News
Featured Image
Nancy TannerClaire Chretien /LifeSiteNews

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 29, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Planned Parenthood refused to let an abortion patient rescind her consent to donate her baby’s body parts and told her she would be to blame if there were complications from the abortion, a regional coordinator for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign testified outside the first stop of 40 Days for Life’s UNITED cross-country bus tour.

Nancy Tanner delivered her powerful remarks at the newly-opened Planned Parenthood in Northeast DC. The giant facility, which is adjacent to an elementary school, takes up roughly half a street block and is being touted by the abortion chain as its “flagship” facility.

Tanner said that in 1984, when she was six weeks pregnant, she went to a Washington, D.C., Planned Parenthood for an abortion.

Tanner had already had bad experiences at Planned Parenthood that included a blood clot in her leg from a high dose of birth control pills and a torn cervix from a failed attempt to insert an IUD, but her doctor referred her to the abortion center. Her baby’s father said he would support whatever choice she made but offered to pay for the abortion.

“The actual experience that day was quite brutal,” Tanner said. “They said it wasn’t going to hurt — it hurt.”

“It was horribly painful, and what made it even worse is that I had tried to get up and leave and then [the abortionist] pushed me down,” Tanner continued. “The doctor took the remains of my precious child,” and put them in a glass jar, she said. Then, he “dumped it on a tray in front of me, pushed the baby body parts around, and then yelled at me, saying, ‘I can’t find all the pieces. If you get an infection, it’s your fault.’”

“One of the things that happened to me in that clinic is that a Planned Parenthood [employee] quickly persuaded me … to sign the release that said that I could donate what they call the product of conception for medical science,” she said. But “when I had my abortion, I immediately regretted that, I went back to them at the desk and asked for the form back and they told me they wouldn’t give it back to me.”

Tanner said the Center for Medical Progress’ videos showing Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby parts for profit were painful for her. However, she encouraged everyone to watch them.

“You can imagine how I felt when the Planned Parenthood videos came out, and as much as I commend David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress for exposing the truth, it still hurt me very much,” Tanner said. “But in spite of that, I wish everyone would look at those videos again and see what happens to the children that are brutally torn from their mothers in places like this.”

Tanner said Mary, the mother of Jesus, led her back to Him and she found healing in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

The vigil at which Tanner spoke was the first stop 40 Days for Life’s UNITED bus made on its national tour. The bus will travel nearly 19,000 miles, mobilizing Americans to pray, fast, and publicly witness for an end to abortion.