Inside the Abortion Clinic

- abortion counselor, Rachel Weeping and Other Essays About Abortion
James Tunstead Burtchaell, editor
New York: Universal Press, 1982 pg. 42-43.

"Counselors are just to give the appearance of help. . . [They] think of themselves as company for the women."

- abortion clinic counselor

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

- Nina Whitten
Chief secretary at a Dallas abortion clinic under Dr. Curtis Boyd

"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?"

- Carol Everett, former owner of two clinics and director of four
"A Walk Through an Abortion Clinic" by Carol Everett
ALL About Issues magazine, Aug-Sept 1991, p 117.

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

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

"We tried to avoid the women seeing them [the fetuses]. They always wanted to know the sex, but we lied and said it was too early to tell. It's better for the women to think of the fetus as an 'it.'"

- Norma Eidelman, abortion clinic worker
Quoted in Rachel Weeping, p 34.

"The counselor at our clinic would cry with the girls at the drop of a hat. She would find their weakness and work on it. The women were never given any alternatives. They were told how much trouble it is to have a baby."

- Debra Harry, former abortion worker
Quoted in the film "Meet the Abortion Providers" 1989.

"When discussing the sonogram, you are supposed to tell the client that it is a measurement as far as the pregnancy is concerned, but not a measure of the fetal head or anything like that."

- Rosemary Petruso, on her training to be an abortion counselor
Her story appeared in the St. Louis Review and was also quoted in
"Women Exploited: The Other Victims of Abortion"
Paula Ervin, editor
Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1985.

"Sometimes we lied. A girl might ask what her baby was like at a certain point in the pregnancy: Was it a baby yet? Even as early as 12 weeks a baby is totally formed, he has fingerprints, turns his head, fans his toes, feels pain. But we would say 'It's not a baby yet. It's just tissue, like a clot."

- Kathy Sparks, as told in "The Conversion of Kathy Sparks" by Gloria Williamson
Christian Herald, January 1986, p 28.

"It is when I am holding a plastic uterus in one hand, a suction tube in the other, moving them together in imitation of the scrubbing to come, that woman ask the most secret question. I am speaking in a matter-of-fact voice about 'the tissue' and 'the contents' when the woman suddenly catches my eye and says 'How big is the baby now?' These words suggest a quiet need for definition of the boundaries being drawn. It isn't so odd, after all, that she feels relief when I describe the growing bud's bulbous shape, its miniature nature. Again, I gauge, and sometimes lie a little, weaseling around its infantile features until its clinging power slackens."

- Sallie Tisdale, abortion worker
"We Do Abortions Here", Harpers Magazine, October 1987, p 68.