So I have heard a LOT of stories and of people who turned from pro-choice to pro-life or got an abortion and regretted it based off of the fact that they honestly didn't know and weren't told about the facts of the unborn, other choices, or what an abortion is or does. I've heard people say they literally go to pro-choice groups or websites and they won't give out info of other choices, or they will use lots of euphemisms and not tell the truth about the unborn, and I have even heard pro-choicers actually say we should be dehumanizing. This really does a disservice to their own supporters, as they don't actually know what they are supporting. They have the wool pulled over their eyes, and that isn't fair to them.
The problem with this is that whenever we advocate for lack of knowledge of something, we're doing it wrong and ensuring that people will make decisions they regret as they didn't have all the info to begin with. That's why all the post-abortive women who regret it's number 1 complaint is that people acted like it was just a "routine medical procedure" (There is also the problem of the more feminist women being told by their feminist friends that they have to be pro-choice in order to be a proper feminist and support womanhood, or telling them they should get an abortion if they are in whatever situation), or like it was no big deal and ignored to tell them info about anything, and they honestly didn't really know what they were doing, or maybe they did in the back of their heads but everyone acted like it was no big deal and skipped over what it actually is and does, so they went along with it.
Here is my playlist for post-abortive women telling their stories and how they regret it. These women wish people actually told them stuff. They end up thinking it was their fault when really it's the society that decides to hide info and act like they can "exercise their legal right to choose" and use euphemisms the whole way. Dehumanizing and hiding info and not telling them of all their options is bad for everyone. We all hate abstinence only education because of that as well, so just think of that.
The only thing to say when a woman says she's pregnant is to tell her all of her options and any nearby pregnancy support centers or hotlines or websites and make sure she feels supported and is informed as possible on everything available to her, and that includes the support and choices she has like all the social safety nets and financial stuff and daycare and adoption and safe surrender/safe haven and so on and so forth, as well as what is happening with her unborn, and what an abortion is.
I just recently came across a post of a picture of abortion victims, and someone there posted that it wasn't an abortion and it was propaganda, and it made me realize that they really don't know what abortion looks like and that they are also told that anything showing abortion or describing abortion is just propaganda and they shouldn't believe it. I have come across a lot of abortion supporters that are very abortion illiterate, and if you try to describe it to them, they'll deny it and act like that's not what happens. These poor people have no idea what they are supporting. You can go see what the abortion doctors themselves say about the procedure, yet if you describe it to them or show them pictures or medical diagrams showing the procedure, pro-choicers are told not to believe this, that it must be propaganda from the pro-lifers who are distorting the truth, or make up lies about how abortions are always early enough to where it isn't developed yet and thus there is no blood or gore, or it doesn't even look human yet, or whatever else. I literally just came across a page where the admins were defended deleting comments and posts, and granted I didn't see the comments they were referring to so they could have been ones with the more conservative and religious side actually lying a bit, but usually you get that about the unborn or abortion in general, but they were going on and on about the "anti-woman forced birth opinions" and that they rely on lies. They actually think that people who are pro-life are lying about it all. This spreads even more of a stereotype that they are, especially when they delete comments so that no one can see what the person says and no further dialogue can be attained, so they have to take the admin's word for it, and once again advocates for a lack of knowledge of abortion, the unborn, other choices, how it hurts woman, and so on and so forth. Anything about any of that is not allowed to seep through to the media, and I've noticed pages who lean pro-choice will delete and block pro-lifers and pro-life comments more than any other pages delete and block. It's total censorship, and ensuring a world full of a lack of information on this subject. These people are so brainwashed it's ridiculous.
It is odd when you have pro-choicers advocating for lack of knowledge of it and not showing what it is. This is what you SUPPORT! This is the choice you proudly stand behind and say you think people should be allowed to choose, yet you can't stand to see it or know what it is about. That should be clue that you perhaps don't actually want to be supporting it. There was
this controversy where a paper refused to show an accurate image of a baby at 20-24 weeks and labelled it as being controversial. I love the quote Secular Pro-Live gave, and I couldn't have said it better myself, "
If you find an accurate image controversial, it's time to reconsider your philosophy."
There was also
this one where three physicians were planning on giving presentations on risks of abortions, and their presentations were cancelled because of that. This just ensures even further that women will be more likely to end up going through all of this because they weren't told about it, because pro-choicers really like to censor those things.
