'We bagged him and put him in the freezer': Ex-Planned Parenthood worker haunted by aborted baby remains

'We were just like robots'

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Friday, January 23, 2026

When Nallely Perez started working for Planned Parenthood, she believed she was stepping into a job that would support her family while she was helping other women. Initially indifferent to abortion, Perez’s views changed the day she was required to rinse and bag the remains of a 16-week-old aborted baby. 

Perez accepted a job as a receptionist at a Planned Parenthood facility in Santa Maria, California, in the late 2000s because she believed the position would provide stability and help her support her children. 

The former abortion worker had been a teen mom after becoming pregnant at 14, and after learning about her daughter’s pregnancy, Perez’s mother had offered to take her for an abortion. 

Fourteen-year-old Perez, however, kept the baby after her boyfriend — who eventually became her husband in 2016 — told her that he would take the baby and raise it so Perez could “live the life [she] want[ed.] 

“And I was like, 'No, that makes no sense.’ So, you know, I fell in love with that baby after that. And at seven and a half months, I had her, and she changed my life completely,” Perez told The Christian Post. 

By the age of 19, Perez had four children and a fragile relationship with the man who would later become her husband. After studying to become a medical assistant, Perez worked at a low-income clinic, but the salary wasn’t enough to support her family.

“When my review came up, they gave me like a 10-cent raise, and I was like, ‘I need more. I have kids,’” Perez told CP. “So, I started looking for a job, and I found that Planned Parenthood was hiring. It said that it was hiring for a receptionist. So I was like, 'OK, let me apply.'”

For Perez, the receptionist job at Planned Parenthood seemed too good an opportunity to pass up, as it promised better pay than she earned at the low-income clinic. 

At the time, Planned Parenthood’s role as an abortion provider didn’t bother Perez. During the job interview, Perez was asked how she felt about abortion, and her answer came easily: “As long as I don’t have one, I support others who choose it.” 

She also viewed Planned Parenthood as an organization that helped individuals with family planning, as her husband had gone there in 2006 for a vasectomy after the couple had their fourth child. 

“And I was like, ’You know, if they help me not to have kids, I can go and help people not to have a lot of kids,’” Perez said about her mindset at the time. 

The mother of four started working at Planned Parenthood two weeks after her interview and worked there for a year. The facility trained Perez as a receptionist first, then asked whether she was interested in training for a counseling position. 

“I had no idea what that was, but then I started training,” the mother said. 

As a counselor, Perez would take women who had received a positive pregnancy test to a room to discuss their options: parenting, adoption and abortion. Perez said that she was taught to emphasize the urgency of scheduling an abortion, telling women they could end up having to travel far to have one if they waited too long.

“If they wanted information about adoption, we gave them a pamphlet,” the former Planned Parenthood worker recalled. “If they wanted to parent, we’d give them a pregnancy test confirmation, and then they’d be out. But most of our clients stayed to listen to the abortion options.”

Perez’s role at the facility evolved, and she eventually started working in the recovery room, monitoring women after abortions, and in the procedure room where the abortions took place. 

“There were a lot of women in there who looked like they didn’t really want to be there, because they were crying,” Perez remembered about the procedure room. “Some women were there holding a rosary. Some women asked, ‘Hey, can you hold my hand while I’m going through this?’”

“And I was like, 'Why are you asking this of me? You’re here; you made this decision,’” Perez remembered thinking about those women. “My heart was so hard at the time. I had no feelings —  nothing made me feel bad about what I was doing.” 

Planned Parenthood also assigned Perez to work in the products of conception lab, the room where the remains of the aborted children are counted to ensure nothing has been left inside the woman. 

“I can’t even describe the smell. It smelled like metal,” Perez said about the POC lab.

After each abortion, a jar containing the remains of the aborted child was brought into the lab, she recalled. Perez's task was to empty the contents into a petri dish lying under a bright light, and then an abortionist would come and count the pieces of the baby.

Then it was Perez’s job to rinse the remains, seal them into a red bag, and place them in the freezer. By the end of the day, there were usually around 13 or 14 bags filled with remains stacked inside. 

