Letter From Bryan
The Convert
Former Bryan Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson’s abrupt change from pro-choice activist to pro-life spokesperson turned her into a talk show sensation. But is her story true?
Switching sides: Abby Johnson, photographed on December 9, 2009, in front of the Brazos Valley Coalition for Life office.
Photograph by Randal Ford
Roger Smith says: I’ve been a born-again Christian since age 5 (pushing 55 here now), have been an ardent student of the Bible since age 18 (read it cover to cover 8 times, studied the whole thing in segments and in half a dozen English translations several more times, along with studying it in four other languages including Greek and Hebrew; went to a wonderful conservative graduate theology school, have been involved in teaching and ministries at many levels --- none of that to brag, all of it only to give a little profile of where I’m coming from spiritually). I also moved from having been closely involved with prolife groups in the mid-’80s, to quickly becoming unsettled at their very obvious promotion of misinformation, and the hypocrisy of not WANTING to learn any more accurate information if it didn’t agree with the things they already believed. That is not Christianity: God is the God of truth, not of "whatever we believe at the moment". Truth may line up with what we believe; it may challenge things we believe, even things we cherish. But truth is the only place you’ll find God, not in mis- (or dis-) information. Misinformation 1: "Human life begins at conception". Several other prolife points are usually linked with that, such as the often-heard idea that "brain waves" (the bioelectric signals in the brain’s cortex that are associated with personality and consciousness) have been detected as early as 40 days into pregnancy. However, that just isn’t medical fact; those brain signals have never been detected earlier than about 20 weeks (see this informative article, and especially its internal links to the original medical research: eileen.250x.com/Main/Einstein/Brain_Waves.htm). So since we associate brain activity with the presence of what we Christians would call mind, soul, or spirit, obviously that cannot emerge till around five months along. In addition, if fully human life (in the biblical sense) begins at conception, that makes no sense in the case of identical twins (or other multiples), since as we all learned in high school science, identicals all begin from a single fertilized egg, which later splits into two (or more) embryos. You’d have to suppose that God also somehow split the mind/soul/spirit as well, to make two or more individuals --- but obviously you never hear a word on that from prolife groups, not to mention there isn’t a hint of support for that notion in the Bible, let alone science. Misinformation 2: "The Bible is against abortion". The Bible doesn’t say a single thing about abortion --- even though abortion was utterly common in the ancient world (search "herbal abortion" or "herbal abortifacient" for a lot of information on that). If God had thought it was a problem, pretty obviously he would have said something about it. However, since in the Bible God matter-of-factly takes responsibility for all that happens as a result of physical (including biological) processes, those who assert unilaterally that "abortion is wrong" must deal with the fact that God himself performs abortions: we call those sad events "miscarriages". (In fact, as any reasonably educated woman in this society will of course know, around 80% of a woman’s fertilized eggs don’t implant in the womb, but are flushed out naturally; so prolife Christians would have to acknowledge that God almost casually flushes away countless millions of incipient lives worldwide, every month; yet you never hear prolife groups address these points.) As a matter of fact, those prolife Christians who studied their Bibles would be aware of Numbers chapter 5, in which (as part of the very law which God gave Moses) a woman suspected of cheating on her husband is to be brought to a priest, who then performs a ceremony calling on God to cause her to miscarry if she’s pregnant with some other man’s child. That is, the God of the Bible, himself, gave direction that he was to be called on to quite literally perform an abortion, with the expectation that he would do just that. So obviously "God is against abortion", "the Bible is against abortion", or simply "abortion is wrong" cannot be maintained by Christians as blanket, unilateral beliefs or positions. So when does human life begin? It might also be worth noting that many cultures in earlier times considered life in the womb to begin only when the woman first felt "quickening", that is, movement in her womb; by no means did they (nor the church) take such an extreme position as prolife Christians do today. Given the actual medical facts about "brain waves" --- what we Christians would read as indicating the presence of soul, mind, or spirit --- it would be hard to make a case for fully human life emerging any earlier than around 20 weeks, as mentioned above. More importantly, it might be emphasized that human life simply doesn’t have any discernible "moment" of beginning: even the "moment" of conception isn’t, of course, a single moment (the moment when a sperm cell first begins to penetrate the egg’s outer membrane? or when it is fully taken inside? or when its genetic material first begins to disperse inside the egg? or when its genetic material, and that of the egg, are fully combined?). With what we’ve been able to see and learn through medical science, Christians in particular ought to be more humbled and amazed at the ever-deeper mystery of when life begins --- which appears indeed to be an "emergence", and not a "moment" we could point to or capture in a photo. That indeed is much more the tendency of God in