On July 31, 2017, The Blaze ran an article about a woman working at an abortion facility who anonymously called Dr. Michael Brown’s “The Line of Fire” radio show. The woman who called the Christian radio show told Brown that she took the job at the facility because it “pays well” and allowed her to support her children as a single mother. But she was deeply troubled by what she witnessed in the facility and wondered if God could ever forgive her.
In a hesitant voice and through tears, the abortion worker described what it’s like to work at the facility:
When I started working there they told me I didn’t have to see anything in the back but that’s not really true. As the manager, you have to do all the other jobs other than procedures because I’m not a clinician. But there’s a room in the back and it’s called a POC room. And it’s “products of conception.” It’s where they take [abortion remains] to process. They refer to it either as tissue or fetus but I saw it for the first time. It’s a baby.
She goes on to say:
It’s not tissue.… It’s really bad. It is, it’s a baby – there is legs and there’s arms and there’s eyes – it’s a baby. And what got me today, the reason why I’m so upset is because on an ultrasound, sometimes you have to do ultrasounds while you’re doing it – if you’re far enough along, it looks like they’re fighting back. [It’s] murder…. It’s just not right.
Some former abortion workers have also commented on the POC room. Former Planned Parenthood manager Abby Johnson described working in this room:
When I worked at Planned Parenthood, I was trained to be a POC technician. POC stands for “Products of Conception.” Sometimes, if the staff were feeling funny, we would say that it stood for “Pieces of Children.”
A former abortion worker in Abby Johnson’s book The Walls Are Talking said:
I spent quite a bit of time in the POC (products of conception) lab during my last few months there. I hated it. It was as if the clinic not only sucked life from the wombs of our patients, from their workers as well .….The doctors seemed to view the lab as a refuge. They would whistle or chat as they poured the glass jars full of remains into a sifter and rinsed away the blood as they searched for the body parts to piece together. I felt nauseous when an abortionist started talking to the baby he had just minutes ago dismembered. (1)
The POC lab is something many former abortion workers never forget.
The woman who called Dr. Brown went on with her story:
And we’re not allowed to tell the women, you know, you should do this or not, and I understand that, you know, but I always make it a point to say “have you considered adoption,” you know, “or carrying it to term?” Maybe there’s a family member, you know. But they almost glorify it there that it’s great to have these women’s rights. You had a right to say no, you had a right to use protection, that was your right, and you did choose that so…. Killing somebody is not your right.
She pleads with any pregnant woman who may be listening:
It’s not what they tell you it is. It’s not what they tell you it is on the news or the marches that you see. It’s not what they say it is. It’s what the pro-life people say. It’s… They’re telling you the truth. When they say how horrible it is, it really is, and that’s coming from inside, I’ve seen it. It’s… It’s real bad. And I just hope to God if there is somebody is that wants to have an abortion, don’t. Just carry it to term. Do adoption. Just don’t do that.
The anonymous caller asked if God could ever forgive her. Dr. Brown told her that God is always willing to forgive, but also had some tough words:
Thank God. Because you’re [God’s] child, you don’t feel right. Because you’re his child you’re under conviction. Because you are his child, the joy isn’t there and it can’t be, because you’re facilitating people’s abortions. Whether you’re greeting them when they come in, whether you’re failing to tell them there are other alternatives, whether you’re processing a payment, you’re part of that and it would be in that respect no different, say if you were during the days of slave trade, that your job was just to register how many people were on the ship and how many survived, or height and weight for sale, or something like that. Or if you were in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust and your job was to count the shoes that were taken from the Jewish prisoners, or the gold teeth, whatever. Even if you yourself didn’t participate in their deaths.
Dr. Brown then says:
You’ll be stronger in the pro-life movement because of it – you’ll have more sympathy for the people who go in and have abortions and know the struggles. You’ll have better understanding of the people behind the scenes performing abortions and those involved with it. So this all can be redeemed for the good.
Brown then offered to connect the caller to pro-life people who could help. He assured her that if she left and could not feed her family, pro-lifers would be there to offer financial support.
And Then There Were None is a group that helps abortion workers to leave their jobs. They provide everything from counseling and emotional support to financial assistance and legal help to those fleeing the abortion industry. Many pro-lifers are involved in outreach to abortion workers. When they leave, the pro-life movement is there for them.
Note that the caller is a single mother. One abortion worker who was employed by an abortionist in Louisiana said something about this in the book Lime 5: Exploited by Choice. In an interview with Rachel MacNair, she said the abortionist chose to hire single women because they were more dependent on their jobs to feed their families and, in his mind, were less likely to quit. The former worker says:
At the time, I needed a job. I’m a single mom with three children… I was hired as a receptionist. And they so-called “promoted” me to doing the urine tests and the recovery room… What [the abortionist] does is he seeks out people that really need to make the money… Most of the women that do work there are single women with children.
Another former worker, Joy Davis, who worked for infamous abortionist Tommy Tucker, says something similar:
If the doctor had somebody come and apply for job whose husband was a big hot shot that made a lot of money, then he didn’t want her working for him. But if they were single, and had children, that’s the one he wanted. He could control them. And he controlled me probably most of all. I had two children, I had a son that had severe problems… And he preyed on that. Because when I started getting into such financial problems with my son’s medical care, that’s when he started making all the demands on me. That’s when he really started pushing on me hard, to change records and to treat patients, and to be a doctor and not get paid a doctor’s wage. And it wasn’t just me, he did that to a lot of people.
Tommy Tucker, who had at least ten malpractice suits against him when he lost his license, had Davis operate on patients even though she had no medical degree. After a woman began bleeding heavily after her second trimester abortion, Davis called an ambulance but Tucker canceled it. Then he left the facility, ignoring Davis’ pleas for help. Davis was left to try and stop the bleeding. The woman died. You can read the harrowing story here, and watch as former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains a second trimester abortion procedure:
We can hope that the abortion worker who called Dr. Brown’s radio show has the courage to leave. She seems deeply traumatized by the work she did in the facility. Perhaps, with time and healing, she will be able to one day come forward publicly with her story and help the pro-life cause.
- Abby Johnson The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2016) 97
