The ProLife Team Podcast 103 | Abby Johnson & Jacob Barr | Talking about Feminism and Abortion

Podcast Transcript:

The transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.

Jacob Barr :

Welcome to the pro-life Team Podcast i am Jacob Barr. Today I’m joined by Abby Johnson and we’re going to be going through a set of questions regarding feminism and abortion. So Abby, I’m excited to have you on the Pro-life Team Podcast working on this History of Abortion museum exhibit on feminism and abortion. Would you most people know who you are but for those who don’t, would you share a little bit about who you are, your background, and what led you to the subject of abortion?

Abby Johnson :

Sure well, I ran a Planned Parenthood facility i was there for eight years at an affiliate in Texas, a Houston affiliate, and you know, believed I was there to help women. And Protect Women got involved as a college student, didn’t really, I didn’t know anything about Planned Parenthood actually, at the time, but was, you know, roped in by their talking points of wanting to keep abortion safe, legal and rare that was the talking point at the time, back in 2001 and ultimately ended up leaving. A few things had happened. The institution of abortion quotas we were building a very large which is now operational, now very large seven story 78,000 thousand square foot abortion facility that was going to be aborting babies through the sixth month of pregnancy. Several different things have taken place but ultimately ended up leaving after witnessing a live ultrasound guided abortion. The first one I’d ever witnessed of a 13 week old baby, and I saw this baby fighting and struggling for his life against the abortion instruments and I knew then at that moment that there was life in the womb, there was humanity in the womb. And I knew that if those two things were true, then I was on the wrong side of this debate.

Jacob Barr :

Yeah thank you for sharing that that’s a powerful story. So what is a woman?

Abby Johnson :

A woman is an adult human female simple.

Jacob Barr :

Perfect to the best of your knowledge, are women in America mostly pro-choice pro-life Undecided, or something else?

Abby Johnson :

I, you know, I think that AI think for a lot of people, I think a lot of women do. They will, if you ask them i think a lot of women will tell you that they are pro-choice But I think if you really start to ask them, you know what does that mean? What do you mean when you say you’re pro-choice and you begin asking them about abortion and you say, you know, what do you think an abortion is? And these are even women who have had abortions, and you start asking them, you know, what do you think happens during an abortion ’cause you have to remember the overwhelming majority of women are consciously sedated, or some somewhat sedated during their abortion procedure, and they’re not given. The proper informed consent before they have their abortion so these are not women that have been given, you know, all of the information about what an abortion is, what’s going to happen to them while they’re on the table. So if you begin asking women, you know, what is an abortion what does it mean to be pro-choice What happens to a woman during an abortion what happens to the fetus during an abortion? What you’ll find is that the overwhelming majority of these women do not have an answer to that they have no idea. And so if you really start educating them on these things, they might walk away with a different perspective in fact, that is what I have found almost all of the time. A lot of these women, you know, they go into the conversation believing that the only way to support women. Is to support abortion. But when you really educate them, I think there’s a lack of education on abortion and also on the physical and emotional ramifications of abortion so we live in a society that has told women by and large for the past 50 to 60 years that women who have abortions are going to be fine, that they have no regret. That there are no physical side effects to abortion there are no emotional side effects to abortion. That you go back to living your life like nothing took place inside of your body, inside of your heart, inside of your soul. But that is very far from true. Abortion is one of the most unnatural things that a woman will do ever, in her lifetime but the other side has made it almost like a rite of passage in order to be a full woman, in order to be a, you know, full-fledged woman, you need to have an abortion. But I think that through education, through understanding and honestly, you know, I think that we try to invent all of these new things to do in the pro-life movement. But you know, if I’m totally honest, I think that we really just need to get back to basics in the pro-life movement. Explaining to people what an abortion is, explaining prenatal development to people do not understand that you know, inside of the womb is, you know, a growing human baby i mean anybody that can compare a human life to a parasite that tells me they do not have basic understanding of human development. So I think in the pro-life movement, we can look to all of these other goals and all these other things that we want to achieve and that’s fine to have goals. But at the end of the day, I think that we really need to get back to focusing just on basic elementary education. What is a human being? What is human development what does that look like in the womb? And what is an abortion? And how does it affect women, our families and children? And how does it affect society? Because there is a societal impact. You know, abortion does affect our culture it affects our society it affects our economy because it is a violation of natural law. And anything that is a violation of natural law is going to trickle down into all systems of humanity.

Jacob Barr :

Excellent points. Thank you for sharing on that question. In your words, what is feminism? And secondly, are most women feminist?

Abby Johnson :

