Ep 30 | Abby Johnson | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Speaker 1 I don't know if you've heard about the controversy surrounding the new movie Unplanned, but it is really important.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And this one scene, I'm promising you, will absolutely cement forever in your child's mind what abortion really is.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 She was somebody who was the Planned Parenthood employee of the year nationally. Go to unplannedfilm.com.
That's unplannedfilm.com.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Unplannedfilm.com in theaters everywhere now.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 She aborted two children.

Speaker 1 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 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's also the name of her book about this experience. But this is real life.
Today's podcast, The Hero, Abby Johnson.

Speaker 1 Abby, tell me who the people are that

Speaker 1 go into Planned Parenthood to have an abortion.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a variety

Speaker 1 of people, mostly college-stage

Speaker 1 women.

Speaker 1 But our youngest client was 10,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 our oldest client was 52.

Speaker 1 About half of them were repeat

Speaker 1 patients.

Speaker 1 You were a repeat patient. Yes.

Speaker 1 I think the pro-life movement

Speaker 1 has

Speaker 1 failed people to some degree because

Speaker 1 you're a baby killer if you go and have an abortion.

Speaker 1 And that's the message that I think I've heard from you. That's not

Speaker 1 true. That's not who people are.

Speaker 1 It's not. I mean,

Speaker 1 you know i i originally got involved with planned parenthood believing that i was helping women and these women who were coming in were

Speaker 1 telling us thank you you know we i when i remember

Speaker 1 somebody talking about women regretting their abortion procedures and i thought

Speaker 1 that doesn't happen

Speaker 1 i've never had a woman come in here who said, I wish I wouldn't have done that.

Speaker 1 They were all so thankful and grateful.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they

Speaker 1 believed the lie

Speaker 1 that society has been telling them for many years

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 I'm so excited to exercise my right to kill my baby

Speaker 1 today.

Speaker 1 They really,

Speaker 1 I mean, I think about so many of the women.

Speaker 1 I'm 38 and my mom

Speaker 1 never had an ultrasound with me. That just was not standard practice.
So I think about women during that time,

Speaker 1 they really, you know, didn't know. So it was sort of out of sheer ignorance, I think.

Speaker 1 Women today, they know they're pregnant with a baby. So holding up a picture of a six-foot image of a boarded baby is not helpful.

Speaker 1 That's not generally going to phase them because they know the baby has arms and legs and they know that.

Speaker 1 It's that they have been taught by our society

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 When you look at Margaret Sanger

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 what she really believed, and

Speaker 1 I mean, I read her stuff, and she was, I believe, a monster on her beliefs. She was clearly a racist,

Speaker 1 but she just thought of

Speaker 1 children as undesirables and most of them should be eliminated,

Speaker 1 especially in certain communities.

Speaker 1 How much of that

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Is there a difference between the local clinic and the people up at the top of Planned Parenthood? For For sure. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 1 your everyday worker in the clinic and your local clinic,

Speaker 1 they have no idea

Speaker 1 about what's going on in upper management. So

Speaker 1 all these quotas that you have as a director,

Speaker 1 the financial incentives,

Speaker 1 All of that.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 They tell people, or they used to tell people when I first got involved,

Speaker 1 safe, legal, rare, right? They don't say that anymore. Now it's just about access, access at any cost.

Speaker 1 So at the cost of health regulations, at the cost of patient safety, no matter what, we just want abortion

Speaker 1 as accessible as possible.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 when you are a manager, when you meet those quotas, then there's a financial incentive. So you get a bonus as the manager.

Speaker 1 Did you hit those bonuses? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. How do you feel about that money now?

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 I felt like

Speaker 1 I mean, I feel like I do about all the money that I mean, I made a lot of money working there.

Speaker 1 it was all money from corruption primarily from abortion pushing my staff to increase abortion numbers

Speaker 1 it's disgusting it's despicable

Speaker 1 but that's abortion it's a business it's and that's Planned Parenthood's done a really good job

Speaker 1 and the abortion the abortion business in general has done a really good job of

Speaker 1 convincing people

Speaker 1 that,

Speaker 1 you know, abortion is just

Speaker 1 this unfortunate decision that women sometimes have to make.

Speaker 1 So if they're going to make it, better that they make it in a safe,

Speaker 1 quote-unquote, clinic.

Speaker 1 They don't talk about

Speaker 1 how they are actually selling patients on abortion. Look, that's the whole purpose of Planned Parenthood being in our public school system.

