for them. You’re not for what they’re doing. You don’t support their job. But you are for them. And you want to help them. And see them as humans. We want to make somebody the bad guy. And the workers, it’s really easy to make them the bad guy. But they are humans. They are children of God. They are mothers and daughters and sisters and brothers and husbands, and when they can come to the other side, they can be powerful tools in the pro-life movement, and powerful tools in other people’s lives.

You never know, that smile that you give to them when they’re coming into the parking lot to park their car, or that cup of coffee you give them, you never know when that’s gonna make the change. Imagine it was one of your kids, or one of your siblings in there. How would you want them to be treated? And when they come out, send them to us, because we’ll love on them, and be there for them and help them be the best them they can be.

Note: Religious beliefs expressed in testimonies may not always be endorsed by website owner.

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Woman who took abortion pill devastated after seeing her dead baby

A woman named Natalia told her story of taking the abortion pill in a video released by March for Life UK

This is her story:

“My name is Natalia. I’m 20, and it was in March last year that I found out I was pregnant, just at the start of lockdown. I can remember the day. It was really, really sunny and I’m driving to my friends house. We were just sitting in her garden and stuff. And it was actually like two days – I should’ve had my period two days prior. So I was a little bit late. So she was just [saying], “Why don’t you just take a test?” And there’s a test kit across the road…

I’ve come outside now with the test, and I’ve given it to her, like, “Will you look for me?” And it comes up with the two lines.… I felt so sick. I felt so sick. I started throwing up, I think. It’s a bit of a blur.…She rang my baby’s father and told him…

My initial reaction was, I just wanted it to go away… I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. I think that night, I must’ve – because he was a couple hours away – must’ve driven all the way to where he was living, and I don’t think we said much, to be honest, at that time. But I think the initial, kind of, thoughts of both of us were that we weren’t going to keep the child.

But then as time went on, I was talking to different people, different friends, and stuff like that. I think as time went on I kind of accepted the idea… In a weird way, I kind of felt this kind of attachment, this kind of love for my child that I didn’t even know. But at the same time, I didn’t want to get comfortable with the idea, because I knew the baby’s father was so against me having it and all of that. It was almost like I was scared to talk, and stick up for what I thought. Every time I brought it up, I was always shut down. Everyone would tell me I can’t do it; I’m stupid. That this is going to ruin my life. All of my friends, I think, but one, were so against it. So I think I reached out to the wrong people.

I had people in my life that I could’ve gone to, like my mom. I chose not to. I was just scared. You have all this fear inside you that – it’s just so scary…
It’s all kind of a blur. You can’t remember dates and times… I was making these appointments to go into the clinic and get this abortion. I can’t really remember it that well, but the first time I went, I remember I went to the door and I just burst into tears. And I actually had my baby’s father with me, but he wasn’t allowed to come in because of COVID.… That set me off. I just started crying. And they didn’t give me the abortion pills that time. So I left.

They said, come back when you want to do another appointment. So obviously, I rang back.

[The] same thing happened, but he didn’t come with me. So I missed another appointment.… And then on the third time I went in. I can’t really remember the consultation… All I can remember [was that] it was quite cold. There weren’t any emotions, really, from the nurses. I remember them all being masked up and stuff, and it was quite scary. So in the end, because I was – I was in a state the whole time. They said, okay, well if you want to have this abortion, and you’d feel more comfortable at home, we’ll give you the pill to take home. So then they gave me the pills to take home…

They gave me in a massive – because it’s quite a few pills you have to take, it’s not just one – this massive envelope thing. It just sat like – I would carry them with me. It was really weird.… The nurse said to take them that night. Obviously, I didn’t. They just stayed with me. And there were quite a few attempts… I was going to take them, but it never sat right with me. I never wanted to take them.

By my last consultation, I was about seven weeks pregnant. In those three consultations, I was never told about the risks that there are emotionally and physically. I wasn’t aware of them. I was never offered a scan, so it was never like they actually knew how far along I was. It’s just crazy now that I look back on it, and I just think how I was even able to take those tablets home. I mean, for all they know I could’ve been so far gone [that] it could’ve caused some serious damage.

