unPlanned

I’ve just started reading Unplanned, by Abby Johnson, “the dramatic true story of a former Planned Parenthood leader’s eye-opening journey across the life line.”

It’s a book that really gets at how someone like Abby, a Christian from a pro-life family, might end up working in an abortion clinic. I’m just at the beginning and I’d say there’s a lot of naivete coupled with a lack of rigourous thinking. For today, though, I’m going to post the part about Abby’s chemical abortion. As stories accrue about how hard this is on women, I think it’s important to post:

My cramping was excruciating and went on for days and days. I was too ill to get out of bed, ran a fever, and bled heavily. I was frightened, but whether our of shame, humiliation, or self-punishment—or maybe some combination of the three—I would not call the clinic. I couldn’t bear the thought of going to an emergency room or an ob-gyn because there was no way I was going to confess that I’d brought this on myself by aborting my second pregnancy….After two weeks I returned to work though I still felt so weak I’d come home exhausted and go straight back to bed. Finally, after about eight weeks of feeling ill, I felt recovered enough to return to the clinic for one of my volunteer shifts.”

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