Commentary
As I walked down the hallway and turned to enter the exam room, it was hard to believe the room was not real, that it had been built to mirror the exact clinic where I had worked for eight years. The lights, the tables, the number of doors in the hallway, the waiting room, the bathroom—all identical.
The exam room was real enough in my mind, bringing me back to that September morning eight years earlier, where I held the ultrasound wand on the stomach of a woman who was 13 weeks pregnant, so the abortion doctor could properly use the suction machine to end the life of the fetus.
I watched that baby struggle for its life, mere inches from the device I was holding, until it gave up and the screen went dark.
This time, I watched it play out again, but as an onlooker. I watched as an actress, playing me, did the same thing I had done in that exam room built for the sole purpose of telling my story—one that was being filmed for a Hollywood movie, a movie on the big screen about my life. It doesn’t get more surreal than that.
Who thinks their life will be the subject of a major motion picture? Not me, not ever. When I walked out of Planned Parenthood after participating in that 13-week abortion in October 2009 and into the office of a pro-life group next door, I wasn’t considering the possibility that what I did was radical, that it would grab the attention of screenwriters, producers, and directors.
I just needed to get away from what my heart had finally realized was wrong. I couldn’t be the director of Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas, any longer. I had to leave.
Since that day, my life has been turned upside down in many good ways. I started a nonprofit called And Then There Were None—the only one of its kind in the country—that helps abortion workers leave their jobs. So far, we have helped more than 462 abortion workers, including seven doctors, leave jobs in the abortion industry and find new work and healing.
I’ve authored two books on my journey from volunteering to be a Planned Parenthood escort in college to rising through the ranks to become a clinic director, to walking away and joining the pro-life movement. It’s my first book, “Unplanned,” that is the basis for the film of the same name.
I was on set for a majority of the filming, which had to be done in secret in a small town in the middle of Oklahoma under a different name. No one took any chances that the abortion industry would find out what we were up to. Why? Because this movie is going to save lives. This movie is going to change hearts. This movie is going to expose all the reasons why the abortion industry is anything but pro-woman.
It’s going to show that love wins in the end. That’s how I left Planned Parenthood—it was through the love of sidewalk advocates who befriended me, despite our vast differences. This is their story as well, and the producers rightly decided to film in secret to keep away any disturbances.
The culture today is demanding that women be heard, that their stories are worth telling, that they have a voice among the noise of a society too long dominated by men who abused their power. This movement isn’t wrong. Women do need to be heard. Their stories have been silenced for decades.
This movie is not only my story. It’s the story of women working in the abortion industry. It’s the story of women standing in the heat and cold and rain outside abortion clinics praying for the conversion of hearts. It’s the story of women who have had abortions and their families. If there was ever a time for these women to tell their stories, this is it.
Abby Johnson is director of the nonprofit pro-life organization And Then There Were None and the author of “Unplanned.” “Unplanned,” the movie, is slated to be in theaters in 2019.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
