Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey across the Life Line

by Abby Johnson

goal from our Planned Parenthood affiliate was to perform twenty-five to thirty-five procedures on those days.

If we are pro-choice, I thought, then we believe in women making their own choices, right? So why do we feel we need to protect clients from conversations about their choices? What does it hurt if they hear information and make the choice to leave? We want them to consider their alternatives and to make the decision that’s right for them. Right? I found myself wondering if I belonged here.

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,

The truth is that abortion had by now become a simple and normal reality in my life. Every week I walked alongside

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.

I would have passed the fetus within the first six to eight hours and the rest of the uterine lining within about

“Well, Abby, you work at an abortion clinic. People don’t like that. It’s one of the most controversial places in the country to work. If this is what you plan to do, you’d better

Viability shifts as medical science improves. Are you

what is moral or immoral, flexes as science advances?”

a large group of people who disagree with you but are so persistently . . . well . . . nice

secretly looked up my own patient file and for the first time, laid eyes on

looked back at me with absolute certainty and declared, “This is guilt I will carry the rest of my life.” I couldn’t help but feel guilt myself for the part I had played in her story.

At times, I was afraid to pray—afraid that God would tell me to give up my job. I didn’t want to give it up. I felt useful there.

I was leading an unexamined life, filled with inconsistencies.

had a career in educating women about contraception and yet, for the third time, conceived while using contraceptives. Doug was ecstatic.

There’s nothing like opposition to solidify

We were taught to refer to them—and think of them—as anti-choice extremists who would do and say anything to take away the rights of women and

Because our clinic did abortions and because those abortions were lucrative, our bottom line seemed okay to me. I knew we got grants from a government

I told my staff, they should let them know it might be bad—really bad. I didn’t want any surprised patients. I asked them

number of medication abortion patients who had to return for a surgical abortion because the medication abortion didn’t completely

The medication abortion hadn’t worked. The fetus was still alive and growing! Good cardiac activity, apparently healthy.

they were worse. The bottom line was truly ugly and truly scary.[7]

We were one of the few clinics in our affiliate that performed abortions. And those abortions earned a lot of money. The clinics that didn’t perform abortions had little means of providing revenue.

cost. A late-term abortion, I knew, could cost between $3,000 and $4,000. There was big money to be made.

abortion machine in the business of killing unborn babies and meeting revenue goals. And my hands,

It created an opportunity to make news as the apparent “victim” of pro-lifers, it could intimidate their opponents, and it could either rally or intimidate their

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.

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

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

As of this writing, 116 former abortion workers have been assisted by And Then There Were None. And the rate of workers escaping is on the increase.