Abby Johnson details her transformation from Planned Parenthood director to pro-life activist, revealing how the organization tied financial bonuses to abortion quotas and allegedly placed minors on high-failure birth control. She describes witnessing severe complications during procedures, the reassembly of fetal parts, and an annual $2.5 million revenue stream from tissue sales before her 2009 turning point watching a 13-week fetus. After winning a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood for breach of confidentiality, Johnson now advocates for compassionate crisis pregnancy support rather than aggressive activism. [Automatically generated summary]
I don't know if you've heard about the controversy surrounding the new movie Unplanned, but it is really important.
Many people are viewing the MPAA's decision to slap an R rating on this movie as little more than an attempt to prevent Christians or just people who don't have any faith at all who are just going to take their children in and the rating of R will make them not see it.
This is really, really an important movie.
The MPAA rating is making it harder for young people to see the consequence of abortion, to see the real, unbelievable, miraculous story of Abby Johnson.
And this one scene, I'm promising you, will absolutely cement forever in your child's mind what abortion really is.
The movie is Unplanned, and it brings us an eye-opening look inside the abortion industry from a woman who was once its most passionate advocate.
She was somebody who was the Planned Parenthood employee of the year nationally.
Go to unplannedfilm.com.
That's unplannedfilm.com.
I promise that you will not leave the theater in the same way that you went in, and it will be an uplifting experience.
And please bring your teenage children.
Unplanned film dot com in theaters everywhere.
Now, my guest on today's podcast is a woman who I think is going to change the world, but she's changing it through love.
She's always been fiercely determined to help people, to help, in particular, women who are in crisis.
She was a woman who was in crisis twice in her life with a pregnancy crisis.
She aborted two children.
When she went through that, she saw these Christians who were shouting baby killer and it frightened her.
And she wanted to help those women get into the clinic and not have to hear all of that.
So she volunteered her time at the local Planned Parenthood and she rose through the ranks quickly.
She became a director of Planned Parenthood and in fact, in 2009, actually won the Employee of the Year Award, the national employee of the year.
But she was about to experience something that changed her and I think may change the abortion battle.
It's all in a new movie that just came out called Unplanned.
It's also the name of her book about this experience.
But this is real life.
Today's podcast, the hero, Abby Johnson, Abby,
tell me who the people are that go into Planned Parenthood to have an abortion.
Yeah, it's a variety of people, mostly college-stage women.
But our youngest client was 10, and our oldest client was 52.
About half of them were repeat patients.
You were a repeat patient.
Yes.
I think the pro-life movement has failed people to some degree because you're a baby killer if you go and have an abortion.
And that's the message that I think I've heard from you.
That's not true.
That's not who people are.
It's not.
I mean, you know, I originally got involved with Planned Parenthood believing that I was helping women.
And these women who were coming in were telling us thank you.
You know, I remember somebody talking about women regretting their abortion procedures.
And I thought, that doesn't happen.
I've never had a woman come in here who said, I wish I wouldn't have done that.
They were all so thankful and grateful.
And they believed the lie that society has been telling them for many years that in order to provide for your current family and your future family, abortion is a viable option for them.
So it's not like they walked in saying, I'm so excited to exercise my right to kill my baby today.
They really, I mean, I think about so many of the women.
I'm 38 and my mom never had an ultrasound with me.
That just was not standard practice.
So I think about women during that time, they really, you know, didn't know.
So it was, it was sort of out of sheer ignorance, I think.
Women today, they know they're pregnant with a baby.
So holding up a picture of a six-foot image of an aborted baby is not helpful.
That's not generally going to phase them because they know the baby has arms and legs.
They know that.
It's that they have been taught by our society that dehumanizing the baby in order to get ahead, in order to finish your career, in order to put food on the table for your other children that you already have, because by the way, 60% of women who have abortions already have children at home, that that is the right option for them.
at margaret sanger and and what she really believed and i mean i i read her stuff and she was I believe, a monster on her belief.
