Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey Across the Life Line (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Revelation

I still get goose bumps when I think about the things you’re about to read in this chapter. It was when I became aware of them that I fully realized how everything I’ve gone through has been part of a much larger picture—that my story is just a small part of something God has been doing since long before I showed up at the volunteer fair at Texas A&M. And I trust it will go on long after I’ve played my part.

When I stumbled, weeping, through the back door of our Coalition for Life office that fifth day in October 2009, I had no idea that our two organizations, Planned Parenthood and Coalition for Life, had much more linking them than the fact that Abby Johnson was groping her way blindly from one to the other.

The Bryan, Texas, Planned Parenthood clinic first opened in 1975. Then in 1998 they announced a move to a new facility in Bryan that, beginning in 1999, would perform abortions. When the announcement went out that a clinic set to open in Bryan would perform abortions, a Texas A&M student named Lauren heard about it and thought,
I have to do something.
So she called a community-wide meeting to see if others felt the same way. The media got wind of it and provided coverage of the plans for the meeting, so attendance that night was substantial—in fact, four hundred people from sixty churches were represented at that meeting.

There was strong support at the meeting for creating a group to coordinate opposition not just to abortion, but to the opening of a clinic in Bryan where it would be performed. So a board was put together, and Lauren was chosen to head up the organization.

The name chosen for this new nonprofit was Coalition for Life.

That’s right. Coalition for Life, the organization that has inspired the formation of similar groups in many cities across the United States, started right here in Bryan, Texas, as a result of the Planned Parenthood clinic where I had been director.

That happened before my time, of course. When Lauren stepped down as director because she married and was starting a family, David Bereit, who had been on the board, was asked to become director. He had only a small staff and little money coming in. Even so, he saw potential in two of his volunteers, a married couple—Shawn and Marilisa Carney. Marilisa had just graduated from college; Shawn was a junior.

One day when Shawn came to pick up Marilisa from her job at Coalition for Life, David asked him to come into one of the back rooms. “I can’t offer you anything to eat or drink,” David said with a mischievous grin on his face, “because we can’t afford anything. So do you mind if we just sit here and play with the leftover ketchup packets while we chat?”

David asked Shawn an age-old question that day: what do you plan to do with your life? Shawn explained that he intended to study law and that he and Marilisa were planning on leaving soon for Notre Dame where Shawn would do just that.

David said, “Here’s my problem. I can’t afford to pay the staff I have. I need somebody who’s willing and able to visit potential donors, orchestrate some fund-raising, and bring in some financial support. I know you’re still in school—how about coming on with me part-time now, full-time after you graduate? Can you put off your law-school plans for a while?”

Shawn and Marilisa agreed that the cause was worth it. Marilisa came on full-time and Shawn part-time. And you know when that was? August 2001—exactly one month before my first day as a student volunteer at the clinic. Shawn and I began our work on opposite sides of the fence within thirty days of one another.

Just three years later, from September 1 to October 10, 2004, Coalition for Life conducted its first 40 Days for Life campaign—in Bryan, Texas, right outside the clinic where I worked! It was one of the hottest Septembers in recent memory, and it was right in the middle of a “love bug” infestation (if you’re from the South, you’ll know all about these annoying black-and-red flying insects). I was a student intern at the clinic by then, but I had no idea this was the first time this campaign had happened anywhere in the country. I figured pro-lifers in other states had done it before. But not so. The Bryan Coalition team thought the idea up themselves. And they prayed.

Forty days straight, twenty-four hours a day, there was always someone praying at the fence that surrounded my Planned Parenthood clinic. And as a result of an intensive door-to-door campaign, Coalition for Life had lined up a prayer support network not just at the fence but throughout the city for those forty days.

I sometimes joke that I know more about 40 Days for Life than anyone—because I’ve experienced it from both sides of the fence!

Over the next couple of years, David Bereit was asked to speak and assist around the country as other cities heard of the campaign this small yet mighty pro-life group in Bryan, Texas, had conducted around its Planned Parenthood clinic. Those cities wanted a 40 Days for Life campaign of their own, and six other cities soon followed with their own campaigns.

In 2004, during the first 40 Days for Life campaign, David took Marilisa and Shawn out to Subway to break the news. He’d been asked to move to D.C. to take a national pro-life leadership role. But he would agree to do so only if the Carneys would agree to take over Coalition for Life, with Marilisa as executive director. They agreed, and David left for D.C. About a year later, with a young child at home, Marilisa stepped down, and the board asked Shawn to take over as executive director. Oddly enough, this was about the same time that I took the position as director of the Planned Parenthood clinic. Our parts in this story seem to follow parallel paths.

In 2007 David and Shawn, with no money, took a leap of faith and officially launched 40 Days for Life beyond Bryan, Texas. Their goal was to have fifteen to twenty cities participate simultaneously in forty days of prayer and fasting, peaceful vigils outside abortion facilities, and grassroots community outreach. They had no idea what the reaction would be from the rest of the country, and God dramatically exceeded their expectations when eighty-nine cities in thirty-three states signed up and participated in the first national 40 Days for Life campaign that fall. The 40 Days for Life movement was off and running. By 2009, over 300,000 people had participated in campaigns conducted in hundreds of cities across all fifty states and numerous other countries including Canada, Denmark, Australia, and Northern Ireland.

Local campaign leaders and volunteers discovered the same thing that had happened in Bryan, Texas—people of faith and conscience wanted to do something on a local level to help save lives, and 40 Days for Life gave them the opportunity to do just that. As the reports of more than 2,800 lives saved by campaigns poured in from across the country, more volunteers were motivated to hold 40 Days campaigns, and thousands of new people were attracted to join the movement. In fact, over 30 percent of the people who get involved in 40 Days for Life have never participated in any pro-life activity before.