Speaker 1 It's not to provide,

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 is so that they can develop a relationship with your child starting in kindergarten.

Speaker 1 When your child gets old enough and they start going through puberty and they start having questions about sex

Speaker 1 the educators are there to say and i know they say this because i was an educator and i said this

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You can trust me.

Speaker 1 And then the goal is we get these girls into our clinics.

Speaker 1 And by the time they're 11, 12, 13 years old, we have them on a birth control method.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 They're putting her on a method that has a high human error rate, and they know that.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Put them on a method that has a high human error rate.

Speaker 1 These girls will fail.

Speaker 1 Hopefully, before they graduate high school, they will be into our clinics for their first abortion.

Speaker 1 And by the way,

Speaker 1 they don't have to tell their parents that they're having an abortion.

Speaker 1 So, you know, we have all of these laws in place, parental consent, parental notification, which are all good laws.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 here in Texas for instance there's an organization called Jane's Due Process.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And then by the time they get to college, which

Speaker 1 again,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 were there meetings? Do you talk like this in those meetings? If we're lucky, they'll have three abortions.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's their revenue generating model.

Speaker 1 We were taught to turn every client visit into a revenue generating visit.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 on an abortion if she's pregnant because Planned Parenta 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.

Speaker 1 So if she comes in and she's pregnant, it is our job to sell her an abortion.

Speaker 1 And they train us then on how to sell that abortion to her. This makes it sound like, I mean,

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 you're describing a scene that is much more like,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 we had trainings on how to overcome objections. So particularly religious objections.
Like what?

Speaker 1 So women would come in, about 60% of women who have abortions

Speaker 1 identify as Christian.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So we were trained then through scripts to talk to them,

Speaker 1 talk through that objection. So we would say to them, well,

Speaker 1 but don't you believe in a forgiving God?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If a woman came in and let's say we did her ultrasound and we're going to charge her $150 for that ultrasound.

Speaker 1 And then she's like, well, I don't know. I don't know.
Maybe.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Is there any reason we shouldn't just go ahead and get that scheduled?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 you are literally taught how to overcome the objections that women coming in might have for you

Speaker 1 and that never seemed bad to you i didn't even see it

Speaker 1 i mean

Speaker 1 how long were you there you started as eight years you you came in and you were a client of planned parenthood or another abortion clinic another abortion clinic

Speaker 1 twice

Speaker 1 well another abortion clinic for my first abortion, then Planned Parenthood. Okay.
And the first abortion clinic was a nightmare. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they gave you the morning after pill? No, no, no. I had the surgical abortion.

Speaker 1 And then the second abortion was the medication abortion. And that was the nightmare.
That's the RU46. Right.
Yeah. And at least in the film.
Yeah. It was even worse in real life.
Yeah. And is

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 what it's usually like for women? Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But we, we would, well, so it sort of became a joke at the clinic because

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 so they don't have to pay a doctor

Speaker 1 to give out the medication

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 They wanted to increase that number.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so it became a joke in the clinic because every time we would have

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And so my boss stopped letting me counsel the medication abortion clients because I was actually giving them the truth

Speaker 1 of what those procedures were like.

Speaker 1 Explain what it's like.

Speaker 1 So most of the time women pass clots the size of lemons or bigger.

Speaker 1 That can last for eight weeks. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 Sometimes

Speaker 1 women,

Speaker 1 well, a lot of times the

Speaker 1 The medication abortion procedure won't work. So it will kill the baby.

Speaker 1 The mifoprex that you take will kill the baby, but the mesoprostal will not be effective at actually removing the baby from the uterus.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 if it does, the mesoprostal'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.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So then you have to go back for a surgical abortion anyway.

Speaker 1 And then you're recovering from a surgical abortion on top of the traumatic event you just experienced with the medication abortion.

Speaker 1 And what is the

Speaker 1 procedure like for the patient if you just have the medical abortion?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 They make sure all the consents are signed, all the legalese is taken care of.

Speaker 1 Then she goes back with usually a nurse, not always, sometimes it could be a non-medical staff person,

Speaker 1 to perform an ultrasound because we want to make sure that she's within that window where she can do the medication abortion because

Speaker 1 you can only do the medication abortion after 12 weeks

Speaker 1 and then

Speaker 1 they give her the pills they give her the mifoprax in the clinic

Speaker 1 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, 49? 36. Oh, if you do the surgical.
If you have the surgical.

