Ex-Planned Parenthood worker: “the smell of blood permeates the clinic on killing days”

Former Planned Parenthood worker Judith Fetrow spoke at a conference sponsored by The Pro-Life Action League which was recorded in a series of videos entitled Abortion: The Inside Story. The video series can be found here.

Judith Fetrow first discusses how legal abortion is not as safe as many believe:

It is difficult work at abortion for any length of time and continue to believe that it is a safe procedure. Even with the best doctors, abortion days are filled with minor and sometimes major complications. I watched Dr. William P perforate a woman’s uterus and then lie about the severity of the perforation. The most horrifying complication that I witnessed was a woman who stopped breathing during the abortion. Dr. Michael Sussman just walked out of the room when he was finished. Despite my telling him that our client was not breathing, he left me alone with her. When Dr. Sussman was forced to return we didn’t even follow emergency protocol for that situation. It was a miracle that this woman didn’t die.

I began to wonder if we were really caring for these women, or if we were just working for another corporation whose only interest was the bottom line.

This unnamed woman in Fetrow’s clinic was much luckier than 33-year-old Lou Anne Herron, who died after abortionist John Biskind left her unattended after a late-term abortion. Biskind was at his tailor when frantic clinic workers called to tell him that Herron was not breathing. He responded with:

Well, what do you want me to do? Call 911.

By the time paramedics arrived, Herron was dead.

Fortunately, the woman in Fetrow’s clinic did survive her abortion ordeal, though the extent of her injuries and the challenges she faced while recovering from them was not mentioned in Fetrow’s presentation.

Fetrow worked at a Planned Parenthood clinic; her experience shows that Planned Parenthood, for all its attempts to create an image of competence and caring, endangers women with substandard medical care. It is not only independent abortion clinics that injure women; Planned Parenthood clinics have their share of malpractice,  lawsuits   and abortion complications (including deaths) as well.

Fetrow described how  clinic workers were not informed about injuries and deaths at other Planned Parenthood locations:

The average clinic worker does not know that there are medical malpractice suits against the clinic where she works. Planned Parenthood does not encourage talk of complications or mistakes. Planned Parenthood workers are not informed of the injuries and deaths that happen within clinics in the same affiliate.

This secrecy allows clinic workers to hold onto a rosy picture of Planned Parenthood; they are not aware of the extent of malpractice that goes on in the franchise.

Fetrow also described other aspects of working in an abortion clinic:

Although workers can be protected from seeing the babies’ butchered bodies, there is no inoculation to make clinic workers immune to the smell of blood, and the smell of blood permeates the clinic on killing days. Generally there is one clinic worker in charge of the babies. No one at Planned Parenthood wanted this job. I did not particularly want this job. However, I did not want to see the babies treated disrespectfully. I did not want to hear Janice [another clinic worker] callously say she was taking the kids and putting them into daycare….

Others have talked about similar sick “humor” in abortion clinics. In an article in Lifenews, Abby Johnson describes how in her clinic the freezer where aborted children were stored was called “the nursery” by clinic workers. Pro-Choice author Magda Denes, who spent time observing at an abortion clinic for a book she was writing, talked about how she joined clinic workers in making jokes about eating the dead bodies of aborted fetuses. 

Fetrow often mocked pro-lifers when they protested outside the clinic. Sometimes pro-lifers mistook her for a patient and tried to convince her not to have an abortion, not knowing she was actually there to assist in abortion procedures. Fetrow says:

When someone would show me a picture of an aborted baby and say to me “this is abortion,” I would agree with them. When someone begged me not to kill my baby, I’d look at them and say, “oh, I’m not here to kill my baby. I’m here to kill other people’s babies.”

Judith Fetrow is one of many abortion clinic workers who came out of the abortion industry and has courageously told her story in the hopes that it will influence more people to oppose abortion. I encourage readers to share her story and that of other former clinic workers and let them be an inspiration in the fight against abortion.