It has been proven to work where pro-lifers by abortion clinics tell the girls coming in of other options instead of just shouting at them or calling them names, and they actually choose something else. When they know they actually do have other choices, they choose them. This shows that the people around them either weren't giving them enough support or weren't being honest and telling them of their other choices (though perhaps they honestly didn't know either.) Everyone (especially pro-choicers) always says that women only choose abortion because they feel like they have no other choice, and that's true. The thing is, they do have other choices. They just don't get told about them that much, and everyone's first response to a pregnancy is, "you know you can exercise your legal right to choose, right?" It all becomes about politics, and making sure they know first and foremost that they can abort, and that helps to ignore the other options and support for those other options as well. Supporting a choice that you know women only choose because they have no other choice, especially if you don't spend that much time on the other choices, is NOT pro-choice. It is anti-choice. I have heard so many sentiments from pro-choicers who prove that they really only care about that one choice. To them, even if you support all the other choices, you're a bad person if you don't support this one. One would think they would want to get rid of that choice and totally help out all the other choices, since they are so "pro-woman" and "pro-choice" and women only choose it because they feel like they have to and it isn't even a good choice (actually the worst) anyway. If it were that great of a choice, women would be lining up to do it with pride and utter happiness, or at the very least, not choose it because they feel like they have no other choice. To keep supporting something like that, and then claim to actually care about women, is just sick. Perhaps the pro-lifers that actively work towards getting women more choices, better and fixing the choices, and them knowing of their choices more should actually be the ones to be called pro-choice.
They aren't told what the unborn goes through, they aren't shown any pictures or ultrasounds, or pictures of abortion victims (or if they see them they are taught that it must be wrong and just political weaponry from the pro-lifers, or they are so gung-ho about their own position that they don't really pay attention to them) and a lot of people have turned pro-life or found out about what happens to the unborn just by seeing ultrasounds or sonograms or pictures or abortions or reading info about the unborn, and realizing that what they thought was "just a clump of cells" actually looked like a human, and had already formed this and that and the other. The pro-choice side is full of a lot of outdated mottos that still get spread around even though it isn't the 70s anymore and we have much better technology and a greater knowledge of science. People in their side just don't spread around the new info, and keep feeding people lies. Here are some links to just a few of the stories I have seen where people describe how their former side and the abortion industry is full of lack of knowledge, and I'll put parts of note below them...
Why I Lost Faith in the Pro-Choice Movement
"
My first tipoff that something was wrong in the pro-choice movement was when I realized that there was a great fear of information. A year or two after Sara's situation, another friend found herself in a crisis pregnancy (also due to failed contraception), and was wrestling with the issue of abortion. She had asked me to find out how far her baby would have developed at this point, so I did some research online.
I found some images and descriptions of fetal development, and was amazed by how much I hadn't known. For all the time I'd spent talking about abortion rights, I'd never bothered to learn the details about what, exactly, happens within a woman's womb when she's pregnant, and no one had encouraged me to do so. I had never heard that fetuses have arms and legs and tastebuds at eight weeks gestation, or that they began practicing breathing at 11 weeks. I paused and thought about that for a long time. It didn't make me question my pro-choice stance, but for the first time I could understand how someone could be uncomfortable with abortion.
The biggest thing I noticed, however, was that pro-life sites had this information in abundance. The pro-lifers encouraged women to educate themselves about the details of pregnancy, suggested that they view ultrasounds to know what was happening within their bodies, and offered resources to educate women about all aspects of the female reproductive system.
On the pro-choice side, it was a totally different story.
I had started my research on websites for abortion providers and various feminist organizations, which I had assumed would equip women to make informed choices by providing them with full information. To my concern and surprise, I could not find one shred of information about fetal development on any websites associated with the pro-choice movement. When I read their literature about the details of abortion procedures, they were full of insulting euphemisms. Even when describing second trimester abortions, they would use eerily vague terms talking about "emptying the uterus" of its "contents." I felt like I had been transported back to Victorian England, where women weren't supposed to be told hard facts, even about their own bodies, because they might get all flustered."
Kristen Hatten's pro-choice feminism to pro-life feminism story
“Sadie spoke of human rights, ethics, and science. She explained the provable fact that the unborn human is a distinct and separate life from the moment of his or her conception. She shared the statistic that in more than 99 percent of cases, the pregnant woman willingly engaged in the act that led to her pregnancy. How then, she asked, could she treat her baby as an unwanted alien invader, a nutrient-stealing parasite, in order to justify its killing?
She also talked about the harm done to women by the abortion procedure – physically, mentally, and emotionally. She talked about the brutality of abortion, how the fetus is often ripped limb from limb, and how the woman is often left wounded – and sometimes infertile. She explained “partial-birth abortion.” She made me understand the cycle of violence that is continued when a woman, feeling oppressed herself, passes that oppression on to her children.
I asked to see the photographs to which she’d alluded during our conversation. I saw them. I saw proof of what abortion does, and the lie that says that an unborn child is just a “clump of cells” or a “blob of tissue” was destroyed for me – forever. My ignorance was gone, and I was pro-life.
