Mayra Rodriguez once marched loudly for abortion rights.
She stood among pro-choice activists chanting, “My body, my choice,” convinced she was defending women’s freedom. She even brought along her young daughter, training her to echo the same slogans as the two walked side-by-side at women’s marches.
But on a warm April 6 evening in Annapolis, Rodriguez – Planned Parenthood’s 2016 Employee of the Year – stood before several hundred participants at the 47th annual Maryland March for Life with a starkly different message. She urged those gathered to confront what she described as the truth about abortion and its consequences.
“I truly believed what I was doing was good for women,” remembered Rodriguez, who spent 17 years working for Planned Parenthood, rising into leadership roles that included training staff and managing three clinics.
“I used to think we were marching for women,” she said, “but we were not. We were marching for the lies – the lies that sound compassionate, but leave women alone. Lies that promise empowerment, but end life. Lies repeated so many times that they start to feel like truth.”
Rodriguez described her time working for Planned Parenthood in Arizona, where she said complications and consequences of abortion were routinely “minimized.” From inside the organization, she witnessed what she characterized as safety and health-related violations. When she raised concerns, she said, the response was swift and unforgiving.
“I called out the wrongdoing,”...
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