Women Share Experiences at Deceptive Abortion Facilities

The documentary Life After Abortion features testimonies from post-abortive women. 

One woman described a worker’s anger when she looked at the ultrasound screen: 

[I] turned to look at the screen and thought, “That looks like a baby.” Well, she got very upset and yelled at me, and said, “Turn around, don’t you dare look at that!”

Ultrasound at 7 weeks, 2 days

Another woman says, “As I was watching the monitor, the nurse and the doctor asked me not to watch. They turned the monitor away.”

A third woman asked to see her ultrasound:

As the nurse was performing the ultrasound, I watched her, and she was looking at my baby on the monitor. And I asked her, I said, “Can I see my baby?” And she took the monitor, literally, with her hands, and turned it away from me.

Another woman believes the abortion worker deceived her:

[T]hey had the screen turned away from me. And I asked to see it. And she said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” 

I told her, no, I really wanted to see it before I went through with it.

So, she ran the probe across my stomach, turned the screen toward me, and showed me a dot on the screen. I thought, “That’s it? Well, I can do this.”…

I bought the lie. I now know she didn’t show me my baby. She just showed me a dot on the screen so that I would go through with the abortion.

One woman told the following story:

They proceeded to tell me that I was too far along in my pregnancy to have what they called an “easy” abortion, that I was going to have to take a two-day procedure, they were actually going to put me into labor, and the word surgery was used. I began to get frightened. I told them I couldn’t stay two days for this procedure. My parents did not even know I was pregnant, and I had to go home that night. 

Just before I got to the car, someone from the office staff came running after me and said, “Wait, wait, we made a mistake! We’ll take care of your problem, you’ll be gone in 30 minutes, and you’ll never think about this day again.” I followed them back in because I believed them.

This facility’s fear of losing a customer, and their decision to do a two-day procedure in 20 minutes, could have destroyed this woman’s chances of ever carrying a baby to term. 

In a late-term abortion, a woman’s cervix must be dilated wider than in an earlier abortion because the baby is bigger and must pass through it, either whole (in an induction procedure) or in pieces (in a D&E). Dilating the cervix quickly could traumatize it to the point where it cannot function properly in a future pregnancy, causing miscarriage or premature birth. 

Another woman said, “They explained to me that it was a blob. That it wasn’t anything yet.”

A woman who had doubts about her abortion said the following:

The nurse asked me if I was okay with the procedure, and I said, no I really wasn’t, because it seemed like it was killing a baby. But they all looked very professional. They showed me a filmstrip of, just, blobs of tissue. So, I thought, “They’re the adults. They’re the professionals. This must be okay.” So, I went ahead with the procedure.

Another woman said:

There was no concern. “Why are you upset?” They just kept telling me, “It’s okay. It’s a blob of tissue. You’re a college student, you have your whole life ahead of you. You already have one child.”

Another woman was lied to about her baby’s development:

And she told me that it wasn’t even a baby yet, that it was just a clump of cells. And I didn’t know anything about fetal development, so I believed her. And, in fact, I felt relieved because I thought, “Well, if it’s not a baby yet, then I’m not doing anything wrong.”

Another woman said, “They said it was easy, they said it was simple. You know, you write your check for $300, and all your problems are solved. I wish someone had told me what really happens.”

An abortion worker put an arm around an ambivalent woman and led her into the procedure room:

I felt almost like I was being pushed in there. She didn’t want to help me. She wanted me to have this done, and she wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to leave. This lady got what she wanted.

Another woman changed her mind on the abortion table and sat up, only to be pushed back down by a worker and told abortion was best for her. She gave up and submitted to the abortion.

Other women and workers have described similar behavior. 

Abortion facilities make money only if women go through with their abortions. They don’t make any money from women who change their minds and walk out the door. Therefore, they have a vested interest in encouraging women to have abortions. 

These testimonies are only a tiny fraction of the thousands of stories from post-abortive women who have experienced dishonesty and/or coercion in abortion facilities. 

Pro-choice activists accuse crisis pregnancy centers of deceiving women. They make sweeping generalizations based on questionable claims of fraud from a few “undercover” pro-choicers who visited pregnancy centers with the intention of discrediting them. But the pro-choice movement refuses to address the many, many accounts of women who were deceived in abortion facilities