She was “small, bubbly, and joyful. She had a radiant smile . . . ” with a “sweet” face. She was young and Sound of Music–like.
And yet, she wept.
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She was a nun — in full habit. Standing outside a Planned Parenthood clinic that Abby Johnson was running in Texas.
The first day Johnson and her staff saw her, they “gawked” through the clinic window. It was nearly 100 degrees, and there she was “in a heavy, dark brown habit that swept to the ground.” Johnson, in her new book, Unplanned, remembers: “Her head and hair were completely covered so that only her face showed, a face lifted toward heaven, eyes closed, clearly praying.”
And then a “client” left the clinic: a woman who had just had an abortion.
The religious sister “fell to her knees and wept with such grief . . . that I couldn’t help but think to myself, She feels something far deeper than I ever will . . . this grief at knowing that client had an abortion.” Sister Marie Bernadette would be back, every week, on the days the clinic performed abortions. And, Johnson writes, “We could continue to see that she was deeply and personally grieved by abortions.”
The weeping sister affected Johnson: “I tried to shake it off but couldn’t get past the fact that a nun was grieving over what was happening inside my clinic.” Johnson asked herself, “How many other people cry outside my workplace because of the work I am doing?”
And she was not alone in her reaction. Writing about the first encounter of a spiritual mother, Johnson writes, “A silence fell over us for a time.” It was “as if we all felt embarrassed or ashamed. We tried to get back to work, but every few minutes someone would look out the window and offer an update on the sister, like, ‘He’s still weeping,’ or, ‘Look, one of the pro-lifers is consoling her now.’ It was agony just knowing she was out there.”
“The truth was, the sister’s simple, prayerful presence bothered most of us, Catholic, ex-Catholic, Protestant, and unchurched alike,” Johnson recalls, “as she somehow represented our consciences.”
The sister was in agony.
I thought about the sister when I heard New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg rant last week: “If they had their way, the reproductive rights of American women would be tossed away and it sounds to me like a Third World country that’s requiring women to wear head shawls to cover their faces even if they don’t want to do it.” He was responding to a simple funding bill before Congress to keep taxpayer money away from abortion. There is currently no universal, permanent prohibition. The bill would change that. And I’m not going in for burqa measurements because of it. A new senator from Connecticut called the same an “assault” on women.
I wish I could call that the day all the civility talk died, but we know better.
I don’t know Sr. Marie Bernadette, but I know why she cries. Because it’s miserable, our rhetoric and our reality.
As you might expect, Johnson no longer works for Planned Parenthood. Participating in an all-too-clear sonogram-guided abortion was the termination point for her. But it had been building. There was the “incredible irony” that, as Johnson puts it, “I had a career in educating women about contraception” and yet three times “conceived while using contraceptives.” It was the third time when she kept her child, Grace.
Complexity, confusion, disconnect — these are all words Johnson uses to describe what was going on in her life and profession. And they describe American life in general on this issue.
KLo, thanks for this touching article. I'm usually torn between wrath and grief reading of these horrors. I'm reminded by my parish priest to pray more about it, and as well I should. He also sees the value in foreign healthcare aid which happen to include family planning. He's figured out a way to reconcile the good with the bad. I see it as adding an ounce of dung to a pound of ice cream. It always tastes more like dung than ice cream. Thx again NRO.
Years ago I read an issue of Esquire magazine which contained a confessional by a doctor who had sworn off abortions. It moved me as your column has, since they both bring flesh and bone reality to what so many zealots and hip media moral eunuchs try to portray as as neutral a procedure as pulling a wisdom tooth.
Your story can and should be read. The doctor's story, published in the 1970's, began with an admission that he bought into a "simple procedure" line until he noticed something. He liked to fish and during an abortion when he hooked the baby, it tugged and thrashed like a fish would. He recognize neither the fish nor the fetus were very complex creature, but they were living and fought their demise. He closed by noting he was not proselytizing, just stating he would not be involved any more.
Your column ends with the word "misery."
These times profess openness and honesty, as all times (wrongly) do, come to think of it. If people only were open and honest, observed reality and not what some true believer tells you reality is, they would agree with your hero and the 1970's doctor.
Senator Lautenberg and the rest of the pro abort crowd intentionaly skews the conversation onto one of "reproductive rights". We are all for a woman's right to reproduce with whomever she chooses. That is why rape is against the law. The problem is one of definition (ie, the rhetoric).