Yeah, so feminism at its core, when it was first developed, I guess when it was first made into an idea, was simply. Sort of a it was a cause to create equality between men and women. And you know first it was it was really about voting rights it was it was the suffrage movement was really when feminism sort of came to be. And you know most of the early feminist believed in the sanctity of human life not all of them, but most of them, did believe in the sanctity of human life. In fact, they would celebrate when one of the other suffragists would have a baby, they would, you know, raise a flag in their yard as a celebration to show that these, you know, women, these other suffragists had children it was a celebration when new life had come into the world. And now though, we have seen feminism. Warp into something very different. And I think that, yes, a lot of women today would call themselves feminism would call themselves feminists. But I think actually a lot of feminists aren’t even sure what that means anymore, because a lot of people who would call themselves feminists can’t even define what a woman is anymore and so I think they are i think this concept of feminism and supporting women’s rights is really at conflict with each other right now, because we don’t even know what. They don’t even know what women’s rights are at this point in time. And they have, really the feminist movement has really overstepped itself. In a way, because they say that they are a movement that stands for women and stand for equality of women, yet they have given up their equality and so now they are actually moving backwards so that now they are giving biological men more rights. And now they are giving biological men more rights to women’s spaces. So they fought for women to have their own individual spaces for so long, right? They fought for so long for, you know, women to have individual spaces in sports, in competitions, you know, all of all of these things and now they are allowing biological men. To take up those individual spaces that they fought for. And so eventually this is going to come to a head and the feminist movement is i believe, going to die if they continue going in this direction because feminism is not going to make any sense anymore. If you can’t even define what a woman is, then how can you? How can you define feminism how can you be a part of a movement that champions women when technically there is no such thing as a woman? So i think that feminism has done a great disservice to women over the past few decades. Now we see so much androgyny taken over. Our society, We now live in a society that wants to eliminate gender roles from men and women we want women to be men we want men to be women. And that is not how God created us to be. That’s not how natural law created us to be. Because natural law is equal to God’s law so. But we, you know, I think that we’re. We are in times of confusion. And I think a lot of that confusion has been spurred on by the feminist movement and so many people desperately wanting to call themselves feminists and not really even understanding what that movement represents or what it stands for.

Jacob Barr :

Thank you for reflecting on that. Is there are there any other? Well, if you were to summarize the positive contributions of feminism, what might those be and then also, if you would maybe summarize what the negative contributions of feminism have been, you know what would those be?

Abby Johnson :

Yeah, I mean, certainly the suffragists. You know, had it right, you know, equal voting rights for women. Certainly that’s a good thing. Although I will tell you that women tend to vote for more liberal policies. So I do think that we need to be have more of AI, think that we do need to have kind of a focus. Of really helping women understand some of these policies that we’re voting on because it goes back to that education piece, you know, with abortion education, with, you know, how abortion facts our society, how it actually effects women. You know, a lot of the studies that we’re seeing come out are not peer reviewed. Studies they’re not. They’re, you know, they’re funded by Planned Parenthood they’re funded by these leftist pro abortion organizations so are we actually good and getting good data when they’re telling us that 95 % of women who have abortions do not regret their abortion? Well, you know, are we really looking at the facts are or are we just accepting the headline? Right we should not just accept any headline we need to actually look into it and if you look into the data that’s being presented in a lot of these studies, particularly that one that was put out several years ago, you will find that they stopped collecting data at five years post abortion well, what we also know to be true is that trauma. The traumatic experience usually does not manifest in the body, does not manifest in the mind until an average of 15 years after the traumatic event. So if you’re asking a woman who’s only five years post abortion, hey, do you think you made a good decision, then yes, most of them are going to say yes. That was a good decision for me because the trauma has not actually manifested in her body and in her spirit yet. So a lot of these, you know a lot of these studies that we’re looking at, we have to really pay attention to you know how that study was done and you know what kind of groups, what were the groups that they were looking at where these, you know, where the people paid by a certain institution, all of those things matter. So, you know, certainly I think that we need to go back to education. For what we’re actually voting on. And we need to look at the narratives that are being put out there for the public, particularly how they’re geared toward women. We know that women are going to vote based on more emotionality. So, you know, what are our campaigns saying to women? How are they appealing to women? More leftist emotion is going to appeal to women, but is it actually accurate? And so we need to be doing more educational work when it comes to women. But certainly feminism did help bring about the right for women to vote, and that was a good thing. I do think that we also see, you know, evidence of more. Autonomy and medicine, so women being able to make their own decisions when it comes to medical treatments and you know making decisions about their own bodies and the treatment that we would like to receive, certainly those are those are good things but some of the bad things that it brought to us I believe of course was abortion was brought about by the by the feminist movement. I also think that birth control, I believe that hormonal contraception has been a disaster that has been brought into our society even the way that it was tested it, you know, women died, they were injured because the way the birth control was tested. And the havoc that it is that it has reached upon women in our society. You know, young women now having metastatic breast cancer in their twenties, women having osteoporosis in their thirties women young women twenties and thirties dying of heart disease, strokes, various forms of cancer. All of this can be directly related to hormonal birth control usage and that was filtered in through the feminist movement, through the sexual revolution, which was, you know, all related to feminism and the feminist movement. And now we see that, you know, continuing on through emergency contraception, which is essentially just a high dosage form of birth control. You know, now we see. Feminism, continuing to push the boundaries, late term abortion, bodily autonomy, all of these sorts of things that we see, which is really just an abuse of the original feminist mindset.

Jacob Barr :

So do you consider yourself a feminist? And would you share your thoughts on, yeah, your position?

Abby Johnson :

No, i do not i used to think that, you know, yes, i used to think I, you know, yes, I can be a pro-life feminist i believe in equality for women of course, you know, when I left Planned Parenthood, that was, I certainly consider myself a feminist when I was in Planned Parenthood so I thought, yeah, now I can be just, you know, a pro-life feminist but. I believe that feminism has been right now, at this time in history i believe that it is a threat to our society i believe it’s a threat to families. I think it’s a threat to children, to women, to men. And I think it’s done great damage to the family i think it’s done damage to marriages i’ve seen that in my own marriage, just having to heal. From the effects of the feminist mindset in my own marriage. And so i don’t think that it’s a good thing i think that we need to encourage women to be feminine, not feminist. And I believe that, you know, like I said earlier, i believe that this idea that we can be feminists right now in this current time is a farce because feminism has really derailed into something else in today’s culture it’s really not about protecting women it’s really not about equal rights for women it’s really now about making women, turning women into men, and it’s really about creating an androgynous society, which is not beneficial for women at all it’s not beneficial for men and it’s certainly not beneficial for our families i mean, encouraging women to have a career over families is that’s not good for women. Encouraging women to abort our children in order to, you know, rise up the career ranks, the career ladder is not good for our families. I’m not saying you can’t have goals i’m not saying you can’t have a career in a family. Certainly I do. But encouraging, encouraging women to basically, you know, pit their career over their child, that’s not helpful. And it’s truly not what womanhood is about. And I think that feminism is really the antithesis of the current feminism is really the antithesis of what womanhood is and what it should be.

