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Wendy Burpee shares her harrowing experience of three coerced abortions—two under the control of an abusive partner and all at Planned Parenthood, where she was denied information, consent, and compassion. Now the director of two pro-life clinics and author of Running Toward Abortion, Wendy walks us through her journey from trauma to healing. Her clinics have since helped save nearly 400 babies by offering women the truth, real medical care, and lasting support. This is a powerful story of redemption, resilience, and the life-saving difference real care can make.

Episode 23 is on the following platforms:

Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/exposed-abortion-in-america/id1769630555?i=1000705759778

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6A83FzeTC0rz4qjNwRCdnx?si=aff88a7f38904b48

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-eQUyVNNEU

Amazon Music:
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/3273b561-9afa-4f75-8aba-87a956f41b7f/episodes/ba44b289-b2b0-4a85-83fa-d3af9591161e/exposed-abortion-in-america-ep-23-no-health-care-no-choices-wendy’s-coercion-at-planned-parenthood

Transcript

0:00: So today on our podcast, we have Wendy Burpe joining us, and Wendy is a mother, she is a wife, and she is the executive director of two women’s pro-life clinics, and Wendy has her own personal story that she’s going to share with us today.
0:15: So Wendy, thank you so much for being here.
0:17: And could you go ahead and share your story with our listeners?
0:22: Well, it’s an honor to be here, so thank you for asking me, I am always in awe of all this opportunity that God puts in front of me.
0:33: He opens doors and I walk through so that we can tell the truth about what’s happening to women.
0:41: who walk into Planned Parenthood because they don’t come out the same.
0:45: And I was 19 and I had left home.
0:50: I had gone to college for a year and.
0:53: Started dating this guy and became pregnant and my family had kind of distanced themselves from me, and I only had his voice, and his voice said, hey, let’s go find out what Planned Parenthood has to say.
1:10: And I wasn’t really knowledgeable about them, as an organization.
1:15: I knew that abortion was wrong.
1:17: I was raised to believe that and I, I did believe that, but when you’re terrified.
1:22: And you’re alone, and there’s only one other person who’s saying, just why don’t we just go over and see what they have to say.
1:29: And so we went in and.
1:32: I was taken to a back room and they did an ultrasound, but I was staring at the back of the machine and wondered what did they, what, you know, what are they seeing?
1:44: That I’m not allowed to see, and I was, you know, 19 and naive, so I didn’t say, can I see it?
1:51: Can I see the baby?
1:53: And that’s, you know, to this day, that’s the thing that really is hard for me, that I don’t really know how far along I was.
2:01: and so they took me to another room and I was, you know, told to sit on the medical table.
2:07: It was kind of inclined.
2:09: And the lady came in and she said, well, you know, here’s some medication, this medication will, you know, help to calm you down and then you’ll be able to, talk to a doctor who will come in and, you know, whatever other questions you have, and of course you have questions, cause you don’t really know like what’s going on and what you wanna do and so I, you know, I sat and waited.
2:32: And and then.
2:36: I just woke up in a completely different room, which is so unnerving to think about that, you know, they undressed you and they did all these things and you were kind of, you know, pushed around and eventually, you know, when it’s over, the abortion was over, I was put into obviously some kind of wheelchair and then Unconscious, put into another room and plopped into a chair, sitting up, exactly like the movie Unplanned if you’ve seen that, you know, you wake up in that chair and you’re just like, how did I even get here?
3:13: And they come in and act like they’ve done you a favor and you’re free to go, and I didn’t even know what to say cause I really hadn’t decided.
3:24: And I had somebody recently asked me like, well didn’t you sign papers and didn’t you, and I was like, well, when you come in, you do sign a paper, you know that you’re consenting to treatment, right?
3:39: But like any other medical organization or any other procedure, up until that procedure happens, you’re, you’re just getting information, right?
3:48: I went for information that I wasn’t given.
3:52: So how can I make it a final decision when I haven’t been given all the information?
3:57: Because let’s say I had been 9 weeks and being in, you know, in that ultrasound room as a director every day, I know how big that is now, and I see that.
4:07: And That’s a whole baby at 9 weeks.
4:10: It’s very, very tiny little baby, but a whole baby, and I, I don’t, I don’t think I would have gone through with it.
4:17: So, that relationship kind of came to an end quickly.
4:23: And I started dating this other guy a while later and, you know, he at first he was like exciting and distracting and, you know, made me forget the decision that I had made and for a little bit and but very soon he became very abusive.
4:41: you know, he drank a lot.