Don’t get me wrong – I’d seen those images before, but I’d never really seen them. I did not see the humanity of the children shown in those images until my heart was opened to the fact that I was looking at a human being. As a pro-choice woman, when I was shown graphic images of aborted fetuses – held up in front of clinics, at protests, or seen accidentally while surfing the Web – I did not see murdered human beings. I saw my own opinion, assaulted. I saw crazy people holding gross signs, and my mind glossed over the rest.
To this day, I have many friends of various opinions on abortion. I don’t know a single person who has been converted by an unexpected graphic image waved in his or her face, and I don’t like the idea of making a clinic look like a safe haven from the scary people outside. But when I was ready, and asked to see them, graphic images of intact and aborted unborn children were the final nail in the coffin of my pro-abortion beliefs.
I kept saying to Sadie, “Oh, my God. You just made me pro-life.”
I spent the next week on the Internet trying to “un-convince” myself of the truth of abortion, hoping that something would make me pro-choice again. But you can’t unlearn what you’ve learned. Information made me pro-life. Information about the early feminists and their pro-life views convinced me that Sadie told the truth when she called herself a feminist.”
I Used To Be Pro-Choice...But... stories from people who went from pro-choice to pro-life
"
The whole reason I was pro-choice was based on lies. I was very loyal to Planned Parenthood, but, when I did some research, I found out that a lot of the things they were telling me were false. I didn't know that most of the world's top scientists have said that the fetus is human, and I never really thought about it. I also didn't know that PP was lying when they said 1 million women died as a result of illegal abortions in 1972. The number is closer to 39. There were so many lies that I decided to see what the pro-lifers were really all about, instead of relying on what PP had to say about them. That's when I learned that the fetus deserves to live just as much as any of us. I still believe that if the mother's life is in danger, she can choose, along with the father of the child if he is in the picture, to save her life instead of the child's. But any other time, I now think abortion is murder."
"At one time I was for abortion, until I learned what it is actually about. I was greatly mislead by the media"
Here is a great blog post from Secular Pro-Life mentioning how parents got upset at people distributing fetal models and cards (strictly about prenatal development, not aborted fetus dolls or anything like that and not having anything to do with abortion).
Here is an interesting story,
My Fake Abortion Story
"
I decided to kick my experiment up a notch and sought out the Pro Life Club on campus. I stormed into their meeting, and said, "Keep your fetus worshippers away from me! If I want to kill this thing I will, I will even kill it myself.'' They were very nice, they tried to calm me down, tell me facts about my child, about abortion, and if I ever heard my other options.
Then I went to our campus' Pro Choice club. I told them I want to abort, had an appointment, but I wasn't sure. If they could me information or facts. I received none. Just warm smiles, ''comfy'' talk, and reassurance about my decision.
Personally I am neither Pro Choice/abortion/ solution/life . I try to see it logically and scientifically . Yet the attention I received from the Pro Choice club versus the Pro Life club was insufficient . It was downright scary. These women who are passionate about their bodies...don't seem to know anything about them, and even seem terrified about the facts surrounding them. I almost felt like the blind being led by the blind."
A post about someone's pro-abortion friend seeing an illustration of what happens in an abortion of a 23 week old baby, and realizing she doesn't think she's ok with that.
"I spend a lot of time reading articles. While my friend was visiting, I was reading an article that contained the illustration displayed here, of a D&E abortion of a 23 week old baby.
My friend looked over my shoulder and gasped.
“What are you LOOKING at?” she asked, horrified.
“That’s an abortion,” I answered plainly.
“But, that’s a baby!” she exclaimed. “That doesn’t happen!”
“That’s a 23 week abortion. That happens quite frequently, actually.”"
I tried to remain calm.
She’s not stupid. Really, honestly, she isn’t. She’s actually incredibly intelligent, educated. She has a degree.
I truly believe that my friend has been deceived.
How else could an intelligent, loving individual be completely “pro-choice”?
Deception.
People are told what they want to hear, that it’s “just a blob of tissue,” or they’re told, “abortion is OK in certain circumstances,” and most importantly, they’re told “abortion is a woman’s right.” But when they are presented with the reality that what they thought was a blob of tissue was actually a baby, a human being, a lot of them change their minds. Yes, a lot.
She just stared at the illustration with pain in her eyes.
“I don’t know if I’m OK with that.” She said with finality."
Here is a post about reporters getting to see abortions.
"“This is kind of gruesome,” I said. “Was there some special reason she didn’t want to have her baby?”
“She wanted an abortion,” the nurse replied, “and we’re required by law to do what she wants.”
The doctor had been listening to our conversation. As he stood up, he said, “At this point in the pregnancy, the products of conception aren’t much.” I knew the emphasis on “products of conception” was for my benefit.
Is that what you have in that pail? I thought. Does that make it easier for you? I did not have the courage to put into words what I was thinking. I’ve always regretted that.
I stepped forward and peered into the pail. This time I broke out in a cold sweat. Dear Jesus! I thought. I just saw someone murdered! And I just stood and watched! Why did I come down here? How will I ever put this out of my mind?
