Planned Parenthood executive-turned-pro-life advocate Abby Johnson announced the launch of nonprofit ProLove Ministries on Wednesday.
Johnson left Planned Parenthood in 2009 and exposed suspect practices at the lucrative abortion giant, such as alleged abortion quotas and “coaching” staffers on how to overcome religiously-based hesitation from young women contemplating abortion.
The outspoken advocate for life detailed her journey in a memoir titled “Unplanned,” which later became a success at the box office. She also started a ministry for abortion workers walking away from the industry called “And Then There Were None” (ATTWN).
ProLove Ministries is set up as a “sister organization” to ATTWN, a press release announcing the launch said.
“While the pro-life movement is vast in its efforts to make abortion unthinkable, blind spots exist where segments of the population are underserved or not served at all,” the press release reads.
ProLove Ministries seeks to fill in those gaps, providing “manpower and expert assistance on special projects,” assisting with new ministry start-ups, and helping established ministries “find new life.”
“I founded And Then There Were None after realizing former abortion workers who left their jobs had nowhere to turn to for help for any kind of assistance in healing or finding a new job,” Johnson said in a statement sent to The Daily Wire on Wednesday. “The pro-life position is not one-dimensional and we can’t be either if we claim to be pro-life. We can’t look the other way when suffering is so apparent in our world. ProLove Ministries will be a way to help those who are in need of crisis intervention and do it with love.”
“My team has received hundreds of emails and messages over the past several years asking for our assistance in helping ministries get off the ground or bring new ideas to existing ministries to help them accomplish their goals. Through ProLove Ministries, we’ll be able to do that,” Johnson noted.
The nonprofit’s “mission,” the press release emphasizes, “is to connect resources to help identify blind spots in the pro-life movement and unite passion and vision to provide comprehensive strategies that work to promote the value of all life, regardless of stage of development, race, age, gender, or ability.”
During an interview with The Daily Wire last summer, Johnson detailed her last year at Planned Parenthood and the series of events that triggered her to leave:
There were several reasons (why I left). Things were really, I don’t know, kind of turning upside down for me in 2009. That year out of Houston, my affiliate was building the largest abortion facility in the Western Hemisphere, which is now currently open. And the plan was to perform abortions through six months of pregnancy, which was problematic for me because I had always believed that abortion past the point of viability or close to the point of viability is wrong. That was one thing that was problematic.
That summer, we ran out of funding, which was common every summer, and we were basically told that we were not to give any discounts to patients who might have, you know, qualified for funding, but we were out of it. I remember bringing that up at a meeting with my boss. I said something like, “We’re a non-profit and we’re a charitable organization, we should be trying to help these women with annual exams or birth control,” and I remember her looking at me and saying, “Abby, being non-profit is a tax status, not a business status.” And that just really went against everything I thought we were doing there.
Then in August of that year, I was instructed to double our abortion quota – the certain number of abortions that we had to sell to women who came into our clinic. And then ultimately, I ended up leaving in October after witnessing a live, ultrasound-guided abortion procedure in which I saw a 13-week-old baby in the womb fight and struggle for his life against the abortion instruments. I knew then that there was humanity in the womb, and that abortion took the life of this human being, and I knew that I was on the wrong side of this debate.
So I decided then that I was going to leave and get another job. When I decided to leave, I went to a local pro-life group in town and asked them if they could possibly help me find another job with their contacts. When Planned Parenthood found out that I had gone to this pro-life group, they actually sued me and tried to get a permanent gag order against me so that I wouldn’t be able to talk about what I had seen at the clinic and things that I knew. The lawsuit failed, obviously, and I’ve been speaking out ever since, and just sharing my experiences.