Charlene Carter was fired for sharing pro-life views on social media. As the lawsuit wraps up, let’s thank God for her victory.

From The Epoch Times. Last month, days after [Charlene] Carter testified in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, a jury voted to award her more than $5 million—a unanimous verdict declaring that Carter’s ex-employer trampled her rights and illegally fired her for “protected speech” about religious beliefs and opposition to her union, Transport Workers Union of America Local 556….

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Now that Carter’s trial transcripts are publicly available, many airline employees have been reading them. “And they see this is much bigger than her, and that she’s not just some crazy right-wing, pro-life nut,” the Southwest employee said. “This is about freedom of speech for all of us, freedom to oppose the union, and to stand up for what you believe in.”

Horrified During Abortion

The genesis of Carter’s case dates to 1985. Then a student at Texas Woman’s University, she remembers feeling apprehensive as her boyfriend drove her along MacArthur Boulevard toward a Planned Parenthood office in the Dallas area, where she would terminate her pregnancy. …

Carter felt backed into a corner. She and her boyfriend were unprepared for parenthood and feared the repercussions of revealing an out-of-wedlock pregnancy to their families. …

With coaxing from her boyfriend, Carter made an abortion appointment. … Carter wanted to know more about the development of the 10-to-12-week-old fetus she was aborting. She recalls a Planned Parenthood staffer responding: “At this point in your pregnancy, it’s just a clump of cells …”

Feeling “a little loopy” from a mild sedative, Carter remained aware of her surroundings. She heard the whirring of a suctioning machine and felt pulling inside her—as predicted. Then Carter encountered the unexpected: “Something made me turn over to the left,” giving her a glimpse of a container. It held the vacuumed-out contents of her uterus: bloody fluid and identifiable “little parts” of a baby, she said.

Carter was horrified. She burst into tears and immediately knew she had committed a cardinal sin. She vomited. “I was sick from the anesthesia, and sick from what I just did,” Carter said.

Years of Agony

She was filled with regret and self-loathing—feelings that linger 37 years later. When Carter shared her abortion experience in court on July 8, jurors seemed to have been taken aback, “like, ‘whoa,’ they didn’t see this coming,” said one observer who asked not to be identified because she works at Southwest. …

Carter said women need to know: “This isn’t just a clump of cells. It truly is a little human, and he’s now torn apart” during an abortion. Carter says she would never have gone through with the procedure if she had been better informed. …

Lamenting her ignorance and flawed judgment, Carter descended into a fog of depression and shame that didn’t dissipate for years. Getting an abortion is “something you can never take back,” Carter said. And, as a Christian, “it’s the worst thing you could probably do,” violating one of the Ten Commandments. …

Physical Harm

About two years into the marriage, Carter suffered a medical emergency: an ectopic pregnancy. The developing egg had implanted in a fallopian tube instead of in her uterus, requiring surgical embryo removal. …

The doctor said that, because of abortion-inflicted damage to her female organs, he didn’t know whether Carter would be able to have babies. Again, Carter was devastated. She was filled with renewed disgust for herself and resentment for the man who had been her first love. …

Forgiving Herself

Despite her doctor’s concerns, Carter conceived another child. Her son, Christopher, was born in 1990. Grateful for the gift of a happy, normal, healthy infant, Carter began re-examining her relationship with God. She began to feel that he had forgiven her and had some greater mission intended for her. It just hadn’t become apparent what it was yet.

Partly because her first marriage never recovered from the abortion, it ended in divorce. Carter met her future second husband after going into the nail salon business. One of her clients had a son with an unusual name, Jhara. When the client introduced Carter to her son, Carter immediately recognized him as her soulmate. …

Still, Carter hadn’t quite forgiven herself. That changed around 2007 when she attended a “hot topics” women’s meeting at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas. The purpose was to explore “things that most churches don’t discuss,” Carter said. And, to Carter’s surprise, on that autumn evening the “hot topic” was abortion.

