Abortion is so destructive that it wreaks emotional havoc on everyone it touches: mothers, fathers, siblings, and even abortion workers. And Then There Were None, a pro-life group that helps abortion workers leave the industry, shared the testimony of abortion worker Noemi, who worked in the abortion industry for four years and says that the horrors she experienced “messed with” her mind:
Working in an abortion clinic consumed me: it messed with my mind on a daily basis. I told myself countless lies to help me deal with the reality of the gruesome work I was doing — lies to help me make it through the day. I was an empty shell of the person and nurse I had formerly been.
There was a time I took pride in being a nurse and the abortion clinic killed that. I cringed whenever someone asked what I did for a living. My scrubs were no longer my badge of honor, they had become tainted with the blood of innocent babies. My circle of support had grown smaller as I alienated almost everyone except my coworkers in the clinic. I no longer participated in family functions, I kept to myself. I even stopped attending church as I felt conflicted and struggled with whom I had become. I couldn’t chance anyone finding out the truth about the work I was doing.
I was angry and bitter most of the time, barely smiled and had a morbidly sick sense of humor. It was taking a toll on my body as well; I gained 64 pounds during those years and I hurt my knee and my back to the point I now need surgical intervention and use a brace and cane to walk… but those are just my physical ailments.
My biggest problem has been learning to forgive myself and love myself again; learning to deal with the guilt I carry for allowing myself to turn away from the oath I took to save lives and for hands-on participating in taking lives.”
Noemi is not alone in her experience. A nurse who assisted in abortions says she still has nightmares 20 years later:
I have never had an abortion, but I am an RN who feels as if I have had one… emotionally. I assisted with them for 10 years. After 10 years of emotional “rape,” I finally grew strong enough to stop assisting them in all ways. My depression has gone, and I have adopted a child.
I have not assisted with an abortion in 20 years. I prayed for forgiveness and I know I am forgiven, but the nightmares continue.
READ: Nurse forced to participate in abortion has nightmares about body parts
Pro-choice abortion worker Sallie Tisdale wrote in an article in Harper’s Magazine, “There is a numbing sameness lurking in this job; the same questions, the same answers, even the same trembling tone in the voices… Still, I cultivate a certain disregard. It isn’t negligence, but I don’t always pay attention.”
One can imagine how her attitude affects the women who come to her facility.
In the same article, Tisdale wrote that she, too, has disturbing “fetus dreams”:
I have fetus dreams, we all do here: dreams of abortions one after the other; of buckets of blood splashed on the walls; trees full of crawling fetuses. I dreamed that two men grabbed me and began to drag me away, ‘Let’s do an abortion,’ they said with a sickening leer, and I began to scream, plunged into a vision of sucking, scraping pain, of being spread and torn by impartial instruments that do only what they are bidden…
She, like the former abortion worker, has nightmares. But they did not compel her to leave her job.
In a textbook on abortion counseling, the pro-abortion authors quoted another abortion worker who is suffering from the job:
I find [providing abortions] draining and exhausting, I become tired to the point where I do not want to relate to anyone, especially my family who may be in need of emotional support. I feel I sometimes suffer from burnout.
In another article, former abortion worker Shelley Guillory says she, too, numbed herself:
I basically turned off all feelings, all emotions, everything that was Shelley, and just did my job. I find myself becoming a very bitter, angry, very aggressive person. It changed who I was…. It was always an internal conflict for me.
Although I tried to turn off emotions, there was something inside of me that told me: ‘this is wrong and you know it’s wrong.’
READ: ‘Nightmares’ about reassembling aborted babies ‘come after you leave the industry’
In the same article, former worker Annette Lancaster says emotional breakdowns among workers were common:
Somebody was having a breakdown every procedure day. Women that were working in the POC [products of conception] room would often cry and have breakdowns while they were cleaning instruments or, you know, picking through fetal body parts.
Killing tiny preborn babies is not a healthy or natural thing for a person to do. It takes a toll on workers. In reaching out to them, pro-lifers must keep in mind that sometimes these workers are suffering from the work they do.