Jacob Barr :

Thank you for your thank you for your authentic reflections on that was, yeah, I can tell you Really. Yeah, shared authentically. When it comes to feminism, gender and women’s issues, these are politically charged topics. That candidates often use to drum up votes, motivate their base, and demonize political opponents. When those topics are combined with the topic of abortion, candidates can swing a lot of votes in their favor by saying the right thing about race and abortion or feminism and abortion. In your view, how can female voters avoid being taken for granted and stayed and stay principled enough to navigate through the rhetoric and manipulation?

Abby Johnson :

You know, it’s a great question i think for many years i I’m not, you know, I’m not sure that it’s been women that have been used so much but I think for many years, politicians have leveraged votes on the backs of aborted babies. And, you know, they claimed that they were going to do this they claimed that they were going to do that. Even, you know, our, some of our, you know, quote unquote most pro life presidents have claimed, you know, I’m going to defund Planned Parenthood i’m going to do this and that and what do you know, You look at their numbers and they funded Planned Parenthood at some of the, you know, highest rates, even higher than some of our Democratic presidents. So talk is talk is cheap and it’s easy to raise money off of aborted children. I think now is the time where we can really look. And now that Roe has been overturned, I think now is the time to really look and say, OK, now what are they going to do? Because now is the opportunity to really put some teeth behind your convictions, you know, Do you believe abortion is murder or do you not? Do you believe abortion is taking an innocent life or do you not? If you do, then act like it? Now that we’ve. It’s interesting, actually it’s been interesting to see the pro-life movement sort of change positions on this since Roe has been overturned for 50 years it was, you know, abortion is murder abortion is murder. And now that we have the opportunity to actually call abortion murder and treat abortion like murder. Right after Roe was overturned, I saw a pro-life leader write an article that was published in The Stream comparing abortion to suicide. And going back on this argument that abortion is murder and now saying that abortion is like suicide for a woman, it’s not murder anymore now it’s now it’s suicide. And I think that politicians do the same now that now that they have the opportunity to actually do something about abortion to actually, you know, put to actually, you know, walk the talk, right. They’ve been talking about ending abortion and actually protecting these children. Now what are they going to do? And so i think for women like me, for women who are actually against abortion, for women who would like to see abortion actually end, I think that, you know, we’re kind of tired of just, you know, listening to the talk and we actually want to see some action. I think that, you know, many of us are we’re tired of kind of being treated like we don’t understand politics or we don’t understand what’s really going on here or, you know, just give me some good talking points and I’ll vote for you. Or give me some emotional lines and I’ll, you know, and I’ll vote for you or, you know, shed a little tear when you’re talking about animals and I’ll vote for you, right. That’s really not i think women are becoming hopefully more and more politically savvy. And again, that goes back to the education thing. More and more women need to be educated on these really important topics. I think all people need to be educated on politics and the political process. But just based on how we see women voting on a lot of these social issues, I think women in particular need to be educated on the consequences of how we vote and what happens when we vote a particular way. But yeah, I mean, I think that politicians depend on women’s emotional responses. And so they bank on saying things a certain way and getting women to go. I love how he said that or I love that he said that way or whatever. And the reality is that a lot of women just are not falling for that anymore and we want to see action. And so i hope that particularly when it comes to the unborn and so I hope that women are actually looking at the causes they’re looking at how these candidates have performed and their substance, not just their voice.

Jacob Barr :

As you may know, early feminists in the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds were against abortion or anti abortion, but later feminists mostly embraced abortion choice as a pillar of mainstream feminism. In your opinion what was the cause for that change?

Abby Johnson :

I think that those women felt like they could not get ahead without abortion. I think that they the switch came. They really felt like motherhood was a burden. And that was the consensus at the time that you know, we don’t want to be, we don’t want to be moms of six children because if we’re if we’re a mother to six children, then we can’t get educated we can’t you know we’re going to be stuck in the home sewing clothes all day and doing laundry and dishes and cooking and that’s not the life we want and so we have to have abortion in order to get ahead. And you know that now has continued to expand that line of thinking i think that when, you know, I I’m not, I’m not sure I didn’t live during that time but from, you know, everything I’ve read and the things that I’ve seen, I’m not sure at the time that when abortion was instituted as sort of a, you know, quote unquote right for women i’m not sure that it was really meant to be used as a form of birth control like it’s being used today. I don’t think that it was meant to be used as just sort of this, you know, flippant, like out, you know, like, oh, I’m just going to keep getting pregnant and well, whatever i can just have an abortion i don’t, I don’t really think from everything I’ve read, I don’t really think that was how it was meant to be used now. Either way, it’s wrong, OK abortion’s always wrong. But I think that our mainstream society today, I think that, you know, we were the ones that really took it to this new very laissez faire sort of attitude toward killing, toward murder of innocent people. And i remember, you know, I remember it happening kind of i remember when things started changing. I remember in 2007 being in a marketing meeting at Planned Parenthood And you know for years it is, you know, our forward facing media talking points had been for all those years, you know during the Clinton years and Reagan and all of that had always been to keep abortion safe, legal and rare. That had always been what you know, what everyone had said and that’s what the media said. But and it had been that way for decades. In 2007 though at Planned Parenthood and people need to understand that Planned Parenthood we don’t have this in the pro-life movement but in the pro abortion movement. Planned Parenthood is the guiding ship of the pro abortion movement so whatever they say, the talking points that they create trickle down to every other pro abortion group and they then are disseminated to the media. And so everybody follows lockstep with Planned Parenthood. And so I remember in 2007 we had a big meeting with all of the directors they had, they had brought in this marketing team and they came to us and they said they had a new strategy for us when talking to are abortion patients. And they said any question they ask whether it’s about fetal development, whether it’s about guilt or shame or sin or anything, OK, anything that they ask you are going to give them this one answer. And the answer is we were to memorize it and it’s committed to memory i don’t think I’ll ever forget it. The answer was women choose abortion because they care about themselves, their current families and their future families. And I remember thinking, this is not going to work. These women come in to us and they’re asking questions, and they’re asking specific questions that are, you know, begging for specific answers, right they’re asking questions about fetal development. They want an answer about fetal development right and I thought, this is not going to work. But I remember the day that I tried it for the first time. And I remember the woman’s face she’s sitting across from me and she was very concerned she was kind of wracked with guilt, right and she was wondering, you know, am I going to feel guilty about this am I going to feel guilty later how am I going to feel after the procedure? And I thought, OK, this is my time now i can use this and see if it works so I did. So I looked at her and I said, women choose abortion because they care about themselves, their current families and their future families. And I’ll never forget, she looked at me and she sighed really big with relief. And she said, yes, that’s exactly right that’s it. You get it. And I thought, Oh my gosh, we have effectively turned abortion into an act of compassion. And that is when everything changed. That is when our society changed. That’s when the media changed. All of the talking points changed. It was also that year that we started participating in the research project with Amphioxus Cell Technologies and we were selling, we were essentially selling body parts of these aborted babies to Amphioxus and they were paying us about 200$ per aborted baby that we sent them and our research team told us how to we had to get consent from every woman in order to ship their baby’s body to amphioxus. And they, our research team, they trained us on how to get the woman’s consent. And they told us the best way to do it was to tell the women that their aborted fetus could be the reason that Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s is cured. And we knew that wasn’t true. We knew that that’s not the type of research they were doing. But at that moment, it turned abortion into an act of altruism. I’m getting an abortion to save someone else. And I thought, well, wow, we have really wrapped up this package, right abortion is compassionate and abortion is altruistic. And we never had a woman say no. We never had a woman say no. I’m not comfortable with that. Every woman was like, yes, that’s amazing. You know, my baby could change the world. And it was really interesting it was interesting to be there at the clinic, working in the industry and seeing that shift change not just in the clinic, not just at the affiliate, but see it change on a societal level and we see it growing and growing. This, you know, murder as an act of compassion. We saw it several years ago when the president of Iceland came out proudly proclaiming that they had eradicated Down syndrome in Iceland. And when you look further into that claim, they have done no such thing they have not eradicated Down syndrome women are indeed still getting pregnant and finding out that their children have Down syndrome what they have done is that they have convinced every woman who is pregnant with a child who has Down syndrome to kill that child through abortion. And so women are still getting pregnant with babies that have downs. They’re just aborting them before they’re born. And he was very proud of that. We see this in the disability community. I’ve heard story after story of families who have children with disabilities who are, you know, frequently in hospitals. And the doctors are telling them that the most compassionate thing to do is to starve them and to remove food and water, and it’s compassionate to starve their child to death. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a person starve to death, but it is not compassionate. But we have such a misguided idea of compassion in this country now, and I think one of the primary reasons for that is because of abortion.

Jacob Barr :

Wow Abby, I really appreciate your answer and honestly, you’re sharing some really hard truths that need to be expressed, and so I really appreciate you going into depth on these answers of course. What are some of the benefits of pregnancy and childbirth and what are some of the risks or drawbacks?

Abby Johnson :

Yeah, well I have delivered 7, seven children so i know the difficulties of childbirth and carrying children in your womb it’s you know, it’s not easy on your body. You know it can be difficult i have something called hyperemesis gravidarum with all of my children, which is just excessive vomiting all day, every day through all 40 weeks of my pregnancy it’s not easy, but at the end of the, you know, at the end of my nine months I have a beautiful baby and so that’s, you know, that’s worth it. But I do know that you know, there is a hardship to being pregnant some people are put on bed rest. I had twins and i was fortunate not to have to be on bed rest i know a lot of women who have, you know, high blood pressure and maybe they have a twin pregnancy or triplet pregnancy they’re put on bed rest. That can interfere with employment and raising other children. Certainly, you know, pregnancy can be difficult on the body and on the mind. I mean, I’m a I’m a therapist and we see, you know, more and more women coming in for antipartum depression and anxiety. I think a lot of that is because of the busyness that we feel like we need to fill our time with instead of just enjoying the fact that we are growing another human being and allowing ourselves to just kind of sit in that moment and we feel like we have to fill, fill, fill our time and that’s a problem with just Western culture in general, but benefits of childbirth, certainly if you have a child and you deliver that child post 32 weeks, so after 32 weeks your risk of breast cancer goes down significantly. We know that oxytocin which is released after you deliver and also release through breastfeeding is really great for your mental health. So that’s good and breastfeeding also burns a ton of calories so if you’re trying to you know get off any extra baby weight that’s really helpful during that time. So you know there are, there are some benefits of course I mean and then at the end you have this amazing child, right. That’s part of you. And so that’s the greatest benefit. We know that you know delivering we do believe that it can lower some other risk of cancers as well. So there are benefits and you know certainly there are risks, there’s risks with anything, there’s risks with going and having a root canal, right there’s risks with anything you know, you can’t have high blood pressure, you can’t have preeclampsia, you could go into preterm labor. One thing that does reduce your risk of having complications with birth is not having an abortion. So what we do know to be true is having an abortion before delivering a baby does increase your risk of preterm labor, early labor, and it does increase your risk of having a baby with a lower birth weight. So, you know, doesn’t mean you’re going to have a problem. I did not have that problem i’ve had two abortions. I was very blessed not to have that problem. But we do know that there is a correlation there. And we also know that there is a correlation between abortion and breast cancer. So, you know, one of the ways to reduce that of course, is to not have an abortion. But another way to reduce that is to have a baby. To have children, and certainly to breastfeed them, also helps to reduce your risk of cancer.