Speaker 1 So patient comes in. She's in the back room.
She goes to signs all the consents, goes in the procedure room.

Speaker 1 Doctor begins the procedure. Well, we do an ultrasound.

Speaker 1 But 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So for that reason.

Speaker 1 For that reason. Yes.

Speaker 1 Doctor comes in, begins artificially dilating the cervix. So what you hope naturally happens during childbirth, he's going to artificially make that happen.

Speaker 1 Then

Speaker 1 he inserts a cannula. It looks like a straw.
It's graduated, gets bigger depending on how far along she's in the pregnancy,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Now, I asked my supervisor if using an ultrasound is safer for the patient, patient, why isn't this the standard procedure?

Speaker 1 I was told that it is safer, but using an ultrasound during the abortion takes up an extra three minutes of time.

Speaker 1 And we

Speaker 1 mean when we were performing abortions, we were doing anywhere between, I don't know, 30 to 50 a day. Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He can't actually see what's happening inside the woman's uterus.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He can't see where the end.

Speaker 1 of that uterus is.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then

Speaker 1 after that's completed the woman goes into the recovery room for a maximum of 20 minutes

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 everything that was suctioned out of her uterus the baby goes into a lab

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 How do people who are reassembling these children handle that?

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 there's only a

Speaker 1 specific group of people who are allowed to do it. I think it's the people who

Speaker 1 have really hardened themselves

Speaker 1 to the abortion procedure. I did work with a girl one time

Speaker 1 who was a POC tech for

Speaker 1 several years.

Speaker 1 She ended up leaving just

Speaker 1 completely traumatized.

Speaker 1 We had done a 17-week abortion

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 when she Now that's a DNE, so it's not in a, that's actually removing the pieces of the baby piece by piece. So when she got the tray of all the parts,

Speaker 1 the torso and the arms were still connected. And she said, I saw this baby's hand

Speaker 1 move, like clinched into a fist and then opened.

Speaker 1 And she just lost it and left.

Speaker 1 But like my supervisor was primarily the one at my clinic who

Speaker 1 was

Speaker 1 in the POC.

Speaker 1 which is products of conception, but you

Speaker 1 your staff used to call it pieces of children

Speaker 1 what's the oldest child that would go through that you have

Speaker 1 that you saw go through?

Speaker 1 Um the oldest

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 I have seen

Speaker 1 was around 18 weeks

Speaker 1 in our affiliate.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that's

Speaker 1 technically 18, that's what they wrote down.

Speaker 1 Um, but I think you know, it was more like 19,

Speaker 1 20 weeks.

Speaker 1 You know, there's doctors, though, across the country that will perform abortions electively up until birth.

Speaker 1 Those facilities actually have incinerators built into

Speaker 1 their POC lab so that they can incinerate these babies

Speaker 1 there inside their facility.

Speaker 1 There was a story extensive

Speaker 1 backup for all of this that they were

Speaker 1 Planned Parenthood wasn't incinerating, they were selling body parts.

Speaker 1 Did you know about that? Yeah, we did that.

Speaker 1 We did that at my affiliate.

Speaker 1 It's very lucrative

Speaker 1 for the affiliate. So conservatively, we were probably making about

Speaker 1 $2.5 million a year

Speaker 1 on that transaction alone.

Speaker 1 Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 1 Tell me about

Speaker 1 the day

Speaker 1 that you were called in to assist.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so

Speaker 1 I wasn't often called into procedure rooms.

Speaker 1 You know, I was clinic director. It was sort of administrative, not.
How long ago, how long after

Speaker 1 this,

Speaker 1 when did this take place in relationship to

Speaker 1 your employee of the year award?

Speaker 1 So I received that award in April of 2009. This was in September.
Okay, and you were proud of that award? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you got it because

Speaker 1 you were making so much money?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 In the movie, it shows that at that point, you started to question,

Speaker 1 and there was a beginning of a falling out.

Speaker 1 Did that happen?

Speaker 1 Yes. A couple things had happened.
We were breaking ground on our new facility in Houston that was

Speaker 1 built in order to perform abortions through six months of pregnancy, which was,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So that was the first thing. Did it bother you that viability was getting

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 the wrong side of science or wrong side of history. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was, I remember one time I was reading, I'd always thought viability was at 24 weeks.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So that had happened. Then the abortion quota discussion that we were supposed to be doubling our quota took place.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just thought, what in the world? Why is this?

