On Thursday, Apologia Studios published a video interview with a former employee of Whole Women’s Health abortion facility in Ft. Worth, TX. Going only by her first name, Amanda discussed her reasons for quitting, the facility’s lack of regard for regulations, and the facility’s surgical abortion quota policy, among other revelations.
The video features a conversation between Amanda and Jon Speed, an associate pastor at First Baptist Church of Briar in nearby Azle, TX who frequently ministers outside Whole Women’s Health. During the video, Speed and Christian apologist Sye Ten Bruggencate provide intermittent commentary. The video was filmed by Marcus Pittman who, along with Speed, co-produced the documentaries Babies Are Murdered Here and Babies Are Still Murdered Here.
Surgical Abortion Quotas and Selling Body Parts?
Amanda’s first shocking revelation is that Whole Women’s Health has a surgical abortion quota. Speed asked Amanda if the clinic prefers surgical abortions over medication abortions for financial reasons, but Amanda explained that the profit margin is the same. “They’re not going to make more money off someone doing surgical versus the medication because they’re the same price,” Amanda said. “They push the surgical because apparently there’s like a quota he has to meet for the surgicals themselves, not so much for the medication but for the surgical… I’m not sure why, I never was told why. I just was told that ‘we really need to push surgicals.’”
Speed and Ten Bruggencate wondered if the reason for the quota was that a surgical abortion results in body parts being collected and sold to biomedical labs while a medication abortion usually results in the victim’s entire body being flushed down the toilet.
“As we said in the video, we cannot say with certainty that [a quota for the sake of collecting body parts] is definitely what’s happening, but it would appear that the only reason Whole Women’s Health would place a quota for surgical abortions on an abortionist when the chemical and surgical charges are the same would be that they profit [from surgical abortions] on the back end of the slaughter,” Speed said. “As David Daleiden pointed out in his work, these aborted babies are likely being sold to researchers.”
Pro-Life Regulations Go Ignored
Amanda also revealed that Whole Women’s Health does not adhere to certain pro-life regulations. Since 2012, Texas State law has required that abortionists show mothers a sonogram of their child before performing the abortion. But according to Amanda, Whole Women’s Health would only provide a sonogram if the mother explicitly asked for it. She explained that she would make sure that mothers who wanted to see sonograms got to see them, but added that “other [employees] probably wouldn’t” do the same.
Speed told Free the States that Amanda’s explanation of the employees’ understanding of the policy is that they were operating on the principle of “implied consent,” meaning that if the mother didn’t ask to see the sonogram, that signaled that she didn’t want to see the sonogram. This understanding is not consistent with state law which mandates that the mother be offered the sonogram with the ability to decline if she wants to.
Fetal dopplers are the tools used to show the mother their son or daughter’s beating heart in accordance with state law, but Amanda said that, as far as she knew, the facility’s fetal dopplers have never been used. “They’re still in the box as far as the last time I checked, because I have never seen anyone bust them out of the box. Like, brand spanking new. Brand new, still in the box – I think it still has the paper stuff wrapped around it.”
Amanda continued, explaining that the clinic manager is supposed to ensure that state law is followed, but “she’s normally either running around like a chicken with her head cut off, or she’s not even there, or she’s hanging out in her office talking to one of the other managers.”
Regarding the ease and impunity with which Whole Women’s Health ignores pro-life regulations, Speed remarked in the video that “What you’re seeing there in that interview is what we said in Babies Are Still Murdered Here, that the abortion industry – they don’t have to follow these pro-life regulations. There are loopholes, and this is just proof of what we were talking about there that these pro-life regulations are unenforceable.”
According to Amanda, Whole Women’s Health plays coy with definitions to avoid reporting injuries sustained at the facility. The abortionist allegedly will only report injuries he is liable for if he is sure that he caused the injury, and will not file a report if he merely “suspects” that he caused the injury. Amanda told the story of an injury to a mother definitely sustained during an abortion at Whole Women’s Health which the resident abortionist failed to report. The abortionist allegedly explained his decision not to report the injury because he only suspected that he had caused it.
Amanda: “On that one, he said, ‘I suspect I did it because of the way she was moving and the way she started bleeding – I suspect that I might’ve,’ and then he called the ambulance and all that and got her out of there.”
Speed: “But he didn’t file a report?”
Amanda: “Yeah. As long as he suspects. Unless he knows-knows, then they have to file a report. But if he says he suspects it, then they don’t have to.”
Abolition, Not Regulation
Speed explained that the appropriate takeaway from Whole Women’s Health’s skirting of pro-life regulations isn’t that we need more pro-life regulations. Speed believes it’s foolish, even if well-intentioned, to trust murderers to adhere to murder regulations, and that our demand must be for the abolition of abortion.
