A PowerPoint slide projected in the 1148 Gerdin lecture hall Tuesday night read, “Every 95 seconds, a baby is killed.”

“So the time I came up here, think about how many babies had died in the Planned Parenthood facility,” said Sue Thayer, founder and director of the Cornerstone For Life Pregnancy Resource Center.

Thayer worked with Iowa Planned Parenthood for 18 years until a transformative experience shifted her beliefs in a different direction. She was displeased with the idea of “webcam abortions” conducted at the facility.

Webcam abortions are teleconferencing systems where a doctor allows a patient to take abortion pills in rural clinics.

“I couldn’t believe that it was legal,” Thayer said. “As I voiced my concerns about it, I ultimately got fired. They said they were downsizing me. I don’t really know if that it’s true. I will never know for sure. They gave me a severance package.”

The package was a non-disclosure agreement that came with a lot of money.

“Thank God I didn’t sign it,” she said. “If I did, I would never have stood here tonight.”

For Thayer, this was the moment that she decided to take a stand for what she believed in. She opted to join 40 Days For Life, an international group against abortion.

She created prayer slots online that people could sign up for, and the goal was to host a non-violent protest by praying outside the Planned Parenthood facility in Iowa.  

“I put the hours on my computer for people to sign,” Thayer said. “People started signing up. I remember thinking that I don’t want to face my co-workers knowing that they were thinking that I lost my mind.”

Thayer said the Planned Parenthood facility in Iowa closed a few months after the prayerful protest outside of it.

She explained that Planned Parenthood is a hundred-year-old health care facility that conducts 300,000 abortions per year, earning $500 million per year in taxpayer funding.    

She showed screenshots of “undercover videos,” which revealed the horrors behind the abortion process.

“This is Dr. Moltova,” Thayer said. “She talks in this video about crushing above the thorax and below the thorax so they can get the heart, lung and liver. And the interesting thing is that the two people who went undercover to take the video were charged with 15 felony counts for videotaping people without their permission.”

But Thayer added that the Californian prosecutor who charged the two defendants had ties with Planned Parenthood.

“I have seen kids that were raised horribly,” she said. “I have heard arguments that say it’s best to let those kids go to heaven. But it’s not for us to determine who lives or who dies.”

Thayer is the mother of five children, with two biological children and three adopted. She has been a foster and adoptive parent for 27 years. One of her youngest, Zoey, who is 6 years old, was saved from being aborted when her biological parent missed an appointment.

“Just to think there was one person that didn’t make a short ride across town to pick somebody up to make an abortion, I wouldn’t have had Zoey,” Thayer said. “The world would have been a much sadder place.”

Thayer shared the story of a Philadelphia physician who worked for years without being inspected.

“The people that were in there talked about jars of babies sitting in the sink,” she said. “They interviewed the plumber, and he said the sewer drains underneath the facility was full of baby parts.”  

Thayer emphasized that most of the women who go to Planned Parenthood never get the chance to see the ultrasound.

“Planned Parenthood knows that if people were looking at ultrasound, they would not go through with it,” Thayer said. “Just take a look at the ultrasound before you go through with it.”

Last Wednesday, Cornerstone For Life Pregnancy Resource Centers received a new high-tech ultrasound that Thayer hopes will be used to save children from being aborted.

“We decided that if we can save one child, it was worth the money,” Thayer said.