The beginning of the end of my employment with an abortion clinic in Richmond, Virginia began with a conversation.
“Kelly, make sure you take care of the magazines in the waiting room.”
I knew exactly what my boss meant by “taking care” of the magazines. Initially, when they told me to search the pages for any content even remotely baby-related and remove it, it made sense to me. After all, the last thing a woman walking into an abortion clinic wants to see is a glossy ad with a happy baby, a woman with that healthy pregnancy glow, or an article about the latest trends in child birthing. The longer I worked at the clinic, the less comfortable I felt about editing the waiting room magazines. Instead of being sensitive, it felt sleazy and manipulative.
While we were careful to maintain a public perception that the health and well-being of the women who came through our doors was our top priority, I began to feel that the opposite was true. Holes in our abortion schedule equaled lost dollars for the clinic. If there was a gap in the schedule, I was told to call women who had either simply phoned for information or who had failed to keep their appointment for whatever reason. A full schedule, not the empowerment of women, was the driving force behind our daily work. Fearing that a boyfriend or husband might sway a woman in a direction other than aborting their child, it was our unwritten policy to make sure that no man felt comfortable or welcome in our waiting room. We would turn down the thermostat, be blatantly rude to them, and refuse to provide any information. In the end, most men chose to wait in the car. He might have served the baby’s purposes, but he certainly did not serve ours.
The reality of abortion began to dawn on me, it was a dark endeavor.
I began to grow increasingly uncomfortable with the outright disrespect that the workers showed for the women. My own abortions, in the very same clinic, were the reason that I sought employment there. I was trying to justify my decisions and truly had a desire to help women who felt as lost and alone as I once had.
“Don’t worry about her. She’s a frequent flyer.”
“Sit down and shut up. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Did they say these things about me? I thought we were all about helping women, not judging them, kicking them when they were down, or even making fun of their bodies during procedures.
Fortunately, like me, these women will never remember the cruelty or the physical pain of the procedure. Each woman was given a powerful cocktail to sedate them, block the pain and the verbal abuse, and keep them from considering the emotional toll the destruction of their baby would have on them. As a result of the sedation, the experience would remain a foggy memory—perfect for creating in them the ability to come back and do it again.
To me, the recovery room felt like the saddest place in the entire world. Agony and profound loss were etched on the faces of each woman. It did not matter if she marched into the clinic as a proud feminist, or had entered hesitant, yet resolute. In that room, she was broken. Most women, including myself, do not remember the time spent in that awful, sad room.
Of course, one could question whether pain was what I was really seeing. Couldn’t those emotions just have been a reaction to the drugs? Well, I don’t think so. No. You see, I know my way around drugs.
I was raped at the age of 12 after sneaking out of my house to attend a party. I trusted my youth pastor, and when I confided in her, her words stung and changed me forever. I sought comfort and found judgment. If I had not broken the rules, I would never have been raped. I was left feeling utterly worthless and alone. Pregnant at 15, I got my first of four abortions. It began my pursuit of something, anything, that could kill the pain. Before I knew it, there I was, the daughter of a pastor, running drugs from New York to Florida. I got thrown in jail, was physically beaten in drug deals gone wrong, and had my car blown up by an angry supplier. More often than not, my boyfriends beat me. There was not a moment in my day where I was not drunk, high, or both.
Like many of the patients at the clinic, I was hoping to find a way out of the chaos. I wanted a stable “good job.” After many months of seeing the daily reality of what goes in an abortion clinic, I realized that I was multiplying the chaos, not escaping, it. This was not a place to find hope, only more hurt. I knew I had had my fill of hurt. I simply did not go to work one day, and then just never went back. Despite all the trauma and turmoil I had experienced, the everyday business of an abortion clinic was still too much for me. I was done.
After 15 years of running from God, He encountered me in the front pew of my dad’s church. The process wasn’t quick or easy, but God walked with me through ten years of healing and redemption. I took a job at a pregnancy resource center. From the very beginning, I disclosed my own abortions to them, and they welcomed me with open arms. In an amazing turn of events, I publicly gave my testimony to a crowd of thousands on the steps of the United States Supreme Court during the March for Life in 2018. I was doing something positive, and certainly felt like God was regenerating beauty from ashes, but I knew I was holding something back and that there was much more healing to be had. The few times I told people that I was not only post abortive, but that I had also worked in the abortion industry, I immediately saw on their faces that they saw me as the enemy. I was flooded with shame. I had met countless women who had also chosen abortion, but I had never met another former clinic worker. I felt like I was the only one and quickly learned not to talk about it.
It was at the March for Life in 2019 I first encountered AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. I knew I had to talk to them. When I got some time with a client manager at their Coffee with Quitters event, a panel of ten or more former clinic workers bravely sharing their stories, I told her my secret and she threw open her arms. “You belong in our tribe!” she said.
The realization that I didn’t have to convince them to accept me or let them see only what I felt comfortable with, began the process of healing in a part of me that had been sealed off. They accepted all of me, embracing who I was with hugs and smiling faces. It was overwhelming. They were a group of women just like me. All they really wanted was to make sure I knew that they had my back.
Twenty years of pent-up shame began to melt away.
Today I am the Director of Outreach for AND THEN THERE WERE NONE and have a strong relationship with Jesus Christ having given my life to Him in February of 2006. I am amazed daily that God could so fully redeem everything I have been through and use it to reach others. Best of all, that too is a part of my message to the ladies I talk with. God can use everything in your past for His glory, no matter how bad. Can anything be better than that?
