When Stephanie Pavlic walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic three years ago, she didn’t get the warm welcome she had hoped for.

A pastor’s daughter, Pavlic found herself with an unplanned pregnancy. Before she even told her parents or her boyfriend she was pregnant, she visited a local Planned Parenthood affiliate to get some information about adoption services.

The workers gave her blank stares when asked about adoption resources, but they were very quick to suggest she have an abortion.

“The woman told me, ‘You’re only 18 years old. You have your whole life ahead of you. Have you considered abortion?’ Every time I tried to shut it down, they would bring it back up,” Pavlic said.

“They tried to get me scheduled for an abortion later that week. I explained to them that my choices were going to be adoption or keeping the baby. I ended up leaving.”

Former Planned Parenthood manager Sue Thayer—who now runs Cornerstone for Life, a pro-life pregnancy center—spoke with Decision about the financial profit motivations of Planned Parenthood, which reportedly even incentivized their workers with pizza parties if they met the quota of abortions.

Thayer, who had a minor objection to abortion at the time, began working for Planned Parenthood in 1991. She quickly rose in the ranks, becoming a manager later that year. “The pay and the benefits were great,” she said.

In 2007, her clinic in Iowa began doing the experimental “Webcam,” in which doctors administer abortion-inducing pills remotely via video teleconferencing.

“Nonmedical staff was going to be trained to do those,” Thayer said. “That concerned me. The closer we got to doing that, the more vocal I became.”

One day, Thayer—who would soon give her life to Christ—stumbled upon a Christian radio station, where she heard someone from Iowa Right to Life being interviewed. She knew she had to call Iowa Right to Life and tell them what was happening in her clinic.

As it turns out, the clinic she managed was wired, and Planned Parenthood could hear everything she was saying. She was fired in 2008.

“Getting fired was actually a relief,” Thayer said. “I felt so conflicted.”

Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, some 60 million babies have died at the hands of abortionists. In Canada, that number stands at 3.7 million abortions. Today, Planned Parenthood performs more than 300,000 abortions per year—nearly a third of the United States’ total. In Canada, which has no laws preventing abortion, Planned Parenthood does not perform abortions, but it routinely refers people to abortion clinics.

Over recent years and months, the North American public has been exposed to the horrors—aside from the abortions themselves—that happen behind the Planned Parenthood front desk. In 2015, videos and audio files that linked Planned Parenthood employees to trafficking fetal organs surfaced on television and were circulated throughout different social media platforms.

Here are some of the things said by workers participating in fetal baby part trafficking:

• “Here’s the heart … My fingers will smoosh it if I try to pick it up. The heart is right there.”
• “A lot of times I‘ll get a full torso, spine, kidneys. You could send the whole thing or pick that apart.”
• “You can pull out a leg or something.”
• “It’s a baby.”

And for years, there has been recorded evidence of the horrors that occur even at the front desk of Planned Parenthood. In 2003 Lila Rose—who, at the time, was 15 years old—founded Live Action, an organization dedicated to advancing the human rights of the unborn. Live Action News, the publishing arm of Live Action, is responsible for many of the investigative stories surrounding the true life-snuffing goals of Planned Parenthood and of the abortion industry, in general.

The reports speak for themselves. Not only is Planned Parenthood invested in advancing a legal, yet immoral, death culture—it is also breaking the law in some cases.

A February report exposed unlawful behavior by a Texas Planned Parenthood clinic that deceived a pregnant woman into believing her baby was just a “blob.” Texas abortion law requires a consultation between the mother and the abortionist, and the mother has to be shown an ultrasound of her baby. This consultation should include allowing the mother to listen to her baby’s heartbeat, and pointing out parts and organs—like arms and legs—that can be seen on the ultrasound.

As it turns out, the clinic showed the woman an image of only her baby’s head, and not the full body.

Aside from major ad campaigns intended to misinform the public about the realities and implications of abortion, there have also been many recorded instances of Planned Parenthood being incriminatingly truthful about what their priorities are: to profit from the slaughter of innocent babies.

In 2016, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards claimed that prenatal care is just one of several “types of services folks depend on Planned Parenthood for.” However, call after investigative call to Planned Parenthood clinics revealed that most do not provide this service.

And just last month, the Trump administration proposed to continue funding Planned Parenthood under the condition they cease abortions.

They declined.

“More and more people are seeing the truth,” Rose said. “The enthusiasm and the conviction [to save unborn lives] is encouraging to see. Yet, we’re still working now to move the needle forward.

“For the first time in over eight years, we have a pathway to defund Planned Parenthood,” said Rose, who went on to explain that around $500 million of taxpayer money is annually going to Planned Parenthood. One move in the right direction, she said, is that some lawmakers are having discussions about including the defunding of Planned Parenthood as part of the reconciliation spending bill, which would cut funding by 80 percent for one year.

Daniel Darling, vice president of communications for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC)—the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention—says that defunding Planned Parenthood should be one of the highest priorities of the current administration.

Primarily through their Washington, D.C., office, the ERLC works with pro-life allies on Capitol Hill, pro-life activist groups and pro-life members of Congress to defund Planned Parenthood and to bring general awareness regarding the sanctity of life. Policy experts within the ERLC and other pro-life groups are in regular contact with Speaker Paul Ryan’s office, encouraging strides toward ending the funding of abortions.

“Through our conversations with key people on Capitol Hill, we’re imploring those Congress members and senators who ran for office on a pro-life platform to keep their promises,” Darling said. “The more we make our voices known, and the more pro-life people who sign petitions and call their congressional representatives and senators, the more likely [officials] are to keep their pro-life promises. These elected officials have a responsibility to go beyond rhetoric and make it happen. It’s on us to make sure it doesn’t get moved down on their list of priorities.”

While the pro-life community hopes and prays Planned Parenthood will go out of business and abortion will not only become illegal, but unthinkable, Darling said there is work the church can do right now to save lives.

“The greatest answer to abortion is the Gospel,” he said. “God is near to those in crisis. The church should be a place where women with unplanned pregnancies can find hope and healing—and a community that will rally around them and help them raise their children. There is forgiveness for women who have chosen abortion. All of us have sinned, and fallen short of God’s glory.”