Abortion and Planned Parenthood

Abby Johnson is an American pro-life activist who previously worked at Planned Parenthood as a clinic director, but resigned in October of 2009 after watching an abortion of a 13-week-old baby on ultrasound. She is now an outspoken advocate for the pro-life movement and author of best-selling books Unplanned and The Walls are Talking.

Today, Abby travels across the globe sharing her story, educating the public on pro-life issues, advocating for the unborn, and reaching out to abortion clinic staff who still work in the industry. She is the founder of And Then There Were None, a ministry designed to assist abortion clinic workers in transitioning out of the industry. To date, this ministry has helped over 460 workers leave the abortion industry. Abby lives in Texas with her husband and seven precious children.

To find out more, visit her website: http://www.abbyjohnson.org.

Scott and marcy skype in abby johnson. 

Abby tells us her story.

She went to work for Planned Parenthood when she was in college, but didn’t really know anything about them at the time. She grew up in a pro-life home...her family members weren’t activists or anything like that; it was just something they claimed to be. When Abby was in college, she met a woman with Planned Parenthood that was going on and on about how awesome Planned Parenthood is and how they help women in need, especially those who are low income and have no healthcare available. Since Abby had always been blessed to have healthcare and didn’t know the plight of not having it, she wanted to help. So she volunteered with Planned Parenthood, and then right out of college, they offered her a job with them in Texas. She got promoted to Community Services Director, dealing with donations and political affairs. She eventually wanted to get away from the donor part of the job and get back with the patients. So she got promoted again to manage the entire health center there for eight years. But she left the organization in October of 2009, which happened to be the same year they told her they were going to be doubling their abortion quota. She says she remembers thinking “Is it that the organization is changing? Or is it just now, I’m so high up in the organization I’m actually seeing what’s been going on all along?” During this time, she also witnessed a live ultrasound abortion procedure of a 13-week-old baby and watched in horror as the baby fought and struggled against the abortion instruments. She knew right then that there was humanity in the womb and it was a human being -- not just a ball of tissue -- that deserved human rights. She realized she had been on the wrong side of the pro-life debate. Abby left the clinic and went to the pro-life group that always prayed outside her work. The group had promised that if anyone ever wanted to leave the clinic, they’d help...so she went to them for help. Abby says that she was the most hated local celebrity in town. But this group helped her, and once Planned Parenthood found out that she’d gone to them, they tried getting a permanent gag order against her so she couldn’t tell her story or what she’d seen in the clinic, which is something Abby didn’t have a desire to do anyway. The lawsuit was later dismissed, but when she got sued, it got picked up by the associated press, which then catapulted her into telling her story on CNN and MSNBC...another thing she never anticipated doing.

Is there a lot of turnover at Planned Parenthood?

Turnover is super high in the abortion industry. The majority of the people leaving consistently are the ones who work in the actual health clinic because they are the ones seeing the abortions happen.

Anyway, a pro-life OBGYN wanted to help Abby, so he made a job for her at his practice. When her story got picked up by national news channels, she started getting asked to speak at different places and ended up not needing that job after all. The doctor encouraged Abby that she needed to be spreading awareness to save moms from a lifetime of regret, more than she needed to be at his practice. So she began speaking about what she’d seen and gone through, which was totally out of her wheelhouse because she was not a speaker. However, during her time at Planned Parenthood, she picked up different talking points, which definitely helped in her newfound career.

In 2012 she started an organization called And Then There Were None (ATTWN) that proactively reaches into abortion clinics to pull out the abortion workers. Whatever the abortion worker needs help with to get out of that job, this organization provides that help. At the time it started, there were no other organizations that did this. Since its formation, they have helped over 460 abortion workers leave their jobs, and seven full-time abortion doctors have left their jobs as well. Abby says the majority of the people that work in the day-to-day of an abortion facility do not want to be there.