Jacob Barr :

So every pregnancy has some risks. Do those risks help justify abortion choice policy?

Abby Johnson :

No, certainly not. You know, we’re talking about two very different things so you know, it would it we can’t really compare the two and the two because the outcomes are very different, the procedures are very different and so you can’t really compare the two. So there are i can’t think of any reason why. I mean, abortion advocates, do they do compare the two and they say, well, you know, you might as well have an abortion because childbirth is so dangerous. You know, like I said, there are risks, but there are also risks to having an abortion. And, you know, at the end of your abortion, there will always be a dead child. And so, you know, anyone who says abortion is safe, I mean, I would beg to differ. Because any procedure where its success is dependent on the death of a human being, I believe is the antithesis of SAFE. We know that women die from legal abortion we will never know how many because our system, our US medical system, does not properly document abortion deaths and abortion complications. But when we look to other universal social healthcare systems like in Finland, in the UK, some other systems we look, we see that the risks of these abortion procedures are as high as 20 % severe complications so we’re talking about sepsis, retained products of the baby in their uterus up to death. Hysterectomy that is very high, 20 % is high and that’s actually higher than complications of childbirth. So you know it really depends on, you know what you’re looking at, if you’re looking at real results, if you’re looking at real statistics here in the United States, we’re not looking at real numbers, we’re looking at very skewed statistics but either way, I don’t really think that we should be comparing because these are two completely different procedures. Delivery is not the same as an abortion. So two completely different methods of delivery and two completely different outcomes, 1 outcome as a dead child, one outcome as a living child so I don’t really think you can compare the two.

Jacob Barr :

That makes sense. People have argued that abortion choice policy helps women achieve equality with men and overcome historic obstacles. How is that supposed to work? And do you agree or disagree with that logic?

Abby Johnson :

I don’t i don’t agree. I don’t think that we need abortion in order to be successful in our lives. I think that, you know, having a child may change the path that we’re on it may change the way that our educational goals look it may change the way that our career goals look, but it does not mean that our goals have to disappear. Because having a child and being a mother is truly the greatest accomplishment of our lives and so in reality, if I had to give up my career, if I had to give up my education, if I had to give up all of it and know that I, you know, gave birth to seven beautiful children and adopted another, and I have 8 healthy, wonderful children, then it would be worth it would be worth it for all of that to disappear. But that is going to take a monumental cultural change because even if you look at our society and you look at even advertisements out there, you see, you know, an advertisement for a woman for birth control and the woman in her car in the convertible. And she’s got long flowing hair and she’s beautiful and her scarf is blowing in the breeze and she’s the woman without children. The woman with children always looks a hot mess. She’s got spaghetti sauce on her face. Her hair is in a messy bun. She has no makeup on she looks completely bedraggled, right? That is the stereotype for a woman with children. And so we have just this division in our society on what motherhood is supposed to look like and what single womanhood is supposed to look like. And neither one are true, because many single women are lonely, and they’re longing for a spouse and they’re longing for children. And many women who are mothers are not bedraggled, and they’re not feeling overwhelmed by their children. And they’re beautiful women who do have it put together and they’re successful in their careers they’re educated, they’re professors at universities they’re doctors or whatever, or they’re perfectly content stay at home moms, right? They look beautiful in the school drop off line, you know, and they’re not a hot mess everywhere they go. Or if they are, they’re perfectly content in that, right and that’s OK too. So it’s just this crazy dichotomy that we’re living in our society and that has to change. The way that motherhood is seen has to be changed. But that is a that’s really a paradigm shift that’s got to take place in our society.

Jacob Barr :

Good answer. So I’ve been waiting to ask you this question i’m excited to hear your thoughts. So who is Margaret Sanger and what is Planned Parenthood?

Abby Johnson :

Margaret Sanger is the founder of Planned Parenthood she was a woman who believed in eugenics. Planned Parenthood is her brainchild it started off as the American Birth Control League eventually was renamed to Planned Parenthood. And Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, really, for one reason and one reason alone and that was to eliminate the minority population through widespread access to abortion and contraception. And today, really, we see her dreams coming to fruition as you know, in some states like New York, there are more babies being aborted than being born alive. And so you know that was her goal and we see it happening in some States and in cities around the country.

Jacob Barr :

Wow. So among feminists, being a homemaker, wife, mother caring for the home has sometimes been called domestic slavery. Is this a fair or valid description? And yeah, explain your thoughts.

