This interview in 2023 features Michael Voris, the former founder of Church Militant, and Pro-life Expert Abby Johnson, and a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned prominent pro-life advocate and speaker.
The discussion focuses primarily on the biggest challenges facing the pro-life movement, particularly the alarming rise of chemical/medication abortions, the American public’s indifference to the issue, and the perceived failure of leadership within the Catholic Church regarding the sanctity of life.
Chemical abortion: The Biggest Threat to the Pro-Life Movement
Michael Voris: Abby, first of all, thank you for giving us an interview. Let me ask you, what do you think is the biggest single challenge of the pro-life movement now has in 2023?
Abby Johnson: Chemical abortion, medication abortion, the fact that it is so easily available. I could go online right now to over 70 websites. I could put in a fake name, I can put in a fake date of birth. I can put in a fake last menstrual period date, and I can have it sent to any address anywhere in the United States. And I could have sent, take it in my bathroom, take it in a hotel room.
Basically, we have turned every woman’s home into an abortion clinic. And it’s scary. It’s dangerous. And the Biden administration and his incredibly partisan FDA has put every woman’s life on the line. I mean, of course their baby’s life as well.
But I think that’s the biggest threat right now. It’s the biggest threat to women. And I mean, the pro-abortion movement says they’re out here to help women and protect women. But they will be the ones killing them.
Michael Voris: It’s a 50-year-old lie. I remember that when I was a kid they’ll say women help women. Do you think that the percentage of surgical abortions, what we used to think of in terms of abortion?
Are those now eclipsed by chemical abortions, is it 50-50? I mean, I know the numbers are kind of not really certain, but what do we know?
Abby Johnson: Yes, there are more chemical abortions taking place than surgical abortions now, and that was the goal. So Planned Parenthood’s goal, their stated goal in the spring of 2009.
When I left Planned Parenthood, at our last conference that I went to, was that by 2020, they wanted more medication abortion than surgical abortion. And they have now, they’ve succeeded that.
So there are now on record 54% medication abortion, but that’s just recorded. So it’s probably more we know it’s higher than that. We’re probably somewhere around 60–65% medication abortion.
Michael Voris: Wow. Why would that be their goal? It seems like because it makes so much money from surgical abortions. You’re not paying 300, 400, a 1000 dollars for the pill, you know, for the chemical abortion. So sort of just an ideological thing to do?
Abby Johnson: There’s no doctor. You don’t have to have a doctor. So you can give out pills anywhere. You can give them out, you know, in any clinic anytime, day or night, online, anywhere and you don’t have to have a doctor available, which means you don’t have to pay a doctor and there is an abortion doctor shortage. So we know that.
I mean, the bulk of abortion doctors in this country are old, right? I mean we look around, we see you know, Leroy Carhart just died, right? You look at, you know, these old abortionist, Warren Hern, in his 80s. Rosenfeld in his 80s. Boyd in his 80s.
All of these, you know, long time well-known abortion fathers, they’re old, they’re dying. And there is not this young crop of abortionists to take their place. And so they’re needing to fill the abortion gap with abortion procedures that don’t require doctors.
Michael Voris: They certainly found that!
Abby Johnson: Yes, they did. And they are going to continue to push the limits of medication abortion.
The last National Abortion Federation conference I’ve been to was in 2008, there had been a study that was done in Canada and the doctor had done the study on medication abortion, so giving 800 micrograms of misoprostol to women every hour to two hours on 24-week pregnant women, so six months pregnant.
They were dosing these women vaginally, with 800 micrograms of misoprostol every one to two hours. These women were delivering, I mean, fully formed, potentially born alive, babies in a hotel room. And this was a study that was done in Canada on misoprostol-only abortions. So misoprostol-only at that time was the only way that they were doing abortions.
Mythoprax, at that time, the misoprostol was not allowed in Canada. So they were doing misoprostol only, there was nothing to kill the actual baby before it was delivered. So these babies were being born alive if they didn’t die during the birthing process.
These women were going to a hotel. They were being sort of loosely monitored by abortion clinic staff that were part of the study. And these women weren’t delivering mostly live babies. They were being instructed then to put them in red biohazard bags.
They were given a go kit which included gauze, the bag, scissors to cut the umbilical cord, and they were just instructed to put their live baby in the bag and let it suffocate to death. And that was considered a viable study in Canada. And that is what they are going to continue to push.
Here in the US, you know, we already have medication abortion up to 10 weeks, which means Planned Parenthood’s doing it up to 12. So they’re going to continue to push this further and further and further. They’re going to try to change the RAMS they’re going to try to change the regs so that they can push this further and further and eventually we’re going to have women delivering live babies.