4:42: I wasn’t raised with alcohol or with drugs, so it was all very new to me and He was this party boy, and I tried not to take that too seriously, but after a period of time.
4:58: I was pregnant and there’s a lot more to that story, which you can read in the book Running Toward Abortion, but You know, he controlled every move I made and everything that I did, and I, I was easy to manipulate because I didn’t feel good about who I was, so I allowed that to happen.
5:23: And when I told him I was pregnant,, he and his mother had a discussion about how it wasn’t good for him and he wasn’t ready, and, it was like I wasn’t even part of it, and he came back from seeing her and said, you know, we’re not having a baby, and I said, I really want this baby, I want the baby.
5:42: And, you know, looking back at who I am today, I could have said I’m having the baby, and you can go pound sand, but I’m gonna have the baby, but I wasn’t, I was so weak-minded at that point, and so, controlled by him.
6:01: So there I am going back to Planned Parenthood, which I couldn’t barely believe that that was happening again, and You know, at least this time I knew what I was getting into, right?
6:12: I knew what they were gonna do.
6:14: And, he was a very, like I said, very abusive guy, so I was often, often covered with bruises from my neck all the way down to my wrists, from him grabbing me or punching me or slamming me into walls or whatever he was doing.
6:31: and they, they could see that.
6:33: They could see that I was an abused woman.
6:36: And you would think it would be, you know, number one priority, cause they say they’re there to protect women.
6:44: But I think that day they were there to protect my abuser.
6:48: Because they really joined with him that day in coercing me into aborting my second child.
6:55: They were, they were a teen that day to make sure that I eliminated my child.
7:02: And so, same process, can’t see the baby, never got to talk to the doctor.
7:08: in his defense, think about it, these doctors, would you want to be seen?
7:13: Really by the woman, woman after woman all day long that you’re ripping their babies out, and I mean, I wouldn’t want anyone to see me if I was doing such a horrible thing.
7:23: , But I went through with the second abortion and.
7:29: Then the next day I, you know, I went to work, couldn’t afford to take off.
7:34: And, it was hard.
7:36: I, I sat at a desk and I just didn’t get up cause it hurt so bad.
7:40: When I got home that night, I, I definitely knew something’s not right.
7:44: I was vomiting and I was just in terrible pain.
7:49: And he got home and, I said, you know, you, you really should take me to a hospital.
7:54: I think something’s wrong.
7:55: And he thought I was overreacting, but, You know, if he had gone out that night and I had just stayed home and and tried to go to sleep, like, I don’t know what would have happened to me that night, you know.
8:09: But I went to the hospital, got into the emergency room, and passed out, and then they took me to the back and brought me to, and I explained that I’d had an abortion and I was rushed into the back for an emergency D&C and repair to the uterus, which they had damaged, and a blood transfusion and a round of antibiotics, and so then they saved my life.
8:35: So I, I was, released a few days later and, went home.
8:43: And just tried to survive one day at a time.
8:46: I was so.
8:49: Empty.
8:50: And, you know, he had gone out partying that night.
8:54: He dropped me off at the hospital and went partying.
8:56: He didn’t come home for a day or two and never asked me what happened.
8:59: , And I never brought it up cause I didn’t want to talk about it, and I just thought.
9:06: Now my 2nd child is gone, and what I’m left with is him.
9:11: And it can’t be worse than that, and I chose him over my child and what kind of person does that and And so it was, it was just a lot of heartbreak and self loathing, I think of myself.
9:25: I just hated what I’d done.
9:27: And then about 44 or 5 months later, even on birth control.
9:32: , I got pregnant again, and I didn’t even tell him because I thought he’ll just beat me up and say, how did you let this happen?
9:41: so I just went there and, you know, figured, well, that’s what they’re there for, right?
9:47: That’s all they care about is how you’re gonna pay, so I scraped the money together and I had another abortion and then after that, I mean I thought about suicide, I I had enough respect for my mother and for God that I didn’t do that.
10:04: , but I thought about it a lot and didn’t see my life as having any purpose anymore, that why, why would God even care what happened to me.
10:14: , after that, And then my friend Joanna from high school, we kind of reconnected, God let that happen, and she could tell I was in trouble.
10:28: And she really was relentless in her pursuing of me.
10:32: And, you know, my mother had tried that for years, but, you know, Joanna was like a, you know, take no prisoners kind of girl, and she was like, come on, let’s go.
10:44: you’ve got to get out of this.
10:45: And it took a bit and I finally did leave and there was some more to that story too, but, eventually I met my husband, and we were married 2 years later.
10:57: We’ve been married over 25 years, and God gave me kids, which I still can’t get over it.