When I brought the tablets first home with me, I was about seven weeks. I didn’t actually know that at the time. I was just kind of lost – I lost track of time so I didn’t actually know how many weeks I was. But those tablets sat with me for about three weeks, and there were countless occasions when I look at them and say, well today’s going to be the day that I take them. And then I would just put it off and off and off… It was almost like I was prolonging it. I wanted my baby’s father to be like, “No, it’s all right, we can keep it.”

[At this point, she breaks down in tears]

It’s so sad to say it now. I was doing anything to please him. I never thought about my child… It was countless occasions where he’d be like, well, “if you keep it, I’m not going to stay with you.” It was stupid. Why didn’t I just leave him? But it’s fear. You’re scared. And not only that. You have so many other views of people… giving their opinion. I never asked for their opinion… I’m too young. I’m going to ruin this, I’m going to ruin that, you know what I mean? It’s ruined me now, so it’s like, what was it really for?

So, I was in my friend’s garden. I remember the day. At that point, my baby’s father wasn’t speaking to me. I remember, almost like a state of panic, that he was going to leave. It sounds so stupid. And I was with my friends in the garden. They were just saying, you’re an idiot, just take them. Just take them.

It took me like three hours to even take those tablets with a water bottle. And there was a water bottle, the lid of the water bottle. And they put water in the lid, and the tablet in the lid, just to dissolve it for me because I couldn’t physically take it.

[Breaks down]

My friends were telling me that I just needed to take it. Looking back on it, it’s like, I can’t believe I listened to them. It’s almost like I was manipulated into it. I don’t know why they didn’t stop me. Why they couldn’t see that I was hurting. I remember saying so many times, “don’t make me do it. I don’t want to do it.” Not to just them, but [to] other people as well.

[Drank the dissolved tablet]

After I got home, and I was just in my room – you have to wait until the next day, and then you have four other tablets, that you actually have to stick up, one by one, like, right up there. I went back to that same girl’s house – I went back to that house – and did one by one, in her garden, because it was locked.

And it was that night that the physical aspect of it all started. So I’ve gone back home, I’ve taken five tablets now, one orally, four up, and I remember, I had to wait and then take another tablet later on that night. I had to wait till 1 AM… I was just so scared.

I felt so alone during that whole pregnancy, but that was hard. That night was so hard. I remember just saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I remember, I had my laptop on my bed, and I was watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians the first season, because I was just trying to get my mind off everything that was happening. I think the pill that I took at 1 AM – I remember throwing that up at the side of my bed. And I was worried it wasn’t working – I didn’t sleep.

I remember the time. It was about 5 AM when it first started happening. Really, in the grand scheme of things, the physical pain is nothing. It’s nothing to do with that – but I know people are going to want to know whether it’s painful. Of course it’s painful… It feels like you’re being stabbed in the stomach. I had to be quiet because my mom was in the house, with my sister. I didn’t want to wake anyone up. I remember somehow getting to the toilet. It was unbearable, the pain.

That’s when I passed my baby. And I looked down, and I saw him. It was like a heavy period. It was like a baby. I looked down, and I looked up, and I can’t look anymore… It’s a child. It’s not like a bit of blood.

I must have flushed the toilet. I passed my baby into the toilet. [I] flushed it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I remember just falling to my knees. Everything get so blurry. I got into my bedroom. I [was] throwing up again. I’m taking all of these Codeines, but they’re just coming up. And then I just lay in my bed. And I was just bleeding through the mattress. And I just lay there for about three days on my own, not wanting to speak to anyone. Just all alone. On my own. Just trying my hardest not to think about what was happening.

After I threw up the pill, the one I took at 1 AM, I must’ve rang the clinic. I left a voicemail and said, I’ve taken this last pill, but I don’t know if it’s going to work because I threw it straight back up.… And then I switched my phone off for a few days. And when I switched it back on, there were so many voicemails and stuff. So I rang them back and the nurse, or whoever picked up the phone, was like, “we were just ringing to check on you because you were over the 10 weeks when you’re allowed to take these tablets. And you over the 10 weeks, and we were worried that you would’ve lost a lot more blood and it would’ve been a lot more, kind of, painful. But at that point it was already done. I already done it; been through it all, and she – that was it.

