‘500 bodies a week’: Planned Parenthood pushed quotas, ignored chemical pill horrors for profit, former director says

Planned Parenthood deliberately ignores women’s safety – often in violation of the law – to reach daily abortion quotas and rake in millions of dollars, according to a former director at the organization.

“When you have to be the person signing off on 500 bodies a week to be cremated with trash from hospitals, you understand that what you have been selling has never been freedom – not for the mother and not for the child,” Mayra Rodriguez said in a video released Thursday by Live Action and Stop Coerced Abortions. “What you have been selling, it’s pain and darkness and it’s bloody, and it’s all about money.”

Rodriguez worked at Planned Parenthood from 2000 to 2017, serving as a center coordinator and then a center director of three locations in Arizona. As a director, she said she had to meet a daily quota of 45 to 50 abortions, five days per week, which incentivized staff to “upsell abortion.”

“As a center director, to me, the obvious reason why Planned Parenthood train staff to mislead women to have an abortion and lies to them: it’s easy money,” Rodriguez said. “It’s very easy for them to make money. There’s hardly any responsibility or legal backslash to them.”

The abortion giant accumulates more than $2 billion in revenue annually and has $3.1 billion in assets, according to the company’s annual report. Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson raked in $904,014 in 2024, according to a lawsuit the state of Florida filed against the abortion organization. Nine company executives earned $500,000 or more in fiscal year 2022-23, according to the suit.

“We’ve seen the only thing that actually has an impact on Planned Parenthood is when laws are passed that restrict their money-making operation, which is abortion,” Live Action Vice President of Communications & Government Affairs Noah Brandt told The Lion in an interview.

“The actual incentive that they care about is money. So when that incentive is impacted, they shut down,” Brandt said, referencing the nearly 70 Planned Parenthoods that have closed in 2025 due to less government funding.

Live Action filmed and produced Rodriguez’s video and released it in partnership with Stop Coerced Abortions. The partnership is planning to release recorded testimonies from three additional women harmed by Planned Parenthood’s operations and dangerous chemical abortion pills. 

“This new video series exposes the abuse, neglect, and open contempt for human life that defines the abortion industry,” Live Action Founder and President Lila Rose said in a press release. “Mayra’s story is not rare. Planned Parenthood and its affiliates routinely prey on vulnerable women and their preborn children for profit.”

All four testimonies are also part of a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood chapters and Minnesota officials, including the attorney general and governor.

The lawsuit argues that Minnesota’s abortion laws enable coerced and unwanted abortions and thus violate the 14th Amendment rights of pregnant mothers. Rodriguez is among dozens of women, medical experts, and former abortion-industry workers whose testimonies support the claim. Harold Cassidy, lead attorney for one of the plaintiffs, Women’s Life Care Center, emphasized the significance of Rodriguez’s testimony and the urgency of the case.

“Mayra’s courage in coming forward reveals the reality of what too many women have endured in silence,” Cassidy said in a press release. “Her testimony, and that of so many others, confirms a systemic pattern of coercion in the abortion industry that strips women of their most fundamental constitutional rights. This case exposes government collusion with the abortion industry, fights to end forced and uninformed abortions, and demands justice to restore mothers’ constitutional rights across America.”

The plaintiffs in the case have appealed a district court’s ruling to dismiss.

Dismissed concerns

Rodriguez recalls that even when she would express concerns regarding women’s safety, she was dismissed and told she “was not the FBI.”

Once, she observed the same man bringing different women to multiple locations and was only reassured that someone would investigate it, but nothing changed.

Another time, she noticed bruises and cuts on a young woman and reported it.

“You don’t know if she likes it rough,” an abortionist told her.

Rodriguez explained how for years she was told she was helping women, who would seek “back-alley abortions” if it weren’t for Planned Parenthood.

“To me, the abortion pill is a back-alley abortion,” she said. “You’re giving women a pill that she gets by mail now in many states, they don’t even ask them for ultrasounds to get the abortion pills. They don’t even want to know how old are they. And this is how we have cases of men putting abortion pill on drinks for women.”

She referenced the numerous reports of women being tricked or forced into taking abortion pills.

Planned Parenthood continually claims mifepristone – the abortion pill – is “safe and effective,” but Rodriguez told stories of young women who had taken mifepristone, calling and saying they thought they were dying.

“You told me I was just going to feel cramping like a period, but I think I’m dying. …I’m bleeding so much that I think I’m going to die,” she recounted.

Rodriguez said Planned Parenthood staff were instructed to dismiss such concerns, saying “take ibuprofen.” Women would call saying they could see their fully formed babies.

“Grab it and throw it in the toilet, flush and don’t look,” staff were instructed to say, Rodriguez said.

She told another story of a 23-week-old baby born alive and left to die in a room where staff would re-assemble aborted babies to account for “all the tissue.”

The abortionist and nurse sign affidavits to confirm all parts of the baby were recovered after an abortion. One abortionist, however, forced staff to sign affidavits before completing the abortion – simply to rush the process.

“He signed the affidavits long before the mother even showed up to the center, and forced all the staff to sign the affidavit, because to him, it was a waste of time to follow the law,” Rodriguez said.

Once, a baby’s head remained inside a woman, but the abortionist had already inserted a vaginal contraceptive known as an IUD.

“We had the knowledge enough to know that a woman lying there with an IUD and baby part, it’s beyond dangerous. It could kill her very quickly,” Rodriguez said. “So, I’m sure that abortionist with a medical license understood the severity of it, but to him, it was nothing. He didn’t care.”

Rodriguez located the baby’s head, and the abortionist had to perform a second procedure to remove the remains. This incident led to Rodriguez leaving Planned Parenthood and speaking out against it, she said.

Investigation and oversight

Brandt said attorneys general – especially in pro-life states – should investigate the potential illegal activity of Planned Parenthoods. The responsibility also lies with Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Brandt said, referencing their continued promises that a review of the abortion pill is “ongoing.”

“I believe not only should the regulations that say there needs to be an in person visit be reinstated and mail order abortion be made illegal, but I think this pill should be pulled from the market because it’s proven how dangerous it is for pre-born babies and their mothers,” Brandt said. 

Rodriguez said she joined Planned Parenthood to help women, but she never saw a woman leave happy after an abortion – medical or procedural.

“I met the other day a woman that came to hear my testimony and said ‘you were the director when I came to that center,’” Rodriguez said. “Now, she’s trying to heal from that abortion. And she said, ‘I forgive you.’ She didn’t say, ‘Thank you because you were the director.’ She said, ‘I forgive you.’ That looks like redemption.”