“The lack of regard for regulations at the clinic just points out how incredibly meaningless they are,” Speed said. “They’re not doing anything to slow down the slaughter at Whole Woman’s Health. They do more to secure the pro-life voting and donation base than they could ever do to end abortion.”
“The Fort Worth office is the busiest office that Whole Women’s Health has. They did 500 abortions in June alone. We often see as many as 60 cars on a Saturday and there are more than that during the week. It continues in Texas precisely because Rep. Jeff Leach killed TX HB896 [The Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act] and put forward a born alive protection act. These abortionists are doing everything they can to ensure that these babies die. And they do so under the protection of pro-life political apathy as we outlined in Babies Are Still Murdered Here.”
Insulating Staff From the Killing Rooms
Regarding her personal feelings about abortion, Amanda said she was on the fence about it, but was able to justify to herself her decision to work at Whole Women’s Health while she was there because she wasn’t directly involved with the killing.
Ten Bruggencate pointed out that keeping their staff away from the brutality that takes place in the killing room is likely a tactic of abortion facility managers. “What I thought was interesting too is that they insulate the staff from [abortion],” Ten Bruggencate said. “There are only a very few people who get to see the gruesome part of it. I think that’s to insulate them from what they’re actually doing. Although they know it, but I think it makes it even more real to them when they see that.”
Amanda Reaches Out
Surprisingly, the conversation was initiated by Amanda, who, after quitting in August, contacted Speed by Facebook Messenger. Speed said that Amanda and her coworkers were well-acquainted with him from his videos. “She decided to reach out to me because the workers in the clinic watch my livestreams when I am there doing ministry,” Speed said. “She mentioned that the workers would sometimes chat about what they would do if they left the clinic and most say that they would ‘talk to the people on the other side of the fence.’ She reached out to me the day she quit. My wife and I met her formally the following Tuesday for lunch.”
Speed then set out to help Amanda financially and connect her with prospective employers. “She’s found some gig work to do on the weekends. A lady in our church is working with her to try to find a job in the medical field as a medical assistant,” Speed said. “We put together an Amazon gift registry for her kids for back to school stuff and it sold out within a few hours. We had a goal to get her $2,100 to cover one month of expenses while she looks for work. We raised a little more than $3,000 in about a week through my social media platform and our church.”
In the interview, Amanda explained that her employers were trying to bring in more patients which caused them to become less and less flexible with their employees. “The straw that broke the camel’s back was that they made me pick between my small child versus them, is basically what it came down to, and I chose my child,” Amanda said.
Ten Bruggencate responded to Amanda’s reasons for quitting by addressing the importance of the Gospel to anti-abortion outreach. “I got the impression from the interview that she didn’t quit from an opposition to abortion. I think she’s been on the wire – on the line with it, but I think in the interview it came out that she quit for practical reasons,” Ten Bruggencate said. “We’re thrilled that she quit her job, but if she doesn’t repent and put her trust in Jesus Christ, she’s no closer to heaven for quitting her job. So our goal is not to get women to quit their jobs. It’s not to get women to stop killing their babies. Ultimately, we want that, but we want it because we want them to be saved.”
Speed, Ten Bruggencate, and Pittman are affiliated with End Abortion Now (EAN), an organization which rejects the incrementalist and big tent philosophies which most pro-life groups adhere to. They are explicitly Christian and their outreach at killing centers focuses on the proclamation of the Gospel, something which most of the leading pro-life organizations advocate against due to a belief that explicit Christianity will scare away workers and abortion-minded mothers. Whole Women’s Health employees watching Speed’s videos and Amanda seeking Speed out would appear to contradict that idea.
From the EAN website: “We believe that it is the responsibility of the Church to fight abortion as Christians who stand on the Word of God. It is our humble assertion that the modern day Pro-Life movement has failed to end abortion because they have abandoned this sure foundation and elected to fight on the basis of neutrality rather than Scripture. This has had major implications for how we see, treat and legislate against abortion. The heartbeat of End Abortion Now is to proclaim the Good News of forgiveness and salvation, to help mothers and fathers considering abortion, and to see that equal justice is afforded to unborn children through righteous legislation that criminalizes the act.”
With Amanda connected to First Baptist Church of Briar and her immediate needs taken care of, Speed said he intends to continue helping Amanda however he can. “We’ll continue to stay in touch,” Speed said. “She gets along well with my wife and we’ll check in on her. Of course, we’ll keep working to find her a job. And along the way we’ll keep sharing the gospel.”
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