I remember asking her on the phone, like, I wasn’t going to be able to have more children, because I thought I would ruin the chances of that because I was – I didn’t know – I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d taken it too late, or whatever. And she was like, no, no, everything’s going to be fine, don’t worry. And that’s where the phone call ended.

After that phone call to the nurse, I didn’t have any contact. No one rang me or anything, to see if I was all right. That was it. I just had to deal with it on my own from then.

So, during my whole pregnancy I was – I kept it so quiet in the house, when I was feeling sick, or I would go to throw up. No one knew. I don’t know how I got away with it. I just did a really good job of hiding it. And that was the same with those three days. My mom’s a nurse, so she was, obviously, working. I think she just thought I was having a couple of off days. And just not wanting to come out of my room and stuff. Me and my sister aren’t close anyway, so it’s not like she even noticed. She’s in her room and I’m in mine. But it was on the third day – or I can’t remember how many days that

I come out of my room and I’ve gone to the shop and I’ve come back, and I went to sit on the sofa with my mom. And she looked me in the eyes, and she was, like, she started crying. She’s like, “You’ve had an abortion, haven’t you?” And all that time, I just wanted to tell her. But it was almost like, I was waiting for her to say, this is what you’re going through – because she’s so good at reading my mind. She’s so good. I was just kind of waiting for her to [say] “you’re pregnant.” Or say something like that. …

I just burst into tears, and she was really really amazing. She obviously had gotten into my room and just seen the pools of blood and stuff, so that’s how she found out. She was just so mortified in herself that she hadn’t come to me and asked if I was all right… She knew I was going through something, but she thought it was relationship stuff. That’s why I’d been up and down.… She kind of kicks herself about it… But it wasn’t her fault. How would she have known?

So I got to October time that same year, and I was just scrolling through the Internet the way you do. I was searching about abortions and people’s experiences and stuff like that. I’d never been given any kind of support or aftercare kind of thing…

Most of my friends had had abortions. They kind of bounced back to their normal lives. So I felt very alone. I was having all of these emotions, and I felt like I shouldn’t be having them… I felt a lot of guilt and shame. But I found Rachel’s Vineyard. And I remember the first phone call when I phoned Rachel, who is the organizer – it just felt like the right thing to do. It felt like God was calling me to do it… I just felt this massive relief, although the pain doesn’t go away. It was just – it was nice to know that there were others who felt the same, who’d gone through the same traumatic experiences…

I just wish I knew everything that I know now back then. I would tell that poor girl to leave that guy straightaway. I wouldn’t question if I was going to keep the child or not. It’s not a natural thing. Every woman’s got that motherly instinct to look after and care for what’s theirs. So if there was any woman or man who was going through similar – or who is pro-choice, just to really think about it. It’s not just a group of cells. It is actually a baby, because I’ve seen it. It’s not what they tell you it is. It is a life.”

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Rape survivor who had her child tells her story

Patti Harrison is from Toronto, Canada. At age 14 she was brutally raped by multiple men, but she had her baby. Her son, Austin, is now 25.

In a speech sponsored by two Canadian pro-life clubs, she gave her testimony:

“I was born and raised in Ontario, and we moved shortly after to a town called Oshawa… It’s just about half an hour, 40 minutes outside of Toronto.

So, growing up was a pretty normal childhood besides the fact that I was dealing with some undiagnosed mental illness. And [I] had two parents. Both worked. Two brothers. We got along pretty well. But I didn’t get along with my parents, and I broke almost every rule they set in place for me, which made living at home hard. And when I was 14, we got in a huge fight and I was thrown out.

It was wintertime, and it was cold. I was looking for a place to stay, and I had a friend who knew somebody from high school that had their own apartment, and so I went there.

Well, when I got there, it was about midnight, and there was partying going on. And a little girl, she must’ve been about five, six years old answered the door and let me in. And took me by the hand, and we fell asleep watching TV on the couch together.

I heard a woman screaming, and I went to see what was going on. And when I got up the stairs, there was a man with a woman who was performing oral sex on him while he was injecting drugs into her arm. And I startled them.
So I was thrown down the stairs, and the rest of that night is pretty blurry. I remember bits and pieces of light and darkness. The door opening, the light from the hallway coming in. But I was left in a room in a basement, tied up, and left there.