Abby makes 2-3 calls a day to abortion clinics. To whoever answers the phone, she’ll say something like “Hey, my name is Abby Johnson. I don’t know if you like your job. But if you ever want to leave your job, we’re here for you. Go to abortionworker.com. We’d love to help you.” A week or two later she might hear back from them. Most of the time, the workers receiving the calls are so thrown off by the call, because they’re not trained to believe that someone would actually want to help them out. So it’s sort of a hard sell. The abortion workers have been trained to believe that pro-lifers hate them and want to hurt them. It’s common for pro-lifers to look at the abortion worker and say that they’re too far gone. But Abby says nobody is beyond God’s reach.

“If you think that person is too far gone to be redeemed by Christ, then we must not serve the same God.” - Abby

Going after the abortion worker was essentially uncharted territory. Nobody had ever thought “Let’s try to get to the workers.” Maybe those workers know something that might be beneficial that could help close down abortion clinics. Maybe they’re worth saving too.

“The pro-life movement had done to the clinic worker what we had accused the clinic workers of doing to the unborn...and that was the process of dehumanization.” - Abby

ATTWN’s goal is to fix this problem and re-humanize those who are affected by abortion, particularly those who are working in the abortion industry.

How often does Abby call a Planned Parenthood clinic on her list?

Half of the clinics on her list are Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is performing about 40% of the abortions in the country. It is the largest chain. But there are a whole bunch of private abortion providers that people don’t really think about that are performing very high volume abortions.

Planned Parenthood is known to be pretty slick with their words and they know the right rhetoric to use to keep their funding with the government. They use phrases such as “women’s health” and “helping women with all types of issues”, etc. In Abby’s experience with Planned Parenthood, are these talking points true, or is it mostly just abortion?

According to Abby’s budget from her days at Planned Parenthood and other budgets they’ve seen, abortion is 40-50% of what Planned Parenthood is doing on the daily, regardless of their 3% talking point. Planned Parenthood claims that only 3% of their health services are abortion services. The 3% number is come to in a creative accounting way. Say a patient goes in one day to get four tests done: a pap smear, a gonorrhea test, chlamydia test, and HIV test, and also gets ten packs of birth control pills. So that’s 14 products total in one single visit. Planned Parenthood unbundles that single visit to look like 14 separate visits. They do the opposite with abortion. With an abortion, they bundle everything into one package visit.

Abby admits that maybe she sounds like a conspiracy theorist, but every service they offer is a service they hope will lead back to abortion. Their marketing plan is to get into elementary schools. Their sex ed program starts in kindergarten, so at that time they’ll begin grooming our children and breaking down their natural modesty. With stuffed animals, they’ll talk about all the different types of sex and sexual positions. This will continue to progress and then by the time girls are 11-13 years old, they hope to have them all on the pill. Planned Parenthood will tell these girls, “Now is not the time to talk to your parents. Your parents don’t understand what’s going on with you. We know what’s best for you at Planned Parenthood. We’ve been with you since kindergarten. We know you, you know us.”

Planned Parenthood knows that 54% of women who seek abortions were using contraception at the time they got pregnant.

“You see, we don’t need more birth control in our country. We don’t have a birth control problem. We have a self-control problem.” - Abby

But self-control isn’t lucrative. Birth control is.

So they’re going to get these girls birth control at a young age, knowing that a young girl isn’t going to remember to religiously take these pills every day. Planned Parenthood hopes that a girl will have her first unplanned pregnancy by the time she is 18...and they’re hoping to be the one to perform that abortion. When that girl gets in a crisis pregnancy, she is going to go back to where she got the birth control...and that’s Planned Parenthood. So the cycle continues. She’ll go to college and Planned Parenthood will still be her trusted provider. She will do the college thing and party and probably get pregnant again. They’re hoping that by the time a woman hits the age of 28, she will have already had three abortions in her life. That is a successful client to Planned Parenthood.

Scott says that every time he talks about Planned Parenthood or abortion, there will be Christians that get angry and defensive about all the good things Planned Parenthood does, saying things like “I was broke and it’s the only place I could go.” People are blinded by the horrors of it and want to justify it in some way.

