Free Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey Across the Life Line by Abby Johnson, Cindy Lambert Page B

decided on adoption. I connected her to a Christian adoption organization. They were able to link her up with a family. Accepting that the child had been conceived through sexual assault, the adoptive family not only gave the baby a wonderful home, but they extended tremendous support and love to the young birth mother herself. I found deep joy in being part of bringing such God-given healing to this wounded woman, another confirmation to me that God had me here for a purpose: to do His work in a broken world.
    “I just know I’m here for a reason,” I told Doug. “I share a mission with my coworkers to care for our patients. Several of us feel that way.” But then I admitted I only felt that way when the woman chose not to abort. I found that odd, since I still believed that we needed legal access to abortion and that Planned Parenthood should offer it. Otherwise lives would be lost, or women would be hurt through botched abortions by unqualified providers. If that sounds more like talking points than a conversation between loved ones, you’re right. Yet I repeated those talking points a good bit, as if hoping to convince my mom or Doug—or more likely myself—that the clinic was doing God’s work.
    “Abby, I know you love your job,” Doug responded, “but do you really think you can separate what goes on there into two unrelated matters and pretend that the good done on the one hand cancels out the abortion on the other? Doing wonderful things doesn’t balance out the ending of babies’ lives. Your paycheck comes from those abortions, Abby. How do you reconcile that?”
    I fumed. “We don’t do any late-term abortions, Doug. We don’t end the lives of babies. That’s just misinformation—right-wing political propaganda! At the early stages, a fetus is just not viable outside the womb. Far better to remove fetal tissue early than to bring an unwanted baby into this world. Can you imagine where society would be today if all the abortions since Roe v. Wade hadn’t happened? Besides, women have the right—the responsibility—to determine if and when they want to have a child.” The debate was repeated more times than I can count.
    I had two coworkers who were devout Catholics. One Monday they told me they’d heard an antiabortion sermon on Sunday. They confided to me that they felt the same way I did—that they were doing God’s work except for abortion cases, and they talked about how they avoided any connection to the rooms where abortions were performed. We affirmed one another’s thinking. In truth, nearly all of my colleagues worked in the clinic because of a sincere desire to help women—and many, like me, were drawn in spite of, not because of, abortion.
    One day I counseled another woman who had been raped. Our counseling session was heartbreaking, and I agonized with her over her trauma. After vacillating back and forth, she chose abortion. I remember the depth of her weeping after it was over. In the months that followed, as she returned for checkups, we talked about her healing process. After several months, she felt that she was dealing with the rape fairly well.
    “I was the victim. I completely understand that I carry no blame for the rape. But,” she began weeping, “I keep having nightmares about the abortion. I feel so much guilt. I know I deliberately took the life of my child.”
    I tried to assure her that she’d made a difficult but understandable decision, but she 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.
    I would discover over time that this was not uncommon. I’ve seen many women suffer emotional pain and guilt, often for years, over their decision to abort. In cases of rape, I found it particularly sad because often abortion seemed to add a new wound on top of the first.
    During our engagement, Doug and I decided we wanted to