STFU, Abby Johnson
Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood director who joined forced with the steadfastly anti-choice group Live Action, is a paid puppet of the anti-choice movement who was recruited in order to make Planned Parenthood look bad.
In a remarkable streak of coffee and research I managed to discover some hidden gems about this Abby Johnson lady - you know, the girl who defected to the conservative anti-choice movement.
Let’s talk about her book, “Unplanned.”
Reading the first few pages you can tell this was written by a professional story writer, with references to inner monologue to develop and illuminate the emotional struggle between heart and mind. For copyright reasons I cannot post excerpts from her book, but you can view the first few pages via Amazon’s book preview module.
The story is written well, capturing the essence of what a good narrative does in order to take you on an emotional roller coaster through a gallery of images gently painted by your mind by a diatribe of words that expose a vast difference of opinion between Abby and “them” (the word she describes as the staff performing a hypothetical abortion).
It starts off on a “typical day” in the abortion stalag, Abby doing her mundane work as the clock ticks away. Suddenly, though, she is called to assist an abortion, and the free-fall begins. She is met by staff that she has worked with for years, but describes them as if she has never met them. Her thoughts are potent with doubt about what is going on, about how there is a person on the screen, how the mother is heavily sedated and laying helplessly on the table as the doctor makes jokes about the tools he is using as he conducts the abortion. Abby sees the outline of a person on the ultrasound screen as she holds the probe on the mother’s stomach and continually reminds herself that fetuses can’t feel pain, and that while she “doesn’t want to be part of an abortion” and “doesn’t want to be one of them,” she must be strong and get through this horrible event.
As the machine turns on, suddenly Abby goes into emotional shock. She describes the fetus as desperately running away from the metal device inside the womb, pushing and kicking in the opposite direction as it obviously is scared for its life. It fights futilely until it disappears completely, and suddenly the sentences get shorter and Abby drops the probe. Her life has changed completely.
I challenge you to read the first few pages and come up with a different opinion than this: #1) It’s extremely hard to believe that Abby spent eight years working for Planned Parenthood (attaining the status of director) and she never once had a challenge of emotions as strong as this; #2) It’s extremely hard to believe that Abby wrote this book, because her choice of words, emphasis on talking points and adjective usage is completely different from the words she uses on her blog, which, oddly enough, only came to be after the book came out; #3) It’s extremely hard to believe that Abby Johnson is not a puppet for the anti-choice movement, solely based on the amount of media exposure and popularity as a Hero of the Fetus she has received. This story isn’t her recounting a painful memory - this is her working with a book writer, both being hired to come up with a heart-wrenching lie about what really happened.
Abby Johnson is a sellout. She is someone who felt the crinkled green paper of power and became addicted. I believe that Abby was approached by someone with an offer of money and popularity and Abby took it.
Sauce is a blog that's been floating around Tumblr. I figured _P would like it.
EDIT: Turns out...she was definitely lying about pretty much all of it. Thanks to madlovesong for the link!
Remember when we told you about the Planned Parenthood clinic director in Texas who quit her job to join the 40 Days for Life wingnuts? Well, Abby Johnson is back in the news - this time because her story of experiencing a radical change of heart just isn’t holding up to scrutiny. According to Texas Monthly, portions of Abby Johnson’s story may have been fabricated to cover up the real reason for her departure from Planned Parenthood - slipping job performance.
The rollout of Abby Johnson as a culture-war celebrity got off to a rocky start. In early November, the online magazine Salon reported that on September 27, the day after Johnson says she witnessed the ultrasound-guided abortion and had her epiphany, she appeared as a guest on the Bryan public radio program Fair and Feminist to discuss her work at the clinic. In the hour-long interview, Johnson gives an enthusiastic defense of the clinic and ridicules the 40 Days for Life protest. She doesn’t sound like someone who’d had a life-changing experience the previous day or who had soured on her employer’s mission . . .
Johnson’s departure from Planned Parenthood turned out to be a more complex story than it first appeared. At a court hearing for an injunction sought by Planned Parenthood to prevent Johnson from divulging confidential information to her new allies, two of Johnson’s former co-workers testified that she told them in the days before she resigned that she was afraid she was about to be fired. At one time, Johnson, who was named the regional Planned Parenthood affiliate’s employee of the year in 2008, seemed to have a promising future with the organization. By mid-2009, however, her relationship with her employer had begun to deteriorate. Salon reported that on October 2, Johnson was summoned to Houston to meet with her supervisors to discuss problems with her job performance. She was placed on what Planned Parenthood calls a “performance improvement plan.” It was just three days later, on Monday, that Johnson made her tearful appearance at the Coalition for Life. The following day she faxed Planned Parenthood a resignation letter, which mentioned nothing about a crisis of conscience . . .
Johnson’s account is so plausible and rich in detail that even Planned Parenthood seems not to have investigated whether this event ever took place. At my request, the staff at the Bryan clinic examined patient records from September 26, the day Johnson claims to have had her conversion experience, and spoke with the physician who performed abortions on that date. According to Planned Parenthood, there is no record of an ultrasound-guided abortion performed on September 26. The physician on duty told the organization that he did not use an ultrasound that day, nor did Johnson assist on any abortion procedure. “Planned Parenthood can assure you that no abortion patients underwent an ultrasound-guided abortion on September 26,” said a spokesperson. It’s difficult to imagine that Johnson simply got the date wrong; September 12 was the only other day that month that the clinic performed surgical abortions.
Could clinic staff and the physician be mistaken? The Texas Department of State Health Services requires abortion providers to fill out a form documenting basic information about each procedure performed at a clinic. This document is known as the Induced Abortion Report Form. The Bryan clinic reported performing fifteen surgical abortions on September 26. Johnson has consistently said that the patient in question was thirteen weeks pregnant, which is plausible, since thirteen weeks is right at the cusp of when physicians will consider using an ultrasound to assist with the procedure. Yet none of the patients listed on the report for that day were thirteen weeks pregnant; in fact, none were beyond ten weeks.
This has cover up written all over it. I don’t mean to be suspicious of people, but the facts in this case just aren’t holding up to close examination. I’m more apt to believe actual medical records than I am to believe a disgruntled former employee.
Kudos to Nate Blakeslee for digging up the dirt on this one.