“We were just like robots,” she said. “We were just handed the jar, we emptied it in the POC lab, had the doctor come in, and then we did that for the next one, and then the next one, and then the next one. It was just non-stop.” 

As is the case with most abortion facilities throughout the country, the Planned Parenthood where Perez worked had a pro-life presence outside of the facility. Perez remembered seeing two different types of pro-lifers during her time with Planned Parenthood. 

One group of demonstrators would block the parking lot entrance, or they would scream at abortion-minded women or the Planned Parenthood employees entering the facility.

Perez remembered one day, when she was walking a girl to her car, one of the more aggressive protesters shouted at her, “There’s a special place in hell for you.” 

“And I was like, ‘What does that even mean? I’m not doing anything bad. I’m just helping women,’” she remembered thinking to herself at the time. 

The group of pro-lifers who stood out to Perez, however, were those who stood across the street and quietly prayed. Some in this group would bring an image of the Virgin Mary, which Perez could see from a window in the lab facing the street.

The image infuriated Perez at the time, even though she considered herself Catholic. 

“I would get so mad,” she said. “I’d think, ‘Why did they bring her here? We’re not doing anything bad.’”

Her apathy fractured following an abortion being performed on a woman who was 16 weeks pregnant, four weeks beyond the facility’s usual 12-week limit, because someone had made a mistake when reading the woman’s ultrasound.

The Planned Parenthood in Santa Maria always had traveling abortionists, and the one who was there that day insisted that he was trained to abort babies beyond 12 weeks. After the abortion, Perez handled the remains in the POC lab, as she had always done, only this time, things were different. 

“In the past, I would see little arms, little legs, but this baby, his head was complete,” Perez said, crying at the memory. “The baby was just sitting there, and his arms were a little longer than the other babies.”

“You could even see his little spine, his little legs, and everything was just so fully formed. You could see the place where his little eyes were going to be,” she continued. “And the doctor came in and, just like with any other baby, he counted the pieces. And then we bagged him up and put him in the freezer.” 

That night, Perez had a dream about the aborted baby in the petri dish. The next day, she asked one of her co-workers at Planned Parenthood if she felt disturbed by what they had seen.

“She told me, ‘No, this is normal. We do it all the time,’” Perez said. “She kind of just blew it off, but for me, this baby was always in my head. I couldn’t get it out.” 

In 2009, the father of Perez’s children began restoring his relationship with God. As he grew in faith, Perez felt something stir inside herself, and she began to question her work. 

Eventually, she gave her two weeks’ notice and left Planned Parenthood. 

Years later, Perez connected with Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director and founder of the pro-life group And Then There Were None. Perez had seen a trailer for the movie “Unplanned” during a 2019 youth conference in Los Angeles. The movie tells the story of how Johnson became pro-life and left the abortion industry. 

After googling who Johnson was and learning more about her story, Perez realized there were wounds from her time at Planned Parenthood that had yet to heal.

She confessed to a priest but still didn’t feel forgiven. Eventually, she reached out to Johnson’s organization, which invited her to a healing retreat for former abortion workers.

Surrounded by other former abortion workers who knew the sounds, the smells, the machinery, the memories, something finally shifted.

“There was no shaking of the head, no 'Oh, gosh, I can't believe she did that,’” Perez said. “There was no shame.” 

For the first time, Perez felt forgiven, but she was also compelled to act.

While certain sights still trigger memories from her time at Planned Parenthood, such as bright lights and, one time, an ultrasound at a pregnancy center, Perez is no longer alone in carrying her guilt and pain.

Today, Perez works for LoveLine, a national hotline that Johnson founded to help connect pregnant women and families with resources. The mother of four now counsels women and offers encouragement by sharing her own experiences as a teen mom, a far cry from her work at Planned Parenthood.

Perez also speaks at pro-life events, and she appeared in the 2023 mini-documentary, “She Was Stronger,” which highlighted the stories of several former abortion workers and how Johnson’s ATTWN ministry helped them. 

“God has uniquely equipped Nallely and redeemed every area of her life: in her faith, her family, and through her work in this ministry,” Johnson said in a statement provided to CP. “Her unique experience on both sides of this issue makes her an invaluable voice for the mothers and families we serve every day.”