“Are you OK?” the voice of the nurse brought me back.
“I’m sorry,” I smiled weakly. “I just never realized what it was like.
Do you assist with these all the time?”
“More than I care to admit,” the nurse said. “Actually, I can handle one, but when they start to come back for the second or third time, it really gets to me.”
As I left the operating room, I shook my head in an attempt to get the horrible vision out of my head. I couldn’t. It was there; it would always be there: a little hand…a little rib cage.
The author goes on to describe nightmares he had about the abortion. Now he is a pro-life activist."
Also, medical students can turn from pro-choice to pro-life by witnessing abortions and be disgusted by them, as even the scientific and medical minded can be tricked by society and not realize what an abortion actually is.
Here is a story about just that.
"To begin, I must say that until yesterday, Friday, July 2, 2004, I was strongly pro-choice."
"This summer, I was accepted into a pre-medical program in NYC in which we are allowed to shadow doctors and see all sorts of medical procedures. When given the opportunity to see an abortion, I did not hesitate to accept the offer."
"The cervix was held open with a crude metal instrument and a large transparent tube was stuck inside of the woman. Within a matter of seconds, the machine’s motor was engaged and blood, tissue, and tiny organs were pulled out of their environment into a filter. A minute later, the vacuum choked to a halt. The tube was removed, and stuck to the end was a small body and a head attached haphazardly to it, what was formed of the neck snapped. The ribs had formed with a thin skin covering them, the eyes had formed, and the inner organs had begun to function. The tiny heart of the fetus, obviously a little boy, had just stopped — forever. The vacuum filter was opened, and the tiny arms and legs that had been torn off of the fetus were accounted for. The fingers and toes had the beginnings of their nails on them. The doctors, proud of their work, reassembled the body to show me. Tears welled up in my eyes as they removed the baby boy from the table and shoved his body into a container for disposal. I have not been able to think of anything since yesterday at 10:30 besides what that baby boy might have been. I don’t think that people realize what an abortion actually is until they see it happen. I have been tortured by these images – so real and so vivid – for two days now…and I was just a spectator.
Never again will I be pro-choice, and never again will I support the murder of any human being, no matter their stage in life."
This is about someone observing abortions for a book, and a couple examples from that.
"In the first session, a woman named Peggy sits with a clinic worker named Carye as the worker explains the procedure. Carye is telling her about how to prepare for her abortion. Korn says:
Peggy’s mind is off on a different track. ‘Is it true that at six weeks it has a heartbeat?’ Carye says nobody is sure exactly when the heart begins beating, and tries to deflect that concern. “This pregnancy and you are the same thing,” she adds, explaining to Peggy that prior to twenty-four weeks the fetus cannot survive outside her womb. (25)
The beating heart of an unborn baby can be heard with a fetal heart monitor or seen on an ultrasound screen in the first trimester. According to The Mayo Clinic
“Pregnancy Week by Week” Timeline:
Just four weeks after conception, the neural tube along your baby’s back is closing and your baby’s heart is pumping blood.
Here you can see the image of an unborn baby’s heart working at four weeks and four days after conception. Scientists have known for decades when a baby’s heart started beating.
The clinic worker, rather than giving accurate information to the patient, answers evasively and tries to steer the subject away from the baby’s humanity. “The pregnancy [i.e., not the “the baby” or even “the fetus”] and you are the same thing.” Actually, the “pregnancy” and the mother are not the same thing. The baby has his or her own DNA, circulatory system, and developing organs. The goal of the clinic worker seems to be geared towards shifting Peggy’s view away from seeing her baby as a living being and toward convincing Peggy to accept the “it’s just part of your body” viewpoint that many abortion advocates share.
This is not unbiased counseling."
"82% said there abortion decision was “not at all” “thought out.” Only 9% felt that it was moderately well thought out and only 8% believe the decision had been well thought out.
“Do you feel you had all the necessary information to make a decision?” 93% said no.
40 – 50% of women surveyed were wavering in their choice and were actually hoping for another option when they first went to speak with a counselor.
91% reported that their abortion counselors offer little or no help in exploring her decision and options.
Only 4% of the women gave their abortion counselors high grades for being informative and helpful.
66% believe that there abortion counselors are strongly biased toward selling them on abortion is the best solution.
Only 9% believe that their counselors had been free of pro-choice bias
90% of women surveyed felt they did not have enough information to make an informed choice.
76% complained they were not given an accurate description of the procedure.
For example, there was no mention of the physical pain involved.
Only 16% felt the counseling session had adequately informed them about the technical aspects of the abortion procedure
over 80% remarked that there were little or no discussion of risks
only 8% believe their counselors had adequately discuss the surgical risks of the procedure.
Over 90% of women stated that the biological nature of the fetus had not been discussed during a counseling session.
