Unplanned Part One

This evening I decided to take a small break from my articles I've been reading to read part of Unplanned, an autobiography of the courageous Abby Johnson, though she would be the first person to tell you she's not. Abby's story is one of heart rending and heartwarming proportions, starting out as a young college student at Texas A&M, and deciding that she had the heart to help women and was convinced by a recruiter that the best way to do that would be to volunteer at Planned Parenthood.

Before I go any further into this post, I should note in case it has not been clear prior to this that I am Pro-Life. I do not support the industry that abortion has become, nor do I support the death penalty, which the Catechism of the Catholic church states is almost never acceptable in the modern world and should only be used if all other efforts to protect the innocent have been exhausted. Why do I make this personal distinction in this post? For two reasons: The first reason is that many times someone will say they are pro-life but then preach to you about how awesome the death penalty is. The second is because I condemn vehemently anyone who would use violence against providers of abortion; such people are anathema to me. Life cannot, and must not, be preserved through violent means. To take a life to preserve another makes as little sense as burning down a shed to protect the goods inside, the world is diminished for the loss, and so is the person who has committed the action.

Now, to go back on topic; what makes Abby's story interesting thus far, is that it is not her story alone. Anyone who has read up on either side of the abortion issue knows that people join each side because they are drawn to similar viewpoints as their own, yet that they may have something in common with a person on "the other side of the fence". This is illustrated beautifully in this book as she fleshes out both the Planned Parenthood volunteers and employees as well as the Coalition for Life volunteers in detail, making no one (this far in at least) seem like a bad person or a fanatic as we so often see the two sides portraying one another. These are real people, with actual flaws and positive points who are really living their lives day in and day out; these people in the book are not archetypes of what we expect from pro-life, pro-abortion, or pro-choice individuals.

And that my dear friends is just the introduction at the beginning of the book. Abby challenges the reader before anything is even said to look at the other side as their fellow humans and to know that good and bad people exist on both sides of the debate. She even takes potshots at herself throughout the three page introduction, admitting she is far from perfect and that the account that follows contains her own faults for public inspection, something I doubt many of us would be willing to do.

The book begins with an ultrasound guided abortion, and how at the time she had the deepest respect for this visiting doctor because he only used that method. It reduces the risk to perforating the woman's uterus among other complications that are typically associated with the procedure. When asked to help, she was a bit nervous but told herself it would help with counseling women. I think the biggest bombshell by that point had to be the following sentence on page two, "We did abortions only every other Saturday, and the assigned goal from our Planned Parenthood affiliate was to perform twenty-five to thirty-five procedures on those days."

Let me do some reiterating, the "assigned goal" was twenty-five to thirty-five abortions on the days that they had abortions available. A quota, to have X number of abortions. This was the first time she'd helped directly in an abortion outside of holding a woman's hand after counseling, and the first time she'd ever been to an ultrasound guided abortion. She could see the toes and fingers, and kept telling herself that despite it reminding her of the first ultrasound of her own daughter, fetal tissue couldn't feel pain. Then the fetus began to move away and struggle against the instruments on the screen as the doctor light-heartedly told the nurse to turn on the suction with "Beam me up Scotty". Watching that unborn child be sucked up, Abby Johnson had an epiphany...eight years of her life, she'd been helping kill people.

(One last thing: I ran this through 750words.com, a private blogging site with statistical analyses of your words to tell you what's on your mind. "Upset" and "Death" were the two things it listed as the main topics for this.)