***TRIGGER WARNING: If you’re healing from a past abortion experience, this letter discusses an abortion-worker experience in detail.***
There’s something my friend Abby Johnson shared at dinner during the recent March for Life events that really hit me:
“If you grew up in a good, God-fearing family, don’t do anything you’d be embarrassed to tell your parents about. …I didn’t tell them I worked for Planned Parenthood for a year and a half.”
Shortly after this conversation, another friend asked me what would compel someone to continue working in an abortion facility in the face of grave evil — like the recent report from a worker who is witnessing sacrifices to satan inside her facility!
The answer to that common question can be found in Abby’s journey from Planned Parenthood clinic director to a pro-life powerhouse. And it’s a journey I can relate to, being a sinner saved by God myself.
A Path to Sin Paved by Concessions
Abby explained many people get into the abortion industry by making one moral concession. Then two. Then three. Slowly, they become numb to what they are seeing. And eventually, they turn into someone else altogether. That’s how sin works.
Abby shared that after some time working in the abortion industry, her supervisor “invited” her to the products of conception lab — where they pieced aborted babies back together. (This is standard in the industry, to ensure that they successfully completed the abortion.) She said that not just anyone was invited back there — it was considered an honor.
She went into the lab and saw a metal tray with a towel over it. Abby’s supervisor looked at her and asked, “Are you ready?” Abby straightened up and said, “Yes.”
Her supervisor removed the towel, revealing a pieced-back-together, 13-week-old baby. Abby could see every part of that baby. Her supervisor then handed Abby a long pair of tweezers and said, “Go ahead … Play with it.”
And Abby did — and said she didn’t feel a thing.
Now years later, she reflects on that moment through the lens of her new life in Christ:
“That’s how sin works. That’s what happens when we make concessions, and we don’t deal with our pain. It deadens us.”
A New Creation in Christ
Abby shared how all those praying for her helped lead to the day the scales finally fell from her eyes, and she saw what she really was a part of. She accepted Jesus’s offer to take her pain, anger, and dead heart and be transformed.
Abby is a new creation in Christ today.
I can relate, too. I didn’t work in the abortion industry, but I am a very imperfect human being, too. I have had times in my life when I made one concession after another and ended up in a place where I never dreamed possible.
This is why we need Jesus, to illuminate the darkness, take our sin, and transform every imperfect and hard thing and heal us through the power of His grace.
So, before you’re tempted to judge an abortion worker, try praying for her or him instead. What they are doing is wrong, but it is not even remotely beyond God’s grace. And remember that God can rescue and heal us, too.
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Interested in hearing more on this topic and the latest pro-life news? Listen to the most recent “Hot Take” on The Lauren Muzyka Show about the experience of abortion workers and how they get trapped in the abortion industry, as well as Trump’s biggest pro-life wins and what remains to be done.