My First Truth Team

Thursday morning started off just a bit too early in the morning for my liking, but that seems to be how any morning going to an abortion mill is. But Thursday was different, very different, because I’d be walking into the abortion mill that morning, not just standing outside of it. Brianna was going into the center that morning to get a pregnancy test and Jayne and I were accompanying her into the center as concerned friends. So as we got to the abortion mill and most of the team got out with the signs the three of us hung back in the van. We waited about an hour until we knew that there were clients in the center and Brianna made the call to ask if she could come in to get a pregnancy test. We talked and prepared a plan in the van as to how to get the information needed about the center and how to possibly talk to the women in there and convince them to walk out. We grabbed a bunch of literature that we could put in the magazines letting women know the harmful side effects of abortion and also some cards for the local Pregnancy Resource Center that’s just a stone’s throw from the abortion mill. Mary Rose came back to the van to drive us around the corner so we could get out of the van and walk a block to the clinic so it didn’t look suspicious.

I got out of the van and found myself surprisingly calm for this being my first experience walking into one of the clinics. I had prepared the night before a bit for it and texted a lot of friends asking for prayer covering me and the girls going in. We walked to the clinic, Jayne and Brianna in their best pro-choice outfits they could pick out. As we walked up we saw the pro-lifers standing out there with their signs, our friends and team members, but we pretended as if we didn’t know them and had never seen signs like that before. I starred in horror at the signs, which even though I see them every day isn’t hard to do, some things you should just never be used to seeing. As we walked up Kristina started pleading with us to just take the literature and look at it, telling us there was a pregnancy center right nearby that we could go to instead. So I took the literature as Brianna walked right in, Jayne hung back and grabbed a piece from me to look at. 

We walked up the path and opened the door to that Horror house, and went to the receptionist’s window.

Jayne had opened up one of the graphic picture pamphlets at the window and the receptionist grabbed it from her telling her she couldn’t have it in here. I tried to hide mine but the receptionist saw it and demanded I hand it over. I asked “Can’t I just read it?” she barked at me “No, you’ll have to go outside”. So I gave the piece of paper to her, but not before I read some information to loudly share in the waiting room. I asked where the restroom was and was pointed towards it, I walked there. We had gone over in the car to try and leaflet the restroom and hide some stuff in magazines if there was any in there. I didn’t see any magazines so I took one and stuck it sitting up in the trash praying that someone would look at the leaflet and see how the baby grows. It had tons of facts in there, including that a baby’s heart starts beating by 21 days. I was slightly disgusted as I went to wash my hands and noticed no soap in the bathroom, guess that clean hands isn’t a priority so much there. I went back out in the waiting room and proceeded to wait with Jayne and Brianna for Brianna’s name to be called so she could go take the pregnancy test. We all wondered whether we would be told it was positive or not, Jayne had had an experience like that doing a Truth Team once.

So we sat in the waiting room, Jayne got up and went to the restroom as well and then afterwards sat down next to a young man in order to hopefully talk to him and convince him to get his lady out of there, but in a quiet manner. I sat talking to Brianna asking her if she knew what she would do if she was pregnant. I told her I saw in the leaflet that “a baby’s heart starts beating at 21 days!” We talked a little more and then she was called in to take the test. She came back out and around this time Jayne was trying to talk to the young man and his lady still, but didn’t have much luck with them. I went up to the receptionist and asked her “Hey, if my friend is pregnant, I was just wondering if you guys have adoption counseling or something for her?” The receptionist answered back coldly that “we don’t do that here, but I can get a number for it”. I then asked her what type of counseling was available and the lady who was even shorter tempered in the back answered “We don’t do counseling here, we just terminate pregnancies”.  I was shocked, very shocked, not so much that they didn’t do it, but that they would admit it in that manner. There was no sugar coating about it, nothing nice they just “terminated pregnancies” or in truthful speak “Killed children”.

I walked back to my seat feeling sick, I still feel sick about it as I type this. So I grabbed a magazine as I sat back down and started putting cards for the pregnancy resource center in there, my deepest hope is that they didn’t find them all when we left and somebody will find one and walk out of there. Brianna was back and sitting down and we talked about the Pregnancy Center and how she should go there if the test was positive since they offered free help and talked about all the options available to women. I asked a young man next to me if he knew why the receptionist took away what the people outside gave me. He said something about how they were probably threatening the people coming in, so I didn’t think I had much of a chance of convincing him to take his lady out of there. But by the time we made it into the clinic both his lady and then a young daughter of a mother in the waiting room were already in the back rooms.

At this point the mother who had brought her daughter in earlier that we had seen was on top of Jayne because she apparently recognized Jayne was trying to counsel the couple to leave. So Jayne walked out of the center. Brianna’s name was called not shortly after that and she was given her results; a negative… shocker! So Brianna and I, new to doing a truth team didn’t make a huge blow up when leaving we just put all the leaflet’s that we had left on the coffee tables and walked calmly out and found Jayne and proceeded to walk back up the street past the three cop cars that had been there since early that morning. We walked back up the street and crossed over to where the pregnancy center was, I told the girls I was going to go in and tell the nurse Patty what happened while we were in there and how they didn’t provide counseling at all at the abortion mill. I spent some time in there talking to the nurse and receptionist and thanking them for all the work they do to help women who often find themselves in crisis pregnancies. After spending some time with them I went back to our van and changed jackets and went back to sidewalk counsel with most of the team.

Sidewalk counseling is what I’m used to, it’s not a comfort zone, because it’s not easy, but it was nice to be back in familiar territory after a whole week of activism. I was surprised how many cars continued to keep driving up to the abortion mill, so many young women, some just for birth control, but still most don’t know that birth control is abortifacient. So we had literature and tried to give most of the couples or young women some, but most wouldn’t take it. We found out that the staff in the abortion mill often warns women coming in that both the people standing outside and the people at the Pregnancy Resource Center are really mean and won’t be nice to you. That makes me roll my eyes most of the time, I mean how can someone who is fighting for you be against you. But we can also look at God that way sometimes as well.

The roughest part of being there was seeing the young women come out of the clinic after the abortion had been performed on them. They were taken out the back door and the person accompanying them was told to drive to the back door so they wouldn’t have to see us. That honestly just creeps me out! I mean what other medical procedure would force you to leave through the back door so that you’re not seen, obviously something is wrong here!

It was a really tough day, but I’m thankful I was given the chance to participate in the Truth Team, because what we uncovered is only going to fuel me to keep fighting for the unborn, to keep fighting for the women, and to keep fighting for the men, all of whom are affected by abortion.