Scripture: though he makes his reality known, he never lets himself, nor his work, quite be pinned down (which, of course, would give us the misperception of control). We managed to "pin him down" once, on a cross, but aside from that he won’t be pinned down. We should rather humble ourselves before the amazement of life, rather than think we can define it so precisely as to wage cultural wars over it. Finally, I also notice that something like three-fourths of all that’s said or written on abortion is by men --- and it is a fact that not a one of us men will ever have to face, firsthand, the challenges of any pregnancy (whether planned or unplanned). Our breathtaking arrogance, in thinking we can dictate ultimate truth on something we will never have to face personally, is deeply disgraceful; we men should rather give place to women on that issue. (I’ve tried to limit the things I’ve said here to medical and scriptural facts, with a few unavoidable implications raised by those; other than that, I won’t presume to say what any woman should or shouldn’t do or think --- far less when I can never be in the shoes of any woman facing the family, financial, social, medical, or other issues that quite often complicate the matter from being a simple "choice". In fact, those who try to oversimplify this complex, agonizing matter to a "choice" do dishonor to all the lives involved.) An authentically "prolife" position ought to take into consideration all of life’s complexity; in fact life is far too important ever to take a kneejerk, reflexive stance on whether something is simply "wrong" or "right". One thing that Christians ought to agree on, though, is that one of the few simple, straightforward statements in Scripture that does indeed encompass all of life is what Jesus said: "In everything, treat others as you would like to be treated." Prolife groups certainly do not do that; if in fact they are Christians, I would hope and pray that they would actually do what Christ said, and take all lives into consideration, not just one. And yeah, I know this is really long (not to mention, more than a year after the article was first published; I found this linked from a current article, here www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/29/susan-b-anthony-list-planned-parenthood_n_841978.html ), so edit away. ;) (March 29th, 2011 at 5:04pm)
At lunchtime on October 5, in the East Texas town of Bryan, a woman walked through the rear door of the Brazos Valley Coalition for Life office, which is one block west of a Planned Parenthood clinic. She was crying. It was the thirteenth day of the Coalition’s annual 40 Days for Life event, in which anti-abortion activists maintain a 24-hour vigil outside the front gate of the clinic, one of the few places in East Texas where a woman can obtain an abortion. The three staffers on duty immediately recognized the woman. It was the clinic’s 29-year-old director, Abby Johnson. “I want out,” she told them. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I know it’s not right.”
Stunned by Johnson’s sudden appearance and concerned about how distraught she seemed, the staffers sat with her, in a room ordinarily used to counsel pregnant women in crisis, until Shawn Carney, the Coalition’s director, arrived. Carney knew Johnson by sight—he had spent a lot of time on the sidewalk in front of the Planned Parenthood clinic—but he had never had a lengthy conversation with her. Carney, who is 27, had begun working at the Coalition as a volunteer, just as Johnson had at Planned Parenthood. Like Johnson, he had quickly been promoted to a position of leadership. Nothing like this had ever happened to him in his short career as an activist, and he could barely contain his excitement.
Johnson told Carney that she had been harboring doubts about her work at the clinic for some time. She felt she was being pressured by her supervisor at the regional affiliate to increase the number of abortions her clinic performed, to make up for declining revenues from the clinic’s family planning and women’s health services. “I could tell her mind was racing,” Carney recalled later. “She was giving a litany of reasons why she wanted out, and it was just almost verbatim of what you think someone who wants to leave the abortion industry would say: Her conscience had gotten to her, the abortion industry is about money, abortion is horrific.”
Then, as Carney sat rapt, Johnson told him about the incident that had forced her to finally listen to her conscience. Nine days earlier, on September 26, she’d assisted a doctor who was performing an abortion for a woman who was thirteen weeks pregnant, she said. The doctor asked Johnson to hold an ultrasound transducer to the woman’s stomach as he performed the operation. Johnson told Carney she had never seen this done before, since ultrasound machines are not commonly used for first-trimester abortions, which make up the vast majority of abortions done at most clinics. What she witnessed on the ultrasound monitor, she said, horrified her. The fetus seemed to be moving away from the doctor’s probe, which was clearly visible on the screen as it entered the patient’s uterus. Johnson thought of all the patients whom she had told that their fetuses wouldn’t feel anything during the procedure. Then, as Johnson watched, the doctor turned on the suction.
Before she left the Coalition offices that day, Johnson offered to volunteer for the group, and Carney, in turn, promised to help Johnson find another job. It was a standing offer that the Coalition extended to all clinic employees, one often shouted to workers as they arrived in the morning or left in the evening. No staffers at the clinic had ever taken the Coalition up on the offer. Carney never dreamed the first would be the person in charge. “I knew immediately that this would be huge,” he said. Johnson quit her job the next day.
