"And abortion destroys all of that.”
The racist roots of abortion in America
Treviño said she wasn’t aware when she worked for Planned Parenthood that the motives of the organization’s founder, Margaret Sanger, were “rooted in racism.”
For decades, Planned Parenthood defended the legacy of its founder, referring to Sanger as a "hero of the 20th century."
"Margaret Sanger changed the world, forever and for the better," says a 2009 document from the multinational abortion provider.
Between 1966 and 2015, Planned Parenthood presented the "Margaret Sanger Award" as a "recognition of leadership, excellence, and extraordinary contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement." Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi are among the recipients of the award.
It would not be until 2020 that Planned Parenthood began to acknowledge Sanger's racist legacy by removing her name from one of their facilities in New York.
Although the Planned Parenthood facility where Treviño worked didn’t perform abortions, she stressed that abortion organizations "have a quota" of abortions that have to be performed.
"I discovered this at a meeting with the directors of various Planned Parenthood clinics. Of all the directors, only two worked in abortion centers, the rest were centers like ours," she recalled.
"So those two directors told us, 'The number of abortions has gone down and you have to ... work hard to see how we can improve those numbers,'" she said.
“So I was appalled, because I thought: 'Wait a minute, aren't we working on trying to prevent abortion, to reduce the number of abortions? We want it to be legal, of course, we want it to be safe, accessible, but we don't want high numbers, right?'"
(Story continues below)
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But she said it soon became clear to her that “this is a lie, and this is what I want people to understand: It’s an abortion industry. They don't make money on prevention.”
It’s in the interest of abortionists, she said, "to keep pushing this idea of sex without limits, casual sex."
When young women, including 12-, 13-, and 14-year-old girls came to Planned Parenthood clinics, she recalled, “we weren't in the business of trying to help you, give you advice, advice on keeping your baby or putting it up for adoption.”
Instead, Treviño said, these young women are told "‘the best thing for you is to have an abortion, because you’re very young,’ and we give them all the excuses and all the justifications to try to convince them that abortion is the best solution."
Treviño said that currently abortion organizations "are afraid that they’re going to lose their money."
Their "industry," she said, is not helping women or giving them "a voice to choose," but "it’s abortion, abortion, abortion and it’s about millions and millions of dollars."