Work at Planned Parenthood
Although raised in a conservative family opposed to abortion, Johnson began volunteering for Planned Parenthood after seeing their booth at a volunteer fair at her college.[3] She says she had not heard of the group before and did not know they performed abortions, and Planned Parenthood told her they wanted to reduce the number of abortions.[3] Johnson volunteered in 2001, and progressed to the position of community services director. Identifying as “extremely pro-choice,” she worked at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas for eight years, escorting women into the clinic from their cars and eventually working as director of the clinic.[4] Johnson regularly encountered activists from Coalition for Life (now known as 40 Days for Life), a local anti-abortion group who demonstrated at the clinic’s fence, and described extensive harassment of clinic staff by anti-abortion activists.[5] Describing death threats against herself and her family, she stated: “It’s very scary, this group of people that claim to be these peaceful prayer warriors, or whatever they call themselves, it’s kind of ironic that some of them would be sending death threats.”[5] The Planned Parenthood clinic named Johnson employee of the year in 2008.[5]
Resignation
Johnson says that in September 2009, she was called in to assist in an ultrasound-guided abortion at 13 weeks gestation. She said she was disconcerted to see how similar the ultrasound image looked to her own daughter’s. Johnson, who previously believed fetuses could not feel anything while being aborted, says she saw the fetus squirming and twisting to avoid the vacuum tube used for the abortion.[6]
“For the briefest moment,” she wrote in her memoir, Unplanned, “the baby looked as if it were being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then it crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then it was gone.”[7]
Johnson continued working at the clinic for 9 more days, but soon met with Shawn Carney, leader of the local anti-abortion group Coalition for Life, with whom she was well acquainted after his years of activism against Planned Parenthood. She told him she could no longer continue assisting women in getting abortions. She resigned on October 6, 2009.[6]
Johnson said after her resignation that her bosses had pressured her to increase profits by performing more and more abortions at the clinic.[4] Johnson conceded that she could not produce any written orders to prove her allegations and estimated the clinic profited $350 on every abortion.[4]
An article on Salon.com questioned Johnson’s statements regarding financial incentives for abortions, asserting that abortions make up only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services,[5] a figure PolitiFact described as “somewhat misleading”.[8]