UNLIKE SO MANY COLLEGE GRADUATES, I knew exactly what I was going to do with my degree. Although I love my daughter more than I can say, I lived through the hard reality of becoming a teenage mother some years earlier.

At some point, I learned that Planned Parenthood offered birth control pills. Fully believing that women had the right to choose what happens to their bodies, I was going to take my degree and be a part of the symbol of the pro-choice movement—Planned Parenthood, the mythical, great defender of women and feminist enlightenment. I applied, got the job and got right to work.

Jump to three years later, I had just broken up with my boyfriend and was feeling desperate for something to come along and touch where it hurt. I had been a church-goer growing up; more out of tradition than anything else. But suddenly it was church that seemed like my only chance for some healing. When I went back and started attending my church’s young adults’ group, a few of the leaders made a huge impression on me.. It wasn’t so much what they said as it was the way they carried themselves. They had such a peace about them and, if I had to describe it, a sense that everything was OK and would always be OK. They had loving smiles. They talked with such positivity. After a few weeks, I pulled one of them aside.

“What do you have inside you that makes you act the way you do?” I asked. “I want some of that.”

“God,” she said as if it surprised her that I had missed it. “I read the Bible and pray and meditate on Jesus. And then I ask for God’s presence. The point is to get close to God through His Son.”

That was all I needed to hear. I started to do just that—and my heart began to respond. God came flooding into my life and I finally began to feel some peace.

However, one night in prayer, I found myself saying something to God I didn’t really know was there inside my soul waiting to be tended. “Lord, please reveal to me whether or not you want me to stay at Planned Parenthood. I will do whatever you want.” Looking back now, I was really asking if I should get out from under my horrible boss. But what happened next made it clear that God had other, bigger reasons that he planted that prayer in my heart.

God let me see, almost like film strip playing before my eyes, my entire tenure at Planned Parenthood, the good, the bad and the tragic. As I watched, I began seeing things I hadn’t fully realized before. It was like scales were falling from my eyes.

Three-and-a-half years is a long time and my experiences are many. But the most prevalent sin committed by Planned Parenthood was the catastrophic relationship they nurtured with the women in the community we served. Planned Parenthood’s policy of accommodating their every whim, even altering fetus measurements to allow for less invasive abortions, turned our facility into a revolving door. Women would come back repeatedly to get abortions because there was no incentive not to. We made abortion so easy and comfortable. We became their enabler, their de facto family planning, their sexual release valve. The relationship was so cozy the lines began to blur. Were we a clinic that served women in need, or had we become big sister? We never offered our frequent returners counseling or the smallest intervention to let them know that multiple abortions were wreaking havoc on them.

We just took their money.

With so many customers coming in repeatedly, especially the women who came in for birth control but came back for abortions, it was their faces that began to tell a true and terrible story. Faces that once had life in them began to turn cold and expressionless. It’s as if we were no longer the answer to their problem but had just become a part of their cycle of pain—yet they didn’t know enough to stop. They couldn’t help but return to something that was eroding their souls. Of course, we didn’t let on.

Why couldn’t they see that each time they left with birth control in their bags that, as a sexual strategy, it was an abject failure?

Then there was my supervisor who cared about every woman who came in, but just until they left the clinic. That is when she privately demeaned them and talked like they were nothing more than a paycheck. It was more than awful. It hurt to know there was someone out there with the ability to be that two-faced.

It was more than clear what God was showing me. I left Planned Parenthood and never looked back.

A few years later I heard about AND THEN THERE WERE NONE from a friend. The name might not have meant anything to me but I remembered back when I was working at Planned Parenthood that our clinic had received a book, Unplanned, from our national office. Their goal was to alert us to all the “outrageous” accusations that the author, a former Planned Parenthood clinic manager, was making. So disgusted by the book was my supervisor that she tossed it in the trash. And that is what caught my eye—a brand new, pristine book sitting on top of all the garbage. I looked at it long, zeroing in the name of the woman who had struck such fear: Abby Johnson.

That is what gave the organization a note of familiarity when it was mentioned to me some years later. I was out of the industry by that time and doing fine, and yet was still so curious about what they offered to abortion workers. And so, I called them. They invited me to attend a healing retreat. “Do I need healing?” I wondered.

Attending the retreat, for which all my expenses were paid, I found a freedom I never knew I needed. Every woman there had lived my story. I was able talk to them without having to hide anything, realizing that I had been concealing my shameful past from nearly everybody. It was a prison cell I didn’t know I had gotten used to.

Now I belong to a community of ladies just like me, friendly, nonjudgmental faces to talk to. It’s a freedom I can never really describe. The healing that I so desperately needed is happening more each day.

Where Are They Now? Franne Valle

Ironically, it was choosing life for her own child as a teenager that nudged Franne toward a career at Planned Parenthood. “I had my daughter when I was 16 years old. I was embarrassed,” Franne said. “It pushed me toward pro-choice ideology. I am so glad I chose life, but the reality is that being a teen mom is so, so hard.”

