Reprinted from Lifecall, a publication of Sav-A-Life, a pro-life ministry in Birmingham, Alabama
March 1995 – Former abortion clinic worker Joy Davis has finally found an escape from the nightmare in her life through the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.
Joy grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, as the youngest of six children. She married right after high school and soon got pregnant with her first son, Jeff. After his birth she went to work at a local hospital as a safety coordinator. She enrolled in business classes, and took a course so she could teach CPR. In 1982 her cousin asked her if she had ever considered working at an abortion clinic.
“She told me they could pay me much better,” Joy said, so she began doing office work for them. She got the opportunity to assist the doctors, and she said she liked it because it was like being a nurse.
“I got to draw blood, work in the recovery room and do the sterilization,” she said. “The learning experience was exciting.”
In 1988, one of the clinic’s doctors decided to open his own clinic and offered Joy the position of office manager. Joy said he told her they would make a lot more money because they were going to specialize in late 2nd trimester abortions.
Until that time she said she hadn’t had any significant problems with the abortion procedure. She had only observed D&C (suction) abortions, and she said all she saw was blood going through a tube. The only things that bothered her were seeing the women in the recovery room after they realized what they had done, and one time when a doctor took her back to teach her how to check to make sure all the fetal parts had been removed.
“I felt sick and I almost fainted the first time. Then I got used to it after a while,” she said.
Once Joy was in the new clinic her responsibilities began expanding rapidly.
“Some days (the doctor) was incapable of making decisions or seeing patients,” Joy said. “He trained me to be a physician in his absence.”
Joy said she did pap smears, tested for sexually transmitted diseases, did the laminaria insertions (to dilate for the abortion), and, as time went on, she began doing actual abortions.
“Some women would go into labor and would come in the middle of the night. The doctor would be out of the state or just in bed and not want to get up,” Joy said.
During the first two years the clinic was open (1988-1989) Joy said they were often admitting women to the hospital with such complications as a perforated uterus, a torn cervix, Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation (lost clotting factor), and other problems. “It got to the point doctors at University Hospital called (the clinic doctor) down and said, ‘Obviously you’re not qualified to do these late abortions, you need to hold it to 20 weeks,’” she said.
In 1991, a young woman came into the clinic for an abortion. According to clinic reports she was 21 weeks pregnant and had a hemoglobin reading of 9.44, below the 10 or above level Joy said was required for safety. She had five previous pregnancies carried to term, and because of these and other factors, Joy determined she was not healthy enough to undergo the second trimester procedure.
She said she turned the patient down and took her to the bookkeeper to release and refer to Midtown Hospital in Atlanta.
Shortly thereafter, the bookkeeper followed Joy back and told her the doctor wanted her on the phone. He asked Joy why she was turning the patient down, and she gave her reasons.
Joy said he then said, “You know we need the money. Just put her through.”
They did the laminaria insertion, and the woman came in the next day for the procedure’s completion.
Joy said things seemed to go fine during the procedure, and the nurse began trying to revive the patient.
She said the woman was having trouble breathing, and they couldn’t get her blood pressure reading. Joy said the doctor came in the room and panicked. “He started screaming and throwing things. None of us even knew how to establish oral airway on her. None of us were trained to do that.”
She said the doctor administered resuscitation medicine, and the patient seemed to stabilize somewhat. “He told me to get her out of the operating room and back to the recovery room because he had several more patients to do,” Joy said.
All the patient’s vitals were unstable, and she began to hemorrhage. Joy said she ran to tell the doctor and he told her to take the patient to the exam room and see if she could determine the source of the bleeding .
Joy said she could only find uterine bleeding and she packed the young woman with gauze to try to stop the flow. She said she knew the patient was dying and she called the ambulance. She went back to the exam room to get the woman ready for the trip to the hospital, but the doctor came into the room and said he had cancelled the ambulance because he was the doctor and if anyone was going to call the ambulance, it would be he.
The young woman bled through the packing and Joy re-packed, but she saw it wasn’t helping. She ran into the doctor’s wife’s office and found him in there talking to her.
Joy said the patient was bleeding to death and asked the doctor to do something.
She said he replied, “What the h--l do you want me to do?”
“We’ve got to get her to the hospital or she’s going to die,” Joy replied.
At this point, she said, the doctor told her to go ahead and call the ambulance, then left the building.
Joy worked to keep the young woman alive during the 20 minutes it took the ambulance to arrive, and during that time she said she realized she wasn’t such a “hot shot.”
“I realized I wasn’t a doctor,” Joy said, “I wanted to help her, but I couldn’t.”