“If you have to justify your beliefs, you’re probably believing in the wrong things. Because God’s word is just true and doesn’t require any justification.” - Abby

Here’s the thing with a lie. If you say a lie enough, people will begin to believe it. Abby believes that the reason we have an abortion problem and a problem with Planned Parenthood in this country is because of Christians. Over 50% of women seeking abortions are women who consider themselves Christian. There is a lot of misinformed and uneducated people out there. In reality, there are under 700 Planned Parenthood centers and well over 13,000 federally qualified health centers that provide comprehensive healthcare for anything a women could need...way more services than Planned Parenthood could ever provide. That’s in addition to the tens of thousands of providers that people who are low income can go to. So for someone to say that Planned Parenthood is the only place that women can go is a lie! There is nowhere in our country that Planned Parenthood exists that there is not another alternative place for a woman to seek care. Planned Parenthood is not the only place they can go. There are always other avenues available. They just haven’t looked.

Marcy asks Abby what her journey was with Jesus while she was at Planned Parenthood?

Abby became a Christian and was baptized when she was 8 years old, and she loved the Lord. She grew up in church but when she went to college, she did the college thing and wasn’t really involved in church anymore. She says that the falling away from the active habit of church led her to explore things that were definitely against her faith, such as relationships and activities that were harmful. Anyway, she figured that Planned Parenthood was the Christian thing to do because it helped women out and it justified what she was doing. In the eight years of being at Planned Parenthood, she realized she had no connection with God. She remembered sitting in her office thinking, “If I died today, would I go to Heaven or Hell?” And she thought Hell. That was her last year at Planned Parenthood.

“You can run from God, but you will never outrun Him.” - Abby

Abby is thankful for the foundation she had as a young person. She knew she was hearing from God in many different situations, and that He had been working on her as she was working inside that abortion clinic, softening her heart. When she left the clinic, she had to reacquaint herself with Christ and rediscover herself as a Christian and what that actually meant. She says that was a trying time in her life because she believed so many things that were against the word of God and had been brainwashed and indoctrinated into a godless way of living. So trying to navigate her way back to God was a tough road, but she had some awesome mentors in her life that were very firm with her and helped her through it. She says it was quite the journey, but she sees now how God’s grace is so evident in her life every single day.

That wraps up our time with Abby, but we thank her for being so transparent and honest.

Scott and marcy debrief the podcast

“Wow. Sooo, that was deep.” - Scott and Marcy about Abby’s story.

Marcy really loved Abby’s perspective of going after the abortion worker. You totally forget that there are PEOPLE performing all of these abortion services. We always talk about women’s rights and the baby and then pro-life versus pro-choice. But in all the news and propaganda, you just don’t hear much about the abortion worker.

Scott thinks that was bold of Abby to say that pro-life groups dehumanize the abortion workers just as much as the workers do the baby. We shouldn’t be shaming the workers. In reality, they hate their jobs. And Jesus loves the abortion worker, the doctor, and the woman, just as much as He does that baby. Many people get involved in Planned Parenthood because they want to help. Planned Parenthood has done so many good things too, so it’s easy to want to get behind that.

People tend to equate Planned Parenthood with abortion. But we appreciate how Abby wasn’t trying to make Planned Parenthood the only scapegoat.

Regarding the abortion issue, Marcy says that being a woman, she has an opinion on it. But in Galatians, it says we’re no longer distinguished as Jew/non-Jew, man/woman, etc. So as a Christian and someone who is trying to be more like Jesus, Marcy feels like she doesn’t have more of an opinion just because she’s a woman. She doesn’t think her voice should be louder than anybody else’s; the voice she wants you to hear is Jesus’. She realizes that in the midst of all of this, it is hard for women to take less of the “I am woman, hear me roar” stance since we are told that we have to have an opinion and we have to speak it loudly. But abortion is a way bigger issue than man versus woman.

Society has made it a woman’s issue, which is a bit unfair. Scott believes that most abortions wouldn’t even take place if the man was there supporting the woman too. So where is the man in all this? The woman has had to take a huge brunt of it...but where is the man? At the root of this issue, it’s not a women’s health issue. People always talk about a woman’s right to choose. But what about the baby girls that are getting killed in the womb? What about their rights? How does that help women?

