Authors: Abby Johnson,Cindy Lambert
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Inspirational, #Biography, #Religion
I wasn’t sure what to expect from her, and I was a bit on guard. She was about my age—in fact, we’re only six months apart, we found out later—and she seemed nice.
“Can you tell me why? Why you’re volunteering?” she asked.
“Well—I don’t know for sure that I’ll be coming back. I’m just kind of checking it out.”
“May I ask your name?”
“Abby.”
She looked more serious then, and she said, “Abby, do you know they perform abortions?”
I’m not sure why I let my guard down so completely with her, a woman I’d never met before who definitely worked on the other side of the fence, but I told her something I’d told almost no one else at that point: “I’ve had an abortion myself. It was a decision I made, and I don’t have a problem with other women making the same decision.”
She nodded and looked thoughtful. “I’m so sorry you had to experience that, Abby.”
I was a little taken aback by the kindness in her voice.
“No, I’m okay with it, really. It was my decision. No one forced me.”
“All right. But you know, Abby—if you ever need help with any of that—”
And just then we heard a shout. It was Cheryl, the clinic director, literally hollering from just outside the side door of the clinic. “Leave her alone, Marilisa!” Her voice pierced the air.
I remember being startled. It had actually been a pretty pleasant conversation up to that point. Marilisa wasn’t bothering me; I didn’t think she was being aggressive or out of line. In fact, I thought her genuinely kind. I understood now why our client had been drawn to talk with her through the fence.
Then Cheryl hollered again: “Go on and get in your car, Abby.”
I said good-bye and did as I was told.
That first day had been an eye-opener, and not a pleasant one. I left the clinic unsure whether I would be coming back. In fact, I didn’t go back the following Tuesday, and when I got a call from Planned Parenthood inviting me to return, I said, “No, not this time. Call me next time.” But I said the same thing the next time, too. There was a tug-of-war going on inside. Did I really want to do this? It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t comfortable, and it left me confused. Was I really committed to this cause in the face of how uneasy I’d been?
In the end, I decided that my comfort level didn’t matter. The thought I kept coming back to was my conversation with Jill at the volunteer fair, now combined with the creepy Grim Reaper and the red-lettered word
MURDERERS
thrust in the face of scared young women. If abortions weren’t legal and available, women in crisis would get them anyway, but they would have to settle for unsafe and unsanitary abortions from someone who in all likelihood wouldn’t be adequately trained. Women would die. Planned Parenthood was helping to prevent that.
And if women did decide to exercise their right, they needed a friendly voice to walk them past that wacky crowd. If all the people at the fence had been like Marilisa, escorts wouldn’t be needed, I reasoned. But some of the pro-lifers were just plain nuts as far as I was concerned.
I didn’t yet understand that the pro-lifers outside the clinic that day weren’t a unified, like-minded group; that many didn’t even know each other. To me, they looked together, all gathered on “their” side of the fence. So I wrongly assumed everyone was part of the same organization—this Coalition for Life a few of them had mentioned through the fence. And I didn’t approve of the mean-spirited approach of frightening, sickening images and accusatory, inflammatory signs. How could this be helpful or appealing to women who were scared and desperate? What were the pro-lifers trying to accomplish with such methods? I was grateful I hadn’t encountered such a demonstration on the day I’d gotten an abortion.
In the end I decided,
All right. I’ll go. I’ll give it another shot.
Once I’d decided that, my thought processes changed. From that point on, those people on the other side of the fence—the pro-life protesters, the placard wavers, the shouters, the Grim Reaper—became the enemy. My cause—helping women in crisis—was just, I believed, and they were the ones opposing that just cause. So I had to oppose them. With conviction. I wouldn’t be rude, I wouldn’t shout—I would even try to be friendly to this obviously misguided group. I didn’t see any reason to be hostile with them. But I would be definite and direct and firm.
