Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey Across the Life Line (17 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Facing Forward

I called Mom that night. In fact, I could barely wait to tell my parents about my decision to cross the fence and walk into the offices of the Coalition for Life, and that fact alone was a warming internal affirmation that I was following the path God would have me choose.

So on Tuesday, October 6, my parents got the call from me they’d probably been praying for ever since they’d first learned I was working for Planned Parenthood. Doug and I had just put Grace to bed, and I curled up in my favorite chair and dialed their number.

“Hi, Mom. I’ve got some huge news for you. Can you get Dad on the phone, too?”

Knowing that my mom can always tell my emotional state by the sound of my voice, she had to know I was happy. As I’m writing this, it occurs to me for the first time that maybe they thought I was calling to tell them I was expecting! I’ll have to ask her.

“I resigned today from Planned Parenthood,” I told them. You could have heard a pin drop. I hadn’t told them about the ultrasound-guided abortion one and a half weeks before, so they’d been in the dark about my inner torment since that day.

“I have a lot to tell you.” And so I did. The cleansing I’d experienced the day before in my figurative leap over the fence, and now the bold steps today of meeting with Dr. Robinson, then resigning, had been so monumental that I’d wondered how I’d ever convey them to my parents. But once I got started it seemed effortless. The words and emotions came pouring out. As always, my parents listened with love, asked a few questions, and let me know they were there for me.

“You’ve done the right thing, Abby,” Mom told me. “I’ve been praying you’d leave there for so long. I am proud of you.”

“Are you okay on money? Do you need anything?” Dad asked. I teared up, touched that no matter what I’d ever done in my life, my parents were always ready to support and help. Wasn’t this just like Dad? His first response was to make sure his little girl’s needs were taken care of. And then the thought hit me: God, my heavenly Father, was always looking out for my best interests too. Though I surely deserved to bear the consequences for my actions, He’d provided the right people at the right time to encircle me with love and support. I pictured Bobby, just today, on his knees, arms lifted, right outside the fence. God was answering the prayers of many—and I didn’t even know how many—in leading me out of Planned Parenthood. The step I’d taken today wasn’t an isolated event that was all about me. It was one scene in a much larger story.

It would be a while before I discovered the true scope of that story.

Shortly after I hung up with my folks, the phone rang. It was Shawn, calling from Dallas to check in on me.

“So how are you holding up?” he asked. “How did it go this afternoon?” I filled him in on the details, then switched gears.

“Shawn, I am dying to talk to Elizabeth. I just have to let her know the part she played in all of this, the seeds she planted two years ago with those flowers and her card.”

“Maybe you’d better let me call her first,” he suggested. “I’ll let her know what’s happened and that it is for real.”

I agreed, but as the night wore on I couldn’t wait. I looked up Elizabeth’s e-mail address on the 40 Days for Life Web site and emailed her, telling her my story and ending with, “This really is for real. You can call Shawn if you want to verify it.”

The phone rang again. One of my colleagues from another clinic whom I had called earlier that day with news of my resignation was on the line. She told me that she was worried about her job, now that I’d confided in her about my decision to leave. She thought Cheryl would be angry to discover that she knew about my resignation before Cheryl did. She asked if I would feel betrayed if she called Cheryl that night to tell her.

“You can call and tell her whatever you want,” I answered, finding myself surprisingly relieved at how free from fear I felt over Cheryl’s possible reactions. “If you feel you need to tell her in order to cover yourself, go ahead.”

I was relieved now that I hadn’t told this colleague about the Coalition for Life—I’d told no one but Megan and Taylor about that. My resignation was one thing, and obviously, by the next morning Cheryl would learn it along with everyone else at the Houston office. But my joining the Coalition—I needed some time before word got out about that. It would be so easy, given all the mutual suspicion of both organizations, for such news—the news that I’d visited the Coalition the day before I resigned and spent time with Shawn the very day I’d resigned—to spark worries that I’d been feeding information, or conspiring in some way, with
either
organization. I thought of Shawn’s warning to keep it quiet and lie low. He was right.

By the time I crawled into bed that night and curled up next to Doug, I felt like a new woman. I was exhausted from all the emotion of the past few days and the mammoth decisions I’d made in such a short period of time, but it was a wonderful exhaustion.
This must be what a runner feels after completing a marathon,
I thought.
It must hurt all over, but the exhilaration of finishing the race makes all the pain worth it. That’s just how I feel!

The next morning I got a call from the same colleague. She gave me a detailed account of her conversation with Cheryl. I wish I could say that I was satisfied with what she said and didn’t want to know more. But it wouldn’t be true. I knew that high drama would be unfolding throughout the day—and in all likelihood the next week—and I was curious. So as the phone continued to ring that day, I ate up every piece of news. Megan called. She’d taken the day off, but Cheryl had called her several times asking her to come in and asking if she knew anything more or had noticed any suspicious behavior from me. Taylor called too, describing how Cheryl had met with each employee separately, trying to piece together who knew what and when, asking if anyone had noticed me cleaning out my office or taking things home. Nothing surprising, of course. It didn’t worry me. I’d been careful to clean out my belongings and leave things in excellent order.

Megan, it turns out, was using her day off to work on her résumé. She emailed it to me the same day, and as Megan had requested, I forwarded it to Shawn.

Shawn called me as well, and I confessed I’d already emailed Elizabeth. Just then his phone beeped at him. “Hey, this is a call coming in from Elizabeth! Hang on.” He only had me on hold for a minute before he came back on, clearly elated.

“Abby, she’s so excited she’s crying. I’m going to fill her in and call you back.” Only a few minutes went by before my phone rang again, this time from Elizabeth. We both wept as we talked, marveling at how God had worked. I did my best to express my gratitude for how she’d reached out to me and loved me, even though I was running an abortion clinic, which violated what she believed in. We planned to meet for lunch a few weeks later when she’d be able to drive to Bryan.