She said she called the doctor on his car phone, and he told her to just keep giving the patient the resuscitation medication.
Joy said they got her to the hospital, but it was too late to save her.
This was November of 1991, and this is when nightmares of this young woman began plaguing Joy.
“I wanted to get out. I was having trouble living with myself, but I was a single mother of two boys – one with tremendous medical expenses, and financially I couldn’t get out, so I just tried to live with it,” she said.
Joy said she dreamed about her all the time. “That was hard to get over—I’m still not over it,” she said. “I felt very responsible.”
Shortly after, the younger of Joy’s two sons died, and the reality of her situation hit her even harder.
The doctor didn’t come to the 15-year-old’s funeral. Joy said he wouldn’t even close the office so the employees could attend.
For the first time, she said she began to see what he was really like.
“It was hard to see the man I had looked up to and respected so much in a new light,” Joy said. “He had taught me so much.”
The medical board subpoenaed the records for the patient who had died, and Joy said the doctor called her in to help him change them. He tore up the old records, and gave them to her to burn in the basement, but Joy said for some reason she kept them.
These events were followed by another incident currently under investigation in Mississippi. Joy and the doctor had a confrontation stemming from the Mississippi issue, and Joy quit her job.
She said she still felt abortion could be okay, if it were done right. That June she opened her own clinic, but she began showing clients their babies feet and hands on their ultrasounds. She fired her counselor, and began doing real counseling herself. She found out why the girls were having abortions and often referred them to pro-life organizations.
After eight weeks she sold the clinic, and it was during this time the district attorney’s office and medical boards began asking Joy to testify against her former boss. She decided it would be a great time to move to Alaska with her sister.
Joy secured a job in Alaska and returned to Alabama to get her affairs in order. When she was ready to leave, she called her sister to tell her she was on her way to the airport, but after hanging up with her sister, she found herself calling the *Blackerbys, a couple she had known as pro-life sidewalk counselors outside the clinic.
Joy said she didn’t know where she got their number or what made her call. “When they answered the phone I started crying and said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me, but I need help.”
Mary Jim Blackerby said, “I think Jesus is trying to tell you something.”
She started praying for Joy, and Joy said a heat started in her feet and worked all the way up her body.
“I felt peaceful, and I prayed hard for God to come into my life and forgive me for all the messes in my life,” Joy said.
She said she knew at that point that God had forgiven her, but she hadn’t yet forgiven herself.
Joy was scared when time came for the deposition against the doctor, but the Blackerbys told her to trust God and tell the truth.
The Blackerbys aren’t the only people who have stepped forward to befriend Joy. “So many people would call me, and encourage me, and come see me,” Joy said. “They brought Bibles, helped me look for a job, and got me a wonderful attorney.”
Sav-A-Life’s executive director, Bob Foust, began going through a Bible study with Joy. They both prayed for a job, and after a time, Bob suggested they pray about her possibly coming on staff with Sav-A-Life, Inc.
Joy said she thought the women at Sav-A-Life were such mature Christians and knew so much about the Bible that she could never fit in, so she refused the job.
She was then offered a job with Life Dynamics in Dallas. She said she didn’t feel a total peace about taking the job, but she knew she and her son had to eat, so she accepted.
When she returned to Birmingham, she called Bob to tell him about accepting the Dallas job. She said he invited her to talk with him and Wales Goebel, the founder of Sav-A-Life.
After the discussion, the job offer was made again, and Joy accepted the position of office administrator and advertising consultant at Sav-A-Life.
Her dream is to start a home for young women who want to keep their babies, and to have it staffed with doctors and nurses who have come out of the abortion industry.
“They would be under the supervision of pro-life physicians, and they would have the opportunity to gain back some of their dignity,” Joy said. “I want them to have the opportunity to give life again instead of taking it.”
Joy also has a desire to tell young women what is really going on in the abortion clinics. “Basically I’d just like to tell them about abortion and how it hurts,” she said.
The nightmares have gotten much better, and although she still hurts, she has learned to forgive herself.
“Tom Blackerby and Bob said when I was where I was meant to be, I would feel a peace. I do feel that,” Joy said.
She is going to church for the first time since she was a child, and she said she is sleeping again.
“I’ve got a good relationship with my son (20 year-old Jeff) and it’s even getting where he wants to go to church with me,” she said.
Joy closed by saying she thinks things are going to be good for her now and her message to those who still feel trapped in the abortion industry is, “Close your eyes, trust God, and jump out. He’ll take care of you like He took care of me.” 
* Tom and Mary Jim Blackerby are state directors of AFA of Alabama.
