Have you ever hung on a person’s every word?
Last night, my husband and I played table host at the Dakota Hope Clinic annual fundraiser, the biggest event for this local charity focused on supporting those in crisis pregnancies. The keynote speaker was someone you may have heard about in the news a few years ago: Abby Johnson, a former rising Planned Parenthood star director who resigned after holding the ultrasound probe during an out-of-the-ordinary ultrasound-assisted abortion procedure.
She shared the story of those few minutes that changed her life and her heart; how the moment the cannula that was about to suck the 13-week-old baby from his mother’s womb touched the baby, he jumped, and began frantically twisting and wiggling to get away from the instrument of his impending death.
She talked about watching that baby be dismembered before her eyes, while she stood silently by, assisting the doctor as he jokingly quipped, “Beam me up, Scotty!”
She detailed how that broken body ended up in a glass jar marked “POC,” or “products of conception) and was unceremoniously stored in a staff room freezer, laughingly dubbed “the nursery” by Planned Parenthood workers.
She relived for us, the moment her heart was changed, as she stared down at her hands, fully understanding for the first time how instrumental they’d been in taking thousands of lives during her young career, all under the guise of protecting women. She told us how that day, she felt the power of conversion take hold of her life, and drive her that very afternoon from that office and into the stark realization that what she was doing–what Planned Parenthood was doing–was not only unjust, it was unthinkable.
Today, Abby travels the globe sharing her story with anyone who will listen. She cuts through the lies purported by Planned Parenthood, sharing firsthand information about protocols, procedures, and profit-driven atrocities being done to vulnerable women inside clinics across the country every day. She doesn’t mince words–the abortion industry is a powerful, vicious, murderous machine.
What, then, can we do once our eyes have been opened?
We can support crisis pregnancy centers like Dakota Hope, where compassion is shown to every person who walks through their doors. Where women who find themselves in impossible situations, at the lowest points of their lives, are welcomed with open arms, treated with respect, and unconditionally supported. Where the quiet, steady work of sustaining life goes on, day in and day out.
Before last year, I didn’t know a place like Dakota Hope existed in my city. Chances are, you might not either–but they are there, persevering in their call to rescue hearts and heal the hurts of a vulnerable population crying out for help.
Please, support them. Support life. Support women. Help create a culture where abortion is, as Abby Johnson: ProWoman, ProChild, ProLife so rightly puts it, simply unthinkable. .
assignment: mom 