For the rest of the week I continued my job hunt, now free to network with anyone who came to mind. I set up a few interviews for myself. Other than that, I enjoyed being home with Grace and digging into some projects around the house. I felt so free.

Sunday morning, the first Sunday since my resignation, was a day of spiritual celebration. This time, as I prayed the confession, I was filled with gratitude and awe at how God had moved me, led me, and loved me through the ordeal. I thought that maybe this gave me a new insight into how Moses might have felt after he led the Israelites out of Egypt. Free at last!

As it turns out, I was about to find myself trapped between the Red Sea and the chariots of Pharaoh.

Fortunately, ignorance is bliss, so I enjoyed my victory celebration.

Taylor called again to let me know she had decided to resign very soon. She’d been trying to work on her résumé so I could give it to Shawn. Then she asked if she could come over after work one night so I could help her finish it.

I told her to come over. I was eager to see both my close friends on the staff get out of Planned Parenthood and find the same release I was experiencing.

We worked first on her resignation letter, then on her résumé. It was fun seeing her prepare to make this step and doing what I could to help. We spent hours on it and finally, around midnight, finished it up and emailed it to Shawn. She thanked me and headed home.

She called me the next day to tell me she’d decided not to quit until she had a new job lined up. I could understand the concern.

“That’s fair. Come on over again tonight. I’m filling out some online applications. I’ll help you fill out some too. Let’s see how fast we can find you a job.”

We worked long hours again that night, mostly working separately on our own applications, although at her request, I helped her fill some out. We sent them all off that night, and once again, with thanks, she left.

The next two weeks were wonderful. I went for a few interviews and was encouraged by several possibilities. Most days Taylor, Megan, and I texted or called just to check in with one another on how our job hunts were going.

Meanwhile, in those two weeks, my bond with the Coalition for Life was growing stronger. I was on the phone numerous times with Shawn and his team. I had what seemed like hundreds of questions about prayer, God, the Bible, and the Coalition’s stance on medical ethics. Just a flood of questions. They were eager to answer and wanted me to know they were praying for me. They also kept me updated on job possibilities. I also asked about their work—their goals, how they trained volunteers, and what services they offered to women who came to them in crisis.

The more we talked, the more I came to understand that their vision for providing care and resources for these women was incredibly similar to my own, but that their vision to truly care for a woman went far beyond her immediate circumstances. They cared about each woman as a whole person—an
eternal
person—in the context of her family, her spiritual needs, her long-range physical and emotional health. They offered solutions that would enhance a woman’s life over the long term.

This difference in perspective led me to much self-examination. I thought of my efforts at the clinic to increase adoption as an option and how life-affirming that choice is, not just for the child, but also for the birth parents, who would know they’d taken the challenging yet right road of carrying their child to term and then entrusting that child to a family longing to nurture him or her. I thought of the inner strength that builds in birth parents, which then becomes a success story in their lives. I considered mothers who decided to parent rather than abort—their choice to sacrifice career and financial comfort in order to invest themselves in their children. Such decisions are hard, but I could see the good that God would do with such strong and brave decisions.

I was beginning to grasp what seemed to me a stark contrast between the Coalition for Life’s mind-set of life-nurturing, long-range solutions versus Planned Parenthood’s more immediate focus on solving short-term crises. Pregnancy and STDs were problems to be “solved” by abortion and medication—even though those solutions often left the root problems in place and exposed women to great risk. The more I learned, the more my eyes were opened to a brand-new way of seeing how God was working through the Coalition to truly change lives.

My Coalition for Life friends continued to network for me, getting the word out that I needed a job. Shawn connected with a local doctor who supported the pro-life cause and expressed interest, so Shawn invited me to drop by the Coalition house to talk about it. I was glad for the invitation. I knew we wanted to be careful about keeping me from being spotted, but I also found myself drawn to spend time with these new friends. Shawn filled me in on the pro-life doctor and his clinic. It sounded quite positive, so we agreed I’d give him a call. But something was bothering me, and I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Shawn, I need to tell you something.” He looked concerned, deadly serious, and leaned forward. His eyes got huge, like he was afraid I was going to tell him I was heading back to Planned Parenthood. I felt a little nervous but went on.

“I am really struggling with something. I feel like an imposter. I realize what abortion is and the evil that it is. I know I’ve left the abortion clinic and I’m never going back. I know I don’t ever want to have anything to do with the abortion cause again. But I’ve got to be honest. I am not sure I am really . . . well . . . quite what you’d call pro-life yet. I find it hard to even say the word, Shawn. It’s weird, because I know I’m on my way to being pro-life, if that makes any sense, which it probably doesn’t. But I’m really struggling over some of these issues. Do I really think abortion should be illegal? Well, I believe now that it is not the moral thing to do, but illegal? Should it be a crime? Will that really keep women from aborting? I know it won’t, and I know illegal abortions would just skyrocket. And what about rape and incest? Even if abortion were to become illegal, wouldn’t I still support it in those cases? I’ve got so many unresolved questions.”

Shawn looked at me for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed out loud. He wasn’t mocking me, and I knew he wasn’t belittling me. But clearly, he was amused—the last response I ever would have expected to my confession. He leaned forward again and I had no idea what was coming.

“You know, Abby, you were running an abortion clinic just two weeks ago. Two weeks! If this is Abby Johnson’s biggest struggle right now, we’re doing pretty well. We’ll get to that. It will come with time. Your life has just been flipped upside down by the Holy Spirit. You’re going to need to rethink everything you know and prayerfully discern what is true and what is a lie. That will take time and prayerful silence before God. I suggest you not rush to resolve your internal arguments but dive into prayer and allow God to finish what He has started.”