Speaker 1 At the time,

Speaker 1 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 actually seeing what we had been about all along.

Speaker 1 And I realize now it was the latter.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that caused a great deal of strife. between me and my my supervisor.

Speaker 1 I just couldn't believe what I was hearing and I was really trying to fight back against it. And

Speaker 1 she did not like that.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And that was really the first time where I remember thinking,

Speaker 1 maybe this isn't where I'm gonna be for the rest of my life. I thought that I would retire with Planned Parenthood

Speaker 1 and that was really the first time where I thought maybe not. Maybe there is something else out there for me.
Never thinking

Speaker 1 maybe I'm gonna be pro-life one day,

Speaker 1 but just thinking, you know, maybe this isn't it.

Speaker 1 And so that was really, there had been several things that had happened that year to sort of lead up to that pivotal moment.

Speaker 1 And that pivotal moment that made you quit Planned Parenthood and become pro-life

Speaker 1 was what?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And he only did ultrasound guided procedures in his own practice, explaining to me that it was safer.

Speaker 1 So he thought that he would just sort of show us what this looked like. He thought it would be interesting for us to

Speaker 1 watch this different type of abortion take place.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 never assisted in abortion before.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Which is funny because

Speaker 1 you were actually on the business end of the day of abortion.

Speaker 1 And so we did the measurement. We found that the woman was 13 weeks along.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just

Speaker 1 I stood there really shocked as I watched this 13 week old baby

Speaker 1 move away

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 try to

Speaker 1 get away from this

Speaker 1 this suction cannula and the suction wasn't yet turned on

Speaker 1 and I just I couldn't believe it. I remember,

Speaker 1 you know, thinking, I should say something. I

Speaker 1 I should do something. I should sit this woman up and show her this screen.
I mean,

Speaker 1 I felt the urge to do something, but I didn't. I just, I was so frozen staring at that screen.

Speaker 1 I wanted to look away, but I couldn't.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 when the doctor had the

Speaker 1 cannula in the right position, he asked the technician to turn on the suction machine and he said, beam me up, Scotty.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I watched this this baby

Speaker 1 pieces of it just

Speaker 1 disappear into

Speaker 1 that suction cannula until the screen was black. And I knew that that meant

Speaker 1 the abortion had been successful.

Speaker 1 What did you do after that?

Speaker 1 I went to my office.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 didn't know what to think.

Speaker 1 I kept checking on the woman in recovery. I felt like I held this secret that I wanted to share with her, but I couldn't.

Speaker 1 Secret that your son or daughter fought for his life? Yeah.

Speaker 1 That I knew it was a boy.

Speaker 1 And I felt like I

Speaker 1 held all of this, but

Speaker 1 I wanted to share it, but I couldn't. And so

Speaker 1 I kept checking on her.

Speaker 1 going back to my office and

Speaker 1 I left that day.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just said, I have to tell you about what I saw today.

Speaker 1 And I started describing it. And he was like,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And he didn't want to hear it because he had been telling you the whole time, this is not you.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I think he didn't know

Speaker 1 what I was going to do.

Speaker 1 I remember after I recount this to him,

Speaker 1 and he could have said, well,

Speaker 1 I told you so. I've been telling you for eight years.
You know, he didn't.

Speaker 1 He just looked at me and he said, Well,

Speaker 1 what are you going to do now?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I said, I don't know. And he said, Abby, you know the truth.
What are you going to do now?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I said, I think I'm going to have to leave. And that was terrifying.

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 1 the thought of

Speaker 1 leaving behind this salary, leaving behind all my friends,

Speaker 1 leaving behind this identity that had become part of who I was. You know, I was like, who am I? If I'm not this person,

Speaker 1 who am I?

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 having to admit what I had done and what I had been a part of and

Speaker 1 having to face that. It's a hard thing to face.
Before we get there,

Speaker 1 you had to face Planned Parenthood first, didn't you? I did, yeah.

Speaker 1 And they were not happy. No,

Speaker 1 they were not. What happened?

Speaker 1 About three weeks after I left,

Speaker 1 I was served

Speaker 1 papers from Planned Parenthood. They had gotten a temporary restraining order of disclosure, so a temporary gag order

Speaker 1 against me

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 and i was so surprised i remember getting it and just thinking

Speaker 1 what

Speaker 1 these people were my friends like i just i was so i was still

Speaker 1 just so naive i i really did you plan on speaking out at that time never

Speaker 1 no no i already had another job lined up that i was going to start in november this was late october

Speaker 1 running an Obi Gens practice and

Speaker 1 never planned on telling my story.