A couple of days must’ve gone by and a lady came in who was a prostitute who would visit the house frequently to buy drugs, and she bought McDonald’s. The guy that was in charge I guess, he didn’t like the fact that she was talking to me, so he said that if I wanted to associate with the prostitutes, I’d be treated like one. And they tied me up and they raped me and took turns. That went on all night.

The next day I was allowed to take a bath. I was escorted to the bathroom by the guy that was always there…

A few days later I was taken out for a walk. And during that time, I had to carry little bits and pieces of things in my mouth. We would approach someone and I would have to spit one of the things that were in my mouth on the ground, and they would pick them up and take them away. At this time, I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t have any education at all where it came to drugs or sex or anything. I was 14 years old.

The police had actually cornered us at the corner of King Street, right by the Harvey’s downtown Oshawa in the snow, and I had to swallow all the little bits of pieces that I had in my mouth. The police searched us and let us go, and I had to rush back to the house where for two more days I was kept in the room and had to search through my stool to find the pieces that I had swallowed, and found out that it was actually crack cocaine that I was trafficking for these guys.

Finally, one of the girls that my mom bowled with showed up at the house, and she grabbed me and we left.

It was really scary the whole time I was there. I wasn’t treated like a human being. I was beaten. I was raped. I was brutalized, and I wasn’t treated like a human being.

So all of this coming into play kind of triggered what happened next. I went into a really deep depression, and I tried to commit suicide. I took a lot of pills, and I drink a lot of alcohol. I ended up in the emergency room with my mom. And the doctors in the emergency room told me that I was pregnant.
I was in shock because I had seen a doctor before that told me I couldn’t get pregnant. And then all of a sudden, now I’m pregnant. And so, my mom, she was in shock. And my father’s family asked me to abort because, number one, my son was biracial, more than likely, because all the men that were in and around the house this time that I was raped were black. And number two, he wasn’t going to have a father and I was only 14.

So when I had him, I was 15. I chose to keep him. I went against my family.

My mom took me to a little place called the Rose of Durham in Oshawa. It’s a facility for mothers that are young, teenage mothers. And they really were amazing. They gave me the courage to go through the pregnancy after each doctor that I had seen for my ultrasounds and my bloodwork told me that I should have an abortion, that my son was going to be deformed, that he wasn’t going to be healthy, that he wouldn’t make it to birth, that I was only 15 years old and I had my whole life ahead of me – they gave me every excuse not to keep him, but not one to keep him.

So when I met the people at the Rose of Durhum, they gave me the courage to think I can actually do this. I can be a mom to my son. No one warned me about what would happen after I had him, though. Because the depression, from having all of the stuff that happened, was catching up to me, and I was terrified. I was terrified to be a parent. And my mom stepped up, and said that I wasn’t alone and that we would do it together.

And I ended up having him.… He’s absolutely amazing.…

Was it difficult raising my rapist’s baby? At first it was, because that’s all I could see; I couldn’t get past what happened to me. [But] once I saw the sonograms and once I started to feel him move inside of me, and once I gave birth, all that basically went away. Because, just the feeling of love that sweeps over you – it just was remarkable.

And I don’t think for one second aborting him would’ve done me any good. Because it wouldn’t have stopped the fact that I had been raped, it wouldn’t have changed the fact that I was only a young teenager, it wouldn’t have changed anything.

My message to girls out there, and people who say, what if she’s raped, or what if it’s incest or what if it’s something unspeakable – well you know what? The baby doesn’t deserve the death penalty for something somebody else did. And 90% of the time, it’s not rape, it’s not incest, it’s convenience…

It baffles my mind that we are in such a cancel culture, that we can just cancel the life of a child because it’s inconvenient for us at the time. And that’s what people were trying to get me to do. Use the fact that I was raped, and use all those horrible, terrible things that happened to me, to scare me into deleting a part of my life that, he’s so amazing.…

Choosing the life of a child is never hard. It’s never hard. Growing up having that boy look at you and seeing yourself in your child isn’t hard… I just want to promise everyone out there, there is an alternative. You don’t have to choose abortion.

That’s my story. I’m not the only one. I hope that if somebody’s hearing this, and you have a friend, even if you’re contemplating having an abortion yourself, there’s so many places. You’re never alone. You’re never, ever alone. There’s so many places that will help you. There’s so many people that will help you. It’s a remarkable thing. It really is, to choose life.”

She gives credit to counseling and prayer for her healing, talking to your friends, talking about it and not bottling it in, and to:

“keep the lines of communication open with your friends and don’t keep it a secret, because the more people know about what you are going through, the more people that can help you with it. So make sure your friends are aware of what’s going on with you.

And just be open and honest. Say, “this is where I’m at. This is what happened, and this is where I’m at in life, and this is what I need. This is what I need from you.”

How did your family react when you decided to keep your baby?

“Well, my mom was okay with it. My dad’s father said that if I didn’t have an abortion I’d be disowned. So I still don’t talk to my biological grandfather. They never got over what happened. A few of my mom’s side of the family kind of turned their nose up about it, but mostly my father’s family. I was called a bad influence. I was told that by keeping my child and having a baby at such a young age I was a bad influence for my other cousins. Yeah. I didn’t have an easy time with it. But my mom and dad were amazing. They really were amazing.

My mom was in the delivery room when my son was born. She actually got to cut his umbilical cord. It was pretty cool.”

What advice would you give to a young woman facing a crisis pregnancy?

“Turn to your community. Turn to your family. If you don’t have family, there’s always, within a town or two from you, there’s always a crisis pregnancy center or program that they can get you in touch with… You can reach out to your community centers, and there’s moms to moms groups – there’s so much help for people out there nowadays that you don’t have to choose abortion.”

Asked what was hardest about choosing life.

“My grandpa and I were super close when I was a kid, and knowing that I wasn’t going to have that kind of relationship with my grandfather anymore.

Being a mom as a teenager isn’t easy because you now have another person that you have to take care of. So you don’t get to just up and go and hang out with your friends unless you bring a baby with you, or you have a good babysitter at home, like your mom or something.

But it’s so amazing at the same time. Because you’ve got this perfect example of God’s love for you. You’ve got innocence and purity and everything, everything good about yourself staring up into your face. His love for me healed me so quickly. It’s hard, but it’s so rewarding. It’s so, so, so rewarding. He’s a pretty cool guy.”

Asked, “Did you ever think of having an abortion for a second?”

“When the doctors were telling me that my son wasn’t going to survive. That his spine wasn’t attached to the back of his neck, that his internal organs weren’t developing right, that me keeping the pregnancy was just cruel. I did think for one second, would he be better off if I just had an abortion. Then, right away, something inside of me, every ounce of my being was screaming, no. No. He’s gonna be just fine.… They didn’t let anyone go into the ultrasound with me. They always made me go in by myself. And the doctors weren’t very nice.”

Asked how she would respond to those who wanted to silence her voice. Why was it important to listen to the stories of survivors?

“[The pro-choice claim is] it’s cruel and unusual punishment to make me raise my rapist’s baby. It’s not though. For starters, that baby is half you. That baby is half of your flesh and blood. That baby is half you. You don’t have to think of the baby as your rapist’s baby, for starters.
And everybody should be able to hear both sides of the story. Yes, I was raped. Does my son deserve to die for the choice somebody else made? And the answer is no.…

The baby inside of me is not my body. It’s just inside of my body. The baby has its own DNA. It has its own heartbeat. It has its own blood type. It is its own person. The baby has every single right to the same rights and freedoms as we have…, as a toddler has that’s walking around.”

Asked if the doctors who said they would be something terribly wrong with her son were lying to get her to abort or if they really believed something was wrong.

“I have no idea. I don’t know. I know that my son was born 7 lbs. 14 oz., perfectly healthy. I don’t know if they saw something on an early ultrasound scan. I know that I had a lot of ultrasounds, and physicals, a lot of blood work. I was very tiny, so I wasn’t growing as fast as they would’ve liked me to grow. So they might have thought that he was small. But as for all the other stuff, I’m sure they were just telling me what they wanted me to hear so that I would have the abortion. Because they were pressing very, very hard for me to have an abortion.”