She was clearly a racist.
But she just thought of, you know, children as undesirables and most of them should be eliminated, especially in certain communities.
Selling Abortion as a Service00:14:52
How much of that is not with the people who are coming in and not even at the people at the local clinics, but up at the top level?
Is there a difference between the local clinic and the people up at the top of Planned Parenthood?
For sure.
Yeah.
I mean, your everyday worker in the clinic and your local clinic, they have no idea about what's going on in upper management.
So all these quotas that you have as a director, the financial incentives, all of that.
Tell me about those quotas and the financial incentives.
So each clinic has, and each affiliate sort of breaks down for each clinic how many abortions you have to sell each month to your patients.
And that's how they come up with their budget for abortion services.
Which is odd because if you're treating cancer, you're not necessarily saying, we've got to go find more kids with cancer.
Right.
And you're happy if cancer patients are down.
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
No, not in this case.
Now, that's what they tell people, though.
They tell people, or they used to tell people when I first got involved, safe, legal, rare, right?
They don't say that anymore.
Now it's just about access, access at any cost.
So at the cost of health regulations, at the cost of patient safety, no matter what, we just want abortion as accessible as possible.
But when you are a manager, when you meet those quotas, then there's a financial incentive.
So you get a bonus as the manager.
Did you hit those bonuses?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
How do you feel about that money now?
You know, I felt like, I mean, I feel like I do about all the money that I, I mean, I made a lot of money working there.
It was all money from corruption, primarily from abortion, pushing my staff to increase abortion numbers.
It's disgusting.
It's despicable.
But that's abortion.
It's a business.
And that's Planned Parenthood's done a really good job.
And the abortion, the abortion business in general has done a really good job of convincing people that, you know, abortion is just this unfortunate decision that women sometimes have to make.
So if they're going to make it, better that they make it in a safe, quote unquote, clinic.
They don't talk about how they are actually selling patients on abortion.
Look, that's the whole purpose of Planned Parenthood being in our public school system.
It's not to provide, it's not really to provide sex education to our kids.
The purpose of them being in the public school system and in some private school systems is so that they can develop a relationship with your child starting in kindergarten.
When your child gets old enough and they start going through puberty and they start having questions about sex, The educators are there to say, and I know they say this because I was an educator and I said this.
You can't go to your parents about how you're feeling right now.
They won't understand.
Oh my gosh.
They don't know what you're going through.
But you can come to me because I've known you since you were five.
I've known you since you were in kindergarten.
You can trust me.
And then the goal is we get these girls into our clinics.
And by the time they're 11, 12, 13 years old, we have them on a birth control method.
Like I said, I'm 38.
If you told me, Abby, you have to take a pill at the same time every day within two hours in order for this thing to be effective, I would fail.
Okay.
So if you're asking a 12-year-old to do that, she is, of course, I mean, you're setting her up for failure.
But that's the point.
They're putting her on a method that has a high human error rate, and they know that.
Planned Parenthood's own statistics state that 54% of women who have abortions were using contraception at the time they got pregnant.
That's the whole point.
Put them on a method that has a high human error rate.
These girls will fail.
Hopefully, before they graduate high school, they will be into our clinics for their first abortion.
And by the way, they don't have to tell their parents that they're having an abortion.
So, you know, we have all of these laws in place, parental consent, parental notification, which are all good laws.
But the Supreme Court ruled that anytime you have parental involvement regarding a minor's abortion decision, that you have to have something called judicial bypass.
So here in Texas, for instance, there's an organization called Jane's Due Process.
All they do, they're a nonprofit group, all they do is connect girls to judges who will rubber stamp their application for them to be able to get an abortion without their parents' consent.
And then by the time they get to college, which again, they have the abortion, we send them out with yet another pack of birth control pills that we know will eventually fail them, or they will fail taking the pill.
And by the time they're in college, they'll come back for their second abortion.
