Monday, January 24, 2011

Ex-Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life advocate converting to Catholicism

From http://www.calcatholic.com/

“What had been missing our whole lives”

Ex-Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life advocate converting to Catholicism


Abby Johnson, the former clinic director for a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas who had a change of heart and joined the pro-life cause, “is on the verge of entering the Catholic Church,” Catholic San Francisco reports. 

Johnson, 30, who spoke at a rally preceding Saturday’s Walk for Life West Coast in San Francisco, “is preparing with her husband Doug to enter the Catholic Church in her native Texas within the next few months,” San Francisco’s archdiocesan weekly reported. “The couple has a 4-year-old daughter.” 

“Today on January 22nd, I do not honor choice any more, I mourn choice," Johnson told the Walk for Life rally. "You are the new generation of the pro-life movement and I can tell you Planned Parenthood is shaking in their boots." 

“When we went to the Catholic Church for the first time we knew that was where we were supposed to be and we have been there ever since,” Johnson told journalist Valerie Schmalz in an interview for Catholic San Francisco. “The more we started learning about the beliefs of the church and the Eucharist and everything, it seemed like this was what had been missing our whole lives.” 

Johnson has also written a book about her change of heart, Unplanned: the Dramatic True Story of the Planned Parenthood Leader Who Crossed the Life Line to Fight for Women in Crisis, published by San Francisco-based Ignatius Press. “Abby Johnson was sitting at her desk when a co-worker in the health clinic asked for some help with a patient,” said an Ignatius Press news release announcing the book’s debut. “‘I could not have imagined,’ Johnson writes in UnPlanned, 'how the next ten minutes would shake the foundation of my values and change the course of my life.'” 

“Johnson ran that clinic – a Planned Parenthood facility in Bryan, Texas,” the Ignatius Press news release continued. “She spent those ten minutes assisting with an ultrasound-guided abortion. ‘Oh, dear God,’ she writes, ‘what had I done?’ In UnPlanned, Johnson tells the dramatic story of the journey that unfolded as a result of that fateful day in September 2009 – how she literally ‘crossed the fence’ from Planned Parenthood leader to an advocate fighting for women in crisis – and the lives of their unborn babies.” 

To read the full conversion story in Catholic San FranciscoClick Here.