Ramona Trevino, is the former manager of a Planned Parenthood facility, who left her job and is now pro-life. She recently authored a book and in it she shared the story of how Catholic radio show helped her rethink her position on abortion.
Before she left Planned Parenthood, Trevino admitted she had doubts about the activities she oversaw and participated in there. In her book she wrote:
For some time, I had been experiencing an unrelenting, secret turmoil.… I felt like someone engaged in an intense game of tug-of-war.
At work, ‘every child should be a wanted child’ was a constant message. …This idea that every child should be planned, or not exist at all, provided the basis for what we did each day.
But something about that mantra wasn’t ringing true. New pushes at work to pack more and more clients into each day, and without additional resources, seemed to contradict our verbalized commitment to those we served.
Trevino was driving to Walmart one day and was flipping through the radio stations when she stumbled upon a Catholic radio talk show. There was a guest on the show talking about an abortion she had, and the ensuing trauma she went through.
Trevino wrote:
One of the guests had gotten pregnant at age 12 after being raped by a family member. Through tears she talked about how her mother, to protect the family secret, had forced her to get an abortion. Since abortion was illegal at the time, the family had gone to extraordinary measures to kill the child. The woman spoke of her feelings of powerlessness and how long it had taken her to get over not only the rape but the abortion on top of it. If she had had a choice, she said, she would’ve had the baby.
Trevino wrote about how listening to the girl who had the abortion was stunning to her. “The story went against everything we have been led to believe was right. She was young and a rape victim. From the perspective of Planned Parenthood, this was the perfect candidate for an abortion. And yet here she was, saying otherwise. Had it been a choice for her? It didn’t seem so.”
The next guest on the show said something that pierced Trevino even more. The woman spoke how she went to a Planned Parenthood and how herself and the other women were “treated like cattle.” The woman said Planned Parenthood staff never made herself or any of the other women feel loved or really informed them
Sadly, Trevino could relate to the women’s story. She was seeing the same things happening at the Planned Parenthood facility she managed. Trevino detailed how she was being pressured to rush women through their appointments in order to fit more appointments into the facilities daily schedule. Trevino wrote:
Hearing [the guest] talk, I felt my heart jump. Her story seemed to match my experiences as a staff member feeling pressured to push the clients through, hearing all the cautionary notes about low numbers and the need to work harder to reverse that. Deep inside, I had questioned the way we were treating our clients, and now here was this woman – the kind of woman we served and supposedly cared for – validating my concerns….In spite of my good intentions, I was becoming a cattle herder too.
Trevino didn’t leave her job at Planned Parenthood right away after listening to the radio show, however the seeds were planted. Trevino explained how her whole motive for working at Planned Parenthood was to help women, but after learning that Planned Parenthood hurts women, she was torn. Eventually though, Trevino did quit her job.
Planned Parenthood’s huge emphasis on abortion is not beneficial to women. Having an abortion is not beneficial to women, even if the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy are tragic. Having an abortion further compounds the tragedy, Further, having an abortion violates civil rights, punishes innocent people (most notably the preform infant). Abortion can harm women and almost always harms relationships with significant others and family members. The reality and effects of an abortion never go away, because it is the taking of an innocent life. As you can see, all of the results of an abortion only serve to create new problems. Abortion is not a problem solver, it’s not empowering or liberating for women, and it’s important for women and families to understand these facts.