Where Are They Now? Kelly Lester
After meeting someone like Kelly, hearing where she has been, what she has done, where she is now, and the lives that are changed because of her, the word miracle keeps coming to mind. Oxford Languages defines a miracle as, “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.” Her transformation does indeed defy statistics and the natural order of someone who has been in Kelly’s shoes.
Kelly learned to keep secrets from her parents in early childhood when a trusted adult groomed and molested her. After being raped at a party her freshman year of high school, she disclosed the assault to a youth leader whose response was, “If you hadn’t gone to the party, that would have never happened.” The response left her feeling ashamed, and further solidified the seal on her secret life. She rapidly went from honors student and nationally ranked athlete to pregnant teen, having her first of four abortions at age 15. She spent years in a haze of drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, sexual sin, and running drugs for the Puerto Rican mafia before seeking “stability” by working in the clinic where she’d had her own abortions.
Working in the abortion industry didn’t have the healing effect she thought it would. After nearly being killed in a domestic violence incident by her partner, Kelly was disillusioned and broken. She gave her life to Christ on the front pew of her father’s church, where he was the pastor. God healed her as she walked with Him for the next ten years, and He opened doors for her to work at a pregnancy resource center. Kelly loved serving vulnerable women but noticed that while most pro–life people were very comfortable and accepting when she discussed her past abortions, the same wasn’t true when she opened up about her experience working in the abortion industry.
“I found healing in so many areas, but I never found healing from my time at the clinic,” Kelly said. “I never felt safe to share about that. People would look at me with eyes of disapproval, so I kept it hidden. I just never talked about it.”
Kelly met others who had left their jobs in the abortion industry and found healing through And Then There Were None after listening to a panel of Quitters speak in 2020 at the March for Life. She was quickly welcomed into the fold of abortion industry Quitters and realized that there was a safe place for her to unpack the burden she’d been carrying from her time as an abortion worker. She attended her first healing retreat that year, which was small because of COVID.
“Because there were only a few of us on that retreat, it was extremely intimate,” Kelly said. “I was able to heal and forgive myself for what I’d done. I also heard from God that my calling was to focus on the women who had been harmed. I found that I have a voice and a place in this movement.”
Since that first retreat, Kelly has had the opportunity to plug in and find camaraderie with her tribe of fellow Quitters.
“There is something very unique about being in relationship with others who have gone through the same traumas and shared the same experiences as you,” Kelly said. “It is easy to communicate and connect on a deeper level. One thing about most of us Quitters, we are all a little raw, and a little rough around the edges. We are also soft–hearted deep down and we love big.”
Today, Kelly is the Outreach and Government Engagement Coordinator for And Then There Were None and ProLove Ministries. She travels the country to share the mission of the ministry at conferences and events. In addition, Kelly connects with legislators, testifies in legislative hearings, and coordinates the testimony of other former abortion industry workers for pro–life legislation all over the nation. In the first quarter of 2023 alone, she testified in 13 different states. Kelly has also become a sought-after event speaker for pregnancy resource centers, maternity homes, and state right-to-life groups.
“Testifying in legislative hearings allows me to be a voice for thousands of women who have come before me and thousands more who will be impacted by abortion if we don’t continue working to make abortion illegal,” Kelly says. “Laws that support life are essential to reshaping a healthy society, but there’s still more we can do outside the courtroom to make abortion unthinkable.”
In that respect, Kelly lives what she speaks. As a Virginia native, Kelly’s efforts and determination to serve locally got the attention of the Virginia Department of Health, and they started referring women to ProLove Ministries’ project, LoveLine, in droves. LoveLine is a 24/7 crisis line for families, single parents, and expectant parents, prioritizing abortion-vulnerable women. LoveLine triages clients and supports them with comprehensive case management to create individualized care plans that can change the trajectory of their lives. The influx of needs inspired Kelly to start a resource center at her church to serve LoveLine clients in Virginia. The church supportively allocated a space on their grounds for material assistance distribution in collaboration with pregnancy centers to help women and children in need.
Kelly also finds time to volunteer for Sidewalk Advocates for Life. As a post-abortive woman and a former clinic worker, she is in a unique position to provide valuable insight and training for the advocates who pray outside of abortion clinics to reach vulnerable women in crisis pregnancies as well as the clinic workers who might be seeking a way out of the abortion industry. She speaks on panels of former abortion workers for conferences, has spoken at the March for Life, and consults with Students for Life of America on college campuses.
While Kelly is a vital part of so many ministries, her family remains her top priority while balancing her work in the pro–life movement with being a mom to her six children, aged 15 and under, and wife to her husband of 16 years.
“My kids are so supportive of what I do,” she said. “I was nervous to tell them my full story, but after I did, they just supported me even more. They are vocally pro–life at school and with their friends. They travel with me as often as possible. I want them to be a part of what I do.”
Kelly’s work with And Then There Were None is important and fulfilling, but it is also heavy at times.
“I want people to know how hard everyone on the staff works,” she said. “This is not an easy ministry. It takes its toll. Everyone on staff genuinely and deeply loves the workers who are a part of our tribe. We love and pray for the ones who are not with us yet. This work is Kingdom work. We are people who love the Lord and His work to bring people into a family. It is hard. Sometimes it seems impossible. It is messy,” Kelly said. “That is what constructing the Kingdom of God looks like.”
Kelly’s transformation and commitment to serving others who are where she once was is nothing short of miraculous.
“God has shown me that all the ugliness has been redeemed. He has made it beautiful. He can do the same for anyone.”