If we're lucky, by the time this woman is 30, she will have had three abortions.
Do you, were there meetings?
Do you talk like this in those meetings?
If we're lucky, they'll have three abortions.
Yeah.
That's their revenue generating model.
We were taught to turn every client visit into a revenue generating visit.
The only way you can do that, and this was very clearly expressed in management meetings, the only way you can do that is to sell this woman on an abortion if she's pregnant, because Planned Parenthood doesn't provide prenatal care.
We can't help her if she wants to continue her pregnancy.
It's not like we get kickbacks off of adoption.
So if she comes in and she's pregnant, it is our job to sell her an abortion.
And they train us then on how to sell that abortion to her.
This makes it sound like, I mean, that is not the image of Planned Parenthood.
The image is we are just here to provide all kinds of services and that just happens to be one.
And if somebody comes in and needs it, you're describing a scene that is much more like, I don't know, like a car salesman.
What do I need to do to get you into this abortion today?
Let me go talk to the manager kind of stuff.
That's exactly how it is.
So we had trainings on how to overcome objections.
So particularly religious objections.
Like what?
So women would come in, about 60% of women who have abortions identify as Christian.
So many of the women who would come in would say, I just don't know if God can forgive me if I do this.
I don't know if this is a sin.
That was a very common thing that we heard.
So we were trained then through scripts to talk to them, talk through that objection.
So we would say to them, well, but don't you believe in a forgiving God?
Don't you believe that God understands your circumstances right now?
He knows everything about you.
And he understands that you're not in a position right now to be a mother.
So it's this idea of presumptive forgiveness that we are pushing on these religious women who are coming in to have abortions.
I mean, we had scripts for everything.
If a woman came in and let's say we did her ultrasound and we're going to charge her $150 for that ultrasound and then she's like, well, I don't know.
I don't know.
Maybe.
Then we would say to her, well, if you go ahead and schedule your abortion appointment today, I'm authorized to take that $150 off of the cost of your abortion, but you have to schedule the appointment today.
Is there any reason we shouldn't just go ahead and get that scheduled?
I mean, you are literally taught how to overcome the objections that women coming in might have for you.
And that never seemed bad to you.
I didn't even see it.
I mean.
How long were you there?
You started as eight years.
You came in and you were a client of Planned Parenthood or another abortion clinic?
Another abortion clinic.
Twice.
Well, another abortion clinic for my first abortion, then Planned Parenthood.
Okay.
And the first abortion clinic was a nightmare.
Yeah.
And they gave you the morning after pill?
No, no, no, I had the surgical abortion.
And then the second abortion was the medication abortion.
And that was the medication.
That's the RU46.
Right.
Yeah.
And at least in the film.
Yeah, it was even worse in real life.
Yeah.
And is that what it's usually like for women?
Yes.
Yeah.
But we, we would, well, so it sort of became a joke at the clinic because the management wants to increase the medication abortion because in many states, you don't have to have a doctor on site to give out that medication.
So they don't have to pay a doctor to give out the medication.
So they wanted to increase that number.
Planned Parenthood's goal was by 2020 to have 50% of their abortions be the RU46 pill abortion because it costs less for them if you don't have to have a physician there performing the abortion.
And so it sort of became a joke in the clinic because I hated the medication abortion process.
I knew that we were lying to women.
I had gone through it myself.
But what do you mean by lying to women?
Oh, we were telling them, oh, it's just like a heavy menstrual cycle, just some minor cramping, a little bit of bleeding.
I knew that was a lie.
And so it became a joke in the clinic because every time we would have patients there for medication abortions, I would talk them out of it and talk them into doing a surgical abortion, which then takes longer.
We can't do it that day.
And so my boss stopped letting me counsel the medication abortion clients because I was actually giving them the truth of what those procedures were like.
Explain what it's like.
So most of the time women pass clots the size of lemons or bigger.
That can last for eight weeks.
