By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

In the five years that she worked at an abortion clinic, Jewels Green became accustomed to working around freezers full of dismembered fetuses, finding tiny body parts in sinks and looking at dead babies in the lab refrigerator.

LiveAction.org is reporting that Green, a native of Allentown, Pennsylvania,  started her career in an abortion clinic when she had an abortion at the age of 17.

“Everyone wanted me to get an abortion . . . except me,” she said, and finally caved in to her boyfriend’s sometimes violent insistence that she end their child’s life.

Not long after the abortion, she began a five-year stint working at a clinic, initially in desk jobs and later as a counselor.

“During my time at the clinic, I was a staunch supporter of abortion rights, while all the time knowing in my heart that I felt that what I did was wrong, that I missed my baby, and that I wished things could be different for me. In hindsight, I can see that by surrounding myself with people who believed it was OK to abort babies, I was hoping that someday I would be OK with aborting my baby. This never happened…”

What she saw during her years working at the clinic will no doubt haunt her for the rest of her life.

“I worked in the autoclave room where the ‘products of conception’ (as so many pro-choice proponents—and abortion clinic counselors—call the fetus and placenta) were rearranged and counted to make sure ‘we got everything.’ For early abortions, this meant floating the contents of the jar [where the fetal remains are put after the abortion] in water to visualize the chorionic villi. For abortions from about 8 1/2 – 12 weeks, this meant counting hands and feet, making sure the spine and ribcage and skull were present, you get the idea. For the abortions where the gestational age of the fetus was in question, especially if there was a chance it was an ‘oops,’ meaning a pregnancy terminated beyond the clinic’s legal limit of 14 weeks LMP (from last menstrual period), the feet were measured to determine a more accurate gestational age.”

Working in the autoclave room was never easy for her. “I saw my lost child in every jar of aborted baby parts,” she admitted. At one point, her nightmares about dead babies became so gruesome and terrifying she felt inclined to meet with the clinic’s director to talk about her feelings. 

“She was very understanding, open and honest, and painfully forthright when she told me, “What we do here is end a life. Pure and simple. There is no disputing this fact. You need to be OK with this to work here.”

After a few days rotated out of the autoclave room, she felt “okay with this” and went back to work.

Things never got any better.

A cleaning lady once quit after finding a tiny foot in the drain of one of the sinks. “We all laughed and joked about it in the staff lounge for days and weeks afterward,” Green said.

Another time, when the power when out for an extended period of time, employees were ordered not to open the freezer where all of the medical waste was stored – which was where the dead baby parts were stored in bio-hazard bags. Someone opened it anyway and let out a stench of decaying human flesh she says she’ll never forget for as long as she lives. ” . . . (B)ut we all laughed as we gagged and joked how at least ‘they’ had it better in that non-functioning freezer because at least they couldn’t smell it.”

What bothered her the most was seeing a dead baby that was stored in the lab refrigerator. Called a “teaching tool”, it was a perfectly preserved 10 week-old fetus that managed to survive a suction abortion perfectly intact.

“So he (I thought I could tell it was a he) was given the dubious honor of being preserved in formalin in a translucent plastic jar in the laboratory refrigerator. I think we called him Charlie, but I can’t really remember. I know he had a name, but blissfully I have either forgotten or repressed it. But he was there. Every day I worked there.”

Occasionally, Green would “peek in on him, fascinated with the bizarreness of it all . . . (T)his miraculous little creature was perfectly formed and complete in every way, with the heartbreaking exception that he was dead. There was no amniotic sac, no placenta, just teeny-tiny perfect little baby. Floating in the jar. In the fridge. Forever silent witness to the march of death of his immature brethren.”

Green still prays for “Charlie’s” soul, hoping that he will someday receive a decent burial. “Or at the very least tossed out with the rest of the bio-hazardous waste—for that would be far more merciful than where I knew him to be.”

There are far too many innocent lives being snuffed out in our country before they have the opportunity to take their first breath, she says, and as a nation we should be doing better. “We need to do better. We need to provide real resources to pregnant mothers facing an unplanned pregnancy. The women and babies of our country deserve better. After all, sometimes the best things in life aren’t planned.”

And to her own lost little one, she sends this heartbreaking greeting.

“Happy Nobirthday, Unbaby. I miss you every day. Love & tears, Mom.”

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