Only 2% said that the fetal development had been thoroughly or even moderately discussed
asked whether they felt “well-informed about the procedure and fetus through other sources before seeking an abortion.” 90% claimed they had little or no prior knowledge and 5% stated that they had only moderate prior knowledge. Only 4% claim to have been well informed about abortion, fetal development, through prior knowledge.
80% felt their counselors had not encouraged – or even attempt to discourage – questions about the abortion. only 5 to 13% believe that their counselors were open and willing to answer their questions. When questions were asked, only 8% thought the questions were thoroughly answered. 8% believe they receive moderately complete answers and 52 to 71% said the questions were trivialized or avoided
21% were at a Planned Parenthood facility for their counseling and/or abortions. 60% stated that there Planned Parenthood counselor had very strongly encouraged them to choose abortion as the “best solution to their problems. Over 90% of those encouraged to abort by their planned parenthood counselor said there was a strong chance they would’ve chosen against the abortion if they had not been so strongly encouraged to abort by others, including a counselor
Of the Planned Parenthood patients, over 60% were still hoping to find an alternative to abortion when they went for counseling. Only 25% were already firm in their abortion choice. All felt their Planned Parenthood counselor did little or nothing to help them explore their decision. 89% said the Planned Parenthood counselor was strongly biased in favor of abortion.
95% of Planned Parenthood counselors gave “little or no biological information about the fetus which the abortion would destroy.” And over 80% of the Planned Parenthood counselors gave little or no information about the potential health risks
Only 13% felt “adequately prepared” by Planned Parenthood counselors"
Mom Baby God is the name of a pro-abortion play written by an abortion supporter after she went undercover at a Students For Life of America conference and was "disturbed by how much enthusiasm there was for the pro-life issue among youth" and wanted to show her side this and "wake up the pro-abortion movement." Yet she ended up
censoring fetal development because this backfired and the facts made her own audience question their pro-choice beliefs.
“The writer admitted during the Question & Answer session after the premiere that she had to rewrite several scenes of the play relating to fetal development, because they were actually causing her audience to question their pro-abortion beliefs.”
There are also a lot of abortion doctors or abortion clinic workers that tell their stories of how they were specifically told to lie to their patients and not let them know about the development of the unborn. They know they are supposed to do this, because if they ever knew the truth, the girl wouldn't choose abortion, and then they would be out of money. You can find a lot of them on
Clinic Quotes, especially in
these sections, and here is a facebook page for that site as well,
Clinic Quotes facebook page, and there is also another facebook page affiliated with that,
Abortion Quote of the Day, and I will post some below.
http://clinicquotes.com/former-planned-parenthood-worker-describes-counseling-at-her-clinic/
Former Planned Parenthood worker Catherine Anthony Adair :
“In fact, clinic workers would purposefully avoid providing information on fetal development, what the child looked like, the child’s anatomical development and the pain he or she could feel. I was continuously reminded that when referring to the baby, the appropriate terminology was “clump of cells” or “contents of the uterus.”
Planned Parenthood’s mission is to pressure as many women into having an abortion as it can. Those in charge know that can’t be accomplished if they refer to the child as a “baby.”
Then women would know what was really growing inside them: a little person with a beating heart, functioning nervous system, tiny hands and feet. The child is entirely disregarded. There is no counseling, no care, no waiting and no discussion. Once a pregnancy is confirmed, it is off to termination.”
Catherine Anthony Adair “Planned Parenthood lies about itself” Washington Examiner, 11/22/11. Quoted in Abortion Industry’s “Mission Is To Pressure Women”, Afterabortion.org, Elliot Institute, January 12, 2012.
http://clinicquotes.com/clinic-worker-we-would-find-their-weakness-and-work-on-it/
Former Clinic Worker Deborah Henry:
“Many women could not afford to have babies, so we would use examples- like the price of babies’ shoes, the price of clothing, how much it cost to raise a baby. If they weren’t finished with their education, the hindrance it would have on their education, how would they find a baby sitter, who was going to take care of that baby for them? We would find their weakness and work on them…All they were told about the procedure itself was that they would experience slight cramping similar to menstrual cramps, and that was it. They were not told about the development of the baby. They were not told about the pain the baby would be experiencing or the physical effects or the emotional effects it would have on them. They had no idea who was going to be there to help them when they fell apart afterward…Some of the women were a little apprehensive about it. We were told that in explaining to them we could never use the word “babies.” It was always tissues, tissues of cells, or clusters of cells or products of conception.”
“The women were never given any type of alternatives to the abortion. It was just automatically assumed that they knew what they wanted. They were never told about adoption agencies. They were never told about people out there who were willing to help them–to give them homes to live in, to provide them with care and even financial support. The euphemisms that are used — clusters of cells, products of conception, or just plain tissue — are all lies.”
