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(LifeSiteNews) – An ex-abortionist who once worked for abortion giant Planned Parenthood said she was turned to pro-life activism “by the hand of God.”

In a July interview with Focus on the Family, a pro-family, pro-life advocacy group based in Colorado, Dr. Patti Giebink, M.D., explained her journey from working as an abortionist for Planned Parenthood for three years to now advocating for the lives of the unborn,. Giebing recently authored Unexpected Choice: An Abortion Doctor’s Journey to Pro-life.

Giebink is a trained obstetrician who qualified as a medical doctor in the 1980s, at which time Roe v. Wade was about a decade old. Giebink told Focus on the Family that, although “we didn’t talk about abortion in medical school” during classes, the prevailing narrative on campus was that legal abortion was founded on “saving women’s lives, providing good healthcare,” and keeping them safe.

“All the history, pre-Roe v. Wade, women dying or becoming physically injured by illegal abortion, that’s what was so prevalent among these women’s groups when I was in medical school,” Giebink noted.

Later, as a qualified obstetrician, she ended up running a busy medical practice, delivering babies almost every day. In 1995 she was approached by Planned Parenthood and offered a part-time position performing abortions one day per week.

Having taken the job at the time, Giebink said “I would be delivering babies the day before and the day after,” while providing abortions in between, a contradictory situation that she described as “mentally schizophrenic.”

The former abortionist further explained the stark contrast between her regular job and the part-time position she took at Planned Parenthood as one day “working really hard to save [her obstetrics] patients and their babies and then the next day going in and doing pregnancy terminations.”

However, the contradiction did not dawn on Giebink for some years, during which time she explained that popular fallacies about the nature of the unborn child as being simply a “bundle of cells” helped to mitigate the realization that a life is being destroyed. “In order to do abortions, we put pretty thick blinders on,” she said.

For two years Giebink worked part-time with Planned Parenthood, transitioning to a full-time abortionist with the company in 1997, a position which she held for one year. During her final year with Planned Parenthood, Giebink had an inside eye into the extent to which the facilities rely on abortion as part of their business model.

Giebink described being incredibly busy with abortions upon accepting full-time employment, with the clinic she worked in targeted to perform around 8–10 abortions on the days in which abortions were scheduled in order to “to break even,” with any more abortions purely adding to profits. The doctor noted that they performed “considerably more” abortions than the break-even target.

“Make no mistake, they’re about money and abortion is their top money maker,” Giebink added.

Although primarily there to provide abortions, Giebink would often encounter women who were unsure of their decision to kill their child. However, while working full-time “it really became apparent to me that my hands were tied as far as providing good healthcare,” the doctor said.

Planned Parenthood provided Giebink with “pages and pages” of company protocol “about what you can do and what you can’t do, what you can say and what you can’t say,” making it “very clear” that she was simply “a technician” whose job it was to carry out the killing orders. “It wasn’t my job to counsel or do anything that isn’t in the manual,” she said.

In fact, even the in-house counselors at Planned Parenthood “were not necessarily professional counselors,” Giebink explained. “All they had to do was read the script and get them [women seeking abortions] to sign.” She described the clinics themselves as not being “all that clean.” In the three years she was involved with Planned Parenthood, she “never saw anyone from the health department. Never.”

Describing one distressing instance, the former abortionist related the story of a woman who came to her for an abortion after having paid all the relevant fees and signing all the papers, but who showed signs of uncertainty about the decision to abort her child.

“I have about two minutes to talk with her before I start the procedure,” Giebink stated, noting that the woman “was really ambivalent, she was clearly undecided.” After asking if the mother was struggling with the decision, the woman told Giebink that she did not want to continue with the abortion, but since she had already paid, she “might as well go through with it.”

Giebink told the woman that she would be able to have her money returned if she was unsure, and she could simply reschedule after sleeping on the decision. “If you’re unsure, reschedule, come back when you’re sure … you don’t have to do this today,” Giebink told the woman.

But, afraid of losing her money, the woman eventually asked to go through with the abortion, and Giebink obliged.

Indeed, she spoke with other women who also had reservations about their decision to abort and would tell them simply, “You don’t seem to have your mind made up, maybe you should just reschedule.”

The case caused a stir among Giebink’s superiors, who terminated her employment with Planned Parenthood as a result of her attempt to counsel the undecided women. “I guess that wasn’t the company line,” she said.

A blessing in disguise, her dismissal prompted the doctor to examine the job she had stably held for the prior three years.

She recalled a patient coming to see her who was around 24 weeks pregnant and suffering chronic bleeding. Examinations showed the baby was coping well initially, but at a follow-up appointment, when the woman was over 25 weeks pregnant and still suffering from lots of bleeding, the condition of the baby appeared to be deteriorating.

“This baby is 25 weeks and if we want any good outcome, I have to do a C-section now,” Giebink told the patient. She continued, describing the possible outcomes of giving birth at around 25 weeks, painting an admittedly “grim picture” of the conditions such a premature child could develop.

“They have trouble breathing, their bowels don’t work as well, they have eyesight problems, and possibly seizures … I painted a really grim picture,” the physician said.

Despite the possibility of so many problems, the mother decided to press on with the surgery and, to Giebink’s amazement, “the baby was feisty and breathing … the baby never was intubated … it did really well.”

15 years later that same mother crossed paths with Giebink at a pro-life rally and explained that Sam was “perfect,” and that he doesn’t even have to wear eyeglasses.

Focus on the Family host and CEO Jim Daly added that a case such as that of Sam “shows what is possible with medical technology” and that the “point of viability … continues to drop.”

In addition to the medical marvel that was Sam, Giebink said she “studied Roe v. Wade, read a lot of books on it,” discovering that “the numbers were inflated, the number of women dying every year from illegal abortion.”

Giebink’s recognition of the fallacious arguments for abortion led to a spiritual awakening, ultimately leading her to become a pro-life activist.

The doctor informed that she had been “going down a New Age path,” but that she was searching for something more. A friend invited her to a Christian church to listen to the newly installed pastor. Although she wasn’t initially looking to get involved with a church, while attending the service she described being “captivated” and having her perspective on abortion reoriented.

“For the first time in my life I just felt so drawn to this church and to the Bible,” Giebink noted.

Likening her realization about the evils of the abortion industry to the scales falling from St. Paul’s eyes, Giebink added that she spent the next 18 months “intensively” studying Scripture. “At some point … it became so clear to me that God is a God of life.”

“That’s his character,” she said, “that’s his heart. There should be no question.”