Abortion Insiders Turn Their Backs on the Industry | Jim Graves | Catholic World Report
For different reasons and in different ways, these former clinic workers have rejected abortion and embraced life.
As Americans mark the 40th anniversary of the 1973 US Supreme Court decision striking down the nation’s anti-abortion laws, Americans remain deeply divided on the issue. There is one small group, however, that has a unique perspective from which to shed light on it: former workers in the abortion industry who, for moral reasons, left their jobs—often returning to or finding religious faith—and embraced the pro-life cause. Having worked behind the doors of abortion clinics, they know first-hand what abortion is, and the destructive force it has been in many lives.
“We wouldn’t really tell them about alternative options”
Annette Lopez worked as a program assistant for Planned Parenthood in the Los Angeles area for five years. Her job was to visit high schools and teach teens about “responsible choices” relating to sex.
She first learned about Planned Parenthood while in college. A nominal Catholic, her views were rather vague on the abortion issue, and she was assured it was a small part of Planned Parenthood’s business.
Lopez initially liked her job. “I wanted to help youth,” she explained. “I had a niece who got pregnant at a very young age, and I wanted to help them avoid making her mistake.”
As Lopez was seldom at clinics she rarely saw pro-life demonstrators, and what little she knew about them was negative. Her perspective on pro-lifers came from such media depictions as the 1996 HBO movie If These Walls Could Talk, in which pro-life demonstrators are angry and violent. (Cher portrays the caring and kind abortionist, Dr. Beth Thompson, in the movie, who is harassed relentlessly by pro-lifers. At the close of the movie, she has just performed an abortion on a relieved Anne Heche, and is gunned down by a pro-lifer who bursts into the procedure room.)
In her final year at Planned Parenthood Lopez began dating her future husband, a pro-life Catholic who gently queried her about her work. “He’d ask, ‘Don’t they do abortions there? Is that right? You’re a loving person and you love your family, why are you there, where they hurt babies?’” she recalled. “He got me thinking.”
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