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Former Abortion Clinic Regional Director and Unlicensed Abortionist Joy Davis

Joy Davis went from working at one abortion clinic to directing six clinics and eventually began to perform abortions without a license. Her involvement in a negligent homicide led her to get out of the abortion business and cooperate with authorities in revoking the license of her boss, abortionist Tommy Tucker.

In despair over her involvement with abortion, she finally turned to God for forgiveness and later was received into the Catholic Church.

Joy Davis

Fourteen years ago, I was offered a job in an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. A very short time after working there, I realized one thing: we were not there to help women. We were a business—a money-making organization.

The conditions in the clinic that I worked at were very, very poor. Our people were not very well trained—most of them did not even have a medical background. The fact that I was killing children for a living didn't bother me at all, and I knew that's what we were doing.

Regional Director of Six Clinics

I met a doctor at the clinic, Tommy Tucker. He said that he wanted to open his own clinic. He said he wanted to do things right. He wanted to have highly trained and qualified people working at the clinic. He wanted to do general anesthesia and have anesthetists come in and put these women to sleep so they wouldn't suffer, because in the clinic we worked at they did suffer a great deal.

I thought that this was a wonderful idea and I accepted Dr. Tucker's offer. We had the best equipment, a highly trained, qualified staff, and we would only see a very few women a day because we didn't want to rush them through like cattle.

But we still lied to the women; it was just something we had to do to make money.

Abortionist's Mounting Greed

But that didn't last long. After just a few months, his greed took over. He wasn't making enough money, so the first thing to go was the anesthetist. Through just the few months of watching them put patients to sleep, we started putting patients to sleep ourselves.

Then our registered nurses that worked in our recovery room were the next people to go. Then our lab technician and on and on. So I brought in people off the street with no medical background and trained them.

We were seeing approximately ten women a day in the clinics, but that wasn't enough. We started seeing as many as we could get in every clinic. There was not an airline fast enough or efficient enough to get the doctor to all of the clinics. So he trained me to be a physician.

I really knew nothing about medicine, other than what I had seen other doctors do, but I started doing abortions. I started actually performing surgery on women.

I never spent the first day in medical school. I really knew nothing about medicine, other than what I had seen other doctors do, but I started doing abortions. I started actually performing surgery on women. I did norplants, cryosurgery, pap smears, pelvic exams—anything he did, I did.

And I was real proud of that because I felt I did it better than he did. I never put a woman in the hospital, and he was putting them in the hospital almost every month, in very critical condition. So I really had a big head.

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A Desperate Young Woman

Then one day a young girl came to us. She was not healthy enough to go through a late second trimester abortion. So I turned her down. I told her that she needed to go to a hospital where they could find out what was wrong with her. Dr. Tucker came in and insisted that I put her through. He said she had paid an $1800 deposit and that he was not going to give her the money back.

The doctor came in and did her abortion. I monitored on ultrasound while he was doing the abortion. And as soon as he was through he walked out of the room.

A Crisis Spiraling out of Control

As she started coming to, she started having difficulty breathing. Her blood pressure bottomed out. Everything was going wrong. I sent for the doctor to come back in the room. We were running around, trying to resuscitate her, trying to do everything we could to stabilize her.

When the doctor walked in the room, he got angry, because we were making so much noise. He told me to get that patient out of the room and take her to the back recovery room so the other patients could not hear her or us.

I took her to the back recovery room. I stayed with her and did everything I could do to stabilize her, but then she started bleeding uncontrollably. I ran back to the doctor and I said "You've got to help me. She's bleeding and I don't know what to do." He said to take her to the examining room, examine her, find out why she's bleeding and stop it.

So I did. I took her to the examining room and tried to find out what was going wrong, but there was so much blood. I did everything I had been trained to do. I then called an ambulance so we could get her to the hospital and they could help her.

When the doctor found out that I called the ambulance, he was furious. He canceled the ambulance. He told me, "I'm the doctor here. I'll make those decisions. We cannot send this patient to the hospital in this condition. They'll hang us. Now try to stabilize her."

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Abortionists's Fatal Cowardice

And I did. I tried. At this point she couldn't talk. She was in such serious condition that all she could do was just look at me with very frightened eyes—just look at me. Blood was just pouring out of her like a faucet and I couldn't stop it.

Blood was just pouring out of her like a faucet and I couldn't stop it.

So I ran back to him and said, "Please help me. If you don't help me she's going to die." He said, "Fine. Call the ambulance. I have a plane to catch." And he left the building.

I called the ambulance. It took twenty minutes for them to get to the clinic. During that twenty minutes I realized that I was not a doctor and it scared me to death to realize that I was put in that position—that I let myself be put in that position—to try and save a life that I was not qualified to try and save.

The other thing that ran through my mind was the doctor. He was my hero. He brought me up from nothing to making approximately $100,000 a year and doing real well. But at that moment I finally saw him for who he really was. He was a coward and he had run out on a patient that needed him.

So they transported her to the hospital. I felt relieved that the responsibility had been taken off of me. I then received a phone call from the hospital, which informed me that she had died.

At that point I started having nightmares. Every time I would close my eyes I would see her face. The guilt and the anger that I was experiencing was overwhelming, it almost destroyed me.

Refusing To Lie for Abortionist

The medical board then subpoenaed her records. Tucker went one step further and changed her records to make it look like he was not as negligent as he really was. He gave me the original records and ordered me to go to the basement and burn them. I put them in my briefcase. I couldn't lie for him on this one. I couldn't cover for him any longer.

I went to the medical board; I went to the D.A.—I turned over all the information of all the negligence that we had done. I turned myself in for practicing medicine without a license and gave them the proof that I was doing so.

They told me that they wanted me to stay employed with him. They wanted me to continue to gather information for them. So I continued to work for him and continued giving them information. But this kept going on and on, nothing was being done.

I went back to the medical board in Alabama and I said, "Why aren't you doing anything?" They said abortion was a hot political issue and they really didn't want to touch it.

God's Forgiveness

I fell into a deep depression. I felt like if I did what was right by stopping the negligence and by stopping everything that we were doing that it would ease my pain. But it didn't. My pain got worse.

Heat ran all the way through my body. I was on fire and I fell to my knees and begged God to forgive me.

But I then remembered two people that were sidewalk counselors in front of our clinics. They were very, very much against what we did, but they loved me. And when I had no one else I could turn to, I called them. I told them that I couldn't face another day, that I needed help. And she said, "Joy, what you need is God." She told me how God loved me. How he died for my sins. She prayed the most beautiful prayer I had ever heard, a heat ran all the way through my body. I was on fire and I fell to my knees and begged God to forgive me.

And He did forgive me. My life changed that day. The nightmares went away. The media got a hold of this information and forced the medical board to take action against the doctor. Tucker was put out of business in Mississippi and Alabama and his license was pulled.

Finding Peace in the Catholic Church

I started traveling around and visiting different churches. I still had a lot of guilt and a lot of pain. You see, God had forgiven me, but I had not forgiven myself. I kept looking for something -- something to take my pain away and the guilt that I felt.

And then one day a friend invited me to go to Mass with her. I had never been to Mass, but as I walked into that chapel and saw the Blessed Sacrament, I felt that God was there. And I felt I had to go back there everyday, because through being in His presence, that He would take my pain away.

Then a wonderful thing happened. This past Easter, I was baptized into the Catholic Church and I think that was the day that everything turned around for me. I was no longer the person that I used to be. I had completely changed. My heart had changed. Everything about me had changed.

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Links and Related Pages

More on Abortionist Tommy Tucker -- Update on Wrongful Death of Angela Hall and other issues