Robert Gochee of Ss. Mary & Mathias Parish in Muscatine, talks with Abby Johnson following The Woman’s Choice Center’s annual Life & Family Gala in Bettendorf Sept. 23. Johnson spoke at the Waterfront Convention Center in Bettendorf about her conversion from working for Planned Parenthood to becoming a pro-life advocate.
By Anne Marie Amacher
The Catholic Messenger
BETTENDORF — In 2009, Abby Johnson’s life was turned upside down. The former Planned Parenthood director’s heart changed while assisting with an abortion. Just days later she resigned from her position and now works to save lives.
Johnson spoke at The Woman’s Choice Center’s annual Life & Family Gala, which was held Sept. 23 at the Waterfront Convention Center. A record 816 people attended.
Johnson said she was there to talk about the power of truth, grace and redemption.
The author of “Unplanned,” which then became a movie, said, “This room is filled with 816 people who are willing to fight for life. I love that.”
Growing up in southern Louisiana, then Texas and raised as a Southern Baptist, she was conservative and pro-life. But she never attended a pro-life rally or march. “My church didn’t talk (about) hard things. Nobody talked about abortion.”
Johnson went off to college in Texas feeling she knew God, but not knowing her faith. “That is dangerous.” It is easy to get set adrift, she noted.
Being on a college campus, Johnson said abortion providers know there are clients to be had. “Their first hook is birth control.” She noted that many women take birth control incorrectly, hence increasing the risk of pregnancy. She emphasized the dangers of birth control as well. Abortion providers “want birth control to fail (at any age),” Johnson stated.
In 2001, Johnson started work at Planned Parenthood believing the business’s statement that abortion was “‘safe, legal and rare.’” She learned from experience that “their talking points don’t make sense.”
Although from day one Johnson questioned some of the practices of Planned Parenthood, she remained an employee. “All the doors were locked down (in the facility).” Keypad access was needed to enter each area. The “lab” is where “products of conception” were brought following a surgical abortion. In that room the technician makes sure all parts of the fetus were accounted for. “All the contents were put in a biohazard bag and put in the freezer. It was called ‘the nursery.’” Upon hearing this, the crowd gasped. At the end of each week, the red, biohazard bags were picked up by a contracted company.
Over time, Johnson felt her heart grew harder due to sin of working at Planned Parenthood. She had two abortions of her own. When doing a radio podcast with Cardinal Timothy Dolan after her departure he asked her how she lived with herself. “I don’t know,” she told him. She tried to justify herself and her behavior while working at Planned Parenthood. “My heart became so hard I felt nothing. I didn’t feel loved.”
“My daughter Grace was three when I left Planned Parenthood,” she told the Bettendorf gathering. “I didn’t love her like a mother should love a child. I was killing babies every day. I didn’t love my husband. I’m not sure why he stayed with me — just glad he did.”
When she was pregnant with Grace while working at Planned Parenthood, her boss tried to convince her to leave her husband and to “kill my child.” When Johnson reached 24 weeks into pregnancy, she felt relieved as abortion was illegal at that point.
“I worked at Planned Parenthood for eight years. I was the only employee during that time that had a live birth. I was not the only one who was ever pregnant.”
On Sept. 26, 2009, Johnson was asked to help with an ultrasound-guided abortion. The mother was 13 weeks pregnant and was never shown an ultrasound photo of her child. “I watched as the baby fought and struggled for life. I saw the baby brutally torn apart.” That moment changed her life.
Johnson noted over the years her parents, husband, the pro-life people on the sidewalk outside the abortion clinic had prayed for her. “I was one of them who flipped them off, cussed them out and turned on the sprinkler, but they continued to pray for me.”
Abby Johnson speaks during The Woman’s Choice Center’s fundraising event Sept. 23 at the Waterfront Convention Center in Bettendorf.
On Oct. 6, 2009, Johnson left Planned Parenthood. Her boss was not in the office that day, to her relief, so she faxed her resignation and left. As she walked outside and slammed the gate, she felt like a weight or millstone had been lifted off her shoulders.
Walking to her car, pro-life supporter Bobby stood there. She told him she would visit him at the group’s office the next day.
Johnson wonders if the pro-lifers ever felt like giving up being there week after week not knowing if they saved a life. “They saved me into eternal life.”
“Being pro-life is not just about saving babies,” Johnson said. “It’s opening up eternal life for every woman who walks through those doors. Our culture is so lost and broken and in need of one solution: Our Lord and savior Jesus Christ,” said the convert to Catholicism and mother of eight children.
Johnson encouraged supporters to share their testimony.
“Make a difference like Ananias,” she said referring to the Acts of the Apostles story of Saul being knocked to the ground and blinded, that led to his conversion to Paul. “Be alongside those who are in need.”
She asked those in attendance to support The Woman’s Choice Center, which offers pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, abortion information, sexual health education, peri-natal hospice, abortion pill reversal services and more.
Reflecting on the two abortions Johnson had and participating in the deaths of 2,200 babies to abortion during her time at Planned Parenthood, she said “Lives are depending on you.”
