{"id":173765,"date":"2017-10-30T13:56:08","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T17:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=173765"},"modified":"2017-10-26T17:35:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T21:35:58","slug":"secret-planned-parenthood-training-documents-show-how-workers-deal-with-womens-doubts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/secret-planned-parenthood-training-documents-show-how-workers-deal-with-womens-doubts\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Planned Parenthood training documents show how workers deal with women’s doubts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The pro-life group Feminists for Life<\/a> recently published excerpts from a training program used by Planned Parenthood to teach employees how to talk to women coming for abortions. These training materials, created by Planned Parenthood and The Consortium of Abortion Providers, were used to instruct abortion workers on how to “counsel” women and answer their questions about abortion.<\/p>\n

These documents were not meant to be seen by pro-life eyes.<\/p>\n

In their instructions, Planned Parenthood tells workers to stress the following points when talking to women considering abortion:<\/p>\n

Abortion is a common experience.<\/p>\n

Women are not alone.<\/p>\n

A range of emotions is normal.<\/p>\n

Most women do fine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A woman is assured that abortion is ordinary. She is told she will be fine afterwards and will not suffer emotional scars. However, there is ample evidence that abortion leads to higher rates of suicide<\/a> and mental health problems<\/a>. This study<\/a> in The British Journal of Psychiatry<\/em>\u00a0shows that women who abort have an 81 percent higher chance of developing mental health issues.<\/p>\n

Workers assure the woman she will have no post-abortion trauma, but at the same time they tell her that negative emotions are normal. Therefore, she is encouraged to ignore any feelings of ambivalence, guilt, or sadness that she experiences.<\/p>\n

The training documents also include samples of common questions asked by women. These questions include:<\/p>\n

What happens to the baby?<\/p>\n

Will it hurt?<\/p>\n

Does this make me a bad person?<\/p>\n

Does this mean I will go to hell?<\/p>\n

Will God forgive me?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Is it a baby?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

In their instructions, Planned Parenthood acknowledges that women coming for abortions sometimes use the term \u201cbaby.\u201d\u00a0Carolyn Kasdorf, who had an abortion at Planned Parenthood as a teenager, recalls how the abortion worker answered her<\/a> when she asked, \u201cIs it a baby?\u201d<\/p>\n

Feeling I had nowhere to go, I turned to Planned Parenthood and ultimately chose abortion. At first, I struggled with the morality of the decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it a baby?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

The counselor gave me all the answers. \u201cNo, it\u2019s not a baby; it\u2019s just cartilage like your ear. It\u2019s a blob of tissue.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many women have similar stories.\u00a0However, in a recent webcast<\/a>, sponsored by And Then There Were None,<\/a> an organization that reaches out to abortion facility workers, former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson says most women coming in for abortions now know they are pregnant with babies. You can listen to the full webcast here<\/a>. Johnson explains how things have changed over the past ten years:<\/p>\n

[O]ne of the things I really try to impart to the pro-life movement is that women are not having abortions because they don\u2019t recognize that they\u2019re pregnant with a baby. I can only think of one time in my eight years at Planned Parenthood when a woman came in talking about her pregnancy and didn\u2019t call it a baby. I don\u2019t think I ever heard a woman call her pregnancy a fetus. That\u2019s what the opposition does. That\u2019s what Planned Parenthood does. That\u2019s what the media does. But these women \u2013 60% of women who are having abortions, they\u2019ve already had children. So we\u2019re not dealing with a population of people who are ignorant to the fact that they\u2019re pregnant with a baby.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

READ: “Is it a baby?” Clinic workers respond<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Johnson explains how more women know about fetal development, thanks to online resources:<\/p>\n

You know back in the 80s and 90s when ultrasounds were, sort of, just coming around, yeah, that was a real eye-opening experience for women and in many cases it still is. But I think we\u2019re dealing with a different generation of people because everything is online. Everything is at the push of a button. Everything\u2019s on a smartphone. So we\u2019re sort of dealing with a more educated \u2013 I don\u2019t know better educated \u2013 I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true \u2013 but a more educated population because they can Google anything and have information there at their fingertips.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n