Pro-life voice Abby Johnson shares testimony of leaving Planned Parenthood and fighting for the innocent

Former Planned Parent employee-turned pro-life activist Abby Johnson, whose testimony and memoir inspired the movie “Unplanned,” challenged students in Friday’s Convocation to be bold amidst a daunting secular culture that promotes abortion.

Years ago, Johnson volunteered at Planned Parenthood and eventually became the director of the clinic. Over her eight-year career in the industry, Johnson helped facilitate more than 22,000 abortions.

“I really didn’t even know how I got to that point,” she told students. “It just happened in a blink of an eye.”

Her transition to pro-life advocacy started when she assisted with an ultrasound-guided abortion procedure. At 13 weeks, the pre-born baby had every bodily function and anatomy as a fully grown adult.

For the first time, Johnson witnessed the true nature of her work as she saw the unborn baby suffer at the hands of a suction tube.

“I knew in that moment that what I saw in just those few seconds was not choice, was not reproductive justice; it was not justice of any kind,” she said. “It was certainly not health care. I knew that what I witnessed in those moments was murder. Murder of an innocent human being in the womb. And I knew I could not participate in that again.”

Johnson grew up in a Christian conservative household, attended church every Sunday, and participated in weekly youth groups.

She told students that her downward spiral was a slow fade, beginning with immodesty in her language, behavior, and attire. Those habits ultimately steered her down a dark path of sin, leading to premarital sex, unplanned pregnancies, and abortions.

“There are many sins that lead up to the sin of abortion,” she said. “I didn’t go to bed one night, this good Christian kid, and wake up working in an abortion clinic. … Sin comes into your life one compromise, one justification, one lie at a time. It creeps in slowly, a little bit at a time. You are all just one sin away from walking down the path that I walked down. And it is not the path that you want.”

“I was a compassionate person,” she added, noting that her intentions to help women were genuine. “I was a person who was seeking justice. But they perverted that sense of justice that was inside of me, and they used it against the innocent human being that I should have been trying to protect.”

Johnson encouraged students to live counter-cultural lives because she said the secular world aims to misguide and manipulate the vulnerable minds of young people.

“At the end of your life, you’re going to be face-to-face with the one true God. And He is not going to ask you how many friends you had on Instagram,” she said. “He is not going to ask you how many people followed you on Tik Tok. He will ask you what you did for the least of these.”

The pro-life movement has seen tremendous strides in improvements in America, most recently in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

Johnson challenged students to continue fighting for life, despite the ruling tilting in the favor of the pro-life movement.

“This is the beginning,” she declared before exiting the Convocation stage. “Now is the time for us to stand up. Now, more than ever. … I can’t end abortion on my own. I will not end abortion on my own. It’s going to take all of you to help us do it.”