We must be innovative to stop abortion

By Abby Johnson

Until last September I was the director of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas. For nine years I was involved with an organization that was about the business of selling abortions. Then last Sept. 26 a woman who was 13 weeks pregnant walked into my clinic, and my life dramatically changed.

I had never seen an abortion happen on an ultrasound. I'm not sure why, as the director of the clinic, I was asked to be in the procedure room on that day, because it wasn't a normal part of my duties. My job during the procedure was to hold the probe on the woman's abdomen. I saw the baby fighting to move away from the probe. I saw its life disappear.

I thought, "What am I doing?" Then I thought, "Never again." I looked out the window and saw a couple of women praying, and I thought, "That's where I need to go."

After my change of heart I joined a group called Coalition for Life, which prays outside the clinic where I used to work. When I'm not there I travel and speak out to promote pregnancy resource centers and groups like Vitae Foundation who use media to help women find these pregnancy resource centers.

It's great that Vitae is on Facebook and purchasing Google ads to advertise to women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy. That's innovative. That's also good because we have an innovative opponent in Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood sets the standard in the abortion industry.

During the last year I worked for Planned Parenthood, I attended the National Abortion Federation conference. A man from Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa presented an innovative concept, a method of providing medical abortion: RU-486. He said this would be the new standard. All you would need is a computer, monitor, keyboard, webcam and cash drawer. The other thing they had was a loophole.

You see, most state laws say a physician must administer the RU-486 medication. However the Des Moines Planned Parenthood has numerous clinics scattered around the state in rural areas. Because it's not cost effective to send a doctor way out to do five or six abortions in one day, they installed computer technology and the cash box in each rural clinic.

The same equipment was installed in Des Moines. The health services assistant at the rural clinics will counsel the patient on the medical abortion. When the patient says she's ready, the assistant calls or texts the doctor in Des Moines and has the patient sit in front of a webcam. The doctor is in front of a webcam, so they're face to face via technology.

The doctor says, "Are you ready to take the abortion pill?" The patient says, "Yes." The doctor pushes a button on the keyboard and the cash drawer pops open in the rural clinic. The abortion pill is in the drawer. The patient takes it out of the drawer and takes it in front of the webcam so the doctor can see her taking the RU-486. That is how they are getting around the doctor administering the medication.

Innovative? Yes. However, these women have no way to contact a physician if they have a problem after-hours. Her only option would be to go to an ER that may be one to two hours away. If she's hemorrhaging or having a serious complication, she could die before she made it to the ER.

I believe we've made abortion about politics, and that's not going to change our culture of death to a culture of life. That's not what it's about. It's about the 4,000 children being killed everyday. We must save these children and their mothers.

Abby Johnson spoke last week at a Vitae Foundation benefit dinner in Jackson.