Abby Johnson :

I would say no now, I would also say that not all women are made to be stay at home wives, so they don’t enjoy that and that’s OK too. I do not enjoy being a stay at home mom. I love the time that I’m home with my kids and i enjoy it but I would not want to do it full time and that’s OK my mom was a brilliant stay at home mom and she loved it and was so good at it. I envy her ability that. I mean she was just she was amazing. I am not that type of person. And that’s OK. I, you know, spend time at home when I can and I love every minute of it but I’m, you know, also ready to get back to work, to the work that God has called me to. And so, you know, I feel like women need to go where they are called to go and whatever God compels them to do. But i don’t think it’s fair to call it, you know, a domestic slavery. But I do think that, you know, it could feel that way i guess if a woman feels like she’s, you know, trapped in her home and she’s kind of trapped in a situation she doesn’t want to be in. And so i do think though that right now in our society it is important if possible to have a person at home taking care of the kids if at all possible because i don’t believe in just throwing our kids to the wolves of society and allowing our government schools to parent them or you know, daycares to parent them or whatever. And so I do think it is important if possible to have a parent in the home and sometimes we do have to make those sacrifices for our children. Sometimes it’s temporary, sometimes it’s just a few years, sometimes it’s longer than that but our children are worth that sacrifice, and that’s what you’re committing to whenever you become a parent.

Jacob Barr :

Is sex selective abortion legal in the US? And please explain.

Abby Johnson :

Yes, sex selective abortion is legal in the United States. We saw it a lot. And it’s completely legal. Particularly we see it more in other cultures, Asian cultures, but it’s absolutely legal and Planned Parenthood and other abortion organizations defended. They have never come out and opposed abortion based on sex, biological sex, which I mean seems strange, you know that they would support someone aborting a female child, considering that they say that they are, you know, four women, but they have never come out and oppose sex selection abortion.

Jacob Barr :

Some feminists have said that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. What do you say to that?

Abby Johnson :

Well it’s going to be really hard to continue to populate the earth without men and so. But we need men for more than just procreation. Men are they are a complementary for women and so i think that, you know, it would be interesting actually to somebody should do a video about that Like a world without men, what would that look like? And just even in a utilitarian way, you know, we wouldn’t have roads we wouldn’t have the buildings that we have we wouldn’t have so many, you know, of the hard work, right, that men do in our country, we wouldn’t have those things, right women are not going to go do hard labour construction jobs, right that’s not because that’s not what we’re really meant to do. Our bodies are not really meant to do that sort of work. And so I remember there was a documentary that was put out like it was called A Day without a Mexican or something Somebody should do 1A Day Without a Man just to kind of show the importance of men in our society and men in our in our culture and just the everyday benefits of men in our country. But we need men for our families. We see the destruction of the family. When we take men out of the home, you know, we see the you know, we see how detrimental it is when children don’t have a father in the home. The majority of inmates in our prison system grew up in fatherless homes. Poverty increases when we don’t have fathers in the home. Almost all single parent, almost all single mother households are living below the poverty line, you know, and we saw that after Roe, you know, we saw the poverty rate increase we saw women living on Medicaid, fathers leaving the intact family was completely blown out of the water because abortion was supposed to make everything good. Abortion made all of these promises to women and told women you don’t need a man. You don’t need a man because you have abortion now, so you don’t need a man to support you, to take care of you. But the reality is that women do need men. We are to be men’s help mates and we need each other and we need men to protect us, to provide for us. That is God’s design for a family. It’s God’s design for society.

Jacob Barr :

Thank you for entering that one. Has abortion choice policy been overall more helpful or harmful for women and families?

Abby Johnson :

Oh, I think it’s been incredibly harmful. Just like, you know what I stated before, you know, after Roe was supposed to be, you know, decrease in abuse, child abuse, familial abuse, domestic violence, supposed to be a decrease in poverty, it’s supposed to be a decrease in divorce, All these things, right all these things were abortion was going to fix our society, right? And all we have seen is a dramatic increase in all of those things so we see, you know, an increase in divorce, increase in poverty, increase in domestic violence, increase in child abuse. And you know, why not? I mean, why why wouldn’t we abuse each other? If we are willing to actually kill for actually willing to murder our most innocent in the womb, why wouldn’t we go out and hurt people that are outside of the womb? Of course we would. So when you don’t value the most vulnerable, you won’t value anyone else and so. It all, it all makes sense, but I think abortion has hurt all of us i think abortion has a detrimental ripple effect that affects not only the child, not only the mother, but it also greatly effects fathers. There are so many fathers that are suffering silently whose choices were taken away from them. There are many fathers that are living with regret because they didn’t stand up for the life of their child and I think we need more fathers to stand up and tell their stories and share their testimonies.

Jacob Barr :

In some countries and cultures, women are often treated like property and second class citizens much worse than in the US. They can. They can include legal domestic abuse, spousal rape, forced marriage, sex trafficking, female circumcision and restricted access to education and opportunity. These are clear inequalities facing many women in the world. With that in mind, why do you? Why do you think the mainstream feminism in the West tends to focus on supporting abortion choice more than anything else?

Abby Johnson :

Oh, they’re very culturally dense. So they’re not looking at other countries and looking at these atrocities, they’re really just not i mean, even you know, we look, we look at you and I’m not sure that they can really look at it. They have to focus on abortion because for instance, if they look at something like female genital mutilation, they look at FGM, how can they go about talking about FGM and really condemning that practice when they are supporting that practice here in the United States as long as it’s done through a hospital and a doctor and it’s called transition surgery, right. So I mean they’re they support genital mutilation here in the United States they support it anywhere as long as it’s done in a hospital. And it’s done because the person supposedly says they want it done. But in some cultures, you know, FGM is something that, you know, these girls would say this is a rite of passage for me and this is something that I’m OK with, even though it’s heinous, even though it’s an atrocity, even though it’s terrible in some cultures I’ve talked to, talked to women and they said, no, I nobody had to hold me down this is something that is part of my tribe this is something that I’m expected to do and I was fine with it. So, you know, so are they going to speak out against that they can’t. I mean, so they can’t really speak out about these things because in some instances they supported, but in some instances they wouldn’t so they have this contradiction. So they’re not going to speak out about things like that. And that’s kind of the crux of the feminist liberal movement is they are incredibly hypocritical and they don’t really know what they believe about so many things. They will in one minute talk about needing to support women who have gone through a miscarriage and talk about how important that life was, but in the next minute, say that they support late term abortion. The science doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make any sense, but they are just completely they’re full of hypocrisy. And so I think that they’re scared to start venturing out into other cultures, into other countries i mean, even look at places just recently in the news, we read that one of the Israeli attacks, one of the Israeli airstrikes, it blasted what had demolished Gaza’s only Planned Parenthood facility. And the only thing that the IPPF, the International Planned Parenthood Federation spokespeople could talk about was how it’s, you know, so devastating for women not to be able to access reproductive healthcare. I mean, really that that’s what was so devastating. You know, they didn’t, you know, they didn’t want to talk about the fact that, you know, there’s all of these women and children, you know, being killed, being, you know, forced by the Palestinian government to, you know, do this and that. They don’t talk about that they’re like, well, let’s let’s just talk about reproductive healthcare they, I mean, they’re not even having abortions there so I don’t even know why they’re there, but it’s just bizarre they are so focused on abortion they’re so focused on the right to kill children that they can’t talk about the fact that Palestinian children are being killed right now through these airstrikes because how could they when they’re when they support the legal killing of children? So they have to stay focused on only abortion because if they get out, they get outside the bounds of that. Everything just becomes hypocrisy.

Jacob Barr :

So perhaps the most famous abortion choice argument is summed up as my body, my choice. What does that mean and how do you respond to that argument?

Abby Johnson :

Oh, I just respond really. Just, you know, just the scientific argument is that yes, you do have rights to your body, 100 %, you have rights to your body. You do not have the right to end the life of another human beings. You don’t have the right to end the life of another human being so your human rights stop where another person’s rights begin. And so you know, inside we’ve all seen the diagram, right, of like a woman’s body and then a baby inside of her body, not your body, right. So it’s a unique experience, right, when a woman is pregnant and she has another human being inside of her body and it’s unique to only women. But that’s how we continue the human race and so that’s not something that we should be altering that’s the way that we continue on and so I mean that’s just science that’s just the way it is i mean we don’t have the right to inflict harm on another human being’s body and an innocent human being it’s just that’s really, that’s what the law says and every other case, you know, I can’t walk up to you on the side of the road and just start beating you with a baseball bat for no reason. I can’t do that. I can’t, you know, walk up to someone, even if they’re getting on my nerves. I can’t walk up, you know, to my neighbor who’s getting on my nerves and just start, you know, pounding them in the face, you know, with a crowbar i can’t do that because my rights end where theirs begin. And that’s really how it should be with abortion. Just because they reside inside of your body doesn’t really matter, you know yes, you have bodily autonomy, but they also the child inside of your womb also has bodily autonomy.

Jacob Barr :

So it’s been said that women cannot be ethically required to lend their body for someone else’s use, even if that individual needs their body to live. This, they claim, is true whether it’s lending a womb to a growing fetus or lending a kidney to a famous violinist. How do you respond to this argument?

Abby Johnson :

Well, you don’t you don’t lend a kidney first of all, you don’t get it back. So you do, you do lend your body, but you don’t you don’t lend an organ. It’s kind of weird that they say that is what they say, but it’s kind of a strange argument because that’s not the way organ donation works. But, you know, sometimes that is the case sometimes we do. That’s what. That’s what pregnancy requires. No, you’re not ethically obligated to hand out a kidney if someone needs it. Even if your child needs it, you’re not ethically obligated to do that. But that is a requirement of pregnancy is that you do have to lend your body for a period of time to grow another human being. That’s just the way that pregnancy works and we all consent to be a part of that process. When we have sex that is, that’s part of it that’s part of the deal that’s part of what we what we agreed to and it’s a temporary period of time and Even so we don’t have the right to kill people because it is inconvenient for us because we don’t want to lend our bodies. We don’t have that right. And you know, it reminds me of situations i remember watching a documentary about these conjoined sisters and you know, if one decided i want to kill myself, then the other one would die as well. Well, she doesn’t have the right to do that, right she doesn’t have the right to say, well, I’ve decided I’m going to have this surgery and I in this surgery, you know, I may die and that is going to affect you. She doesn’t have the right to do that without also having this. Her sister, her conjoined sister’s consent. We just don’t, We don’t have the right to take another human being’s life, an innocent human being’s life we just don’t. And that is just, that’s just the norm. That is just a societal norm that is just natural law. That is just God’s law. That’s just the way it is. And so people can make arguments and say this and that, but it’s just morally the wrong thing to do. And at some point in time, we just have to look at people and say there is a moral absolute, and this is the absolute, and it is wrong to kill innocent human beings no matter where they’re located, no matter if they’re inside your body, no matter if they’re outside of your body. It is wrong.

Jacob Barr :

In your opinion, what’s the biggest misconception that women tend to believe about abortion?

