National leaders are celebrating pro-life advocate Abby Johnson’s trailblazing address at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night, one that bared the violence of abortion and the stark choice facing Americans in the upcoming election.
A former Planned Parenthood director-turned-pro-life activist, Johnson shared some of what she experienced during her eight-year tenure working in an abortion clinic:
She related, for example, what she witnessed while assisting a doctor with an abortion that used ultrasound technology:
Nothing prepared me for what I saw on the screen – an unborn baby fighting back, desperate to move away from the suction instrument. And I’ll never forget what the doctor said next: “Beam me up, Scotty.” The last thing I saw was a spine twirling around in the mother’s womb before succumbing to the force of the suction.
Johnson explained that, even for most people who identify as “pro-life,” abortion is still “abstract”:
They can’t even conceive of the barbarity. They don’t know about the Products of Conception room in abortion clinics, where infant corpses are pieced back together to ensure nothing remains in the mother’s wombs or that we joked and called it the “Pieces of Children” room.
But for me, abortion is very real. I know what it sounds like, what it smells like. Did you know that abortion has a smell? I’ve been the perpetrator…to these babies…to these women.
“In her groundbreaking Republican National Convention speech, Abby Johnson courageously exposed the brutal reality of abortion, the lies of Planned Parenthood, and the extreme agenda of Democrats like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – the most pro-abortion presidential ticket in history,” said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser in a statement.
Dannenfelser, who serves as national cochair of the Pro-Life Voices for Trump Coalition and is the author of the book Life Is Winning, observed that in their convention last week, Democrats avoided mention of abortion, though its advancement is one of the most prominent items on their platform:
President Trump and Republicans at every level are leaning into the life issue as a strength. The contrast to the Democrats, who spent their entire convention downplaying their radical stance, could not be starker. We thank President Trump for making this historic moment possible. Because of his leadership, life is winning in America.
National Review editor, Rich Lowry, tweeted that Johnson’s speech was “extraordinary.”
“Wow—must be the strongest, most compelling pro-life speech ever given at a major party convention,” he remarked:
Former White House press secretary and Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer tweeted, “Abby Johnson’s telling of the baby moving away from the suction is incredible. I had never heard that before. That’s going to change minds”:
Young Not Stupid conservative media founder Cameron Arcand tweeted a shot of NBC News’s video of Johnson, however, in which the pro-life leader was identified as an “opponent of abortion rights,” a label that drew criticism of bias from Arcand and Fleischer, who asked, “Did they describe supporters of gun control as ‘opponents of gun rights’?”:
Similarly, Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins tweeted, “Yeah, no bias here @NBCNews”: