Former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson interviewed former Annette Lancaster, another former Planned Parenthood worker, for her PureFlix series, “Beautiful Lives.” In her interview, Lancaster spoke about the way Planned Parenthood workers coerced women into having abortions, even when the women were uncertain of their decision.
Lancaster said:
Of course, the procedures themselves were bothersome to me. But just the way that women were being coerced, the way that women were kind of being guided into having abortion procedures, even when they came in and they weren’t really sure which way they wanted to go – if they wanted to have the procedure, or if they just wanted to come in for counseling.
It seemed that all of the “counseling” that we gave them led them and guided them to having the procedure. And that became very bothersome to me.
Lancaster further described how she and the other “counselors” were told to do what they could to convince women to abort:
[S]ometimes women would come in and they would say, “you know, I’m not really sure if this is what I want to do.” And we were taught to tell them this is the best thing for you. It’s good for this time in your life. You either need to continue your career or continue your schooling or it will be the best thing for the children that you already have. You’ll be able to have children again in the future. This is just not the right time for you.
Those are the types of things we would tell women. So, in my mind, I’m thinking, we’re guiding them to actually have this procedure done.
Even when ambivalent, visibly upset women made it to the procedure room, staff continued to assure them abortion was best:
It bothered me a great deal because some women would cry. They would be very emotional. You could see it in their eyes that they just were not certain, even when they were in the procedure room with the provider. They really weren’t certain about their decision, but we were guiding them to go ahead and have the procedure done anyway.
Often, the women were rushed through the “counseling.” Lancaster said, “[T]hey weren’t given enough time to really think. It was very quick. We would ask them a lot of questions, but the counseling was not really counseling. It was basically, “Sign these documents so we can get the procedure done.”
Lancaster said she and the other workers lied to women:
[E]ventually I started realizing that we were lying to these women. Things that we were telling them were just lies. It wasn’t going to be better for their other children. It wasn’t going to help them continue their career or their schooling. But these were the things that we were taught to tell them, so that they could go ahead and just sign the paperwork and have the procedure done.
Many women who had abortions at Planned Parenthood have spoken or written about the biased and dishonest “counseling” they received there.
One woman became pregnant and had an abortion at Planned Parenthood when she was 17. She wrote:
[T]hey told me that my baby was not really a baby yet. They said it was a clump of cells and that it would definitely not feel pain. I was also told that they could do a simple procedure that would not hurt me either. They said there may be some “discomfort,” but that it would go away.
I was told that it would be easy and over quickly. My boyfriend could drop me off and I would go home the same day. Then, my life could return to normal. There would be no more worrying about how to make a baby, a mistake, fit into my life. After all, I was still a child myself…. I was told that I was young and had my whole life in front of me to start a family when I was ready.1
This woman’s abortion led to a lifetime of regret:
The truth is that my life did not return back to normal. The “procedure” did hurt both physically and emotionally. I tried to forget about it, but I could not. I filled my life with more bad choices because my sense of self-worth was nonexistent.
No one told me that I would, in fact, live with this decision for the rest of my life. No one told me the sorrow I would feel that I would never get to see my child, that I would never know what could have been.2
According to those who have been there, abortion “counseling” at Planned Parenthood is a one-sided sales pitch, full of lies and distortions.
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Quoted in Julie Boles, MSN, ARNP and Brent Boles, MD Should I? Things to Consider before an Abortion (2020) 20 – 21
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Ibid.
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