JEFFERSON CITY – Abby Johnson, the woman who was once a vocal proponent of Planned Parenthood and is now a bold voice for saving lives of the unborn, spoke to a packed and fired up crowd April 5 at the Missouri State Capitol.
Once a staunch pro-choice supporter, Johnson was a Planned Parenthood director and was even 2008 Planned Parenthood Employee of the Year. In September of 2009, she witnessed an ultrasound-guided abortion procedure on a 13-week-old unborn child at her clinic in Bryan, Texas, and it dawned on her that she was actually hurting the very women she wanted to help. She decided to quit her job and sought out the help of the individuals praying outside her clinic for an end to abortion.
She soon became involved in the pro-life movement and wrote a best-selling memoir, unPlanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader’s Eye-Opening Journey across the Life Line. She wrote about that final abortion in the book: “For the briefest moment, the baby looked as if it were being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then it crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then it was gone.”
Johnson was in Jefferson City to encourage pro-life Missourians during Missouri Right to Life’s Pro-Life Action Day, and participated in sidewalk counselor training and a prayer vigil in front of the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Columbia, which – thanks to constant prayer vigils out front – has not performed an abortion in 10 weeks because the clinic cannot keep a doctor who is willing to work there. That time period represents an estimated 150-200 babies’ lives. The only operating abortion clinic in Missouri is in St. Louis.
In speaking to those gathered in the Capitol Rotunda, Johnson demonstrated her enthusiasm for the topic.
“This is not a Republican or Democrat issue,” she said. “It’s an issue about the right to live. The legislators in this Capitol did not get elected to support corporations like Planned Parenthood. They were elected to represent their constituents. Be loudly pro-life. Be unapologetically pro-life. For years I was embarrassed to tell people where I worked, but today I’m proud when I get to say I work to save the most vulnerable in our population, truly the ‘least of these.’ Get on the phone and make your voice heard until there are no more abortions in America.”
Johnson was unapologetic in the role her faith plays in her now pro-life convictions.
“Sin is attractive,” she said. “If sin were ugly, none of us would sin. Satan is an attractive deceiver and that’s what he’s done with abortion. He’s turned the word ‘choice’ into something attractive.
“We can’t allow the fire of our faith to burn out and we can’t allow our fire for life to burn out either. Children’s lives are depending on that fire. Every day that we’re not praying for God to end abortion in America, children that God has created are dying. We are the hands and feet of Christ; what are we doing with those hands and feet?”
BRIAN KOONCE/staff writer
bkoonce@mobaptist.org