Kris McCarthy’s fellow “Quitters” and And Then There Were None family describe her as open, honest, and bold, while still maintaining her sweet and pleasant demeanor. Kris is the type of person who does not hesitate to share her struggles and testimony with others because she has a soft heart that yearns to help.
The seventh of eight children in a large Catholic family, there were always playmates and the chaos that comes with any large family, but there was also trauma and dark times.
“My dad was the child of an alcoholic, and my mom also had abuse in her past,” Kris said. “They lost one of their children at ten months old, and then their eighth child died a few years ago. I remember thinking when I was little that no parent should ever have to go through the death of a child.”
Although Kris and her siblings attended Catholic school from first to sixth grade, faith did not play a huge role in her everyday life.
“We just stopped going to church,” she said. “Getting to church with such a big family was difficult and we never felt any connection there. It was just so easy to walk away from. I equated God to just some genie in the sky.”
There were some people of faith in their lives though. Kris’ mother had some serious health issues, and she remembers hearing that many people were praying for her.
“My mom had diabetes and breast cancer. She confessed some things to my father, and I remember how he changed after that,” she said. “Suddenly, my father was very cruel and demeaning to my mom. He was emotionally abusive. After five years of that, my brother, who had become a Christian and prayed for my mom, brought her to church and she got saved.”
Abortion was not something that was discussed in Kris’ family or her Catholic school that she recalled.
“Having sex outside of marriage was such a taboo topic,” she said. “It was right after the pill became the thing and we could have sex supposedly without consequences.”
“I remember as a child right after Roe v. Wade was passed, I went to the Michigan State Fair,” she said. “There was a pro-life booth there and they had very graphic pictures of aborted babies. I was shocked and I told myself that I could never do that.”
Kris labels herself as a science nerd, and vividly remembers when the famous Life Magazine was published giving the world its first glimpse into the fascinating beauty of babies growing in their mother’s womb.
“That Life magazine made a huge impression on me. I knew I needed to do something in the medical field because I loved science,” she said. “My teacher pointed out that since abortion was now legal, not every baby conceived would end in birth. He talked about how to terminate a pregnancy. He seemed very pro-abortion. I believe that classroom was the first time that I became fully aware of what abortion was and meant.”
Kris is sure that some of her friends had abortions of their own, but at the time this was not the kind of thing that even most friends would discuss with each other.
Kris became pregnant in October of 1979 and delivered her son the following July.
“While I was in the hospital with my son, I ran into a classmate who was there doing her clinicals for nursing,” she said. “I thought, this is something I would love to do.”
Despite her strong reaction to the photos Kris saw years earlier at the state fair, the resolute convictions of childhood are often destroyed when met with the harsh realities of adult life.
“After the birth of my son, I became pregnant three more times,” she said. “I had two abortions. I was in an extremely toxic relationship, and I never even told him I was pregnant.”
Kris’ second abortion was nothing less than traumatic.
“I delivered my baby in the toilet at home. There was no support. No one asked if I was okay. The doctor was very cold. I remember that I could feel the baby moving. They inserted the laminaria at the hospital and sent me home. They miscalculated the age of the baby. I don’t know how I survived it. I started drinking and doing drugs.”
Later, Kris had a miscarriage.
“I was extremely drunk and never even knew I was pregnant,” she said. “Everyone I told said that it was for the best since I was already a single parent.”
Despite Kris’s life being in such disarray, her intelligence and the science nerd inside her helped her complete nursing school.
“I felt like if I could just get out of Michigan, things would just somehow magically get better. My son and I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. I was such a hot mess and my job at Duke University Hospital lasted less than six months.”
While searching for another position to support herself and her son, she ran across an ad for Raleigh Women’s Health Organization. She landed an interview, and they liked that Kris had some experience in obstetrics and gynecology. It was then that they asked her how she felt about abortion.
“Ironically, it was the horrific experience of my second abortion that made me think that I could help women if I worked in the industry,” Kris said. “I could do it better and more compassionately. I told her that I had experienced two abortions myself, and if that is what a woman wants, I would be there to support her choice.”
The clinic required Kris to come back, as they did for all their applicants, and watch an abortion.
“They wanted to make sure we could handle it,” she said. “I observed an abortion involving a couple where the wife had breast cancer. They had previously been struggling with infertility but had been told if she did not proceed with this abortion, they would have both died. It was heart wrenching. This doctor was so kind to her and I remember thinking that we just saved this woman’s life. I always wonder what happened to her.”
Kris was hired and soon realized that this would be a very fast-paced job. The clinic performed abortions up to 18 weeks.
“I was only there for 11 and a half months, but in that time, I calculated that I aided in over 7,000 abortions.”
During this time, Kris was again in a toxic and dangerous relationship with a man who battered her on a regular basis.
“So many times, I would show up for work with black eyes, broken bones, and other clear signs of domestic violence,” she said. “Never did any of my co-workers reach out to me to offer any support or concern. They just looked the other way, and I resented that. If they cared for women, where was the concern for me? They just needed me there to flip the switch on these women.”
Feeling stuck and overwhelmed as the sole provider and punching bag at home, she stayed and took each day as it came. Kris was trained to do ultrasounds. A women came in who was pregnant with twins.
“The woman said that I can kill one, but I can’t kill them both. This statement struck me. Until that time, I had not allowed myself to think of them as ‘babies’. Several weeks after that a woman came in for a second trimester abortion. While the doctor and I were walking out of the room, he pointed to the tray where I saw a beating human heart. It was the size of a walnut right next to the forceps and the suction catheter. I just saw his little mutilated body. That was a person.”
Kris followed the doctor as he proceeded to the POC lab with the baby. Horrified by what she saw magnified by the realization that these were human beings, the crushing reality of being a single mother with a child who relied on her to pay the bills pressed in on Kris. She stayed at the clinic for another two months. Her home life had become so abusive that she knew she had to leave, so Kris fled for her life back to Michigan.
“My son was 12 or 13 at the time,” she said. “I had already sent him back home to stay with family because things were so out of control. If I wasn’t working, I was getting drunk and passing out. I was a dumpster fire.”
However, relocation failed to magically put out the dumpster fire. Kris got another job working at the hospital where she had graduated, the University of Michigan. Her life continued to unravel, and she got a job as a travel nurse in Miami.
“One of the first assignments they wanted to give me was a woman who was six months pregnant, but her baby had died. They wanted me to help her deliver and I told them I couldn’t. It was then that I realized how much working in that clinic had changed my life. Not only had I assisted in ending the lives of seven thousand babies, but I had also scarred their mothers. I am so thankful that God is good.”
Kris continued working in Miami hospitals for nine years until she decided she wanted to try something new and accepted a position with hospice.
“That is where I met the Lord,” Kris said. “People who die without the Lord left a powerful message of the importance of eternal certainty. I would sit and talk with families about faith. God showed up in a big way in 2006. I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous on Jan 26th, 1994. I have been sober ever since.”
Helping people pass naturally in hospice care gave Kris peace, and she enjoyed comforting those who were dying. The stark difference between the patients who knew the Lord and those who did not struck her. For the believers, there was peace, for the unbelievers there was agitation and genuine terror.
“When I first started working at hospice, I didn’t know the Lord,” she said. “I just felt so dirty and shameful because I knew I had killed all these kids. Why would the Lord want to use me in something so intimate as someone’s death?”
Ultimately, the Lord used the peace and certainty of His people in their dying to lead Kris to Him.
Kris transitioned out of hospice care in 2011. She felt the Lord calling her to volunteer at a pregnancy center. She went to one center, and they had a Bible study for post-abortive women.
“I went to the first study, and I opened up about my own two abortions and the fact that I had worked in an abortion clinic,” Kris said.
The reaction of the facilitators and other participants was extremely negative, and she never went back because she felt so uncomfortable.
“After Billy Graham died, I remember feeling almost like I had lost a family member. I had been to his library which felt like an oasis in this sin-filled world,” she said. “I filled out a volunteer application at the library and I remember telling her that I had been an abortion clinic worker.”
What this woman shared with Kris deeply impacted her and helped her to realize the grace of God is for everyone and His will is for her to walk in the light of His love.
“I told her that I know I am born again. But I am a former abortion clinic worker, and I have had two abortions of my own. This woman looked at me and said that all my sins were nailed to the cross. ‘You are forgiven.’ No one had ever said that to me before.”
In God’s perfect timing, Kris started healing and understanding how true those words were. She applied to volunteer at a local pregnancy center but realized she had so much healing left to do and told them she wasn’t ready.
Several years ago, Kris attended another Bible study, and a woman mentioned that she had an abortion in her past. Kris shared that abortion was part of her story as well. The next week, that woman brought Kris a copy of Abby Johnson’s book, Unplanned.
“I couldn’t put it down,” Kris exclaimed. “I emailed Abby, and she reached out to me. Since reading that book my life has changed. I started volunteering at a pregnancy center. They made sure that I did Surrendering the Secret.
Kris had so much anger, shame, and unresolved guilt that she didn’t even know she had been holding onto. Kris is now a facilitator for a Forgiven and Set Free study for other women. She started mentoring a young lady and Kris has become more than a mentor. She has become family. Kris loves her baby and watches him so she can complete her education. She is following in Kris’ footsteps and going to nursing school. The Lord really does bring beauty from ashes.
Although Kris has been connected with ATTWN, she had not yet attended a Healing Foundations to meet her other Quitters until 2024. She quietly observed from a distance.
“I was leading a post-abortive study and one of the women was talking about the nurse who was there for her abortion. She described the nurse as so detached. I wondered; was I like that?”
Now retired from nursing, Kris is so excited and glad to be a part of And Then There Were None.
“It was hard for me to get out of my comfort zone. When I finally did come and meet everyone, I realized how much I mattered. When I need prayer, everyone genuinely cares. You have helped me realize that I truly do have a tribe of sisters, and a few brothers, too.”
“If you are a current or past abortion clinic worker who has considered reaching out to ATTWN, you have scars,” Kris says. “The only thing they want for you is for you to succeed and grow. I have an urge to share my story, and after listening to my tribe sisters I realized that we do have stories to share, and the world needs to know them. Our stories matter and are powerful.”
“I love how eclectic our tribe is. We are young and old. We are so different, but we are so connected. When I can’t do this alone, they are here to carry me, and when I can help them, I will carry them. Only God can do that.”