{"id":217338,"date":"2020-01-27T10:30:56","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T16:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=217338"},"modified":"2020-01-27T13:46:34","modified_gmt":"2020-01-27T19:46:34","slug":"people-work-planned-parenthood-employee-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/people-work-planned-parenthood-employee-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do people go to work for Planned Parenthood? A former employee shares her story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Licensed clinical social worker Linda Couri<\/a> formerly worked at the Planned Parenthood in Champaign, Illinois. She experienced a change of heart on the abortion issue, and now travels the country speaking about her experiences inside Planned Parenthood and what ultimately led her to leave the company and then to become pro-life. Linda recently told her powerful story on a podcast from weDignify<\/a>, an Illinois-based organization that seeks to build a culture of life on college campuses.<\/p>\n

She was motivated by “compassion and a deep sense of justice”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Linda first encountered Planned Parenthood when she went away to college and found herself “very sympathetic to a lot of the things that Planned Parenthood was doing for the culture, for society,” such as their student sex-ed programs. She personally had a positive experience when she was uninsured and visited a PP for her first gynecologic exam. She says “compassion and a deep sense of justice” led her to later choose to work there. She also believed at the time that women needed access to abortion, believing it was sometimes a necessary option for pregnant women in difficult situations.<\/p>\n

Linda experienced her own unplanned pregnancy at 24. While she personally believed abortion was the killing of a human person, she also felt overwhelming anxiety and other psychosomatic symptoms when she thought of how having the baby would change her life, how she did not want to be with the baby’s father forever, etc. The idea of having an abortion filled her with so much relief as a potential resolution to all of her problems, and she ultimately chose to have an abortion. She says she felt very little emotional response afterward, and “tucked away” any sort of qualms about the abortion in her heart.<\/p>\n

She once considered abortion as the ‘best option’ for every woman<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

After her abortion, Linda became a Planned Parenthood volunteer for several years, and eventually took a paycut to work there for one year. She was a sexual educator, speaking primarily to high school teens, but she also occasionally counseled abortion-minded patients. She noted that Planned Parenthood had a prenatal clinic at the time she worked there, and that they also had connections in the community to facilitate adoption. But, she recalls, she earnestly believed that abortion was the best option for each woman she counseled.<\/p>\n

One particular patient asked her point-blank, “If I have an abortion, will I be killing my baby?” Linda responded, “You will be terminating the product of your conception.” Afterwards, emotionally distressed, she told her manager she had “just lied” to the young woman.\u00a0Linda also recalled how a compassionate nurse approached her after an abortion procedure, upset because she had just seen a tiny baby hand. Both of these experiences highlighted a kind of cognitive dissonance, but she and her coworkers ultimately accepted abortion as a necessary evil and encouraged each other to soldier on.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Planned Parenthood claims abortion is now 4% of its services instead of 3%. It\u2019s still false.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n