In the years to come, though I didn’t have a clue at this point, I would actually come to value some of these pro-lifers as friends. I would witness a careful and hard-won shift in the techniques, tone, and character of the pro-life advocates outside the Planned Parenthood fence. By my first shift at the fence in September 2001, the Bryan clinic had been providing abortions for about two years, and the pro-life movement of the area was in its infancy. Though I didn’t know it then, I’d already met one of the courageous and prayerful leaders who would go on to shape the Coalition for Life: Marilisa. And one of the young college-age guys praying that day, Shawn Carney, would soon marry Marilisa and assume leadership of the organization. Together with David Bereit, they would help transform the efforts here in Bryan into a powerfully positive pro-life force whose influence would reach across the country and to other continents as well. These pioneers would replace the shouting with gentle conversation, the waving of ugly signs with prayerful vigils, and the hostility with a peaceful presence. They would also change my life. But all of that was yet to come.
On my first day as a Planned Parenthood volunteer, the confrontational and hostile demeanor of a few in the pro-life crowd not only colored my perception of their movement but solidified my commitment to Planned Parenthood. Though my first day had been baffling, one thing was clear to me: those on
my
side of the fence were defending and helping women, as we protected them from those on the other side of the fence.
I’d discovered the answer to my question about the fence. Obviously, I thought, it was there to keep those hostile pro-lifers out and provide a safe haven for the women in need of Planned Parenthood’s services.
Chapter Five
The Bond of Compassion
Lobby Day is just what it sounds like.
Every other year Planned Parenthood and other prochoice groups gather students, staff, and supporters to descend upon the Texas legislature in Austin, Texas’s capital. February 2003 marked my initiation into this much-celebrated part of the Texas political process and cemented my identity as a vital part of the Planned Parenthood movement.
For weeks leading up to the event, Planned Parenthood had been publicizing it to clinic staff as well as to students at Texas A&M, and I was psyched! We gathered at the clinic at 6:00 a.m. on a chilly morning and piled into a bus that took us to a meeting hall in Austin where hundreds of others from around the state had gathered. Hot pink, our signature color, was everywhere. We were given hot pink canvas bags and water bottles, and many of us wore hot pink hats, shirts, or scarves. We rallied together, listened to speeches, studied our packets of talking points, and prepared to meet our legislators.
Today, the speakers told us, we were personally taking part in the political process of our great nation, many of us for the very first time. Perhaps before we had exercised our right to vote; today we would lobby by personally conversing with our political representatives. We were told we should be proud to represent Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest and most trusted reproductive health care organization. Planned Parenthood believed that everyone had the right to choose when or whether to have a child, that every child should be wanted and loved, and that women should be in charge of their own destinies. Every year, we were reminded, nearly 25,000 affiliate volunteers and staff provided sexual and reproductive health care, education, and information to nearly five million women, men, and teens in the United States. More than two million Planned Parenthood donors and activists also served as advocates for sexual and reproductive rights. “You are a part of this great cause,” one speaker announced. My heart swelled with pride.
After the speech-making we were divided into teams and sent to the offices of legislators, some of whom supported us, some of whom opposed our position. We were to voice our support of Planned Parenthood and the prochoice movement using the talking points we’d been given. We met with officials or their appointed staff. I found myself the spokesperson in several meetings, passionately saying, “The only way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. The only way to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies is to provide additional funding for contraception.”
I firmly believed in our cause, and I’d been well educated by Planned Parenthood to push for our public education system to provide better sex education and hand out contraceptives. I loved being part of this massive wave of pink washing over the capitol. I’d never felt so proud of my citizenship and so proud of my part in Planned Parenthood. My actions, I believed, were helping to reduce the number of abortions.
3
By this time I’d been a volunteer at the Bryan clinic for about a year and a half, but as I rode back to Bryan that night in the bus filled with fellow supporters, I knew I’d never before felt such a connection with others. It was a bond that would continue to grow.
And I was at a point in my life when I needed to feel as if I belonged. That same month, I separated from Mark and filed for divorce. He and I had married in December 2001, about a year after my abortion and just a few months after I’d joined Planned Parenthood. I had dropped out of school for a time—partly to increase my working hours to cover living expenses, but also because I’d lost my way at school once Mark and I got involved. Our marriage had been rocky from the start as I’d soon discovered that trust and fidelity weren’t part of his plan for marriage, and I had sadly come to realize that my parents’ words of caution—though unwelcomed by me—had been well founded.