Oh my gosh.
Sometimes women, well, a lot of times the medication abortion procedure won't work.
So it will kill the baby.
The mifoprex that you take will kill the baby, but the mesoprostal will not be effective at actually removing the baby from the uterus.
So if it does, the mesoprostel's job is to cause cramping to cause the cervix to contract and the uterus to contract and expel the baby.
You expel the baby into the toilet, you flush it down the toilet.
Oh my gosh.
If it doesn't work, which many times it doesn't, especially if you're further along in your pregnancy, then part of the baby may come out, but part of it may still be left inside of your uterus.
So then you have to go back for a surgical abortion anyway.
And then you're recovering from a surgical abortion on top of the traumatic event you just experienced with the medication abortion.
And what is the procedure like for the patient if you just have the medical abortion?
For the medical abortion, she comes in, she talks with all of her paperwork is completed and filled out by a non-medical staff person.
They make sure all the consents are signed, all the legalese is taken care of.
Then she goes back with usually a nurse, not always, sometimes it could be a non-medical staff person to perform an ultrasound because we want to make sure that she's within that window where she can do the medication abortion because you can only do the medication abortion after 12 weeks.
And then they give her the pills.
They give her the mifoprex in the clinic.
That's what actually kills the baby, removes the progesterone.
I mean, what is it like if you don't use the, are you for, what is it, four years?
3,600.
Oh, if you do the surgical.
If you have the surgical.
Inside the Procedure Room00:07:04
So patient comes in.
She's in the back room.
She goes to signs all the consents, goes in the procedure room.
Doctor begins the procedure.
Well, we do an ultrasound.
We only did an ultrasound to determine how far along she was in her pregnancy so that we would know exactly how much to charge her for the abortion.
The ultrasound is rolled away and then the doctor.
Mom never sees it.
No, no, no.
No, you don't give her the option.
You don't tell her you're doing it or anything.
She's sedated immediately.
So for that reason.
For that reason.
Yes.
Doctor comes in, begins artificially dilating the cervix.
So what you hope naturally happens during childbirth, he's going to artificially make that happen.
Then he inserts a cannula.
It looks like a straw.
It's graduated, gets bigger depending on how far along she's in the pregnancy, primarily because the head is bigger the further along she is in her pregnancy.
And he inserts that into her uterus and just blindly pokes around in the woman's uterus.
Which would be more safe if they were still doing ultrasound at the time, right?
Absolutely.
And they choose not to do that.
They do not.
Now, I asked my supervisor if using an ultrasound is safer for the patient, why isn't this the standard procedure?
I was told that it is safer, but using an ultrasound during the abortion takes up an extra three minutes of time.
And we- This is a factory floor.
Sure.
I mean, when we were performing abortions, we were doing anywhere between, I don't know, 30 to 50 a day.
Oh, my gosh.
So if you're adding three minutes of time per patient, that's just additional time for your physician.
And so he's performing this abortion.
He can't actually see what's happening inside the woman's uterus.
So it's no wonder that we see such a high complication rate with uterine perforation where the doctor pokes a hole through the woman's uterus because he can't see when to stop.
He can't see where the end of that uterus is.
And then after that's completed, the woman goes into the recovery room for a maximum of 20 minutes.
And everything that was suctioned out of her uterus, the baby, goes into a lab.
And in that lab, there's a technician there that reassembles the parts of the baby to ensure that everything was removed from the woman's uterus.
Because if we didn't, if we left a leg or an arm or something, she could develop a, she could become septic and that can be fatal for her.
How do people who are reassembling these children handle that?
You know, there's only a specific group of people who are allowed to do it.
I think it's the people who have really hardened themselves to the abortion procedure.
I did work with a girl one time who was a POC tech for several years.
She ended up leaving just completely traumatized.
We had done a 17-week abortion.
And When she, now that's a DNE, so it's not in a, that's actually removing the, the pieces of the baby piece by piece.