Speaking to about 100 women in the main sanctuary, a woman stood up and told her personal story. After having an abortion, she let regret wreck her life. But she finally realized God had forgiven her and “wiped it clean,” Carter recalled. Then, the presenter asked the crowd: Please stand if abortion has ever affected you, a family member, or an acquaintance. “Almost every one of the women in attendance stood up,” Carter said. “I just couldn’t believe it, how many women abortion has touched.”

Carter believed that God had placed her at that meeting for a reason. She left inspired. “From that night on, I promised God that I would never, ever stay silent about abortion again,” she said. …

Soaring With Southwest

For years, Carter felt like she and Southwest airlines were riding high together.

“I had gotten my dream job,” she said, noting that she was hired in 1996 after three attempts. Before working at Southwest, Carter had done a stint at American Airlines. There, she started in an office job before becoming a flight attendant—a position her first husband frowned upon. But her second husband, Jhara, was a pilot, so he shared her passion for flight. Just after meeting Jhara—who flew airplanes for other employers, not Southwest— Carter landed that coveted job at Southwest. …

Besides enjoying close-knit, fun-loving relationships with co-workers, “I got to work under the most amazing CEO in the world,” Carter said, referring to Herb Kelleher. …

Carter also respected Kelleher’s right-hand lady, Colleen Barrett. She had worked at Kelleher’s law firm as an executive assistant. …

Tensions Escalate

Carter and other employees say that the culture that Barrett and Kelleher spent years cultivating is now fading.

For longtime flight attendants, one cause of the alleged cultural deterioration can be traced back at least a decade ago. A series of ugly disputes within the labor union began. Carter’s court case outlines some of that history with Transport Workers Union of America Local 556. …

Controversy Peaks

On Feb. 7, 2017, in response to union activities that she viewed as pro-abortion, Carter posted a video of an aborted fetus on her Facebook page, along with these words: “WARNING, this is VERY GRAPHIC!! I want my tax dollars to STOP funding this….PERIOD!!!! This is MURDER.”

Company officials searched back about five years in Carter’s Facebook posts to find several photos that they argued could be used to connect Carter and her “highly offensive” anti-abortion posts to Southwest. This, they said in her termination letter, made her “identifiable” as a Southwest employee and could create a false impression that she was representing the airline with her anti-abortion messages. Officials said this constituted a violation of the company’s social media policy; that was one reason they cited for firing Carter.

In contrast, the company took no action when its name appeared on a banner that Local 556 members carried during the Women’s March; pictures of that banner and the marchers from Local 556 showed up on social media, too, according to court records.

The company also said it fired Carter because she repeatedly sent private messages to Audrey Stone, who was then president of Local 556. …

A week after her aborted-fetus post, Carter sent four Facebook messages to Stone, including two videos of aborted fetuses. In a comment posted with one of the videos, Carter wrote: “This is what you supported during your Paid Leave with others at the Women’s MARCH in DC … You truly are Despicable … by the way, the RECALL is going to Happen. …”

The company summoned Carter for “a fact-finding meeting,” but Carter said she felt like company officials’ minds were already made up. Soon afterward, they fired her. …

Carter believed she had a right to complain about the union’s activism; as a Christian, she felt compelled to share videos showing “the truth of what abortion is all about….”

Heading to Court

Carter turned to the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation, a nonprofit that fights union abuses. When the foundation asked Carter what she wanted from litigation, she replied: “I never want this to happen again to any other flight attendant or any other employee who is under a union.”

Carter’s lawsuit went to trial in July, almost five years after she filed it….

After daylong deliberations on July 14, the jury spoke. Jurors decided in Carter’s favor. They found that Southwest and the union had violated her rights under federal laws and Local 556 breached its duty of fair representation. The jury also awarded her more than $5 million….

Are you encouraged by Charlene Carter’s story? If so, share this article with your friends and family to encourage them!

(Excerpt from The Epoch Times. Photo Credit: Getty Images)