On Sunday, abortion activists across the country recognized National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers.
Organizations like Planned Parenthood, NARAL and others put forth various propaganda stories in order to try and portray abortion providers as somehow saintly figures. Women, and the handful of men, who put their lives on the line and in return face, in the words of abortion supporters, “harassment and intimidation on a regular basis.” According to one woman who works at an abortion clinic in West Virginia, “abortion providers are heroes.”
It all sounds like a desperate attempt to remake abortion providers and abortion clinic employees into some sort of sympathetic victims of an aggressive right-wing conspiracy that is against a woman’s right to choose. But that isn’t true.
Here are the statements of a couple of abortion providers and clinic workers that show the depths they go to portray abortion as something positive:
Andrea Ferrigno, corporate vice president of Whole Women’s Health – “Hearing the stories our patients share with us—stories of resilience, deep senses of responsibility, and love for themselves, their dreams, their current children, and future families—is what has made this work my mission in life, what has helped create my vision for what health care should look like, and what a just world should look like.”
Jamila Perritt, MD, MPH FACOG – “Abortion providers are activists, advocates, parents, healers, and dreamers. We are united in our belief in agency, autonomy, and self-determination. We care for our mothers, our sisters, and our friends. We care for our neighbors, our co-workers, our daughters. We are united in our work and share in the privilege and honoring of caring for those who need us. This work is an honor and a privilege.”
Jen Castle, nurse practitioner at Planned Parenthood – “There is no requirement that abortion care must involve suffering, other than what our collective culture demands. Our world is rife with toxic stigma around abortion. So often, patients come to us expecting to be judged and shamed — I’m often saddened at the extent to which they are surprised to be cared for by kind, compassionate, professional staff who are ready to share a joke, a hug, or a tissue, as each situation requires.”
These platitudes all sound well and good, but they’re based on a false premise. The reality is that abortion providers kill preborn babies, and there is nothing honorable about it. They aren’t saving women or families and they aren’t alleviating suffering, abortion itself is often the cause of grief and sorrow. The loss of a child always has an impact on a woman, even if it may take years or decades to manifest. It always does.
Abby Johnson is one of those who believed the lie. She thought that the work she was doing at Planned Parenthood as a volunteer, then counselor and finally as the clinic director was good. Abby “believed in the vision of the organization.” Until she witnessed an abortion being performed on a patient for the first time.
In that moment, an abortion was no longer standard medical care on a “fetus” that doesn’t feel pain, but as something far worse.
“What was in this woman’s womb just a moment ago was alive,” Abby said. “It wasn’t just tissue, just cells. That was a human body—fighting for life! A battle that was lost in the blink of an eye. What I have told people for years, what I’ve believed and taught and defended, is a lie.”
After that moment, Abby decided to leave Planned Parenthood and went on to start And Then There Were None, which is an organization that helps people who want to leave the abortion industry.
Abortion activists and providers might want to make the public believe that their work is helpful, supportive or life-saving. But abortion is none of these things. It is an act that intentionally ends the life of a preborn child, usually for the sake of convenience. The medical professionals who perform such operations do not deserve any praise.
But there is hope for them.
On March 29, Abby’s story will come to theaters for the first time.