Personal Testimony “Meet the Abortion Providers” Convention
in 2005, in Georgia, a law was proposed that would’ve allowed women coming in for abortions to see information about their unborn babies. The woman would not be forced to look at this information, but she would have the option to if she chose to. Planned Parenthood vehemently oppose the law. According to Kay Scott, who is executive director of Planned Parenthood :
“Supporters of the Woman’s Right to Know bill say it would allow time for reflection, but this bill is really about deception. …women already receive full informed consent before having an abortion…..”
Kay Scott “ABORTION: 24-HOUR-WAIT SUPPORTERS TRY TO DECEIVE” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, GA), Jan 21, 2005 pA15
http://clinicquotes.com/ultrasound-technician-shari-richard-speaks-out-about-abortion-and-ultrasounds/
Ultrasound technician Shari Richard describes how effective ultrasounds are in changing the minds of women considering abortion.
“In my own career as an ultrasound technician, I’ve been told to turn the ultrasound monitor away from pregnant women so that they wouldn’t decide against an abortion (I refused). That’s because 90% of women change their minds about having abortions after viewing their babies via sonogram.”
She goes on to tell the following story:
“For 10 years I have been an ultrasongrapher and I have witnessed the development of pre-born children. I am convinced that if every mother could see her baby on ultrasound, the abortion argument would be over. A look through the window reveals the true victim of abortion. This is why ultrasound images are often censored, for example…
In 1990, I testified on fetal development before the House and Senate committee considering the “Freedom of Choice Act.” I brought an ultrasound videotape of fully formed fetuses as young as eight weeks after conception. Representative Don Edwards (D – CA) tried to prevent me from showing the videotape.”
Shari Richard “Now Wombs Have Windows” All about Issues vol 5 # 2
http://clinicquotes.com/abortion-clinic-workers-given-instructions-at-odds-with-clinic-advertising/
One Chicago abortion clinic said the following on a brochure aimed at women considering abortions at the clinic:
“From admission to recovery, patient ease and comfort are first considerations. She is encouraged to ask questions, share feelings or misgivings.”
These were the actual instructions given to the clinic workers:
“1. Don’t tell [the] patient. The abortion will hurt.
2. Don’t discuss [the abortion] procedure or the instruments to be used in any detail.
3. Don’t answer too many questions.
Pamela Zekman and Pamela Warrick “The Abortion Profiteers” Chicago Sun-Times November 12, 1978
http://clinicquotes.com/abortion-provider-hides-ultrasound-screen/
In the article “Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflicts” in American Medical News, a Toronto physician said she didn’t know “how and whether we [should] protect the patient from the reality of the procedure.”
She said she regularly hid the ultrasound screen.
Diane M. Gianelli, “Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflicts,” American Medical News, July 12, 1993. Quoted by Rachel MacNair “Achieving Peace in the Abortion War
http://clinicquotes.com/lying-about-whether-babies-feel-pain/
“The hardest question you get asked is ‘does the baby feel pain?’ We had to lie to them or say we don’t know.”
Former clinic worker Amy
http://clinicquotes.com/adoption-is-subversive-says-abortion-clinic-owner/
From the essay “Alternatives to Abortion and Hard Cases” Patricia Casey. This quote was from an abortionist who runs a clinic in London:
“… it is not in any way standard to offer advice on adoption. It would be subversive…. In fact I would consider firing anyone who did this.”
Today, BBC radio four, 28 August 1996
http://clinicquotes.com/clinic-counselor-on-how-to-think-of-abortion/
When a woman in an abortion clinic voiced her concern that abortion might be killing, her counselor said
“Don’t think of it is killing. Think of it is taking blood out of your uterus to get your periods going again.”
Dr. Monte Harris Liebman and Jolie Siebold Zimmer “The Psychological Sequelae Of Abortion: Facts and Fallacy” in David Mall and Dr. Walter Watts, editors The Psychological Aspects of Abortion (Washington DC: University Publications of America, 1979) 133
http://liveactionnews.org/is-it-a-baby-clinic-workers-respond/
Carol Everett, former owner of two abortion clinics and administrator of four, said that:
Every woman has these same two questions: First, ‘Is it a baby?’ ‘No’ the counselor assures her. ‘It is a product of conception (or a blood clot, or a piece of tissue)’ Even though these counselors see six week babies daily, with arms, legs and eyes that are closed like newborn puppies, they lie to the women. How many women would have an abortion, if they told them the truth?”
Another former clinic worker, Linda Couri, who worked at Planned Parenthood, described how she responded when a teenager considering abortion asked her the following question: “If I have an abortion, am I killing my baby?”
Couri said:
‘Kill’ is a strong word, and so is ‘baby.’ You’re terminating the product of conception.
