(LifeSiteNews) — When you are confronted with truth—even though it’s ugly and terrifying—you can’t avoid it. This is a lesson that Mayra Rodriguez learned after nearly two decades of working at Planned Parenthood.
Mayra Rodriguez grew up in Mexico City and came to the U.S. when she was 18. She originally wanted to become a doctor, but this proved difficult with her move to the U.S. Instead, a friend suggested she apply for a job at the place where she worked—a Planned Parenthood facility.
Mayra explained that she had never heard of Planned Parenthood and didn’t really know what they did, so in 2000 she applied for the job and got an interview. During the interview, Mayra was asked her opinion about abortion. She responded that she would never have one but that she believed it was a decision a woman should make with her doctor and according to her conscience.
Planned Parenthood hired her on the spot. She said it was the easiest interview she had ever been to.
Mayra told them she didn’t want to have anything to do with abortions, and they explained that she would be working on the “other side”—the side that provides women with birth control and sex education. Mayra said that, at the time, she was okay with that, as she truly felt that she was helping women.
She had no idea what she would face in the following years.
The ‘grooming’ begins
Mayra explained that “little by little, [she] started getting groomed,” as she was forced “into the abortion side.” She said that, at the time when she was first hired, women were taken into a room like “cattle” as they waited for their abortions. They were placed in front of a TV playing a video that “downplayed” abortion, and doctors readily dismissed any concerns that they may feel regret.
Because the administration knew that Mayra could speak Spanish, they eventually asked her to go into local Hispanic communities to tell women about Planned Parenthood’s birth control and abortion “services” and explain how they could hide their abortions and birth control from their husbands. Then they asked her to go into schools to teach these same concepts to the kids and to talk to them about “judicial bypass”—the process by which underage girls can petition the court for an abortion without a parent’s knowledge. She said staff even knew which courthouses had the “friendly judges” and would send the girls there. She called the whole process “sickening.”
The years went on, and Mayra received several promotions, including to center director, and she even won Employee of the Year. In 2016, she was promoted to director of the largest abortion facility in Arizona, and that’s when her “eyes started opening.”
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Mayra explained that it was now part of her job to deal with moms and aborted babies. She helped bag the babies who were to be cremated. She helped staff count the baby pieces after the abortionist removed them from the mother. She saw the women crying in the recovery room. Then, because she was the facility director, she began receiving phone calls from post-abortive women in the middle of the night. Many were afraid because they were told they might experience some mild cramping, but the pain instead was “excruciating.” Women also called expressing their horror that they thought they were going to pass clots of blood, but they actually saw heads and arms of a tiny baby.
All of this started weighing on her.
Mayra then began receiving reports of patients who ended up in the ER because of perforations, and she heard accusations of “wrongdoings” perpetrated by the abortionist, including leaving a baby’s head inside a woman.
In addition to the horrific actions directly perpetrated against women within her facility, Mayra said that many staff members suffered from depression and abused alcohol. They drank at lunchtime, and they regularly met for drinks after work. As she explained, “With alcohol, you forget what you just saw.” Further, she said that it was widely known that those who complain about what they see just “seem to disappear” and are never heard from again.
In 2017, when Mayra complained to administration about what she was seeing, she was fired. She filed a wrongful termination lawsuit and won in 2019.
Learning pro-life truths
Meanwhile, Mayra knew she had to begin to heal. She explained that she had been “groomed” by Planned Parenthood to not trust pro-lifers, so she needed time to really learn about and research the truth.
She had been told that the people praying in front of Planned Parenthood facilities were paid to be there, that they didn’t care about the moms, that they only cared about babies, and that they would abandon the moms once they had the babies. Further, she was told that pregnancy resource centers were “fake” clinics. After she left Planned Parenthood, she was shocked to learn that none of that was true and that, in fact, the people who work at pregnancy resource centers often have more credentials and qualifications than those at Planned Parenthood. She came to truly understand that abortion should not be a “choice” and that all human beings are sacred and deserve protection.
These realizations and her newfound knowledge and desire to teach the truth led her to begin speaking about her experiences at Planned Parenthood. She soon joined forces with Abby Johnson, another former Planned Parenthood director, and began working with Johnson’s organization And Then There Were None as the global outreach director.
Mayra spoke in public for the first time in 2020 at the Arizona March for Life. This led to further speaking engagements around the country. Most recently, she is part of an upcoming Abby Johnson documentary called Unthinkable—a “shocking exposé of the abortion industry’s dirtiest secrets” that offers testimonies from former abortion workers. Mayra hopes the film will “change hearts and minds” and will help people understand the value of every preborn baby.
Today, Mayra continues her outreach with And Then There Were None and works as a client advocate for Loveline, a nonprofit that helps women find the resources they need after having their babies. She also does leadership training with 40 Days for Life and is often used as a witness for the pro-life side in battles against Planned Parenthood.
Mayra hopes that all people will open their eyes to the dark truth about Planned Parenthood and how it harms, not helps, women. As she explains, “There is a better choice than either working for the abortion industry or choosing abortion. There’s less regret when you choose life.”
It took Mayra nearly two decades to learn the truth. She hopes others learn it a lot sooner.