So when she got the tray of all the parts, um, the torso and the arms were still connected.
And she said, I, I saw this baby's hand move, move, like clinched into a fist and then opened.
And she just lost it and left.
But like my supervisor was primarily the one at my clinic who was in the POC.
Which is products of conception, but you, your staff used to call it.
Pieces of children.
What's the oldest child that would go through that you have, that you saw go through?
Um.
The oldest that I have seen was around 18 weeks in our affiliate.
But that's technically 18.
That's what they wrote down.
But I think, you know, it was probably more like 19, 20 weeks.
You know, there's doctors, though, across the country that will perform abortions electively up until birth.
Those facilities actually have incinerators built into their POC lab so that they can incinerate these babies there inside their facility.
There was a story extensive backup for all of this that they were Planned Parenthood wasn't incinerating.
They were selling body parts.
Did you know about that?
Yeah, we did that.
We did that at my affiliate.
It's very lucrative for the affiliate.
So conservatively, we were probably making about $2.5 million a year on that transaction alone.
Oh my gosh.
Tell me about the day That you were called in to assist?
Yeah, so I wasn't often called into procedure rooms.
You know, I was clinic director.
It was sort of administrative, not.
How long ago, how long after this?
Facing My Own Conscience00:09:32
When did this take place in relationship to your employee of the year award?
So I received that award in April of 2009.
This was in September.
Okay, and you were proud of that award?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And you got it because you were making so much money?
Yeah.
In the movie, it shows that at that point, you started to question and there was a beginning of a falling out.
Did that happen?
Yes.
A couple things had happened.
We were breaking ground on our new facility in Houston that was built in order to perform abortions through six months of pregnancy, which was that was a little too far for me.
I felt like now we're dabbling into viability issues, and that was my line in the sand.
So that was the first thing.
Did it bother you that viability was getting closer and closer to where you were?
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
It did, yeah.
And I was very aware of that.
You know, I sort of the wrong side of science or wrong side of history.
Yeah.
I was, I remember one time I was reading, I'd always thought viability was at 24 weeks.
So then I was reading this article in People magazine one time about this little girl that was born at 22 weeks.
And I was like, oh, gosh, it's creeping back.
You know, that line is creeping back.
That made me feel very uncomfortable to know that we were now going to be surpassing that line.
So that had happened.
Then the abortion quota discussion that we were supposed to be doubling our quota took place.
And I just thought, what in the world?
Why is this?
At the time, you know, I didn't know if it was that the organization was changing or if it was just that now I was so high up in management, I was actually seeing what we had been about all along.
And I realize now it was the latter.
This had always been us.
I just was never privy to what was taking place at these higher levels of management until I became part of it.
So that caused a great deal of strife between me and my supervisor.
I just couldn't believe what I was hearing.
And I was really trying to fight back against it.
And she did not like that.
So, you know, she did not like that I was going against her orders and being combative and arguing with her.
So there had been some tension there.
And that was really the first time where I remember thinking, maybe this isn't where I'm going to be for the rest of my life.
I thought that I would retire with Planned Parenthood.
And that was really the first time where I thought, maybe not.
Maybe there is something else out there for me.
Never thinking, maybe I'm going to be pro-life one day, but just thinking, you know, maybe this isn't it.
And so that was really, there had been several things that had happened that year to sort of lead up to that pivotal moment.
And that pivotal moment that made you quit Planned Parenthood and become pro-life was what?
I was asked to come in and assist during an ultrasound guided abortion procedure.
We had a visiting physician come in that day who ran his own private practice.
And he only did ultrasound guided procedures in his own practice, explaining to me that it was safer.
So he thought that he would just sort of show us what this looked like.
He thought it would be interesting for us to watch this different type of abortion take place.
So because he needed an extra set of hands, literally, to hold the ultrasound probe, and I was the clinic director, I was called in to assist and never assisted an abortion before.