But Couri was haunted by the girl’s question and troubled about her response. She began questioning whether providing abortions was really moral. She recalls asking her supervisor if she had done the right thing. The supervisor did not deny that abortion was killing a baby but told her that in the teenager’s case, abortion was a “necessary evil.” Struck by the use of the word “evil,” Couri continued to question her position at the clinic. Eventually, she left, and now she is a pro-life speaker.
Clinic worker Peg Johnston, who works in an abortion clinic in New York, revealed how she dealt with women who said they were killing their babies in a 2005 article.
Johnston acknowledges that many women suspect that having an abortion is killing a baby. It seems that when directly misleading women fails, she uses semantics to separate the concept of “murder” from “killing.”
On the blog “
Abortion Witness” in a post entitled “Talking about the babies: saying the things we cannot say,” a clinic worker discusses a similar situation when she describes a conversation with a patient.
“You’ve written in your chart that you feel guilty.” I say to the patient I am screening. “Can you tell me more about this? Why do you feel guilty?”
“I feel guilty because I am killing my baby,” she answers. “That’s why I feel guilty.”
The first time an abortion patient said this to me, I was completely unprepared for it. Although I was a long-time pro-choice activist, a Ph.D. who had studied feminist theory , and a former abortion patient myself, nothing in my experience had prepared me to talk with a woman about killing babies. “Oh no,” I said to her as gently as I could. “It’s not a baby- it’s just tissue.”
But the clinic worker later came to feel that her response was wrong.
She describes how pro-choice activists have trouble with using the word “baby” to describe the child who is killed in an abortion and says:
We all know that an unborn child dies in each abortion. And the majority of abortion care workers accept responsibility for our roles in these deaths. We have, for various reasons, determined for ourselves that having a part in these deaths is an important- and ethical- thing for us to do[.]
ultrasound of the baby at three months
“Are there psychological problems?” I continued.
“Hardly ever. Don’t worry,” I was told.
“What does a three-month-old fetus look like?”
“Just a clump of cells,” she answered, matter-of-factly.
Later the woman said:
“When I saw that a three month old “clump of cells” had fingers and toes and was a tiny perfectly formed baby, I became really hysterical. I’d been lied to and misled, and I’m sure thousands of other women are being just as poorly informed and badly served.”
Quoted by David C Reardon, Randy Alcorn “Pro-life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments” (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2000) 198
Former clinic worker Luhra Tivis, who worked for Dr. George Tiller, stated:
“We were told specifically to coax [pregnant women to have an abortion] by any verbal means available.”
Quoted by Cal Thomas, “Celebrate Life” Oct 1991
http://clinicquotes.com/former-clinic-worker-ellen/
And Then There Were None, a ministry that helps former clinic workers, told the following story in one of their emails:
“Ellen” recalled her time working at Planned Parenthood. Like many others, she felt uncomfortable with her job there, but it paid the bills and offered the benefits she needed. She was hired on as a patient educator and was reprimanded for quietly giving patients information on adoption services and resource centers in the counseling rooms, because she was not pushing the sale of abortion onto women who weren’t sure what they were going to do. ”It took a huge physical toll,” Ellen said. “I would always come home from work and cry.”
http://clinicquotes.com/former-clinic-worker-dina-madsen/
"My official title at the mill was “health worker.” I did various duties-lab work, leading groups (deceiving women about their abortions), “advocating” (deceiving women during their abortions), and assisting the abortionist, which included helping during the abortion and checking to make sure all the parts of the baby were there in the collection jar afterwards."
"There was no medical background required for the job, you just had to be able to accept abortion. And of all the women I worked with several of those women, at least half of them had had abortions and had repeat abortions. And yet they wouldn’t let any of these guys [abortionists] touch them with a 10 foot pole. Never. And yet every day they told these other women, “they’re wonderful doctors, they won’t hurt you. They’re the best at what they do. He’s really a nice man.” And sometimes the women would ask, “have you ever had an abortion?”And of course they wouldn’t say, “yes but not by him.”
I have to admit though I didn’t really have much sympathy for them.[the women] In my view, well you got yourself into this position, tough it out.
So I was looking at these babies as something to be disposed of. I didn’t see them as important, I didn’t see life as important, I didn’t value my own life, therefore how can I value anyone else’s life. And if these women were stupid enough to get pregnant, then it was their fault. And that’s how I felt. And that was how the majority of the staff felt.
Some of the directors I worked with had eight or nine abortions, and we were the same people who would look down on these women when they came in for repeat abortions. How stupid can you get, you know?
And every time she’d come in for an abortion or a D&E, we’d stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp – some of these charts were filled in on both sides. And the doctor would take a look at them and say, “Gee, if she tries real hard she can come in again before Christmas.” And this is somebody who cares about women? I don’t think so."
"I just took it as the general consensus, the general population does, that it is a choice, unfortunately it’s often presented as the only choice.
