Poised and professional, Christine is a woman with aspirations and fierce love for her family. Christine grew up in a Christian household with solid principles in New York amidst a highly fluid cultural climate. Beginning in elementary school, Christine knew she wanted to work in the healthcare field and attended a healthcare magnet school. She did not, however, aspire to work in the abortion industry.
While Christine’s family never explicitly discussed abortion, she knew it wasn’t something she wanted to be a part of. She didn’t really contemplate it much at all until she discovered she was pregnant at age 20. She told her mother she was considering abortion as an option.
“Over my dead body,” her mother replied. “You have this child, and if you don’t want it, it’s gonna come to me.”
Christine at once realized the gravity of that choice and gave birth to a precious daughter, thanks to her mother’s tough love. “She is the pillar of my life, my backbone, my best friend, my everything,” Christine shared. “I’m a big mama’s girl.”
Christine began working in management for a healthcare company but felt a need to move on. She applied for multiple management jobs and received a call back from Planned Parenthood. The pay was attractive, and they were willing to negotiate to onboard Christine as quickly as possible. They assured her that she would be in an office all day, not on site in the abortion facility; she wouldn’t have to see or take part in anything she didn’t want to. For Christine, it seemed too good to be true as a single mother with bills to pay.
Dissonance grew within Christine when she realized she had some hesitation sharing the news about her job with others. She recalled telling a colleague in corporate leadership that she would be working for Planned Parenthood. Her friend reacted with alarm.
“Even in New York, that’s not a place you want to associate yourself with,” Christine said. “Everyone referred to it as ‘the clinic’.”
At first, they did everything to make Christine as comfortable as possible. They were very accommodating and flexible, allowing her to leave early most of the time.
The honeymoon ended when Christine was asked to oversee an abortion day. Christine voiced that this wasn’t part of her job description, but the regional director assured her. “You’re literally just going to document the stuff. You’re not going to be doing anything crazy,” she was told.
“That’s when I went in. I’m sitting down and I have the book and I’m actually seeing everything in real time,” Christine remembered.
After that first abortion day, she was asked to oversee them more frequently. Christine’s affiliate had two centers that performed abortions twice a week.
“It was very draining. It’s like a factory. You’re literally seeing the patients in the waiting room. They come in, you talk to them, they go into the room; it’s not compassionate. You pop them in, then you see the jar and make sure everything is done properly, then you send them into the other room,” Christine described. In the event that all baby parts were unaccounted for, which happened often, they would have to send the woman back into the procedure room.
“Is it enough time for the room to be serviced? Absolutely not. It’s like, let’s finish as many patients as we can so everyone can go home,” Christine said. “[In the recovery room], they look lethargic; a lot of them are contemplating what they did while the workers stood with them for whatever time allotted for them. It wasn’t a happy place.”
This rapid turnover process on abortion days did not allow for rooms and equipment to be properly sterilized between patients. “At certain points, I tried to help out to clean it myself, and sometimes I would see errors from the previous person,” Christine said. “It’s like a factory.”
Christine found it especially difficult to transition from work to home to her beautiful daughters. The contrast between the lack of humanity in the clinic to the warmth she felt as a mother to her precious babies was jarring.
“I will never forget this one client. She came in and she knew she was pregnant. The individual she was with, she didn’t think it was going to work out. So, she wanted to get an abortion. When she found out she was having twins, that’s when she became emotional, and she started to have second thoughts,” Christine reflected. However, once a woman enters the door at Planned Parenthood, they do everything they can to close the sale. Christine observed as the woman was pushed toward abortion rather than give her time to think about it. “I remember that really impacted me because I’m like, let’s have compassion. What if that’s one of us? And thankfully we let the lady leave.”
While not proud of her work, Christine felt close to her coworkers. In her management role, she poured into the clinic’s human resources and built strong relationships with her staff. “Everyone equally hated the place,” she said. “No one had pride in working for Planned Parenthood. Everyone seemed drained, everyone seemed withdrawn.” Christine was transferred to another clinic during her six-month tenure that did medication abortions only.
“The medication abortion is like popping candy,” Christine said as she explained the process. “Sign up. Here you go. Bye.”
There were a couple of situations that prompted Christine’s departure from Planned Parenthood. Someone she knew, someone she was very close to, appeared on the schedule for an abortion procedure.
“I felt responsible. I could have stopped her,” Christine said. “But I chose to stay in my office, and I still regret it to this day.”
Another patient Christine knew personally came to the clinic with her young children and the father. The receptionist and medical assistant came back to Christine’s office and told her she was too far along for an abortion. Christine went out to speak with her.
“Her eyes looked like she cried so much that she had no more water. And then the father, he’s just looking there like, can we get this over with? She looked at my face and I could tell she was shocked because we knew each other,” Christine recalled.
Maintaining her calm, Christine asked her, “Hey, how can I help you?”
“I just want to know my options. I really cannot do this again. I cannot have another kid, and they said I’m too far along, but I really cannot keep this baby,” her friend replied.
Christine took a moment to reflect on her job description and reconcile it with the compassion of her own heart. She said to her, “I know, I apologize for the inconvenience that we cannot service you, but I printed out some options that can help you.”
Christine looked back, “I printed out adoption information for her because I said, ‘You know, there’s still a way out.’ And she looked at me and she said, ‘Thank you.’”
Christine went back to her office realizing that she couldn’t stay in that job.
In an affiliate meeting, an ultrasound tech blurted out that she did not sterilize the vaginal probe properly between patients. Her admission prompted an internal audit and a more thorough look at that center’s documentation and found many inconsistencies across the board: the clinic’s medication, refrigeration, autoclave – everything – had neither been handled nor documented properly. The ultrasound probe had been used woman to woman without the proper sterilization procedures, and patients were not given any kind of notice of possible exposure after the discovery was made.
The staff member who failed that protocol was given two weeks’ notice, but that was the extent of the clinic’s response. “If the state was actually involved in their audit, that center most likely would have been closed down,” she said.
Less than two months before Christine’s exit from Planned Parenthood, she gave her life to Christ.
“I’d walk into my office every morning, turn on the light, go on my knees, and pray and ask God for a way for me to get out of there. ‘I don’t care how, but I need to get out of here because I’m not comfortable being around death 24-7,’ I’d pray,” recalled Christine.
One day while her employees were on break, Christine intercepted the mail. A pretty envelope with no return address caught her eye, and she opened it. “I still have it, this beautiful Christmas card. It was handwritten, and I could tell that it was personalized. It basically said, ‘Are you looking for a way out? We can help you get out of the abortion industry. Call this number.’”
“I asked a colleague if the letter was real, and she said it was fake; don’t pay any attention to it. Something prompted me, which I know is the Holy Spirit, to put it in my bag and bring it home. So, I brought it home and I remember talking to my mom about it,” Christine called to mind.
Her mom encouraged her to give the number a chance, so she did.
“I called the [ATTWN] hotline. She was the sweetest thing on this planet. I do not like crying, but as soon as she started talking, the waterworks started. It just felt like it was way too good to be true,” Christine explained. “I’d been praying every day to get out of this industry.”
ATTWN walked Christine through the process of leaving Planned Parenthood, finding a new job, and ultimately finding peace after those horrible six months in the abortion industry.
“It’s been life changing. God provided, ATTWN assisted,” Christine said. “The magnitude of how this mission and ministry impacts each and every one of us individually…I can’t speak for everyone else, but it is truly life changing. This is the way humanity should be.”
“I’m a pretty private person,” she continued, “but my story can help the next person. The battle we have is not with flesh and blood, and the first step towards getting out of that battle is leaving that place.”