Kirsten Breedlove was the administrator of the now closed A-Z Women’s Health [abortion] Clinic in Dallas. Her clinic did late-term abortions. When pro-life activists started demonstrating at A-Z in the early 90s, Breedlove was initially very hostile to them. The pro-life protesters were very aggressive. Breedlove had Mark Gabriel, one of the activists, frequently arrested and jailed.
But it in an article in World magazine, Breedlove told writers Joe Maxwell and Roy Maynard that things began to change.
“Around January I noticed a definite change,” [Breedlove] she says. Mark and other protesters started asking her to pray with them; something clicked in her and she started talking with them. “They would show me a lot of love. … they would be out there praying for me.”
Breedlove ended up responding to the the pro-lifers’ efforts. She said:
“Every day I would go in the clinic and hear the same thing over and over again, and I started thinking about what they were saying; questioning my own self.”
When Breedlove became friends with the protesters, her whole attitude began to change.
“She started asking women to take a look at the [ultrasound] screen with her. “You don’t want to abort this. C’mon, I have some people who will help you “At that point she would walk them outside and introduce them to the protesters, who would take them to a nearby crisis pregnancy center.”
After that, it was only a matter of time before the clinic closed.
Breedlove described what it was like in her abortion clinic before her change of heart:
“I called myself the administrator, but I was a 22-year-old LVN [Licensed Vocational Nurse] with no experience at all. My counselors were not trained as counselors. They were high-school graduates with no type of counseling degree at all. I would call them counselors. We gave the girls no alternative choices when I first started doing this…. On a typical day 20 girls were rushed though. It was almost like a factory line. They were just pushed through one at a time. They were given no personal attention …. A good doctor could do a suction abortion in three minutes. … [The women] were sent home and told to come back in two weeks. When they came back all we did was a urine test to make sure they were not still pregnant. The doctor would walk in and say, ‘Good news, you are not still pregnant,’ and then walk out without ever examining her.”
She also talked about what was, to her, the worst room in the abortion clinic – the place where the aborted babies were stored:
“You would just look in the buckets and see arms and legs. I have horrible dreams about that now. It was something you would see in a scary movie.”
Other clinic workers also had a hard time dealing with the aborted babies’ remains:
“Some of the nine clinic workers actually refused ever to go back there.When Miss Breedlove would ask them to go measure a dead baby’s foot, a standard procedure, some would reply with a flat – no.”
Bad things were happening inside this abortion clinic. Mainly due to the efforts of pro-lifers, the clinic was shut down. But what made the difference was not loud, boisterous demonstrations, blockades, harassment, or arrests. The catalyst for Breedlove’s change of heart was simple compassion. It was the concern the protesters showed towards Breedlove and the other clinic workers that left a lasting impression.
Source: Joe Maxwell with Roy Maynard in Dallas, “Driving Miss Norma“ WORLD, August 26/September 2, 1995 – Volume 10 – Number 15