The reproductive act (and the main reproductive right) is the act of sexual intercourse. Birth isn't the reproductive act, sex is!
If you need an abortion, you have already reproduced! Your child is just at one of his or her stages of development. They are totally dependent on you and will continue to be dependent, both in and out of the womb, for several years.
The truly sad thing about this, the pro-abort crowd knows this. That is why they are so opposed to sonograms and the crisis pregnancy centers. They say they are "pro-choice" and they are, as long as the choice is an abortion!
As one who suffered personally from the monstrous practice of abortion, I can vouch for the effect it has on men who condone it. When I was a young man, I participated in two abortions of my own children. I cannot say those decisions have ruined my life, but they would have if God had not sent me a good woman with two wonderful boys of her own. They saved me from the pit of despair I had been in for more than ten years. Still, I will never forget what I have done and the horror of it will haunt me until I die. This is the fruit of the institution of abortion: it destroys the lives of unborn children as well as the souls of those who commit it. It debases and corrupts all that it touches. To support it, people must have an elaborate rationale in order to shield themselves from its true nature. Its days will end because no human endeavor so rooted in sin and falsity can last forever. In the meantime, it is our task to pray and to bear witness. Thank you, Katherine Lopez.
Excellent article. The question is this: "When will enough people demand an end to the practice that kills the little ones and scars their parents?" It may be that until the general public actually sees images of what abortion really is, like we see of famines and genocides, there will be insufficient outcry. There is certainly reason for weeping.
As others have pointed out before me, many people do not agree that an early stage embryo is equivalent to a child that can eat, breathe, think, remember on their own. In fact, it seems to me to be a monstrous violation of common sense to equate an embryo with the child that my wife carried to term and whom we have raised.
I don't doubt that some people who have been involved with abortions regret them and suffer emotionally. However, one should also acknowledge the suffering caused by unwanted children. The dramatic drop in crime rate that is correlated with legalized abortion attests to the fact that not having an abortion can also lead to suffering.
As for me, my girlfriend got pregnant when we were 19 and in our second year of college. This is spite of the fact that she used birth control and we used condoms every time.
Do i regret doing what I felt was neccesary at the time? Yes, of course. Was I ready, physically, emotionally or financially for a child? Absolutely not. Did i make the right decision? For me, i think it was the right decision.
I don't believe anyone wants to get pregnant and have an abortion. I shamefully admit that my life is better now because of what we chose to do. But I also believe that not bringing that child into the world at that time was the right thing to do.
It is time to call our representatives and encourage thier support of HR-3 and Title 10 Abortion Provider Prohibition Act.
Regardless of if we know how they will vote, we the people need to speak out on this one. Perhaps some of the gruesome details popping up all over this nation will touch our representatives hearts.
Mr. Phillips, how nice of a representative of the moral relativist crowd to drop by.
It serves no purpose to discuss morality with a person such as yourself -
your statements clearly indicate a complete lack of comprehension regarding the concepts of good and evil.
Have faith, as you will discover soon enough that both exist in this world.
I pray that with time, luck and patience, people such as yourself eventually realize the depth of your abject ignorance.
A marvelous article. Sister Marie Bernadette's agony and how it affected Abby Johnson communicates the big truth about our culture of abortion. We can now see the forest clearly and the little trees are put into context. To think that the suffering Sister Marie internalized - far beyond my jaded capacity - is as nothing in comparison with the suffering that Christ endured for my sin and the sin of the world.
You make this argument: There's a huge difference between an embryo and the child your wife carried to term. I presume you granted that baby person-hood when he or she was born.
So what if I say there's a huge difference between your baby and my ten-year old, a person who can think, talk, moralize, understand and return love, etc? Wouldn't your relativist morals/shocking ignorance let me argue that killing a baby is different than killing a ten year old? They're wildly "different" after all? What if I said it was a "monstrous violation of common sense" to equate the two? Well, I would be using your pitiful "logic" to defend evil, which is incidentally exactly what you are doing: Using your own pitiful "logic" to defend evil.
Someday I pray you realize that a human being doesn't gain -- or lose -- person-hood simply because you say so. Human beings are human beings whether you say so or not. I know it's probably news to you, but evil is evil, even when everybody supports it. That's called objective morality; you should acquaint yourself with it.
If Mark Phillips is evil, then Talesin is a hyporcrite of gargantuan proportions.
