Abortion Workers Speak Out

Posted on August 27, 2024 By Rachel MacNair

by Sarah Terzo

Sometimes former abortion workers come forward with their stories, and these stories can shed light on what goes on in abortion facilities.

First-Trimester Surgical Abortions

In the Fall/Winter 2016 edition of Feminists for Life’s The American Feminist magazine, former abortion workers spoke about working in abortion facilities., former abortion worker Julie explained how she and other workers kept people having surgical abortions from seeing their aborted children.

In first-trimester suction aspiration abortions, the abortionist inserts a tube attached to an instrument called a cannula into the woman’s uterus. The doctor also connects the tube to a suction machine and a small jar. When the doctor activates the suction machine, it forcefully tears apart the preborn child and the pieces travel down the tube into the clear glass jar.

See a former abortion doctor, Beverly McMillan, explain this procedure:

Seeing (and Hiding) a “Head, Body, Limbs”

If the pregnant person is in the ninth to tenth week of pregnancy (the seventh to eighth week after conception) or beyond, one can observe recognizable body parts in the aftermath.

Abortionist Dr. Willie Parker describes this:

I inspect what has just come out of the woman’s body: what I’m looking for is the fetal sac, which, at a later gestational age, becomes the placenta, and, after nine weeks, every one of the fetal parts—head, body, limbs—like a puzzle that has to be put back together.

I make sure I find every part, and I place them together, re-creating the fetus in the pan. I have done this so many times that it is has become routine…¹

In Julie’s abortion facility, the workers wanted to prevent people having abortions from seeing the contents of the jar.

To hide the blood and body parts, the workers covered the jar with a “cute calico cover.”²

This way, post-abortive people wouldn’t glimpse a dismembered arm or leg. The abortion workers could maintain the illusion that a preborn baby is just a clump of cells.

Lies About Body Disposal

Former abortion worker Margo spoke about a lie abortion workers told those having abortions at a different clinic:

We lied to patients all the time! … People asked, ‘What’s going to happen to my baby [after the abortion]?’ We were told to tell them whatever made sense, that it’s like, if someone is in a bad car accident and lost a leg. It’s medical waste, and it goes into an incinerator …

Instead, they ground up the remains and sent them down the sewer.³

Dr. Susan Poppema, in her 1996 book Why I am an Abortion Doctor, wrote about how she thought flushing aborted baby remains down the sewer was the best way to dispose of them.

Poppema commits abortions through sixteen weeks. She refers to the dismembered bodies as “tissue,” and this sanitized language hides the reality.

She says:

Realistically, the best and safest way medically to dispose of tissue from the uterus is to put it directly into the general sewage system.

Waste of every kind, after all, eventually winds up being disposed of in one manner or another, and short of sacred burial rites it is safe to say that disposal of organic matter (which uterine tissue is) is generally a fairly straightforward proposition. The matter leftover from surgery is all natural tissue and blood.⁴

She does say, “Could it be infected? Yes.”⁵

The Problem with Flushing Aborted Babies into the Sewers

Poppema concedes there may be one problem, though. She says, “[T]he obvious problem is presented when considering that the larger pieces of tissue can block disposal pipes.”⁶

Below is a sonogram of a sixteen-week-old preborn baby.

These “larger pieces of tissue” are arms, legs, etc.

Poppema ordered an industrial-strength garbage disposal for her abortion facility to grind up fetal parts. The man who came to install it broke down in tears and refused to complete the job.

Poppema says, “[M] y colleagues and I found the poor man on the floor literally sobbing at the thought of a disposal system at an abortion clinic.”⁷

Someone else finished the installation. The man reported Poppema’s clinic to the health department, which led to added hassles for her. She complains about this in her book.