11:04: I still can’t get over that he gave me.
11:08: Two boys and a daughter, and they’re all young adults now and and more important to me than anything in the world.
11:16: And so, you know, I’m raising my kids and I’m being a mom, and I’m back in church and I’m doing all the things and, you know, that part of me got buried and my husband did know about it, but no one else, and I kept that quiet cause I didn’t want the judgment of anyone, particularly people in the church.
11:37: So, When they were in high school, I heard about Genesis and the job opening, and I just thought it was helping moms and babies, not even really realizing it was, focused on, you know, or at that time it wasn’t super focused on going after the abortion minded and we didn’t have ultrasound back then.
11:59: So, but I thought this sounds good, moms, babies, I can do it.
12:03: So I took the job as director and Very quickly, other directors helped me understand that we needed to be a medical clinic, so we turned medical and It it was one of the best days of my life when we did our first scan.
12:21: And we showed that young woman, her unborn child.
12:26: And it made all the difference in the world.
12:29: And It’s been Just such an amazing experience since then, you know, I was like, Lord, let me, let me save 3.
12:39: If you let me save 3.
12:41: It will be The most amazing thing.
12:45: And now it’s in the hundreds, you know, we’re we’re we’re getting near 400 babies that have been saved in our clinic now since 2019.
12:54: So, God is, you know, he’s for life.
12:58: So we know he’s for us.
13:00: And it’s amazing to be in that room and be a part of those ultrasounds and be able to talk to women and give them truth and You know, all this nonsense about, we’re fake clinics and we force women, we’re forced birthers.
13:16: Somebody said that to me the other day.
13:18: And, you know, it’s, it’s really crazy, because we give them the truth.
13:23: Now, what they do with it is still up to them when they walk out the door.
13:27: But nobody should be trying to shut down or go against a clinic that is just giving women the facts.
13:34: This is what your baby looks like.
13:35: This is the heartbeat.
13:36: , here’s what we can do for you, and Genesis has an amazing 3 year support program.
13:43: So again, not at all what they say about us, right?
13:46: How do you help these women?
13:47: We helped them a lot with housing and jobs and material assistance and church communities and counseling and all these things that they didn’t have before.
13:58: And if they have little kids like 2 year olds, 3 year olds, we help with that too.
14:03: So we want, we want that process of motherhood to be successful for them, you know, even beyond that little baby that they’re carrying, so.
14:13: That’s what’s been going on and we’ve been, we have a great team here of women that have very, strong hearts for the unborn and for.
14:26: Women, we don’t want to see them traumatized by abortion anymore, so that’s what we do at Genesis and then, I decided to write my story running toward abortion, so that came out, in 2022.
14:44: And now I’m, I joined Ambassador speakers and, travel all over the place and share my story to help other clinics be able to raise money or, like we just did in Washington last week to to spread the truth of the harm that’s being done to women, at Planned Parenthood.
15:06: Wow, thank you so much for just sharing that beautiful redemption story.
15:11: And it is very interesting when you talk about all of the services that your clinics provide to women, the resources, the medical help, yet Planned Parenthood on their website, they would refer to your clinics as dangerous.
15:27: They would say, Don’t believe these dangerous clinics and the lies that they’re spreading the misinform, the dangerous care.
15:35: That they’re providing when your own personal experiences with Planned Parenthood stands in very stark contrast with all of the wonderful services that you’ve just described that your clinics do.
15:49: So I’d love to just ask you a few more questions about your experience at Planned Parenthood, and then I’d love to hear just a little bit more about what you’re doing now.
15:58: So, Our first question is, did you ever see any doctors when you went to Planned Parenthood?
16:04: Do they provide you with specific medical staff to give you information?
16:10: , I never saw a doctor, so it’s really, It’s really amazing to think that, that you go to this place that says they’re gonna give you, I mean what they’re doing to you is The most invasive thing, right?
16:29: and you should have the right to talk to a doctor, but I never, never, and 3 times.
16:36: I never saw that guy or woman, and I never saw that person.
16:40: And, I, I think, I mean, I would imagine that the person that did the scan had some kind of medical background, or else she wouldn’t have been able to do that job.
16:52: But beyond that, I really, I don’t know that those people were Actual medical professionals, and of course I never saw the doctor, so, you know, I don’t know what his background is either or even why somebody would want to be involved and goes against the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and he did me a lot of harm that day and certainly he did great harm to my unborn child.
17:23: Yeah, wow.
17:24: And did you ever talk to a counselor?
