Go to that link or read below to see a fantastic article about a woman who worked in an abortion clinic and then walked outside and joined the pro-life protesters. Props to Abby Johnson.
Rod Dreher: Abby Johnson is my Texan of the Year
04:26 PM CST on Friday, December 4, 2009
As director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, and a longtime pro-choice activist, Abby Johnson knew intimately what happens in an abortion. And she had seen hundreds of ultrasound scans of unborn children. But she had never seen an ultrasound image of an abortion being performed – until one day in September.
"For years, I had told hundreds of women who asked me if their baby was going to feel [the abortion] that no, the baby wouldn't. I really believed that," says Johnson, 29. "When I saw on the screen this 13-week-old baby fighting to get away from that probe, I immediately knew that I had been lying to all those women and that Planned Parenthood had been lying."
Johnson's conscience had been troubled by what she claims was the abortion provider's push to increase revenues in these financially pinched times through increasing abortions. Depending on how far along in pregnancy the mother is, each procedure brought the Bryan clinic $500 to $700, Johnson says. But watching the baby struggle to escape the needle that would kill it was too much. Johnson quit the clinic, walked out the door and joined the pro-life protesters outside on the sidewalk.
She not only walked away from her job, but also much of her life.
It may be difficult for pro-lifers to understand what an emotionally difficult decision it can be to leave the pro-choice side. People you thought were your friends suddenly turn on you. You aren't just wrong, in their eyes, but evil – and now, the enemy. For those like Johnson, who have been part of the pro-choice movement, leaving it behind is to abandon a cause that had given you a sense of meaning, purpose and community.
But once you've seen what abortion is, and once you've seen an unborn child battling for its life, what choice is there? Brenda Pratt Shafer, an Ohio registered nurse who was staunchly pro-choice, helped a doctor perform three partial-birth abortions on flailing babies one day in 1993. "After I left that day, I never went back," she testified before Congress. "For a long time, sometimes still, I had nightmares about what I saw in the clinic that day."
Nightmares are an appropriate response to the nightmarish. Earlier this year, Dr. Curtis Boyd, a Dallas physician who performs late-term abortions, told WFAA-TV with admirable frankness: "Am I killing? Yes, I am. I know that." As foul as that self-described killer's deeds are, at least he is not lying to himself or to others about what abortion is.
Abortion-industry workers and their supporters have to harden their hearts and rationalize their actions just to keep coming to work every day, Johnson now says. You tell yourself there is no other choice for these women or for you. You convince yourself that what you see and hear isn't what it seems to be.
"Sometimes, you have defended something for so long that it's hard to come out and say, 'This is wrong,' " Johnson says. "And I think a lot of these workers are in that position."
The thing is, Johnson, the Bryan Planned Parenthood clinic's 2008 Employee of the Year, dealt constantly with abortion opponents who strenuously argued the pro-life case with her. In fact, Johnson says, her experience in the clinic teaches that the lurid, aggressive tactics some pro-life demonstrators use actually make clinic workers and others more determined to carry out their work.
"Things like that just make people angry," she says. "Always remember, just be compassionate when you go out to those clinics. If you feel any kind of anger, either toward the woman coming in for abortion or the clinic workers, then your best place is at home in prayer, not out there on the sidewalks. There's no place for anger out there. The people who are angry and hurting are inside those clinics."
The best approach for those who would save the unborn is to be patient and to show true love and genuine compassion. Johnson never seriously considered the logical case for the sanctity of unborn life because she was not ready to hear it. The image of a human being the size of her pinky straining to escape death inside its mother's womb pierced her heart and opened her mind. That there were kind-hearted and sane pro-lifers there to listen and to offer alternatives made all the difference.
Abby Johnson sacrificed a lot to bear witness to the truth about abortion, and to join the unfashionable cause of defending unborn children. Few people in the media will call her a hero. One just did.
Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His e-mail address is rdreher@dallasnews.com.
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