{"id":182004,"date":"2018-05-03T13:06:02","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T17:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=182004"},"modified":"2018-05-03T14:28:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T18:28:54","slug":"planned-parenthood-discourages-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/planned-parenthood-discourages-options\/","title":{"rendered":"Planned Parenthood discourages options other than abortion, say former workers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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And Then There Were None is a pro-life group<\/a> that reaches out to abortion workers, encouraging them to leave the abortion industry and helping them with financial and emotional support when they do. Sometimes these workers tell their stories. From their testimonies, we can learn a great deal about the abortion industry.<\/p>\n

And Then There Were None sent out an email in which they shared the story of \u201cEllen<\/a>\u201d who worked at Planned Parenthood:<\/p>\n

\u201cEllen\u201d recalled her time working at Planned Parenthood. Like many others, she felt uncomfortable with her job there, but it paid the bills and offered the benefits she needed. She was hired on as a patient educator and was reprimanded for quietly giving patients information on adoption services and resource centers in the counseling rooms, because she was not pushing the sale of abortion onto women who weren\u2019t sure what they were going to do.\u00a0\u201cIt took a huge physical toll,\u201d Ellen said. \u201cI would always come home from work and cry.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Ellen” got in trouble for talking to women about adoption and mentioning pro-life pregnancy resource centers. As many other former Planned Parenthood workers have said, Planned Parenthood is financially invested in selling abortions. They try to sell abortions to as many women as possible.<\/p>\n

Former Planned Parenthood worker Annette Lancaster confirms this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I was told, \u201cWhy did you only do 25 procedures today? Why did you send this many women home?\u201d Because I was the type of center manager that if a woman was unsure, she wasn\u2019t getting the procedure done today under my watch. I was quick to give people a refund, or send women home and tell them, you know, to continue thinking about it\u2026<\/p>\n

When I sent women home because they\u2019re unsure, or I could see in their faces and their answers, their responses to the counseling questions, they were just not certain about their decision \u2013 what was I expected to do? Was I expected to go out and just find women to have abortions? Or was I expected to just go ahead and let these women go through with a procedure? I believe they really wanted me to, of course, not go out on the streets and find women, but the women that were already there in the clinic were expected to have those procedures.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

READ: Abortion workers: We easily avoided parental notification and consent laws<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Planned Parenthood administrators got angry when “Kelli” told women about resources that could help them have their children, and when Annette sent ambivalent women home. Ellen J Reich, who interviewed former Planned Parenthood workers<\/a> for her article in\u00a0The American Feminist,<\/em>\u00a0says:<\/p>\n

Planned Parenthood [had the] practice of never referring clients to crisis pregnancy centers, even if the woman had no interest in abortion. Dana, with Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, heard this message loud and clear. She worked in administration for four months and soon realized the \u201cResources\u201d notebook was woefully out of date. When people called asking for help when they planned to keep their babies, Dana referred them to the Thrive Women\u2019s Clinic across the street. When her boss heard her one day, she got \u201cchewed out.\u201d\u00a0We don\u2019t do that here,\u201d she was told.(1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pregnancy resource centers inform women about programs in the community that can help them. They help women see that abortion is not the only option. Pregnancy center volunteers offer all kinds of support and help to women who decide against abortion.<\/p>\n

Pro-life sidewalk counselor Vicky Kaseorg works with a pro-life group called Cities4Life, which is affiliated with a center. In her book,\u00a0Kaseorg talks about convincing a woman outside an abortion facility to have her baby. After telling the story about the mother and baby who were saved from abortion, Kaseorg describes the services she and the other pro-lifers would offer the mother:<\/p>\n

Cities4Life will now seek to provide, as needed, a place for the mother to stay, a baby shower that will cover the first two years of baby clothes and full assortment of things the baby will need, help getting to and from doctor\u2019s appointments, and an incredible doctor who will deliver the baby free of charge. Some of the counselors have provided their own homes for mothers who choose life and have no place to stay. (2)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Planned Parenthood cared about women and wanted to offer them real options, they would not deny women the chance to know about resources that could help them have their babies.<\/p>\n

\u201cEllen\u201d also says she was reprimanded for offering women information on adoption. Other former Planned Parenthood workers have also indicated that adoption is not one of the options presented at Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

In a Live Action video, former Planned Parenthood worker Sue Thayer said that when she “counseled” pregnant women on their options, she would offer them a brown paper bag, which would be sitting on the desk. In that bag was a pamphlet that offered information on adoption and prenatal care. Thayer would offer the woman a chance to take the bag,\u00a0but if the woman did not take the bag and read the pamphlet on her own initiative, there was no further mention of adoption or keeping the baby. In this way, Planned Parenthood was able to say that they offered information on all options, even though the only option workers really discussed with pregnant women was abortion.\u00a0 Thayer says:<\/p>\n

Well, in my affiliate an adoption referral was if a woman picked up that envelope, that bag and it had a pamphlet in it about adoption. That counted as an adoption referral. In all my years there, never in the 17 centers across Iowa, did we have an adoption. Not once.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n