What’s in the water in Texas that is suddenly causing major players in the abortion industry to start telling the truth about what they’re doing? We don’t know, but we’d love to be able to export it.
The liberal opinion press has been abuzz for the past several weeks over the very public change of heart of a woman named Abby Johnson. Johnson has recently become convinced that the sanctity of human life is worth fighting for. That’s newsworthy because until very recently she worked for Planned Parenthood as the director of its clinics in the city of Bryan (in the southeast part of central Texas, near Texas A & M University). She was the clinic’s employee of the year for 2008. Now you’re just as likely to find her praying with protestors outside where she used to work.
Johnson apparently became aware of two central realities of the abortion business – that it exists to make money, and that it makes money by killing babies. Her superiors had been pressuring her to increase volume, that is, to perform more abortions. Then, in September, she witnessed an abortion through the lens of an ultrasound machine. She resigned the next day.
We don’t know if Abby Johnson will become a prominent voice in the fight for life or not, but she’s certain to become a target of the movement she served for eight years if she does.
So might Dr. Curtis Boyd, although he hasn’t switched sides on this issue. He opened the first abortion clinic in the state in 1973, and recently opened a surgery center to accommodate his practice of performing late-term abortions (Texas law requires that abortions must be performed in a surgery center if the baby is at 16 weeks or later of development).
In a recent interview, Dr. Boyd admitted what abortion is. “Am I killing?” he asked rhetorically to a Dallas TV camera. “Yes, I am. I know that.”
Boyd says he is a former Baptist minister who often prays that “the spirit of this pregnancy be returned to God with love and understand.” Unfortunately his compassion for the “spirit of this pregnancy” doesn’t permit him to allow the body attached to that spirit to have a chance at life.
Knowing the truth isn’t enough, of course, but it’s a start. Let’s pray that Dr. Boyd someday realizes the eternal implications of his career and leaves it.
