Jim Daly, the president of Focus on the Family, thinks that the Hallmark Channel should make a movie about Abby Johnson, the Planned Parenthood clinic worker turned anti-choice leader. Johnson, who now works with Lila Rose’s Live Action, has received plaudits (and earnings) from Religious Right activists for her book deal and speaking tour. At the center of Johnson’s experience is a purported account where she saw a fetus on the ultrasound machine move away from the doctor during an abortion, and she abruptly quit and joined a 40 Days for Life protest outside the clinic.
While Daly says that nobody “has ever questioned her haunting description,” it is quite likely that the event never happened.
Nate Blakeslee Texas Monthly found out that on the day Johnson claims to have assisted the doctor with an abortion, the “physician on duty told the organization that he did not use an ultrasound that day, nor did Johnson assist on any abortion procedure.” The only time he used an ultrasound that month was two weeks prior.
The exposé also discovered that the details of Johnson’s story simply don’t add up with the official records the clinic presented to the state of Texas’s Health Services Department: “Johnson has consistently said that the patient in question was thirteen weeks pregnant, which is plausible, since thirteen weeks is right at the cusp of when physicians will consider using an ultrasound to assist with the procedure. Yet none of the patients listed on the report for that day were thirteen weeks pregnant; in fact, none were beyond ten weeks.”
Johnson claims that the woman undergoing the abortion was black, but the only black woman who had an abortion at Planned Parenthood that day “was in the sixth week of her pregnancy. There would be no medical reason for a doctor to use an ultrasound to guide an abortion performed on a woman at such an early stage. Even if one was used, it’s hard to imagine how Johnson, who said she has seen hundreds of ultrasound pictures in her career, could mistake a one-quarter-inch-long embryo for a three-inch, thirteen-week fetus.”
But while Johnson appears to have manufactured her conversion story, Daly believes that Johnson can motivate other Planned Parenthood clinic employees to quit their jobs:
If the producers of Hallmark Hall of Fame were looking for a thoughtful script that both inspires and convicts, they needn’t look any further than the story of Abby Johnson.
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Abby’s decision was met with scorn and suspicion from abortion activists, with some even accusing her of a “cover-up” to conceal the real reason behind her resignation and orchestrating a campaign of half-truths to embarrass her former employer.
Nobody, however, has ever questioned her haunting description of a baby’s reaction when he or she is about to be aborted.
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As such, please join me in praying that more Planned Parenthood workers will, like Abby, come forward and publicly resign from their positions. We will continue to utilize every legal means at our disposal to help overturn Roe vs. Wade, as we continue to work to change hearts and minds about abortion. At the same time, can you imagine the magnitude of the practical impact should more Planned Parenthood employees turn from supporting death to promoting life?
