The story of former abortion worker turned pro-lifer Deborah Edge gives more evidence of the nature of the abortion industry. FOX News published an article by Edge, who worked in the late-term abortion facility of the “Texas Gosnell,” Douglas Karpen, for 17 years. She eventually left her job at the facility and went public with some of the atrocities that she witnessed, including the murder of infants born alive.
Edge was hired as a receptionist, but was soon recruited to do other jobs at the facility, including “counseling” abortion-minded women. She says, “I … somehow stomached the excuses women had to abort – for many it was because the baby was a girl and they wanted a boy while others it was because of a fetal defect and others because they didn’t want another child.”
Despite the pro-choice claim that abortions for sex selection never happen, Edge witnessed a number of women having late-term abortions for this reason. As Edge stated, some of the women having late term abortions had no reason other than “they didn’t want another child.” The claim that late-term abortions are only done for dire medical reasons is untrue.
Edge was featured in the video below, a Life Dynamics exclusive interview:
Edge saw the bodies of aborted babies every day. Sometimes her conscience troubled her so much that she tried to talk a woman out of having an abortion:
My conscience bothered me at times and I would secretly try to change the patient’s mind during counseling.
One woman came in who was pregnant with twins and already had another child. I just couldn’t counsel her to choose abortion and told her that there are other options. She chose to keep the twins and saw me a couple years later and told me how grateful she was for my advice and that her children were her joy.
Edge is able to remember this one positive outcome, but she also saw many babies aborted – some of them alive:
[E]ven worse than lying to the women or dealing with a cranky boss was what I saw during the abortions. I was the doctor’s right hand person in the operating room and just like those employees of Dr. Gosnell, I saw the abortionist puncture the soft spot in the baby’s head or snip its neck if it was delivered alive.
The behavior of the abortionist towards the women was also appalling:
As time went by I learned every position in the clinic and the doctor trusted me. However, he was always in a bad mood and rude to patients and employees. He referred to the larger women as cows or whales. I hated how he treated everyone and left but went back because I needed the money….
I saw more things that made me question why I was working there. I saw the doctor increasing prices for no reason, making pregnancies look larger on the ultra sound to charge more. I saw him charge women for being overweight, on medication by a primary doctor, for having had previous C-sections, for having a tilted uterus, and many other reasons he just made up.
READ: ‘Texas Gosnell’ abortionist referred for criminal charges by congressional panel
Many other testimonies from the abortion industry reveal that contempt for women is not unusual among abortionists.
Also not unusual is the doctor’s practice of charging overweight women more for their abortions. Shelley Guillory, who worked at the Delta Clinic said the following in a webcast with Abby Johnson:
The one thing I found about our clinic that was humiliating and dehumanizing was that if a larger woman came in, she was charged an additional $150 to $200 because she created a little bit more difficulty because of her size. Whether the abortion was complicated or not. Because she was large, she was charged extra.
Edge first seriously considered leaving when she found a flyer from a pro-life group that encouraged abortion workers to come forward with information about illegal activity at their facilities. She knew that killing babies born alive after abortion was not legal. But she hesitated to leave, because she was unsure if she could find another job. She worried about how she would take care of her children if she was unemployed.
But eventually, Edge contacted the group and was referred to And Then There Were None, a group founded by former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson, which exists to help abortion workers transition out of the abortion industry. The group offers everything from help finding a new job to healing retreats for former abortion workers. Edge quit her job, and begin telling her story.
Edge’s experiences in the abortion industry are not unique. Many other former abortion workers have told similar stories. But her story is one more piece of evidence that shows the despicable nature of the abortion industry. We see through these workers’ testimonies that an industry that kills preborn babies does not follow basic standards of healthcare or respect women. Abortion facilities don’t just kill children; they profit from exploiting vulnerable women who come to them.