Abby Johnson :

I think that women believe that it is a painless, bloodless, sterile procedure. And that’s just not true. It is. It’s incredibly painful. It is incredibly blood bloody and it does not take place in a sterile environment. It is takes place generally in very dirty, filthy clinics. The doctors may or may not wash their hands in between you and another patient, or the patient before you. These facilities regularly fail their health inspections, if they have an inspection at all. Many of the workers there unlicensed, untrained, and these are the people performing invasive medical procedures on your body. It’s a dangerous place. And a lot of women believe that they will not have any memory of this, that you know, their abortion is just going to be something that they don’t think about ever they’re never going to think about it and that’s not true either. So, but this has been an idea that has been really perpetuated in the media that abortion is just kind of like it’s just this fun thing you go in and the staff is cool and everybody has blue hair and they’re fun and they have tattoos on their neck and piercings everywhere and it’s just like going to like a fun circus, you know and everybody’s weird and crazy and I don’t know, you get a lollipop at the end or something but that’s not the case. Abortion is dirty, and it hurts and it’s painful, and you leave sometimes with blood on your shoes, and it’s awful. And women need to know the truth. And your baby leaves your baby you leave your baby behind, either in a garbage disposal or in a biohazard bag to be sent to a facility where it’s burned. It’s a it’s a terrible thing.

Jacob Barr :

Thank you so much for going through these 20 questions. I want to ask you a couple. Well, three more questions one is, would you talk about the Survivor Network that you’re connected with?

Abby Johnson :

Yeah, The Abortion Survivors Network is a great group of people who have found out, usually later in life, that they actually survived an abortion so their mother went to an abortion clinic, attempted an abortion, or they did have an abortion and the, you know, this person actually survived the abortion attempt. And now they are, you know, living with that they’re grappling with that in their life some of these people were adopted some of them were raised by their biological parents. But yeah, they’re learning to heal from that information that they’ve learned what we know now is that there’s probably between 4 and 500 failed abortion attempts every year, and that’s according to the CDC so we have to believe that there’s probably more than that. And you know, we have former abortion workers through my ministry, and then there were none that talk about seeing these babies born alive so we know what’s happening every year. We know what’s happening way more than what we realize. And it’s terrible. These babies are being born alive and these men and women that are in the survivors network, I have to say honestly, they are very blessed for surviving because we have heard through our former workers many stories of these babies being drowned, left to die in, you know, closets, their necks being broken, terrible things happening to them so it’s really a miracle that these men and women are alive to be able to share their testimonies.

Jacob Barr :

Wow. Would you share what what? What are the top misconceptions about Planned Parenthood?

Abby Johnson :

I think the top misconception is that they are not a that abortion is not one of their primary services, and abortion, especially right now, is their primary service. They’re really not an organization that focuses on anything but abortion now, you know, they used to be an organization that focused on birth control, STD testing, things like that, but that’s just not the case anymore. Abortion is their bread and butter it is their primary service that they offer right now and it is their that’s their mission, that’s their focus several years ago when Cecile Richards was still president, she wrote on Twitter. Providing abortion care is as important as providing cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood. And so that really is their focus, it’s how they make the bulk of their money. And so they are going to focus on bringing in money however they can and that’s going to be through abortion because it’s primarily a cash business.

Jacob Barr :

So, and from your understanding, when it comes to Christians and abortion, how come is it, how common is it to have self identified Christians seeking an abortion at Planned Parenthood?

Abby Johnson :

Yeah so the overwhelming majority of women having abortions will identify as Christian. What we know is that about 60 % of women having abortions are regularly attending church. So that means three out of the four Sundays each month they are sitting in a church Pew. And a lot of people will listen to that and say, well, they’re not really Christian. Well, I mean, of course they can be really Christian, have an abortion because, I mean, we really sin all the time and are still christians sin. There’s a newsflash, you know, real Christians do sin and especially when our churches are not talking about these things, especially when our churches are not challenging their congregations on these issues, especially when our churches are putting out this caricature jesus. And they’re not actually talking about who Jesus really is and they’re not talking about sin, and they’re not talking about heaven and hell. And they’re not actually talking through the Bible, and they’re not talking about the Bible really at all and our preachers become more motivational speech speakers than actual preachers and pastors. Then, of course, women who regularly attend church are going to be walking into abortion clinics. So the fact that abortion has spread like wildfire inside of the American Christian Church is really on us. It’s not on Planned Parenthood they have just seen the failure of the Christian Church and they are predators and so they have preyed on that. But it’s on us. It’s not on them it’s on our failure.

Jacob Barr :

Thank you so much for answering all these questions would you? Wrap up this interview with a prayer and with the expectation the people that are listening will join join in this prayer that you’ll maybe lead us in.

Abby Johnson :

Sure of course. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this time together we thank you, Lord, for the eyes that will be opened. And we thank you God in advance for all the work that you’re going to do through this project. And God, we ask that you just open the minds of those who believe that abortion is a good thing. We ask that you open the hearts of those who maybe have had an abortion, those who have been affected by abortion in some way god, we ask that you open their hearts to healing. That God you show them that abortion is wrong, that it is a sin against you, Lord, and that they know that they can turn to you. That they don’t have to turn to the world, they don’t have to turn to social media, they don’t have to turn to their friends that God, you are the healer that you our advisor, our counselor, and that you have the answers for us it’s the answers are not in the world lord, that the answers are with you and in your word. And where we ask that for any woman who is currently in the valley of indecision or we ask that someone just come alongside her and speak words of life to her and that she can be directed to a life affirming center or a church or someone who can give her give her your wisdom Lord and give her good counsel. And where we just ask that people spring into action and that your gospel would be proclaimed around the world. And that we would be unabashedly proud to be your children and I’m proud to be your soldiers in this fight, God and that we would proclaim your word everywhere that we go. And we ask all these things in your most holy and precious name amen.

Jacob Barr :

Amen.