Asked how her son dealt with or overcame the trauma.

“When Austin was… I think he was six, he wanted to know why my ex-husband wouldn’t come to any of his play stuff at school or his sporting events or anything like that. And one of my family members told him, “Well, don’t worry Austin, that’s not your real dad anyway. Your real dad is just some jerk that hurt your mom, and you don’t have to worry about seeing him.”

So my son wanted to know at that time, what are they talking about, my real dad? Sean’s my dad.

We had to sit down and explain to him that no, when mommy was really young, something really bad happened, but that didn’t make him bad at all. He was his own person. I asked him if…he would ever want to go and look for his biological father. And at the time he said, “No, mom. No. I don’t want to.” And he never really has. He’s 25, and he’s never given us the indication that he wants to know who his biological father is. Because honestly, I don’t know… He’s never really cared, because the way he looks at it is, my husband has been his father since he was really young, and he’s a great dad. And he’s not missing out on anything. So why would he really care about that? He’s never really given me any indication that my circumstances, the circumstances that brought him into this world affected him at all.

My children are all extremely pro-life. They’ve been very vocal with their family and their friends about the fact that they are pro-life and they don’t believe in abortion. They don’t believe that that’s a choice at all.”

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NARAL president admits pro-lifers have “won the public debate”

Pro-choice activist and former NARAL president Kate Michelman said in the New York Times in 1988:

“… The antiabortion side has in some ways won the public debate, captured the terms and framed the issues. There is very little discussion these days about how every dimension of a woman’s life is influenced by the right to reproductive freedom. We have to remind people that abortion is the guarantor of a woman’s full right to choose and her right to participate fully in the social and political life of society.”

Tamar Lewin “Legal Abortion under Fierce Attack 15 Years after Roe V Wade Ruling” New York Times May 10, 1988

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Post-abortive woman says she wouldn’t have aborted if it had been illegal

A post-abortive woman named Linda wrote:

“Yes, [the abortion] was legal. Not only would I never have consented to an illegal abortion, I doubt I would have ever taken the chance of having sex had I not known in the back of my mind there was a way out.”

Pam Koerbel Does Anyone Feel Like I Do? And Other Questions Women Ask Following an Abortion (New York: Doubleday, 1990) 7

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Christian woman has abortion because “God wouldn’t want her to have a child now”

A crisis pregnancy center director told the following story of a young woman who came in asking for a pregnancy test. She had already taken several and found herself to be pregnant, and she wanted an abortion:

“She told me she was a Christian who regularly attended church, and had put her trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. I know and hold high regard for the church she attended.…

Even though she believed abortion was wrong, given her situation she believed she couldn’t have a baby – that God wouldn’t want her to have a child now. Fears of bringing shame on her family and on her church were the key factors influencing her to think that her abortion was necessary…

She was willing to bear any personal pain that might come with an abortion – physical, emotional or spiritual, she just didn’t want her church and family to suffer from her bad choices.

She convinced herself that abortion, in her case, was a self-denying act. Even with her Christian background, at that moment, she could not feel her feet sliding down a slippery slope. She did not see that trying to cover her sexual sin by having an abortion could bring even greater harm to herself, not to mention ending the life of the child who God entrusted to her care.”

The girl says:

“My life is over. How can I keep going to school and ever hope to be successful in life?… I’m too young. We’re not ready to get married.

What if my parents found out I was pregnant? They would kill me. And they’ve already paid my tuition. If I show up obviously pregnant at my church my parents will have to step down from their leadership positions. Everyone will talk about us.…

I’m sinful by being pregnant and I’m sinful if I abort, so what’s the difference? I have other friends who had abortions and they got over it. It will probably be hard on me emotionally but I really have no choice. And adoption? I could never do that. If I’m going to go through the pregnancy I am not going to give my baby away to people I don’t know…

If I can’t be a good mother, abortion is best so the child doesn’t have to suffer a terrible life. I don’t want to, but you see I really have no other choice.”

Linda Baartse, Joseph Boot and Scott Masson For Life: Defending the Unborn (Toronto: Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity, 2013) 7-8

She had the abortion.

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