David and Shawn still run 40 Days for Life from their laptops and cell phones, and they personally train the local campaign leaders through online webcasts and teleconferences. They have visited over 300 cities to speak at vigils and encourage local volunteers, and now, as the former director of the abortion facility outside of which this campaign started, I am also a frequent speaker at 40 Days for Life events.

For the most part, media coverage of these events has been widespread and fair, even though there has been little in the way of major national exposure—it’s usually the local affiliates that provide the coverage, not the national, prime-time broadcasts. We’ve had fair media coverage in part because we work hard to make sure all volunteers understand that this is not the time for them to wave their placards, shout insults, or be obnoxious or confrontational.

We are there to stand and pray.

We are there to bear witness to what we know, to what we’ve already experienced ourselves.

We are there to love and befriend and pray for the clients who enter abortion clinics and the workers who staff them.

Just as I was prayed for, loved, and befriended.

It was a few days after my hearing that I sat at the Coalition for Life house with Shawn, Bobby, Heather, and Karen, as they filled me in on all this history. As the story unfolded, I began to sense the implications of what they were telling me, and a feeling of holy awe began to glow inside me.

“Abby,” Shawn said, his eyes deadly serious, “I have to confess that sometimes, in the midst of all the hours and effort, in the face of empty bank accounts and tensions with militant pro-lifers and pro-choicers at each other’s throats, in the face of watching women enter that building with apprehension lining their faces and then exiting hours later with grief etched in their countenance, sometimes, Abby, I’d wonder if we were doing any good at all.

“We’d have a few ‘saves’ at the fence, and whenever we would, we celebrated and sang God’s praises. But more often than not, Abby, we prayed and prayed and saw no changes. Women and clinic staff came and went. Babies died. Families were torn apart. But you were a constant, Abby. You’d been there since the beginning for me. I remember how Marilisa talked to you on your very first day. She liked you. And she prayed for you by name. And Elizabeth—she was so sure you would respond to her friendship. She’d tell me, ‘Abby is different from many of the executives. She really cares about those women and believes she is helping them. One day, she’ll see the truth.’ I wanted to believe her, but months turned to years, and there you remained.”

Shawn sighed and went quiet for a moment. Then he went on.

“Abby, this year as the 40 Days for Life campaign got started, I was tired. I was beginning to believe our detractors—that abortion was here to stay, that nothing we were doing was making a difference. I was weary, Abby, and beginning to wonder if ours was a lost cause. And then you showed up at our back door. Right in the midst of the 40 Days for Life campaign.”

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. I’d had no idea Shawn had been discouraged. And I had not realized until that very moment that my conversion was the result of years of prayers over my clinic.

“What got you so invested at Coalition?” I asked him. “I mean, I know about you and Marilisa, but what was it that kept you here?”

He smiled. “The very first time, I came because Marilisa wanted me to. I stood outside the fence but didn’t really want to look. I felt so awkward. But then a woman came out of the clinic, and I looked up and our eyes met. And she just kind of looked at me in utter despair and sadness, and I knew we were both sharing this moment, both knowing she had just aborted her child. Her eyes were saying, ‘I know what I’ve just done, it’s too late now, and I’m going to carry this the rest of my life.’ I remember feeling hopeless but deciding that if I could help just one woman not make that same mistake, I wanted to. And that desire drew me back.

“After that first encounter, abortion was no longer a political issue or a point in some candidate’s debate. The distance was removed. I’d witnessed it—helplessly yet hopefully—this terrible, sobering sharing of the decision between life and death. And I truly believed that by being present I could offer a last chance for life to the mother and the baby.”

Shawn looked at me then and our eyes locked.

“Abby, remember the day in the parking lot, after I took you to meet Dr. Robinson, when you told me you were going to resign because it was the right thing to do?”

“Of course I remember! I could never forget that—and I thought you were going to burst from joy!”

“At that moment, Abby, at that very moment, I knew that you had been God’s plan all along. The whole history of the Coalition for Life flashed through my mind. I thought of a young student hearing on that newscast in 1998 that this clinic was going to open and calling a prayer meeting. She didn’t know she was starting a global movement. She was just showing up for God because He called her.

I thought of David Bereit praying his heart out for this place and convincing me to give up law school to take over for him. David didn’t have two nickels to rub together, but he prayed. And he showed up. I thought of the day we came up with the forty-day vigil idea and how we prayed so hard that God would change lives through it. And I remembered Marilisa and Elizabeth, and how they both just loved you and never stopped hoping. Abby, all those prayers went up, and God answered those prayers through your story. He knew all along that from this very clinic He would call out Abby Johnson, director of a Planned Parenthood clinic, and hand her a platform to tell the world the truth. And He has, Abby. He has done just that.”

And now you know the story too.

As I tell my part of the story, I am joining in the legacy of prayer begun in Bryan, Texas. Every time I stand in front of a microphone or sit in a circle of women or speak words of truth through a fence in some little town in this big country, I am praying for the women and men whom God is going to touch next, the lives He will save, the people He will use.

I will share just one more story, just one of many, but one that makes it all worthwhile for me—the anguish I felt on the day of the ultrasound-guided abortion in September 2009, the anxiety of having to go into court to defend myself, the pain of losing friends and fellowship because they don’t support my change from prochoice to pro-life. All painful memories and all worth it to bring about experiences like this one.

In the spring of 2010, I was praying and standing vigil alongside other people praying outside the fence at the Bryan Planned Parenthood clinic. When the cars of women coming for services at the clinic pulled up, we did what we usually do: Still outside the fence, we walk as near to those women as we can get. Even as they are escorted into the clinic by a Planned Parenthood volunteer, we explain what we can offer them.