Franne wanted other girls to have access to birth control and education. She thought that was the answer to unplanned pregnancy. She also thought that abortion was a kind of necessary evil.

“Eventually my family did become supportive of me as a teen mother,” she said. “They had a stance of ‘it’s your choice; we will support you with whatever you choose.’” But higher education was much more difficult. There is no easy access to family housing or childcare. There are long lists for those resources. “Those are the things that would have been helpful to me as a teen mom,” she reflected.

“When I first started, I assumed that I would see young teens, abuse and rape victims; girls and women who really ‘needed’ access to abortion,” Franne said.

Over time, she was shocked by the revolving door of twenty- and thirty-year-old women who used the abortion clinic as a birth control method, rather than the scared teenaged girls she expected would be her clientele.

“It bothered me. Although I went to church occasionally with my family as a child, my faith wasn’t a big part of my life growing up, Franne said. “Deep inside me I knew that abortion was wrong, but I thought it was necessary in dire situations. I didn’t like seeing it used so casually as birth control, but I tried not to judge and told myself that while I would never choose abortion for myself, I would never tell another woman what to do with her body and her situation.”

Over Franne’s last years of working in one of the two different Planned Parenthood facilities she was employed by, little things started to niggle at her conscience. She saw how women were degraded. She saw how money, and not women’s rights nor their bodily autonomy, was everything to those in leadership. She saw that instead of helping prevent abuse in the lives of women and children, she was helping to perpetrate it.

Franne returned to her roots desiring to learn more about her faith.

“Being Hispanic, Catholicism is basically embedded into our culture, but I wasn’t committed to it. I experienced a very emotional breakup and wondered what was wrong with me,” Franne said. “I felt used and broken. I knew I needed to return to God, and I found a local parish that taught the Word.”

Franne was impressed with how the church leaders and members expressed themselves and with the genuine peace and joy they showed her and each other. She started really reading the Bible for herself, praying, and questioning if she should be working at Planned Parenthood.

“I asked God to show me, and it was like he removed the scales from my eyes,” she said. “I was thinking about getting out immediately and I heard about another job at a Community Health Center. I interviewed and they hired me right away.”

Franne didn’t even care about how much money she would be making, she just wanted out of Planned Parenthood in the worst way. It turned out that she was making two more dollars an hour at the Community Health Center.

“It was such a blessing,” Franne said. “After working at a clinic that offered real comprehensive health care, I began to notice that Planned Parenthood really offers nothing but abortion to women. I felt so bamboozled by believing that Planned Parenthood was health care.”

Franne never really shared her experiences working at Planned Parenthood with her friends, family, or church. She wasn’t sure how people would react to her.

“I knew no one who could relate to my experience,” she said. “I held it in. I didn’t want to face the reality of what I had done and expose it to the light. I was so ashamed.”

“In 2017, a local prayer volunteer informed me about And Then There Were None and their healing services for former abortion workers,” she said. “I contacted Abby, and eventually found myself heading to a healing retreat in Texas.”

“I didn’t know what to expect. I really needed to connect to other workers who have shared the same experiences. In the core of my being, somehow, I felt my participation in the abortion industry had damaged me, and I needed healing.”

Another part of the retreat that made a substantial impact on Franne was the way they were taught to humanize the babies – even calling them babies – which was not something that she had been in the habit of doing during her years in the abortion industry, or even after.

“I came to understand just how good Planned Parenthood is at dehumanizing babies. Wow… it makes sense now. We made them seem meaningless. Like, this is just some tissue, and we never used the word ‘baby’.”

Franne enjoyed bonding with the other Quitters. Some even live near her and she has spent time with them in person.

“It is very motivating and inspiring to see that women are still walking away from the abortion industry,” she said.

Since she walked away, Franne has been highly active in the pro-life movement. She leads her local 40 Days for Life prayer vigils, attends And Then There Were None healing retreats and church retreats, has spoken on a panel of former abortion clinic workers, and attended the Pro-Life Women’s Conference.

Franne was also called upon to speak to and testify against several pro-abortion bills in California. She is also a Board Advisor for a pro-life teen camp.

She has also recently accepted a job as the Associate Executive Director of a pregnancy center in California.

“I am so excited to serve my community in a life-giving and loving way,” she said. “The culture there is just so different. They are mindful of the fact that I have a family, and they are my priority. They care about me not only as an employee, but as a person.”

Franne now has two daughters, one who is 22, and her baby who is 3 years old. She will be getting married in September.

“My fiancé is a committed Christian and God is in our relationship. I never imagined that I could be living a life like this. He has known me for 20 years and he has seen my priorities and values completely change.”

The more healing Franne received, the more open she became about her pro-life beliefs. She is now confident and educated and her time on the sidewalk has helped her hone her skills and help women and families in crisis. She would urge any worker who is considering leaving the clinic to give And Then There Were None a chance.

“They will love you like you never have been. Give them a chance and see for yourself. You can trust them. You won’t be sorry.”