Live Action recently released videos of former Planned Parenthood workers describing how they saw torn apart bodies of aborted babies in the facilities where they worked. In the video below, former Planned Parenthood director Sue Thayer describes witnessing abortion procedures for the first time. She remembers noticing three arms in a jar of aborted baby parts and being told that the woman had aborted twins:
Other abortion facility workers have written about what they saw in the “POC lab.” “POC” stands for “products of conception,” the euphemistic term used by abortion workers to describe preborn babies. Referring to women’s preborn children as “products of conception” dehumanizes them and makes it easier to kill them with a clear conscience.
In Abby Johnson’s book, The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories, an unnamed former abortion worker calls the POC lab “a horrific place full of unspeakable gore.”
This abortion worker describes how the facility she worked in would immediately put new workers in the goriest room in the place to see how they would cope. She says:
It is the practice of many clinics to shelter their new employees from the bloody reality of abortion for as long as possible. Most are started with innocuous clerical tasks such answering the phones, entering data, and scheduling appointments. Slowly they are transitioned into the POC lab.
This wasn’t the way my affiliate operated. They held more of a “sink or swim” type of philosophy. … Fresh young abortion idealists found themselves standing over a dish full of death. And it was their job to piece the body back together to make sure that the abortionist had “gotten it all”. By throwing the newbies into the trenches of the POC lab, the “weak” ones were weeded out; the ones who managed to stomach it the first time or two promptly toughened up.
When the worker saw the torn apart bodies of aborted babies, she was surprised. The reality of abortion was nothing like what she had been taught:
Of course, I had seen the graphic signs that the pro-lifers liked to hold up as they screamed at the abortion minded women as they were escorted into our building.
However, we were always taught those images were not legit. They were falsified by anti-choice radicals in an attempt to sway the public. We were taught that a first trimester abortion resembled nothing more than a blood clot, and that the visuals used by pro-lifers showing almost fully formed tiny fetuses were doctored. they had to lie to support their arguments. Science was on our side.
I wonder now if I never questioned this because not only did I work in the abortion industry, but I had also had several abortions myself. It was so much easier to accept the fact that I had removed a clot of blood from my uterus that had the potential to become a baby than to think that I had hired a man to end the life rapidly growing in my womb.
Nevertheless, the abortion facility worker telling the story did “well” in the POC room – she didn’t cry hysterically or become sick. The facility administrator said to her:
You are the only person that I’ve ever brought back here that hasn’t gotten all emotional. You’re the one who will take over this affiliate.
A strong stomach is needed to work in an abortion facility. This worker was able to suppress her emotions and harden herself to the broken bodies of aborted babies she saw every day.
But not all the abortion workers at her facility were able to do so. The worker sharing her experiences described what happened when one of her co-workers was sent in with the aborted babies for the first time. The co-worker had worked in the abortion facility for five years, counseling women and encouraging them to choose abortions. Even though she had been at the facility for such a long time, she had never seen what an aborted baby looked like:
Most people think it is a safe assumption that if someone has been involved in the abortion industry day in day out for that amount of time, they have a fairly good idea what an abortion looks like. … The abortion industry is not so straightforward. This woman had no idea what she was getting into.
Here’s what happened next:
When she was tasked to piece together the remains of a 16 week old baby, she cracked. Over her years of employment with the clinic, that woman had undoubtedly sold countless abortions to women in crisis. She knew how to answer their questions. “Will my baby feel anything?” “What does it look like now?” “Will it hurt?” She had spent years in the abortion industry, but a few short seconds in the POC lab was all it took to send her flying out the door, never to return.
As she ran out the door, the worker screamed, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”
16 weeks
The aborted baby was still moving.
Imagine the shock and guilt this worker faced when she realized she had been lying to women for all those years. She was suddenly faced with the reality of abortion, all illusions stripped away. It was too ugly for her to bear.
The worker recounting the story, however, was merely annoyed at her co-worker’s reaction. She saw her only as an incompetent employee, leaving more work for everyone else:
I rolled my eyes, annoyed at her weakness, and headed to the lab to clean up her mess and get the job done. Most babies come out in pieces. But occasionally, they will come out almost whole. This particular baby’s head, torso, and arms were still intact. The legs were ripped off. There was movement, but only for a moment. I accounted for the parts, estimated gestational age based on the chart, and moved on to the next one.
This baby was still alive, with both of her legs ripped from her body.
In retrospect, the abortion worker who told this story couldn’t understand how seeing the baby didn’t change her mind about abortion. She is pro-life now, but it was not the torn apart bodies of the babies that swayed her. As she says before, she was operating on denial – after all, she was responsible for aborting several of her own children as well as helping many women abort theirs. The truth was too painful to accept.
Her story is one of the many firsthand accounts in The Walls are Talking. It demonstrates how horrible abortion is, but also how a person can become completely desensitized to violence and killing to the point where examining dismembered body parts is just part of a job.
Source: Abby Johnson The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2016) 115-120