17:26: Were you ever given a counseling session or anything during one of these appointments, especially since you had visible signs of being abused at home?
17:35: Did they ever show any concern about that?
17:39: No, it was, it was, it was.
17:42: Obvious that I was in distress, not, not one of them.
17:48: Said Are you in trouble?
17:51: Do you need help?
17:52: And instead they just How you gonna pay?
17:57: Get her in, get her out, and hand her back to the guy who is her abuser.
18:02: They don’t really care about any of that, because if they started to really care about women, then they wouldn’t be able to continue doing what they’re doing.
18:11: If they really cared.
18:13: how about if just one person had said, What do you want?
18:18: What do you want for this pregnancy?
18:20: How do you feel?
18:22: But You know, that’s a conversation we have with Genesis all the time.
18:26: Tell me about what’s going on in your mind right now.
18:29: We don’t tell her how to feel.
18:30: I want her to tell me how she feels and what are the circumstances and Tell me what’s going on and there is no wrong answer.
18:39: So when you listen and you care, By the time she’s done that conversation, many of the women will say, I don’t want to have an abortion, I don’t know what else to do.
18:50: So now you’ve just heard her tell you.
18:53: I don’t really want this, but I don’t know what else to do, and then I can give options.
18:58: Here’s what you could do.
19:00: I can’t make her, I can’t make her.
19:03: Make a decision, but I can provide her options so that life seems possible.
19:10: Wow, and what do you think the biggest lie is that women believe when they go to a Planned Parenthood?
19:16: Or what do you think the biggest lie is that you believed about Planned Parenthood when you first went there?
19:25: I think I believed that they were just giving you information and of course they could do an abortion, but that they They were, they would give you all the information though.
19:39: I didn’t think that they would withhold it from you.
19:42: And I do remember now this is 25 years ago.
19:44: So back then, you know, the marketing strategy was sell that sell these girls on the fact that it’s just a clump of cells.
19:53: Now we know scientifically that that is not true, that a baby is a baby, no matter how small, from conception, but You know, at that time that was the push.
20:05: It’s just a clump of cells.
20:07: It has no, you know, feeling, it doesn’t know this is happening.
20:12: It’s, so if you do it, it’s not a big deal.
20:15: It’s, it’s not.
20:16: So when you are scared to death and you are alone, you want to believe that.
20:22: Now, later on, I don’t care how you were brought up, you know it’s not true.
20:27: You just know, but That’s, that’s what they were selling at the time, you know, and probably still due to some point, but I bought into that and you know, not remembering or, you know.
20:42: Anything really beyond that, the medication, whatever it was that I took that day.
20:47: , And he robbed me of anything that happened beyond the point of being sitting on that table, so.
20:55: Yeah, it would have been nice to have somebody asked me what I wanted or was I OK, like, like we, if we saw a woman like that come into Genesis, we’d be all over that.
21:07: Can you tell me more specifically what it would look like if a woman came into your clinic at Genesis and was scared and was alone?
21:17: How would you and your team care for her?
21:21: So we have a very great process here.
21:24: The first thing they do is meet with our nurse and she does a confirmation pregnancy test.
21:30: And if that test comes up positive, then depending on how far along she is, we can take her into our physician’s assistant who’s also trained in ultrasound, and she’s amazing and she’ll do a scan.
21:45: And that allows that client to see her unborn child in whatever, you know, phase it is, and, you know, we can see a heartbeat, in like 5 weeks, 6 days.
21:57: , not every time, but, but we often can, and, you know, seeing that little flicker is, is amazing, and it, it helps that client understand that what is inside of her is a living human being, a little piece of her.
22:15: And so we do that and I’m usually in the room for that.
22:18: And then, she’s given all the information and pictures and all that, and then she comes into me.
22:24: And I just, I just want to hear what she has to say.
22:28: I’m there to listen to whatever’s going on.
22:31: And the circumstances could be from I’m too young, I’m too old.
22:38: I can’t afford more kids.
22:41: I, you know, my boyfriend tells me I need to have an abortion.
22:45: I don’t know what to do.
22:47: I, I don’t have an apartment.
22:49: All these things, and they’re all real and they’re all important to listen to because that’s that’s her that’s her story.
22:59: So we listen and what we say at Genesis is we attack the circumstances, not the baby.
23:07: And so we, we take notes and we look at like what does this woman need to be able to take on motherhood.
23:15: And then we start making a list and we, we give her some options, some in-house, some we refer out to as far as maybe housing.
23:27: , different things that we You know, we’re connected to that we can help her, and we really just rally around her as a team and say, we can help you make this be possible.