Johnson’s story broke at a time when abortion had once again taken center stage in national politics. For months Congress had been locked in debate over the so-called Stupak amendment, the anti-abortion measure that threatened to derail health care reform. Mike Huckabee flew Johnson to New York to tape a segment for his talk show on November 7, and she became an overnight star in the conservative-media world. Bill O’Reilly spoke to her and Carney a few days later, and producers for the Christian talk show The 700 Club traveled to Bryan to interview her. Johnson began receiving dozens of calls a day, mostly from talk radio producers seeking interviews, and she obliged every request she could. Her story went viral in the Christian conservative blogosphere.
Carney’s efforts to find Johnson a new job were unsuccessful, but after her story went nationwide, Johnson didn’t need one. Carney helped her sign on with Ambassador Speakers Bureau, a Christian publicity agency, and the company began booking paid engagements for her. Her job became, in essence, being Abby Johnson. For her first booking, Johnson flew to New York to talk at a fundraiser for the pro-life group Expectant Mother Care. She had done a lot of public speaking for Planned Parenthood over the years, she told me, but had always chafed at the group’s insistence on strict adherence to officially sanctioned talking points. Addressing anti-abortion activists, Johnson quickly found that she enjoyed public speaking much more than she had when she was on the other side. “I was laughing when I was up there giving my talk,” she said, “because I was thinking, you know, when you’re telling the truth, you don’t have to have talking points.”
But was she telling the truth? The rollout of Abby Johnson as a culture-war celebrity got off to a rocky start. In early November, the online magazine Salon reported that on September 27, the day after Johnson says she witnessed the ultrasound-guided abortion and had her epiphany, she appeared as a guest on the Bryan public radio program Fair and Feminist to discuss her work at the clinic. In the hour-long interview, Johnson gives an enthusiastic defense of the clinic and ridicules the 40 Days for Life protest. She doesn’t sound like someone who’d had a life-changing experience the previous day or who had soured on her employer’s mission.
One of the show’s hosts, Shelly Blair, volunteered regularly at the clinic and considered Johnson to be a friend and mentor. The hardest thing to accept, Blair said later, was not Johnson’s announcement that she was now pro-life but her decision to join the Coalition. Johnson, Blair said, had long complained that the Coalition harassed patients and clinic workers and spread misinformation about Planned Parenthood. Blair recalled a party in the parking lot of Planned Parenthood, held just two weeks before Johnson quit, to boost morale on the opening day of the 40 Days vigil. “Abby was so mad that she was screaming through the fence at them,” she recalled. “It’s just so strange, because now she’s saying all the things that they’ve always said. It’s like, how can you unlearn everything you know?”
Johnson’s departure from Planned Parenthood turned out to be a more complex story than it first appeared. At a court hearing for an injunction sought by Planned Parenthood to prevent Johnson from divulging confidential information to her new allies, two of Johnson’s former co-workers testified that she told them in the days before she resigned that she was afraid she was about to be fired. At one time, Johnson, who was named the regional Planned Parenthood affiliate’s employee of the year in 2008, seemed to have a promising future with the organization. By mid-2009, however, her relationship with her employer had begun to deteriorate. Salon reported that on October 2, Johnson was summoned to Houston to meet with her supervisors to discuss problems with her job performance. She was placed on what Planned Parenthood calls a “performance improvement plan.” It was just three days later, on Monday, that Johnson made her tearful appearance at the Coalition for Life. The following day she faxed Planned Parenthood a resignation letter, which mentioned nothing about a crisis of conscience.
Johnson has said that she was disciplined by her employer because she objected to what she described as pressure to increase the number of abortions performed at the clinic. The number of abortions did increase over the past year, chiefly because the clinic, which performs surgical abortions every other Saturday, began offering the abortion pill to patients on a daily basis. That decision, Planned Parenthood told me, was driven by patient demand, not, as Johnson has claimed, by a desire to increase revenue. Citing company policy regarding confidential personnel information, Planned Parenthood declined to specify why Johnson was disciplined, other than to deny that it was due to any conflict over the number of abortions performed.
Postings on Johnson’s Facebook page, obtained by Texas Monthly, suggest an employee worn out by her job and feeling hurt, angry, and unappreciated—not one struggling with the morality of her profession. On September 24, two weeks before she resigned, she wrote, “So tired. Want a day off. Too busy. Blah.” Similar sentiments followed, along with expressions of dread over her coming disciplinary meeting in Houston. This is what she wrote on the night she quit:
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