I'd been inside the room holding the hand of a girl that was scared or something like that, but actually being on the business end of abortion, that was not something I'd ever done.
Which is funny because you were actually on the business end of abortion.
And so we did the measurement.
We found that the woman was 13 weeks long.
And I just, I stood there really shocked as I watched this 13-week old baby move away, try to get away from this Suction cannula and the suction wasn't yet turned on.
And I just, I couldn't believe it.
I remember, you know, thinking, I should say something.
I should, I should do something.
I should sit this woman up and show her this screen.
I mean, I felt like I felt the urge to do something, but I didn't.
I just, I was so frozen staring at that screen.
I wanted to look away, but I couldn't.
And when the doctor had the cannula in the right position, he asked the technician to turn on the suction machine and he said, beam me up, Scotty.
And I watched this, this baby, pieces of it just disappear into that suction cannula until the screen was black.
And I knew that that meant the abortion had been successful.
What did you do after that?
I went to my office.
I didn't know what to think.
I kept checking on the woman in recovery.
I felt like I held the secret that I wanted to share with her, but I couldn't.
Secret that your son or daughter fought for his life.
Yeah.
that i knew it was a boy um and i i felt like i i held all of this but i i wanted to share it but i couldn't and And so I kept checking on her and going back to my office.
And I left that day.
I went home and I talked to my husband about what I had seen.
My husband, who had always been pro-life, so we didn't really talk about my job.
And I just said, I have to tell you about what I saw today.
And I started describing it.
And he was like, Abby, I really don't want to.
I don't want to hear this.
And I said, well, you have to because I have to talk to somebody about it.
And I don't know who else to talk to.
And he didn't want to hear it because he had been telling you the whole time, this is not you.
This is wrong.
It shouldn't be there.
Right.
And he was expecting that you would tell him and then say, well, I got to go to work.
I think he didn't know what I was going to do.
I remember after I recount this to him, and he could have said, Well, I told you so.
I've been telling you for eight years.
You know, he didn't.
He just looked at me and he said, Well, what are you going to do now?
And I said, I don't know.
And he said, Abby, you know the truth.
What are you going to do now?
And I said, I think I'm going to have to leave.
And that was terrifying.
Just the thought of leaving behind this salary, leaving behind all my friends, leaving behind this identity that had become part of who I was.
Leaving Behind My Identity00:04:27
You know, I was like, Who am I?
If I'm not this person, who, who am I?
And then having to admit what I had done and what I had been a part of, and having to face that.
It's a hard thing to face.
Before we get there, did you had to face Planned Parenthood first, didn't you?
I did, yeah.
And they were not happy.
No, they were not.
What happened?
About three weeks after I left, I was served papers from Planned Parenthood.
They had gotten a temporary restraining order of disclosure, so a temporary gag order against me.
And I was so surprised.
I remember getting it and just thinking, What?
These people were my friends.
I just, I was so, I was still just so naive.
I really did you plan on speaking out at that time?
Never.
No, no.
I already had another job lined up that I was going to start in November.
This was late October running an Obi-Gens practice and never planned on telling my story.
But when they sued me, they sent out a press release about it.
Planned Parenthood did.
And that was picked up by the AP.
And that's what got circulated around to all these news outlets and really sort of forced me.
What did it say about you?
It just said that they regretfully had taken action to protect patient confidentiality and that they were Seeking a permanent restraining order of disclosure against me, which then the media was like, what does she know?
Right?
That piqued their interest.
And so, I mean, honestly, if it hadn't have been for their press release, I don't know that my story would have really ever gotten out there.
Take me through the trial.
How long did it last?
In the movie, it was, you know, a minute.
Yeah, I think it was like 53 minutes total.
We went in, and of course, I knew all their attorneys because I'd worked for them before.
So it was all very awkward for me because here's like Planned Parenthood board members and my supervisor and my two best friends who were now testifying against me.
And I just, I just thought, oh my gosh, what is happening?
