Pro-Life Book Review: "Unplanned", by Abby Johnson

I have referenced Abby Johnson in multiple blog posts before. In one sentence, she’s a Planned Parenthood director turned pro-life advocate.

Unplanned is about her journey through Planned Parenthood; starting with her volunteering as a college student, finishing with her, the director of a clinic, assisting in an ultrasound-guided abortion on a thirteen-week-old fetus. Eight years working with Planned Parenthood. And then she walked out.

Actually, she ran out. Literally. Not during the abortion procedure, but later, shaken, wondering what to do, wondering if she could continue working with an organization that performed abortions, now that she had seen what abortion really did. She ran out of the building, in tears, got in her car, and drove to the Coalition for Life building: the peaceful pro-life protestors she had been fighting ever since coming to that Planned Parenthood as a volunteer.

Her story is powerful and valuable. She gives an insider’s look on what it’s really like working in an abortion clinic. A Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. She doesn’t sugar-coat her old workplace, but she doesn’t completely bash it either. And that makes it ten times more reliable. She tells the truth. She tells of the old, dear friendships she had with her coworkers. She tells how her bosses, while still saying to the public that Planned Parenthood’s goal is to reduce abortions, ordered her to make her clinic crank out more abortions to get the revenue up. And then, when she protested, how they told her to “get her priorities straight”.

Abortion advocates are afraid of Abby Johnson, and they’re afraid of her book. They pretend they aren’t. They call her the exception. They call her a nutcase. They call her a liar. They say that she was about to get fired because she mishandled confidential information, and that was the only reason she resigned.

A dedicated, compassionate eight-year-long volunteer, worker, director, 2008 “Employee of the Year” not only quits her job but goes to join the people she had been fighting for all of those eight years just because she was afraid of getting fired?

I don’t think so.

Getting down to the technicalities, Abby Johnson wrote this book “with” Cindy Lambert. I don’t know how much Cindy Lambert contributed, or if Cindy Lambert was really mostly the author. However, regardless if Abby wrote most of it or not, the story is still Abby’s, and it’s still powerful. Whoever really wrote it, she did it well. The book is very easy to read, very fascinating, very personal. Abby leaves nothing out. I find the style a little annoying in the first few chapters, where she tells you part of the story, and then at the ends of the chapters she hints at other things that she doesn’t tell you until you are further in. However, this annoying quirk doesn’t last long, and certainly doesn’t disqualify it as a worthwhile read. I’ll illustrate for you how much I liked it.

When I first heard Unplanned was coming out, I was very excited, but the line for it was very long at the library, and I’m the sort of person who doesn’t like to buy books unless she’s read them. (I have, as I like to say, spendaphobia.)

Well, after getting irritated with the wait, I found it at a homeschooler’s convention, flipped through it, and bought it spur of the moment. I started it in the car on the way home (don’t worry, I wasn’t driving) and I read it all the way through that evening, until two or three in the morning.

I put it down for a month or so, then picked it back up, thinking I’d like to flip through it again.

I read it straight through again.

I picked it up a few days ago and pretty much read it straight through once more…but not quite. It was spread out over two days, maybe three, I don’t remember.

I’d like to leave you with a quote from the book.

"Looking back now on that late September day of 2009, I realize how wise God is for not revealing our future to us. Had I known then the firestorm I was about to endure, I might not have had the courage to move forward. As it was, since I didn't know, I wasn't yet looking for courage. I was, however, looking to understand how I found myself in this place--living a lie, spreading a lie, and hurting the ery women I so wanted to help.

And I desperately need to know what to do next.

This is my story."

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