Though the marriage had been painful, I’d deeply invested myself in my relationship with Mark’s son, Justin, now seven years old. I loved this little boy like my own and treasured each visit we had with him. But Mark had recently told me that he had no intention of continuing his visits with Justin and was preparing to sign over his parental rights entirely to Justin’s mother. She and I had developed a good relationship as we’d coordinated Justin’s trips to visit us, so I knew he’d be in excellent hands, but I was sorely grieving the reality that I’d have to say good-bye to this precious little guy. How could I, his father’s soon-to-be ex-wife, merit visitation rights? I knew I didn’t, and I knew it wouldn’t be fair for me even to ask for them. The grief had been haunting me for weeks.
So as I drove home on the bus that night, I found comfort in feeling a part of something bigger than myself, something I believed was doing so much good in the lives of others.
I’d expanded my volunteer work at the clinic since my early days as a patient escort. Many of the pro-lifers’ faces had become familiar to me by then. Marilisa and I often said hello, and Shawn Carney and I would nod or say hi. David Bereit was almost always there as well. Cheryl and some of the other Planned Parenthood staff ignored them all, and they pretty much avoided her, but a few of us frequently exchanged greetings or nods with the friendly ones. I knew these people saw me as an enemy to the cause of life, but I took pride in my work, drawing upon the sense of purpose that came from knowing I was helping women in crisis.
I still escorted on abortion days, which had by then switched to Wednesdays and would eventually change to every other Saturday, but now I also came in nearly every weekend as well, helping out in the office and pitching in anywhere I was needed. I felt valuable and wanted at the clinic.
A few weeks after Lobby Day, however, I hit a crisis of my own. I discovered I was pregnant for a second time. Panic and grief overwhelmed me, as did the feeling of utter failure. I felt I’d failed at sticking to school, failed at my marriage, and now my contraception method had failed as well. My soon-to-be ex-husband was about to sign away his paternal rights to his own seven-year-old son, so I knew he wasn’t interested in being a father, and I wasn’t at all prepared to consider becoming a self-supporting single mother. Besides, I no longer wanted to be connected to this man, and if I were to have his child, I’d be connected to him for the rest of my life. Even as I write that sentence I hear the faulty thinking that plagues every woman considering an abortion—thinking expressed in the phrase
if I have this child.
If
I have this child? Why wasn’t it obvious to me that I
already had a child,
who was growing inside of me? Once you are pregnant, there is no
if.
That child, though tiny and in an early stage of development,
already exists
! But I didn’t yet see that. What I saw, and by now was reinforcing in the minds of other young women as part of the Planned Parenthood organization, was that I was in a
condition of pregnancy
, not that I was now the mother of a child already dependent upon my own body for sustenance. I am amazed at how semantics can shape thought.
I thought of my parents and knew they’d be compassionate and supportive, that they’d help me in every way, but I couldn’t bear the thought of the burden this would create for them. At least, that’s what I told myself at the time. I can see now that I never gave my parents enough credit—not in my out-of-wedlock first pregnancy with Mark, and not in this second pregnancy coming just as I was about to be divorced. Frankly, looking back, I suspect that by keeping it a secret from my parents, I was trying to avoid it becoming “real” for me. I better understand now that my parents are made of tough stuff and can not only handle whatever life throws at them, but can, through their love and support, help me do the same.
When I’m asked today what someone might have said to get me to change my mind about having either abortion, I tell them it would be this: “What do you think would disappoint your parents most? To find out that you’d gotten pregnant, or to learn that you had taken the life of their grandchild?” Looking back, I realize my fear of talking with my parents about my crisis pregnancies was really irrational.
I so wish I could write that I agonized long and hard over my choices for this pregnancy. But I’d be lying. The truth is that abortion had by now become a simple and normal reality in my life. Every week I walked alongside women on their way to ending their pregnancies and wished them well a few hours later as they headed back out the door. Now, without even revealing my pregnancy to Mark, I made that same appointment for myself.
I know—this chapter fully reveals the ugly truth. I was completely inconsistent in my own thoughts and values. I lobbied at the state capitol for abortion rights while telling myself proudly that, by helping prevent unwanted pregnancies, I was helping reduce the number of abortions. Yet now I was scheduling another abortion myself because I was in a crisis pregnancy.