I honestly thought they would respect my choice.
We're selling baby parts and killing children.
They should respect your choice.
I thought, well, you were in it.
You were honest about it.
You honestly didn't see the problem.
You honestly thought that the people who were Christians out front who were wearing the, you know, the death mask and screaming murderer, you honestly were trying to protect those women.
Yes.
And so you didn't realize at the time that so many of them knew exactly what you had just found out and they didn't have a problem with it?
I mean, I was just so naive at that time.
I just thought, well, I'm going to leave.
And Planned Parenthood is pro-choice.
And now I don't believe in abortion.
So they're going to respect my choice.
Yeah, I was just really stupid at that time.
I really was.
I didn't realize what a threat I was to them.
What a threat former workers are to them.
The Courtroom Battle Begins00:02:34
And we went to court.
And did they say what they said in the movie in the hallway?
Yeah.
What was it?
She had said, she had said that, well, they had made fun of my attorney because he was basically like an ambulance chaser who had billboards up all over town.
But he, man, he hated Planned Parenthood.
So he was ready to, you know, he's ready to go to bat.
They made fun of my attorney.
And I should remember after we won, it was like, this isn't over.
And they said that to you.
Yeah.
And we were like, no, I think it's over.
Were you listening in there?
Yeah, I think we won.
That was it.
But the courtroom was just crazy.
They were my boss got up on the stand.
My attorney was so great.
He was asking her these questions.
And he said, you know, do you believe that Ms. Johnson took any confidential patient information, any proprietary information?
And she said, well, we don't know.
And he said, well, don't you have electronic records?
You can see that.
And he said, what did the electronic record show?
Well, it showed she didn't take anything.
Okay.
And he said, so what's this really about?
I mean, what is this about?
Security alarm code?
I mean, what is this about?
And she said, well, yeah.
I mean, she knows our alarm code.
And he said, change that.
Yeah.
He said, well, you haven't changed that since she left.
And he, she said, no, we did.
And so my attorney, like, so, I mean, he was just so serious.
He goes, do you believe that Mrs. Johnson is somehow clairvoyant and will be able to have access to those codes?
And I swear she looked right at him and she goes, well, I don't know.
It was just a circus.
It was ridiculous.
And so they presented first.
And when they got done, my attorney just stood up and said, this is ridiculous, judge, and asked for a directed verdict.
And the judge said, you have nothing.
This is over.
Living With the Burden00:04:06
And that was it.
Hassled by them after?
Not really.
Every once in a while, I would say something and then they would make a statement calling me a liar.
And then I would provide proof of what I was saying.
And then they would have to come back and say, oh, well, okay.
Well, yeah, we did do that.
And so now when I say something, they just leave it alone.
They just shut up because they don't know.
I think they don't know what evidence I may have.
Let me go to the healing of yourself.
You honestly didn't know.
You honestly felt like this was the right thing to do.
You honestly thought you were helping people.
When you found out you weren't, you got out and you were honest about it.
But going home and counting, you had to have counted the number of children.
I did.
22,000.
It's a big number.
And as you were counting those and you were in that space, what were you thinking?
Well, when I was first counting them and I came to that number, honestly, I just I really didn't know how to live with that kind of burden.
I didn't know if I wanted to.
I just thought, how do you, how do you live with that?
How do you process that?
Thankfully, I grew up with a really strong faith foundation.
So, you know, I grew up believing that God does forgive us when we're truly repentant.
And I truly was.
And I, you know, I was reminded that I could never go back and right my wrong.
That wasn't required of me anyway.
But I just, I remember when I was feeling such despair over just the sheer amount of children, God just kept reminding me that it was over and that he had won.
And I remember one time I was watching that movie Kung Fu Panda with my daughter.
And this was not long after I'd left.
And there's like this wise old turtle, right?
And this little mouse thing.
And the turtle's dying and the mouse is talking to him.
And the turtle says, do you know why today is called the present?
