Reality Check Turns Planned Parenthood Director Around

I've compared facts to big, heavy, hard - and occasionally sharp - objects scattered around the landscape. A person doesn't have to pay attention to them. It's quite easy to close one's eyes and walk around.

The problem is that, sooner or later, you'll run into a fact. And that can hurt.

A case in point:

"Planned Parenthood Director Quits After Watching Abortion on Ultrasound"
FOXNews (November 2, 2009)

" The former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in southeast Texas says she had a 'change of heart' after watching an abortion last month — and she quit her job and joined a pro-life group in praying outside the facility.

"Abby Johnson, 29, used to escort women from their cars to the clinic in the eight years she volunteered and worked for Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas. But she says she knew it was time to leave after she watched a fetus 'crumple' as it was vacuumed out of a patient's uterus in September.

" 'When I was working at Planned Parenthood I was extremely pro-choice,' Johnson told FoxNews.com. But after seeing the internal workings of the procedure for the first time on an ultrasound monitor, 'I would say there was a definite conversion in my heart ... a spiritual conversion.'

"Johnson said she became disillusioned with her job after her bosses pressured her for months to increase profits by performing more and more abortions, which cost patients between $505 and $695...."

Johnson lost more than her job and its income when she quit.

"...A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood refused to answer questions about Johnson's accusations, but released a statement noting that a district court had issued a temporary restraining order against the former branch director and against the Coalition for Life, an anti-abortion group with which Johnson is now affiliated...."

Although the FOXNews article quotes Johnson, the news service follows traditional American news standards, identifying the Coalition for Life, a group which seeks to outlaw the right of women to kill their babies, as as "anti-abortion" group: not "pro-life."

And, FOXNews quotes Planned Parenthood, a "pro-choice" group:

"...A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood told FoxNews.com that it offers a range of services at it 850 health centers nationwide, providing pregnancy tests, vaccinations and women's health services, 'including wellness exams, breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraception, and STD testing and treatment.'

" 'Planned Parenthood's focus is on prevention,' wrote Diane Quest, the group's National Media Director. 'Nationwide, more than 90% of the health care Planned Parenthood affiliates provide is preventive in nature,' explaining that a 'core component the organization's mission is to help women plan healthy pregnancies and prevent unintended pregnancies.'..."

I think one of the greatest threats to "women's rights," in the sense used since the sixties and seventies, has been improved imaging technologies like ultrasound.

Back in the 'good old days,' people could believe that a baby was a "formless mass of protoplasm." Relatively few people had seen a premature infant, and fewer had seen the body parts left over from late-term abortions.

Technology like ultrasound ruined that approach: and in utero photography was even worse. An pre-birth baby sucking his or her thumb doesn't look like the Gerber kid - but is quite obviously human.

And almost a half-century of social engineering haven't (quite) succeeded in convincing Americans that it's okay to kill babies. Provided that they can be persuaded that the squirming lump inside a pregnant woman is a human being.

If the article said why Johnson watched that abortion, I missed it. Unlike the doctor who sucked the babies out, I would have thought that a director could stay comfortably distant from the unpleasantness that goes along with killing someone.

Whatever the reason, I'm glad that Johnson had that reality check. Not because I want her to feel bad for having helped kill so many people - but because it apparently helped her realized that killing people was wrong. Even if they're babies. "Unwanted" babies, of course.

I'm not very surprised that Abby Johnson, who apparently was born around 1980, was very pro-choice. What astounds me is the number of American women around her age who aren't all for killing babies and other 'liberated' ideas.

People growing up in America are immersed in a culture which offers a fairly steady stream of entertainment in which 'unplanned pregnancies' are as repulsive as bankruptcy was many generations ago, women's studies in schools, and other reinforcements for a 'correct' attitude toward abortion.

Under the circumstances, someone who gives up a job - particularly at this time - for reasons which run directly counter to the dominant culture's values - deserves respect.

Related posts:

• "Inconvenient Classes of Persons and Health Care"
  (July 26, 2009)
• "Late Term Abortions Reality Check"
  (June 2, 2009)
• "Pro-Abortion Slogans Sound Nice, Hide Nasty Facts"
  (November 15, 2008)
• "Dred Scott, the Slavery Compromise, and Who to Trust"
  (February 2, 2009)