Speaker 1 But when they sued me, they sent out a press release about it. Planned Parenthood did.

Speaker 1 And that was picked up by the AP.

Speaker 1 And that's what got circulated around to all these news outlets and really sort of forced me.

Speaker 1 What did it say about you?

Speaker 1 It just said that they

Speaker 1 regretfully had taken

Speaker 1 action to protect patient confidentiality

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 they were seeking a permanent restraining order of disclosure against me, which then the media was like, what does she know?

Speaker 1 That piqued their interest.

Speaker 1 And so, I mean, honestly, if it hadn't have been for their press release,

Speaker 1 I don't know that my story would have really ever gotten out there wow

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 uh 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.

Speaker 1 And I just, I just thought, oh my gosh, what is happening?

Speaker 1 I honestly thought they would respect my choice.

Speaker 1 We're selling baby parts.

Speaker 1 and killing children.

Speaker 1 They should respect your choice. I thought,

Speaker 1 well,

Speaker 1 you were in it.

Speaker 1 You were honest about it.

Speaker 1 You honestly didn't see the problem. You honestly thought that the people who were Christians out front who were wearing the

Speaker 1 death mask and screaming murderer,

Speaker 1 you honestly were trying to protect those women. Yes.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I was just so naive

Speaker 1 at that time.

Speaker 1 I just thought,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was just really stupid at that that time. I really was.
I didn't realize what a threat I was to them. What a threat former workers are to them.

Speaker 1 And we went to court.

Speaker 1 Did they say what they said in the movie in the hallway? Yeah.

Speaker 1 What was it?

Speaker 1 She had

Speaker 1 she had said that,

Speaker 1 well, they had made fun of my attorney

Speaker 1 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 was ready to go to bat um

Speaker 1 they made fun of my attorney and

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 i remember after we won it was like this isn't over

Speaker 1 and they said that to you yeah and we were like

Speaker 1 no no,

Speaker 1 I think it's over.

Speaker 1 Were you listening in there?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think we won.

Speaker 1 That was it. But the courtroom was just crazy.
They were,

Speaker 1 my boss got up on the stand. My attorney was so great.

Speaker 1 He was asking her these questions. And

Speaker 1 he said, you know, do you believe that Ms. Johnson

Speaker 1 took any confidential patient information, any proprietary information.

Speaker 1 And she said, Well, we don't know. And he said, Well, don't you have electronic records? You can see that.

Speaker 1 And he said, What did the electronic record show? Well, it showed she didn't take anything. Okay.

Speaker 1 And he said, So, what's this really about? I mean, what is this about? Security code, alarm code? I mean, what is this about? And she said, Well, yeah, I mean, she knows our alarm code. And he said,

Speaker 1 Changed that. Yeah, he said, Well, you haven't changed that since she left.
And he, she said, no, we did.

Speaker 1 And so my attorney, like,

Speaker 1 so, I mean, he was just so serious. He goes,

Speaker 1 do you believe that Mrs. Johnson is somehow clairvoyant and will be able to have access to those coats? And I swear, she looked right at him and she goes, well, I don't know.

Speaker 1 It was just a circus. It was ridiculous.

Speaker 1 And so they presented first.

Speaker 1 And when they got done, my attorney just stood up and said,

Speaker 1 this is ridiculous, judge, and asked for a directed verdict.

Speaker 1 And the judge said, you have nothing. This is over.
And that was it. Hassled by them after?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And then they would have to come back

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 say, oh, well, okay, well, yeah, we did do that. And so now when I say something, they just

Speaker 1 shut up because they don't know. I think they don't know what evidence I may have.

Speaker 1 Let me go to the

Speaker 1 healing of

Speaker 1 yourself.

Speaker 1 You honestly didn't know. You honestly felt like.
this was the right thing to do. You honestly thought you were helping people.

Speaker 1 When you found out you weren't, you got out and you were honest about it.

Speaker 1 But going home and counting, you had to have counted the number of children. I did.

Speaker 1 22,000. It's a big number.

Speaker 1 And as you were counting those and you were in that space, what were you thinking?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 when I was first counting them

Speaker 1 and I came to that number,

Speaker 1 honestly, I just

Speaker 1 really didn't know how to live with that kind of burden.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Thankfully, I grew up with a really strong faith foundation.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 you know, I grew up believing that

Speaker 1 God does forgive us when we're truly repentant, and

Speaker 1 I truly was.

