Gosnell Was Not the End of the Story

A drienne Moton would see Jacob “every time it was dark, and I was trying to sleep.”

Jacob was a 30-week-baby who was killed in Kermit Gosnell’s infamous slaughterhouse. Moton worked there.

“I just went out. I would not even try to sleep as long as it was dark. I went out to casinos or karaoke bars and would only try to sleep when the sun came up. I never saw him when the sun was up.”

She also testified — and went to prison for — cutting the spines of ten babies who were born alive.

She had taken a photo on her phone of Jacob in 2008, pink and looking very much alive. She was fairly certain he could have survived. She sobbed on the stand remembering the horrors that had happened there.

Adrienne was suicidal around the time she was arrested for her work with Gosnell. Like many women who get caught up in abortion work, she was desperate, needed a job, and came to see herself as part of the Gosnell family (Gosnell’s wife also spent time in prison, pleading guilty to participating in an abortion after 24 weeks).

“When I was arrested and went to jail, I felt at peace with everything,” she’s written. “At least if I was in jail, I could not hurt myself. I knew as a mom that suicide would be selfish. I didn’t want to do anything to harm my daughter.”

As she has explained it:

If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump right out; but if you put a frog in a pot of tepid water and gradually heat it, the frog will complacently let itself be boiled to death.

That is the only way I can make sense of my time working for Kermit Gosnell. . . . The dark cloud that rose up over all that I did as I assisted him moved gradually — so gradually that I couldn’t quite see it for what it was and couldn’t feel the weight or the horror of my actions. . . .

I had been grafted into the Gosnell family. I was good pals with his niece in high school, and together we did small jobs in “Uncle Kermit’s” medical office. When my life started breaking down, the doctor and his wife, Pearl, let me come live with them. Years later when I was divorced, broke, broken, and facing homelessness, they came to my rescue by giving me a job (all payment to me was under the table) in their medical practice. For someone with only a high school diploma and very few options in life, I was beyond grateful to the Gosnells. In my book, they could do no wrong.

In prison, Adrienne began life-giving work, as she has explained it:

Ladies were always coming to me to get advice on their situations and talk about their problems. Even the guards would come to me. So, I decided to pursue an education in the counseling field. This is helpful for me as well to heal. I can’t help nobody if I ain’t right. I am doing this for myself as well as others.

I’ve met Adrienne many times over the years — at a premiere for a documentary that recounts her conversion story, at the March for Life, on the road. She is a speaker for And Then There Were None, a ministry and outreach for people working at abortion clinics who want a way out. Like Adrienne in her Gosnell days, they often end up doing what they are doing because they need a job. Sometimes we forget that Planned Parenthood clinics have accountants and other staff like any other organization does. When they see too much, or take a little time for reflection, perhaps they’re affected by women who have been in the clinic or by pro-lifers who pray outside their clinics, offering alternative help to the women going inside.

And Then There Were None was founded by Abby Johnson, who, unbeknownst to Adrienne at the time, was praying for her. Abby is herself a former Planned Parenthood director in Texas. Having had abortions, she saw that multiple abortions were more common than not, and that Planned Parenthood wasn’t really helping the women who wound up there for abortions. Abortion kills and hurts. A mother is a mother, and her body keeps score, as mainstream psychiatrists would say about post-abortive women if ideology weren’t the rule in medicine.  And Then There Were None offers unconditional support to abortion-clinic staff. They help them with new employment — with material as well as spiritual needs.

“I love going on retreats with my ‘tribe sisters!,’” Adrienne said.

When I go on a retreat, it is like I get to release. We come together. We lean on each other. Everyone there has, to some extent, experienced the same things as me. I can just be comfortable and share. For some of us, it is the only time we can let it out. It is like peeling layers off, even if it can only happen once a year. It is like we are chipping away at our pain together.

Adrienne has an exquisite singing voice. I’ve heard her sing “Amazing Grace” from the depths of her heart. Abby Johnson, Adrienne Moton, and the other “quitters” who make up And Then There Were None should be household names. They show the truth about abortion, because they’ve seen it in abhorrent detail. Women deserve better than this. Men can do better. And Adrienne and Abby will help that happen for the rest of their days, for as long as they are able.

We all should, too. We all have a role.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.