23:40: Now, on the other side of it, you know, some of these young women go out and they choose differently.
23:47: And that’s hard, and we know that that happens, But we do such a great job here of making people feel loved.
23:57: And not judged That we’ve seen girls come back here.
24:03: And say, you know, But I, you know, I’m pregnant again, 6 months later.
24:10: But you guys were so great, and I, I’m gonna keep the baby this time, and I just, you know, couldn’t think of a different place I’d want to go or we’ve had girls come back and say, I had an abortion, but now I’m really struggling and Planned Parenthood has no interest.
24:28: They have no method of helping.
24:29: , will you help me, and we’ll, we’ll counsel with them because I know firsthand how incredibly difficult that is to go through that.
24:41: And so We provide a lot of services, believe it or not, for women who are coming out of Planned Parenthood really broken and wounded, and we’re picking up the pieces.
24:53: I think that’s so beautiful that you can say that you’ve had so many countless women come back and that they know that your clinic is a safe space, because I just spoke a few weeks ago with Myra Rodriguez, who was an ex- Planned Parenthood worker, and she said that in All of her time at Planned Parenthood, she never had a woman come back and say thank you.
25:18: Not once did she hear about a woman coming back.
25:21: And that’s very telling, and it’s very telling that at your women’s health clinic, even if they decided to go and have an abortion, they still know that they can come back to you because you have created for them a space where they feel loved, a space where they feel heard.
25:38: And I think that juxtaposition with Planned Parenthood, having so many little women come back to say thank you, just shows which side really truly does care about women, and it’s not parenthood.
25:53: Absolutely not.
25:55: And you know, we had my, we had a, an admin that used to be here until she had a baby, got married and had a baby.
26:02: But she called Planned Parenthood and she said, listen, I, I just want to talk to somebody because, you know, she’s trying to see what they’re gonna say.
26:11: I’ve, you know, you, you provided me this abortion, but I, I’m just, I can’t stand it.
26:16: I, I’m, I feel suicidal.
26:19: Will you help me?
26:20: And they said, I’m sorry we don’t provide those kinds of services.
26:24: You can reach out to some kind of mental health provider, but it’s very common for a few months to have a postpartum after effect.
26:32: So basically, we got what we wanted from you, you’re on your own.
26:37: And what’s the end of it, and what they got was the bill.
26:40: What they got was the payment, right?
26:43: That’s so they’re done, they’re done with you.
26:44: They don’t care what happens to you after that.
26:46: They don’t care if, you know, you go back to, I mean.
26:51: It it gets dark, right?
26:53: I mean, sex trafficking.
26:54: I mean, we’re giving pills to.
26:57: You know, people that are running organizations like that in this country like.
27:01: Planned Parenthood is connected to darkness in so many aspects, it’s incredible, but here we are, you know, acting like this is a woman’s right to, you know, abort her own child and You know, I look at the culture of women today, and I, it’s incredibly sad.
27:19: It’s incredibly sad because it’s they’re drinking the Kool Aid and they’re buying into it, and they don’t realize that they’re being used by an organization to promote their own culture of death.
27:33: Yeah.
27:33: It’s so heartbreaking.
27:35: And just as we conclude here, do you have any, anything that you would say to a woman who was in your shoes?
27:44: Maybe there’s a woman right now who’s listening to this podcast episode who is saying, I don’t know if I can do it.
27:50: What would your message be to a woman in those shoes?
27:56: You know, I think I’ve, I have those women in my office all the time, every week, and I always say to them, if I could go back and be in your shoes right now and make a different decision.
28:09: I would every time, and it does seem difficult in this moment, but God is in control.
28:19: And he can make a way.
28:21: And I think he honors those who honor life, so.
28:26: , in fact, probably at least once a week I say there’s, there’s a reason why you’re here today, because maybe you think Google found us, but God had you find us, so that we could come around you and create a support system that will launch you into motherhood, in a, in a really positive way.
28:48: We want your whole life and your future to be better for both you as the mother.
28:54: And the child, and you will never have to live with the dark regret.
28:59: Of abortion, and a baby is always a joyful miracle.
29:04: Wow, thank you so much for that answer.
29:07: That is a beautiful way to end our podcast episode.
29:11: So Wendy, I just want to say a huge thank you to you for coming on and for being vulnerable with our listeners.
29:17: It is not a small thing for us to be given the opportunity to hear your story, for you to share so many of these details that women need to hear.
29:26: So just thank you so much for being willing to do that, and I look forward to hearing more about your ministry and your, your story.
29:35: so thank you so much.
29:37: Thank you for having me.