Clinic worker quits, calls her former workplace an “abortion mill”
By Sarah Terzo
Dina Madsen
In testimony that Madsen gave at a Pro-Life Action League conference (an excerpt of which can be found here), Madsen said she had no medical background when she began working at the clinic. Medical experience and training were not required for a position on the abortion clinic staff. The only thing that was required, Madsen said, was “a positive opinion towards abortion.”
Madsen described the pro-choice views she held when she became an abortion clinic worker:
I had a couple friends in high school
who had had abortions, and I had a pregnancy scare myself when I was an
adolescent; that was the first thing that came to my mind. I never
thought about having the baby. I just took it as the general consensus,
the general population does, that it is a choice. Unfortunately, it’s
often presented as the only choice.
So Madsen had no problem going to work at the clinic. One thing she
noticed quickly, however, was that the other clinic workers did not have
much faith in the doctors they worked with.And of all the women I worked with, several of those women, at least half of them, had had abortions and had repeat abortions. And yet they wouldn’t let any of these guys [abortionists] touch them with a 10-foot pole. Never. And yet every day they told these other women, “They’re wonderful doctors, they won’t hurt you. They’re the best at what they do. He’s really a nice man.” And sometimes the women would ask, “Have you ever had an abortion?”And of course they wouldn’t say, “Yes, but not by him.”
In her testimony, Madsen described rudeness and incompetence among the clinic’s abortionists and maintained that the clinic workers were well aware that their doctors were substandard. Madsen eventually came to have contempt for the women she was supposed to be helping. She admitted in her testimony:
I have to admit, though, I didn’t
really have much sympathy for them [the women]. In my view, well, you
got yourself into this position. Tough it out.
Madsen describes how many of the clinic workers had previous
abortions. In another part of her testimony she says, “Some of the
directors I worked with had eight or nine abortions[.]”Other former clinic workers have also mentioned that many people they worked with had had previous abortions; some former clinic workers have said they had abortions themselves. David Reardon, president of The Elliot Institute, which works with post-abortion women and conducts research on abortion’s emotional aftereffects, speculated as to why post-abortion women might decide to work in abortion clinics:
Aborted women who work as [abortion]
counselors are almost invariably victims of a disturbing abortion
experience themselves. On one level, they choose to work in clinics in
the hope of preventing other women from experiencing the traumas which
they had faced and may still be facing. But on a deeper level, they
returned to the abortion clinic in the hope of easing the guilt and
traumas which they themselves are still experiencing.
For many women who have been deeply
disturbed by their own abortion experiences, working as an abortion
counselor’s a way of hardening themselves. … By “returning to the scene
of the crime,” some women seek to reenact their own abortion decisions
through the decisions of others. In this sense, the aborted counselor
has a high stake in the final decision of her clients. By watching
others choose abortion for the same reasons that she did, she is able to
reaffirm the “rightness” of her own decision. In contrast, however,
when an aborted counselor witnesses a client suddenly choose against
abortion and boldly accept the challenges of an unplanned pregnancy, the
counselor may become cynical, ashamed, and envious.
If David Reardon is right, and abortion clinic workers sometimes have
an emotional stake in convincing a woman to have abortions, it might
explain why the counseling at many abortion clinics is misleading or
coercive.Reardon goes on to say:
Two WEBA [Women Exploited by
Abortion, a group of pro-life postabortive women] women who had worked
in counseling or hospital situations that brought them into contact with
women seeking abortions have described how immersion in abortion can be
soothing to troubled conscience. According to one, “I found that in
talking to other women about abortion, their decisions to abort
satisfied something in me. It made me feel better about what I had done…
[It] strengthened my own decisions to abort.”
Many of the women coming to the clinic had had multiple abortions, too. According to Madsen:
And every time she’d come in for an abortion or a D&E [late-term abortion – see details here],
we’d stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp – some of these charts were filled in
on both sides. And the doctor would take a look at them and say, “Gee,
if she tries real hard, she can come in again before Christmas.” And
this is somebody who cares about women? I don’t think so.
Madsen described answering the phone and talking to women seeking abortions:
A woman would call, and I’d make her
feel that this was her choice and that we were going to support her in
this choice. Because the women are looking for someone to support their
decision.
Many of the women may have been
looking for someone who would support their decision – but others might
have been confused and uncertain about what to do about their
pregnancies. One survey showed that up to 41% of abortion-seeking women
were ambivalent about their choice. Incredibly, in the same survey, only
29% of women said they were truly “happy with their decision” at the
time of their abortions. Forty-four percent said they were still
actively looking for another option right up until the moment they were
on the abortion table and about to have surgery.
My official title at the mill was
“health worker.” I did various duties – lab work, leading groups
(deceiving women about their abortions), “advocating” (deceiving women
during their abortions), and assisting the abortionist, which included
helping during the abortion and checking to make sure all the parts of
the baby were there in the collection jar afterwards. I will never
forget, in the second-trimester abortions, holding those little feet up
to a chart on the wall to make sure of the age of the baby.
… I was looking at these babies as
something to be disposed of. I didn’t see them as important, I didn’t
see life as important, I didn’t value my own life, therefore how can I
value anyone else’s life. And if these women were stupid enough to get
pregnant, then it was their fault. And that’s how I felt. And that was
how the majority of the staff felt.
Eventually, though, the efforts of pro-lifers to reach the clinic workers and women had an impact on Madsen:
Just like everyone else employed
there, I laughed at the pro-lifers outside the mill and hardened my
heart against the truth. If I thought about what was really happening,
it became overwhelming. So I treated the whole issue as a joke – but
somewhere along the line God started working on my heart. I started to
read literature left by the pro-lifers, and pro-life books. I began to
see what I was doing in a whole new light. I saw these babies for what
they were – human beings. It was very hard for my heart and head to
accept because I had been leaving both my heart and head at home for so
long to work there.
More of Dina Madsen’s story, and commentary by father Frank Pavone, can be found here on the Priests for Life website.
1. David C Reardon, Aborted Women: Silent No More (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway books, 1987), 256.
Editor’s note. Sarah Terzo is a pro-life author and creator of the clinicquotes.com website. She is a member of Secular Pro-Life and PLAGAL. This appeared at liveactionnews.org.
Source: NRLC News
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