It’s embarrassing to even read my own words here. But it’s important that I write them. It’s important that you read them. My story—my decision to abort my second pregnancy even though I told myself I was a champion for decreasing the number of abortions—illustrates the complexity, the confusion, and frankly, the disconnect between behavior and values that permeates our culture. I spent many years counseling women whose thought patterns were not unlike my own. Consider this statistic from the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood: nearly two-thirds of women who have abortions identify themselves as Christian.
4
I was one among many.
Unlike the day I went in for my first abortion, I was extremely well-educated this time. At our clinic we always did an ultrasound before an abortion to confirm how far along the pregnancy was, and we offered the patient the choice to view a photo of the fetus. Like most, I declined to view the photo. I was eight weeks along, and that made me eligible for a medication abortion (the cutoff is nine weeks) using RU-486, also known as Mifeprex, the abortion pill. As I’d witnessed women choosing between medication or surgical abortions, it seemed to me that for early abortions, the medication abortion was the more private, less invasive, more comfortable way to go. And it appeared to offer more control. No anesthesia, no surgery—just a few pills, right?
My experience proved otherwise.
As is typical, I took one pill, Mifeprex, while at the clinic. That pill separates the pregnancy from the lining of the uterus so that it is no longer viable. (Did you notice I said “pregnancy”? Again, the power of semantics. Our Planned Parenthood terminology reinforced that we were removing an unwanted pregnancy, not killing a fetus.) I was also given an antibiotic, then sent home with a prescription for a painkiller and an antinausea medication to take as needed, in addition to pills called misoprostol to be taken between twenty-four and forty-eight hours later, which would complete the process of cleaning out the uterus.
The days that followed, alone in my apartment, were sheer agony. If all had worked as it should have, I would have passed the fetus within the first six to eight hours and the rest of the uterine lining within about forty-eight hours. But nothing went as “advertised.” Of course, since the law requires “informed consent,” I had been told about possible complications such as severe cramping, hemorrhage, and infection. And I had been instructed to call and to return to the clinic if I suffered these side effects. I’d also been instructed to return for a follow-up visit. I was, however, a very bad patient.
My cramping was excruciating and went on for days and days. I was too ill to get out of bed, ran a fever, and bled heavily. I was frightened, but whether out of shame, humiliation, or self-punishment—or maybe some combination of the three—I would not call the clinic. I couldn’t bear the thought of going to an emergency room or an ob-gyn because there was no way I was going to confess that I’d brought this on myself by aborting my second pregnancy. My phone kept ringing and ringing as the clinic tried to reach me for follow up, but I wouldn’t answer. I mentioned nothing to my parents by phone. I suffered alone.
After two weeks I returned to work though I still felt so weak I’d come home exhausted and go straight back to bed. Finally, after about eight weeks of feeling ill, I felt recovered enough to return to the clinic for one of my volunteer shifts.
“Abby, where have you been? What happened to you? Are you okay? We’ve been worried sick about you! Why wouldn’t you answer?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m fine. Just so busy with work and everything. Sorry I worried you.” And that’s all I told them.
In the months that followed, I tried to just put the entire event out of my mind. I said my final tearful farewell to Justin, and my divorce from Mark was finalized in December 2003. I don’t think I was ever more relieved to bid farewell to a year. But as I did, I recognized two bright spots in what had otherwise been a year of heartbreak.
The first was Lobby Day, which had galvanized my commitment to Planned Parenthood. The second was my decision to throw myself back into school and complete my psychology major at Texas A&M. In the aftermath of my grief-filled spring, I’d determined to move forward and overcome my failures. I knew I wanted to give to others, perhaps as a counselor or therapist, or maybe through the Peace Corps or teaching. Whatever I chose, I decided, I was going to be a leader and would fight for those who needed advocates. In contrast to my earlier college years, now that I had a sense of direction, I threw myself into my studies with a passion, and my grades showed it.
By spring of 2004, my increased volunteer role at Planned Parenthood took a new turn: I became the campus intern at Texas A&M. Given my heavy school schedule, it was ideal, since I was spending all my time on campus anyway. The role took approximately ten hours a week, though it varied a good bit. Whenever the school held a health fair, I’d set up a table to equip students with health information. I talked to students about STD and HIV screening as well as contraception alternatives. I loved my new Planned Parenthood role, and it seemed to fit perfectly with my desire to counsel and teach.