A woman would call, and I’d make her feel that this was her choice and that we were going to support her in this choice. Because the women are looking for someone to support their decision.”
http://clinicquotes.com/naral-opposes-law-that-would-allow-women-a-choice-to-see-ultrasounds/
NARAL opposes law that would allow women a CHOICE to see ultrasounds
A Michigan law requiring abortion providers to ask women if they want to see the ultrasound before they consented to abortions was proposed. The women would not be forced to see the ultrasound. This law mandated that abortion providers perform an ultrasound for their patients. In many ways, this is a safety issue, for the only way to know for sure how far along a woman is is to do an ultrasound. Also, an ultrasound is the only way to make sure a woman does not have an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy. Most clinics, including Planned Parenthood clinics, routinely do ultrasounds before abortions.
But clinics didn’t want women to have a chance to see their unborn baby. According
REBEKAH WARREN of Lansing-based abortion rights group MARAL Pro-Choice, gave NARAL’s position:
“…requiring a doctor to ask a patient if she’d like to see an ultrasound in proximity to an abortion is a move Warren has described as “emotionally manipulative.”…
So is it emotionally manipulative to allow a woman the CHOICE to look at information that might let her make a more informed decision? Keep in mind that the woman would not be forced to view anything.
https://www.facebook.com/ClinicQuotes/posts/563952570339214
“I have never yet counseled anybody to have the baby. I’m also doing women’s counseling on campus at Albany State, and there I am expected to present alternatives. Whereas at the abortion clinic you aren’t really expected to.”
–abortion counselor
James Tunstead Burtchaell, editor Rachel Weeping and Other Essays About Abortion (New York: Universal Press 1982) p 42 From The Ambivalence of Abortion Linda Bird Francke
http://clinicquotes.com/former-abortionist-joseph-randallwhat-happened-then-was-a-christian-girl-came-into-my-life-and-influenced-me-basically-the-reason-she-came-into-my-life-to-start-with-is-because-the-only-prerequisite/
"When we started, we lost two nurses. They couldn’t take looking at it. Some other staff was lost. The turnover got greater when we started doing the D&Es and mostly, as I said, the ultrasounds. So I think the ultrasound was one of the keys there. The other thing, too, is because the women who are having the abortions are never allowed to look at the ultrasound, because we know even if they heard the heart beat that many times they wouldn’t have the abortion, and you wouldn’t want that. No money in that."
http://clinicquotes.com/former-clinic-worker-carol-everett-on-abortions-after-rape/
Former clinic worker and owner Carol Everett on abortions for rape victims:
“Abortion is a skillfully marketed product sold to a woman when she needs help.The mother has already been the victim of that crime [rape], and we don’t traumatize that victim a second time by aborting her.”
William Saletan Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War (Berkley: California: University of California Press, 2004) 172
http://clinicquotes.com/chicago-abortionist-on-sales-tactics/
From the owner of an abortion clinic:
“We have to sell abortions. We have to use all the tactics we can because just like my other businesses [a trucking firm, a pollution control business, and a real estate sales office] we have competition. Now, we have to go by the rules, but rules have to be broken if we are gonna get things done.”
Pamela Zekman and Pamela Warrick “The Abortion Profiteers” Chicago Sun-Times November 12, 1978, 12
“Every single transaction that we did was cash money. We wouldn’t take a check, or even a credit card. If you didn’t have the money, forget it. It was unusual at all for me to take 10,000 to 15,000 a day to the bank – in cash. It’s a lie when they tell you they’re doing it to help women because they’re not. They’re doing it for the money.”
“Pro-Choice 1990: Skeletons in the Closet” New Dimensions, October 1990, 31
https://www.facebook.com/AbortionQuoteOfTheDay/posts/148804571986947
"I'm sure that there have been doctors involved in performing abortions who have hated women. ....If you felt at all sadistic towards women, that was an area where you had them totally in your power."
Bertram Wainer, M.D, abortionist The Abortion Dilemma: Personal Views on a Public Issue. Contributors: Miriam Claire - author. Publisher: Insight Books. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1995. Page Number: 128-130
http://clinicquotes.com/former-abortionist-dr-george-flesh/
Dr. Flesh talked about the experience he had that led to him quitting abortion practice:
“… a married couple came to me and requested an abortion. Because the patient’s cervix was rigid, I was unable to dilate it and perform the procedure. I asked her to return in a week, when the cervix would be softer.
The couple returned and told me that they had changed their minds and wanted to “keep the baby.” I delivered the baby seven months later. Years later, I played with little Jeffrey in the pool at the tennis club where his parents and I were members. He was happy and beautiful. I was horrified to think that only a technical obstacle had prevented me from terminating Jeffrey’s potential life. The connection between the six-week-old human embryo and a laughing child stopped being an abstraction for me. While hugging my sons each morning, I started to think of the vacuum aspirator that I would use two hours later.”
