Two women who barely knew each other, living on opposite ends of the country, shared a past in abortion industry work. They never expected the sisterhood that would give them a future. Shelley was a nurse at Delta Clinic of Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 2012. She kept the job a secret from her husband Donald, knowing he would disapprove of …

I WAS JUST 27 YEARS OLD THE EVENING I walked into my home and faced my husband holding a shot gun pointed at me, with a look of murder in his eyes. His cocaine-addled brain had tormented him into believing that I was out having an affair, one of many he had accused me of, when all I had been …

MY HUSBAND AND I HAD BEEN TRYING UNSUCCESSFULLY FOR A THIRD BABY for some months when I began working in the POC (Products of Conception) room at Planned Parenthood in Roanoke, Virginia. The timing of those two things could not have been worse. As anyone who has struggled with infertility knows, when you try month after month and fail to …

I GAVE MY LIFE TO CHRIST IN PRISON. I wasn’t guilty of the drug charges brought against me, but I was tangled up in the street life, addicted to opiates, and knew my life was out of control. Helpless to stop it, I committed my own string of crimes, so prison wasn’t entirely unjust. It took three years of my …

I CONTACTED THE NEARBY PLANNED PARENTHOOD TO INQUIRE ABOUT A JOB because my husband at the time and I had just bought a home. If we were going to afford it, I needed to contribute financially. I made the call even though I was aware of what the organization advocated for, but I figured they helped people. I liked helping …

I remember the day a baby who was taken from his mother’s womb at 19 weeks and six days was placed in front of me. As I looked at him, his face was serene, and his lips and eyes were closed, giving him the appearance that he’d never had a chance to cry, like I was doing at that very …

ABUSE OF THE MEDICAID SYSTEM WAS JUST AS RAMPANT AS THE ABUSE OF WOMEN at the clinic where I took a job as a patient advocate. The fraud was not only brazen thievery of taxpayers’ money, but a perpetuated assault to actual victims of rape and incest. It seemed as if every woman who scheduled an abortion at the clinic …

EXTREME FINANCIAL INSTABILITY MADE ME TAKE THE JOB. After my divorce, I moved in with a man who seemed to be the right one, finally, only to find out that he was wrong in every way. Selling drugs while telling me he was financially buttoned up, when in fact his house was in foreclosure was a rude awakening to my …

RIGHT AWAY, THERE WERE PLENTY OF REASONS TO FEEL UNEASY about the women’s clinic where I worked in North Carolina. The owner lived in the clinic and came out of her room every couple of days, disoriented by drugs of some sort, presumably sleeping pills. She would slur on about being protected by fairies and a few other oddities that …

I remember the dirty street corner in New York City very well on that cold November day in 1973, and the feeling of being scared for what I was about to do. My 17-year-old boyfriend and his buddy had picked me up early in the morning at the house of a girlfriend I stayed with the night before, and we …