Abby Johnson spent 8 years working for Planned Parenthood and became a Director and then a pro-life advocate. She spoke on the second night of the Republican National Convention on Aug. 25, 2020.
Transcript
My name is Abby Johnson, and I spent eight years working for Planned Parenthood, but today I’m a pro-life activist. When I was in college, Planned Parenthood approached me at a volunteer fair. They talked about helping women in crisis and their commitment to keep abortion safe, legal, and rare. I was convinced to volunteer and later offered a full-time job as a medical assistant before my promotion to director of the clinic, I truly believed I was helping women, but things drastically changed in 2009. In April, I was awarded Planned Parenthood’s employee of the year award and invited to their annual gala where they present the Margaret Sanger Award named for their founder. And Margaret Sanger was a racist who believed in eugenics. Her goal when founding Planned Parenthood was to eradicate the minority population. Today, almost 80% of Planned Parenthood abortion facilities are strategically located in minority neighborhoods. And every year Planned Parenthood celebrates its racist roots by presenting the Margaret Sanger award.
Later in August, my supervisor assigned me a new quota to meet, an abortion quota. I was expected to sell double the abortions performed the previous year. When I pushed back, underscoring Planned Parenthood’s public facing goal of decreasing abortions, I was reprimanded and told, abortion is how we make our money. But the tipping point came a month later when a physician asked me to assist with an ultrasound-guided abortion. Nothing prepared me for what I saw on the screen, an unborn baby fighting back, desperate to move away from the suction. And I’ll never forget what the doctor said next, “Beam me up Scotty.” The last thing I saw was a spine twirling around in the mother’s womb before succumbing to the force of the suction. On October sixth, I left the clinic looking back only to remember why I now advocate so passionately for life. I founded and currently run And Then There Were None, a non-profit organization that’s helped nearly 600 abortion workers transition out of the industry. For most people who consider themselves pro-life, abortion is abstract. They can’t even conceive of the barbarity. They don’t know about the products of conception room and abortion clinics where infant corpses are pieced back together to ensure nothing remains in the mother’s wombs, or that we joked and called it the pieces of children room. You see, for me, abortion is real. I know what it sounds like. I know what abortion smells like. Did you know abortion even had a smell? I’ve been the perpetrator to these babies, to these women, and I now support president Trump because he has done more for the unborn than any other president. During his first month in office, he banned federal funds for global health groups that promote abortion. That same year, he overturned an Obama-Biden rule that allowed government subsidy of abortion. He appointed a record number of pro-life judges, including two Supreme Court justices. And importantly, he announced a new rule protecting the rights of healthcare workers objecting to abortion, many of whom I work with every day.
Life is a core tenet of who we are as Americans. And this election is a choice between two radical anti-life activists and the most pro-life president we have ever had. That’s something that should compel you to action. Go door to door, make calls, talk to your neighbors and friends, and vote on November 3rd. Take action that reelects our president, and do it with our very most vulnerable Americans in mind, the ones who haven’t been born yet.