People having abortions do sometimes ask abortion workers what they do with the bodies. In Pregnancy and Abortion Counseling, a manual for abortion workers, it says that “How do they get rid of it, it is burnt?’ is one of the “difficult” questions patients ask. ⁸

Former Abortion Workers Who Come Forward

Margo also commented on the guilt she felt at being involved in abortion for so long. She laments that she took part in “tens of thousands” of abortions and says, “It literally took my breath away … I helped murder almost a football stadium of people.”⁹

Because of the emotional trauma they experience and the difficulty of coming to terms with their actions, many abortion workers have a hard time discussing what went on in their clinics.

This is similar to soldiers who suffer PTSD and don’t like to talk about what they experienced in war. When veterans come forward and speak about atrocities they witnessed or the details of battles they took part in, it’s valuable, as it is when former abortion workers speak.

Expected to Book Forty Abortions a Day

Two former Planned Parenthood workers, Rhyan and Annette, said Planned Parenthood expected them to book forty abortion appointments a day.

Rhyan, who worked for Planned Parenthood in Kansas for four months in 2016, was hired as a receptionist, but says her actual job turned out to be “selling abortions.”

According to the article:

The sales began with the automated answering system that picked up all calls first. The pleasant, recorded voice invited callers to press one number if they wanted birth control, another for a well woman exam, and another for abortion. All abortion calls were automatically jumped to the front of the calling queue.¹⁰

Rhyan says, “If you were calling for birth control, you could wait 20 minutes to get a phone operator.”¹¹

Rhyan was required to schedule women’s appointments before discussing costs. There also appeared to be an unwritten rule to ask Black-sounding callers if they needed financial assistance, but not white-sounding ones.

Annette found herself getting in trouble when she took extra time counseling ambivalent pregnant people or sending them home to think about their decision. According to her interview:

Annette observed the clinic director meeting with a client. To Annette, the woman was asking endless questions and seemed anything but certain about her decision. The patient kept repeating, ‘I’m really not sure.’

When Annette and the director left the interview room, the director told the staff that the patient was ‘just fine’ and ready to proceed. Annette spoke up and said she didn’t see it that way.

The director responded, ‘She’s here. If she doesn’t want it done, she’ll say so.’ Annette got such heat for speaking up she did not do it again.¹¹

Annette says, “We were always told that it’s all up to the woman.”¹² But that was not what she saw in practice. “The emotional manipulation of others,” she says, “is what got to me the most.”

At a staff meeting, she challenged the higher management, and asked if Planned Parenthood had an abortion quota. Annette says, “I just kept saying, ‘This really feels like you’re running a herding clinic.’ All of the other staff chimed in and said, ‘Yes, that’s exactly how we feel…’”¹³

By the end of the conversation, Annette had learned that “Yes, they expect a certain number of procedures a day, but no, this is not a quota.”¹⁴

For all intents and purposes though, it was.

Substandard Medical Care Puts Patients at Risk

A nurse named Jayne wrote about the lack of medical training manuals in one abortion facility. She was asked to administer strong medications intravenously without detailed instructions and no manual to refer to. Without this vital medical information, she didn’t know the proper way to administer the medication.

Jayne, who had been a nurse for twenty-eight years, spent twenty-three days at Planned Parenthood in Wilmington, Delaware before quitting because medical care at the facility was so substandard.

According to the article:

The obligatory crash cart was filled with medicine that was not just out of date but “way out of date.” The oxygen mask on the cart was so old, it was no longer pliable.¹⁵

All of these abortion workers who have come forward with their stories are showing courage. They (and others like them) should be supported by the pro-life movement.

Footnotes

Willie ParkerLife’s Work: from the Trenches, A Moral Argument for Choice (New York: 37INK, Atria, 2017) 95-96

Ellen J Reich “An Insider’s Look into the Abortion Industry” The American Feminist Fall/Winter 2016
Ellen J Reich “An Insider’s Look into the Abortion Industry”
Susan T. Poppema, M.D. and Mike Henderson. Why I am an Abortion Doctor (New York: Prometheus Books, 1996) 162-166
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Joanna Brien, Ida Fairbairn Pregnancy and Abortion Counseling (London: Routledge, 1996) 94
Ellen J Reich “An Insider’s Look into the Abortion Industry”
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.