In today’s world, we have created such an out to lots of lifestyle choices. We have the freedom to do whatever we want because there’s an option. Marcy uses an example of how there are such crazy laws in Washington, like not being able to hold a drink in your hand while you’re driving. She realizes these laws are made to protect people, but then where is the freedom to choose the correct way? This causes her to think about choice versus law, and morals and religion being run from the government. We have freedom in Christ, and Christ doesn’t force us to do something. So she struggles with this concept.

Scott says abortion isn’t a religious issue. You don’t have to be a Christian to realize that abortion is wrong. It’s a moral issue. Was slavery a religious issue? No, it was a moral issue. He says abortion is our generation’s slavery. People are going to look back in a hundred years and be like “They killed babies?!” Like we do with slavery. Every generation has their thing. That’s why Scott tries not to judge the last generation because if he was there, maybe he would have believed what they did too. This new generation is desensitized to the problem of abortion. Scott questions, regardless of whether you’re a Christian or not, how do you not see that this is wrong?

Marcy says that she is trained in her brain to know that “If I’m pro-life that means I’m choosing for women to have back alley coat hanger abortions.” But she knows that’s crazy wrong and it makes her skin crawl. She realizes it’s just fear, and if the whole nation all went pro-life, that probably wouldn’t really happen...but it’s still so ingrained in her thinking.

If you look back on a lot of Martin Luther King’s writings, he is ticked at the silent majority. He asks why aren’t you standing up for us? Why aren’t you saying anything? By not doing anything, you’re letting this happen. So, Marcy asks what do we do?

It’s the conversation. How does a racist become not a racist? Is it by trashing him and telling him he’s a horrible human being? Or is it by getting to know him and showing him the love of Christ? It’s the same with the abortion issue. You can say it’s wrong in a general sense, but when it comes to the individual, you should be loving on them. We really appreciate how that is what Abby is doing with the abortion workers when she calls them up.

How did slavery happen? People told themselves that “these aren’t humans.” People are doing the same thing with abortion, telling themselves “this isn’t a baby.” They will say that Planned Parenthood isn’t about abortion because they do all of these other great things. Scott asks what if, hypothetically, he came out on stage and said that Zootown Church does a lot of good things. We give so much money and do so many things, but we kill some babies in the back for the better of humanity. Would anybody go to our church?! Name any other organization that could get away with that. There is no other one. So that argument doesn’t fly.

Why don’t people just admit that abortion is wrong?

Marcy says at some point, we’re just arguing semantics. Like, when does it actually become a baby? Are we ever actually going to reach a conclusion where we are all satisfied? We’re wasting time asking when it becomes a baby rather than figuring out if this is right or wrong. For an answer to the “when does it become a baby” question, Scott says his pro-life brother suggests going back to the earliest child that was ever born and survived, and at least start there.

Scott thinks the biggest reason people can’t admit that it’s wrong is because of pride. It has to be pride. He really liked Abby’s quote about how it’s not a contraceptive problem we have; it’s a self-control problem. The same goes for the gun debate. It’s constantly the gun’s fault instead of the human being’s. This goes for everything. It’s a human problem. It’s called self-control. It’s call sin.

The one thing Scott disagreed with Abby on was when she said that she thought she was going to go to Hell. If you have that sensitivity to ask yourself if you would go to Heaven or Hell and to be thinking about right or wrong, then you do know Christ. Otherwise you wouldn’t be thinking about that kind of thing. Scott thinks she was saved the whole time and she just lost her way, but Jesus was there with her. Just like the prodigal son was always the son but had just lost his way.

If there is anyone out there that is struggling, we want you to know there is no shame. There is freedom. And Christ is still there and He is still speaking to you. Jesus is so much bigger than us and our plan and our systems we have in place. You can have gotten an abortion and still totally love Jesus. And Jesus still one hundred percent loves you too. It doesn’t have to be the defining moment of your life, and you don’t need to carry that shame if you’ve done it. It is definitely redeemable by Jesus. You are already forgiven. You just have to step into that forgiveness...like all of us do.