Hearbeat Press - July 2022 Edition

   

    The movie "Gone in 60 Seconds," is a pretty average Nickolas Cage movie from 2000. It centers around a former car thief (Cage) who, after retiring from a life of crime, is forced back into the game in order to save his brother from a crime syndicate run by a particularly nasty crime boss. It's not a movie that is meant to make you think and is instead filled with all the explosions, high octane car chases, and general B movie material that you would expect from a low budget action film. It's dumb, cheesy, and hardly worth the two hours and seven minutes that it takes to watch it. By comparison, Abby Johnson's story of "Gone in 60 Seconds" is much different. 
    Abby Johnson was at the top of her game and well on her way to getting everything she ever wanted. At just 29 years old she was the director of a well performing Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas, she had just been awarded the 2008 employee of the year award, and she was in a perfect position to rise higher in the ranks of the greater Planned Parenthood corporation. And then she was asked to assist in an ultrasound-guided abortion on September 26, 2009.
    Though she had been director of her clinic for years and had been volunteering with the organization since college, she had never seen an ultrasound-guided abortion before. And, because she had never seen or participated in the procedure before, she didn't think anything of it. She stepped into the procedure room eager to help; little did she know she would walk out of that room a changed woman. 
    At the request of the visiting abortion doctor, Abby took up the probe on the ultrasound machine and held it to the abdomen of the woman who was resting on the examination table in front of her. The machine purred as it sprung to life and began transmitting grainy black and white images onto a nearby monitor and, as the doctor and the attending nurse prepped the patient for the procedure, Abby glanced up at the screen. What she saw glued her eyes to it. In her own words Abby recalls, "When I looked on the screen I saw a baby on the screen." There it was, pixelated and yet in clear focus, the outline of the tiny thirteen week old baby calmly nestled inside of its mother's womb. Abby couldn't help but look closer. This didn't look anything like the clump of cells or inanimate tissue that was suppose to be present at this stage of the pregnancy. It was human. 
    As she continued to watch, another form appeared on the screen just inches away from the baby: a suction tube barely bigger than two inches. For a split second, as the alien-looking device moved closer and closer to the baby, Abby remembers thinking that it didn't belong, that this whole thing was wrong, and she had the horrible realization that she was helping it happen. "I saw the probe going into the woman's uterus, and then at that moment, I saw the baby moving, and trying to get away from the probe." Abby recalls. But it was too late; without a second thought, the abortion doctor turned on the suction machine and, after a short and futile struggle against the vacuum, the little body crumbled and disappeared. In a moment, in 60 seconds, it was gone and Abby was left staring at an empty screen. 
What she saw in the procedure room that day radically changed Abby Johnson. She couldn't get the form of that little baby fighting for its life out of her mind and she began to realize that this baby was no different than the thousands of other abortions that had occurred at her clinic. A tremendous guilt welled up inside of her when she remembered all the women she had counseled onto that very same abortion table. Within the walls of her workplace and through her diligence, thousands of little babies had been brutally and quickly killed just like the one she had seen but never given a second thought. Racked with guilt and shame, Abby could no longer justify her work as she once had and, in October of 2009, she left Planned Parenthood. She went to the Coalition for Life, a pro-life organization that, up until recently, Abby had despised for hamstringing Planned Parenthood's work. But now, with nowhere else to go, she turned to her former rivals. They welcomed her with open arms and in true Christ-like love, helped her move past her former profession into a new, pro-life mission.

Abby Johnson is now one of the most outspoken advocates leading the charge against abortion in America. She routinely speaks on the issue and shares her story; she has joined the Coalition for Life in its prayer vigils in front of Planned Parenthood facilities including her former clinic; and she founded the organization And Then There Were None, a halfway program for former abortion workers who want to leave the industry. It was once said of Abby, "God touched and opened her eyes...she saw through the deception of the enemy and she came back to God."

Story details courtesy of abbyj.com, texasoberver.org

Photot Credit: Vitae Foundation