Because it is a gift.
And I thought, that's so right.
You know, I can wake up every day and relive my past and wallow in that for the rest of my life, knowing that I can never change it.
I can never go back.
Or I can release myself of it with God's help.
And I can live every day right now for him doing the best that I can do by doing everything I can to save the unborn, to facilitate healing among men and women who have been touched by abortion, to help bring abortion clinic workers out of the industry.
And I feel like when you're living in that space, when you're living in the present, God doesn't really allow you time to continue to go back because you're busy.
You're busy fulfilling his will for your life.
Where I Made the Mistake00:05:26
Where'd you make your mistake?
Well, it's going to sound crazy, but I can tell you where I made my mistake.
I made my mistake when I went to college and I started living a life of immodesty in my speech, in my behavior, in my dress.
I saw that that attracted guys.
That was attention that I wanted.
I had my first unplanned pregnancy, had my abortion.
I believe that was when abortion and that sin that led me down that road, that's when it entered.
And it was just one poor choice after another.
But it started way back before I actually laid on that table the first time.
It was the decisions I was making that led to that unplanned pregnancy.
And I've been, I mean, I've been raised better than that.
I've been taught.
Most of us have.
Yeah.
Last two questions.
Talk directly to those who are in the pro-life movement, but maybe are not behaving in such a way that would have captured you.
Yeah.
I hear sometimes people who are less effective in the pro-life movement say, well, I just have to do what God's telling me to do.
God is never going to tell you to yell at a woman who's in crisis.
That's not who God is.
He is never going to tell you to intimidate a woman who is scared and feeling vulnerable.
There are lives literally hanging in the balance here.
Our effectiveness should be of utmost importance.
And I think we have a skewed.
I remember one time this lady got super mad at me because she said, well, God tells me to bring these signs and to talk to the women the way I do.
And she said, you know, he tells me.
And I said, you know, when I worked in the clinic, I thought God was telling me to work there too.
I said, sometimes the voice you hear is not God.
And God is never going to force himself on anyone else.
I always say God's a gentleman and he works off of invitation, not by force.
And all you are doing is creating a safe haven inside the abortion clinic.
This is not about us being right and them being wrong.
There was some saint that I don't know who it was, but he said, win an argument, lose a soul.
I'm not trying to win an argument here.
I'm trying to save a life.
I'm trying to save a woman from a lifetime of regret and shame.
That matters.
And our behavior toward that woman is really the only thing that matters when we're on the sidewalk because we can't save her child unless we reach her first.
And that type of behavior, just this over-the-top behavior is never going to bring anyone to you.
There's never a time where a young woman in crisis is going to say, I want to walk up to that lady that's calling me a murderer.
It doesn't happen.
Now talk to the woman who's in this situation or girl.
You know, it's a scary thing to be in a crisis pregnancy.
I've had a couple.
And I think it's, I think we live in a society where secular feminism is running rampant and telling women that, telling women everything that they can't do and exploiting their weakness and exploiting their vulnerability.
And women come to me all the time through email or my website and they'll say, Abby, I just can't do it.
And I just, I just tell them, you can do it.
Accompanying Women in Crisis00:01:37
You are doing it.
And I'm going to be there to help do it with you.
We are not meant to parent to live in isolation.
We're meant to do it in community with help.
And there are so many people in the pro-life movement who want to, pregnancy resource centers, who want to come around these women who are in crisis and truly accompany them on their journey.
And so I would just encourage women to find those people who want to be your cheerleader because they are out there and they're probably most likely through your local pregnancy help center.
It's an honor to meet you.
It's an honor to know you.
I think we live in the age of miracles again.
And I think we're going to see an end to this because it's barbaric.
You look at it with the eyes from 100 years from now.
They'll look at it as slavery.
Right.
And we're on the wrong side of history.
And you will be remembered as, I hope, one of the real keys to turn this engine off.
Thank you.
Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be Discovered by other