In Talesin's world, 1.2 million innocent Americans are murdered each year. If each and every day hundreds of Americans age 85 and older in every city in the country were being lined up, shot, and their corpses bulldozed into ditches and covered with loose soil because Congress passed a law to the effect that everyone 85 and older shall be put to death, Talesin and I and just about every other person with a brain and a soul would be outside, down in the street, Tahrir Square style, facing down the executioners. Instead, Talesin and his ilk are blogging. Why? Is there something categorically different about legal abortion and the legal murder of every American 85 and older? Or would you just continue to blog and maybe head down to DC once a year if your grandparents were being gunned down en masse?
Eric Rudolph may be a criminal, but he's a criminal in the same way the generals who tried to assassinate Hitler were. At least he has the courage of his convictions.
In 1789, we began lifting the revolver. Sometime towards the end of the nineteenth century, we rested the muzzle on our temple. In 1914, we pulled the trigger; now, the body continues to fall to the floor. How long will the carcass, once it settles, lie and rot undisturbed?
Mr or Ms Talesin makes my point nicely. He/she has a point of view that derives from their religious faith (or so I presume from their willingness to pray for me). That faith equates a few-celled embryo with a child who loves, talks, thinks. My contention is that such an equivalency violates common sense. Who, seeing two such beings side by side, would say they were equivalent? I accept that philosophies/religions exist that do not rely on common sense. However, in the American political system, we rely on common sense and real-world experience to craft laws that we all must live by.
The question is not what you think of your abortion...but of what God thinks of your innocent child having been murdered so you would be able to avoid feeling tethered. For me I think God would choose the innocent life over your feeling untethered!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news like this but I don't think you'll be able to deal with what you've (apparently unknowingly) done so nonchalantly in front of God.
Scared, desperate, and pregnant. Planned Parenthood is there for you.
You succumb: it's just tissue. It's not a baby unless it takes a breath or gets out intact head first; it's just a fetus. And Planned Parenthood is there for you.
Relief. Your troubles are over. You've joined the crowd, the friends who have all had abortions, friends who need to give and receive encouragement, approval and understanding. You and they have had to make hard decisions, but there were good reasons. It's all normal hormonal responses, nothing to worry about. Planned Parenthood is there to exorcise any slight guilty or anxiety.
But for some weird reason, such comforts don't quite demolish all the uneasiness. So you, your friend, your friends - you find the neural pathways that hormones and distant moralities have burned into your brain, follow them to their source and unplug them.
The next abortion isn't such a hard decision. Just go find the ends of those neural pathways and tug them out of their sockets. You've reached YOUR destination, after all - freedom and liberty stayed by no one, man or woman.
If this is what has happened to you, if your woman's heart has been hardened and shellacked into easy come, easy go, until there's no other direction left, well, Planned Parenthood has done its job.
But the cosmic joke is at the abortionist's expense. The Mind and Power who inhabits eternity WILL give that infant new life. Abortionists cannot destroy a human soul, however microscopic.
And you should know this: guilt has a way of rebuilding connections, of weaseling its way past obstacles and leaping over gaps in the wiring. And if you can't petrify your soul to the point that guilt is forever frozen and harmless, little shadows will follow you throughout life. And Planned Parenthood can't kill those for you.
Contrariwise, if you are willing, if you are weighted with grief and want desperately to break free from the lies, the layers of self-deception, and the manipulations of power-mad human gargoyles, if you turn and ask, there can come the day when that Mind and Power will restore that dear infant to YOU, ten toes, ten fingers and all.
I know a woman that had invitro and wound up with a triple pregnancy. The doctors suggested they "cull" two of the fertilized eggs for a normal pregnancy, she and her husband decided not to. The result,three lovely kids. Was it hard? You bettcha.Was it worth it? Wild, blissfull mayhem, it doesn't get any better
You said, "Was I ready, physically, emotionally or financially for a child? Absolutely not. Did i make the right decision? For me, i think it was the right decision."
If you were not ready to care for a child then you were not ready to engage in sex with your girlfriend. In reality, you were simply playing at being a man, but you obviously were still a great big child yourself.
Therein lies the issue with so many of the pro-abortion crowd: you don't understand responsibility. Actions have consequences, and the post-morality crowd, like yourself, have yet to come to terms with that.
Because you were to immature to be responsible for your actions your child died. Just man up and own it; stop trying to rationalize it.
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