Speaker 1 And I, you know, I was reminded

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 I could never go back and right

Speaker 1 my wrong.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 that wasn't required of me anyway.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I just, I remember when I was feeling such despair over just the sheer amount of children,

Speaker 1 God just kept reminding me that

Speaker 1 it was over

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 that he had won.

Speaker 1 And I remember one time I was watching that movie Kung Fu Panda with my daughter.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 do you know why today is called the present because it is a gift

Speaker 1 and I thought

Speaker 1 that's so right you know I I

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 or I can release myself of it with God's help.

Speaker 1 And I can live every day right now for him,

Speaker 1 doing

Speaker 1 the best that I can do by

Speaker 1 doing everything I can to save the unborn, to facilitate healing.

Speaker 1 among men and women who have been touched by abortion, to help bring abortion clinic workers out of the industry.

Speaker 1 And I feel like when you're living in that space, when you're living in the present,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Where'd you make your mistake?

Speaker 1 Well, it's going to sound crazy, but I can tell you you where I made my mistake.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 I made my mistake

Speaker 1 when I went to college

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 started living a life of immodesty

Speaker 1 in my speech and my behavior and my dress. I saw that that

Speaker 1 attracted guys.

Speaker 1 That was attention that I wanted.

Speaker 1 I had my first unplanned pregnancy,

Speaker 1 had my abortion.

Speaker 1 I believe that was when

Speaker 1 abortion and that sin that led me down that road, that's when it entered.

Speaker 1 And it was just one poor choice after another.

Speaker 1 But it started way back

Speaker 1 before I actually laid on that table the first time. It was the decisions I was making that led

Speaker 1 to that unplanned pregnancy.

Speaker 1 And I've been, I mean, I've been raised better than that. I've been taught.
Most of us have. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Last two questions.

Speaker 1 Talk directly to

Speaker 1 those who are in the pro-life movement, but maybe

Speaker 1 are not behaving in such a way that would have captured you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I hear sometimes people

Speaker 1 who are less effective in the pro-life movement say,

Speaker 1 well,

Speaker 1 I just have to do what God's telling me to do.

Speaker 1 God is never going to tell you to yell at a woman who's in crisis.

Speaker 1 That's not who God is.

Speaker 1 He is never going to tell you

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 intimidate a woman who is scared and feeling vulnerable.

Speaker 1 There are lives literally hanging in the balance here.

Speaker 1 Our effectiveness should be of utmost importance.

Speaker 1 And I think we have a skewed,

Speaker 1 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, she, he tells me.

Speaker 1 And I said, you know, when I worked in the clinic, I thought God was telling me to work there too.

Speaker 1 I said, sometimes the voice you hear is not God.

Speaker 1 And God is never going to force himself on anyone else. I always say God's a gentleman and

Speaker 1 he works off of invitation, not by force.

Speaker 1 And all

Speaker 1 you are doing

Speaker 1 is creating a safe haven inside the abortion clinic.

Speaker 1 This

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I'm not trying to win an argument here. I'm trying to save a life.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to save a woman from a lifetime of regret and shame. That matters.
And our behavior toward that woman

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 behavior

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 never

Speaker 1 going to bring anyone to you. There's never a time where a young woman in crisis is going to say,

Speaker 1 I want to walk up to that lady that's calling me a murderer.

Speaker 1 It doesn't happen.

Speaker 1 Now talk to the woman who's in this situation or girl.

Speaker 1 You know, it's a scary thing to be in a crisis pregnancy.

Speaker 1 I've had a couple and

Speaker 1 I think it's

Speaker 1 I think we live in a society where

Speaker 1 secular feminism is running rampant and telling women that telling women everything that they can't do

Speaker 1 and exploiting their weakness and exploiting their vulnerability.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 tell them, you can do it.

Speaker 1 You are doing it.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to be there to help do it with you.

Speaker 1 We are not meant

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 parent to live in isolation. We're meant to do it in community with help.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's an honor to meet you. It's an honor to know you.

Speaker 1 I think we live in the age of miracles again

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I think we're going to see an end to this because

Speaker 1 it's barbaric. You look at it with the eyes from a hundred years from now.
They'll look at it as slavery. Right.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we're on the wrong side of history. And

Speaker 1 you will be remembered as, I hope, one of the real keys to turn this engine off.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 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 people.