Pro-life Expert Abby Johnson on Indifference
Michael Voris: Why do you think America is so indifferent on balance to the abortion question? And if you look at some of the referendums in the past and you know, 2022 in the wake of the Dobbs decision, indifferent would be being kind.
Is abortion, however, it’s done: surgical, medical, whatever, isn’t now just baked into the American narrative?
This is just a thing we’ve had for half a century and you know, if you can change a state law here or there or you know, making a 12-week ban or whatever, it’s kind of beside the point. This is just something we’ve just come to accept as country and that’s it.
Abby Johnson: So I think, I think the main answer to that question is because so many people have had abortions. We live in a culture that is saturated with people who had abortions.
Depending on what you know, stats you look at to, one in three or one in four women who’ve had abortions, I think it’s probably one in three. I think so many are unreported. I mean, look, you know, the two states that have the highest abortion numbers in New York in California aren’t required to report, right? Okay, so I think it’s probably one in three women have had abortions, which means three men have been involved in an abortion procedure, right?
Knowingly, willingly or not, they’ve been involved, right? So we are living in this society with just walking wounded people. And I think a lot of this anger that we see, you know, like I go to these pro-life rallies and undoubtedly there’s always going to be this, you know, pro-abortion contingent on the other side, and you just see this anger, manifesting in them, and I don’t know that it’s really anger.
I think it’s hurt disguised as anger. But it’s so deep seated. I don’t think that they recognize the difference. And it’s so much justification. You know, why abortion is okay, why abortion was okay for them. And so I think that they have to be sort of apathetic, I think they have to be sort of indifferent.
I think they have to be supportive of it. Because if they’re not, they have to recognize that they murdered their child. And I can tell you personally, as someone who did murder two of my children. That’s a hard, very bitter pill to swallow. It’s a very hard reality to face. And it’s much easier to say no, it wasn’t a baby. No, it wasn’t a big deal. No, abortion was the right thing. No, it was the compassionate thing to do, it was a nothing. It was a blob. It didn’t have a heartbeat. It didn’t have arms and legs. It was it, was just pregnancy tissue.
It’s a lot easier to say that and justify that than it is to say, oh my gosh, I killed my child! But I don’t know that it’s settled. You know? You know, I think there were probably people back during the time of slavery, they probably wanted slavery to be settled. You know, that probably thought slavery was a settled issue.
But then there were people that rose up you know, the abolitionists rose up and said, No, it’s not settled and we’re going to put it in your face. We’re going to keep putting it in your face. We’re going to make it unsettled. We’re going to make you uncomfortable. We’re going to make you feel unsettled. And so that’s what we keep doing.
We keep putting it in their face. We keep making people uncomfortable with this reality. And I think that’s what we have to keep doing. And it took a long time. You know, for slavery to be abolished.
The Call for Civil Unrest and Consistent Justice
Michael Voris: We had a war. We’re going to have war over abortion?
Abby Johnson: Yeah! And you know, will it be worth it? Yeah. I mean, is it worth it? To protect 2,400 souls from death a day? Yeah, I think so.
Michael Voris: I’ve done a number of interviews and you know, read a bunch of literature and everything is particularly post-Dobbs. And really, for the first time as I was involved in pro-life when I was in middle school in California. So this kind of talk is relatively new to the pro-life movement. Like maybe this is civil war material now. I didn’t hear this 10 years ago.
Abby Johnson: We had a war over, what 2,500 people dying in the Twin Tower? What happened with the twin towers? There’s a twin tower event happening every single day in this country. And I’m not trying to minimize what happened at all. But that many lives are killed every single day in this country. And I don’t want that to happen. I don’t I don’t I don’t want there to be a war. That’s not what I want. That’s not what anybody wants.
Michael Voris: Right, but it’s not off the table?
Abby Johnson: No, I think, maybe some civil unrest, maybe is necessary. What does it take? What does it take for people to wake up and say babies are being slaughtered every day? I mean, what if it was 2,500 3-year olds every day? You know, what if it was 2,500 kindergarteners every day, there would be some civil unrest, and that that’s where we have to be in the pro-life movement. That’s where we have actually not been in the pro-life movement.
So, you know, we have not been at a place. We’ve said it. So we believe the unborn have an equal value as children outside of the womb. We’ve said it for 50 years, said it for decades, right? Now, we actually have an opportunity to treat them as such. We’re not doing it!
Now, Roe’s overturned. And you have states like mine, Texas, Tennessee, many other states where abortion is illegal. And now you have the opportunity to actually have a punishment for abortion and you can actually treat abortion as murder, right. Nobody’s doing it.
Michael Voris: Why? Why not?
Abby Johnson: Because the pro-life movement actually doesn’t see. Even though we’ve been saying it. We actually don’t see the unborn child equal to a child out of the womb. Because if we did, we would punish a person who killed a child in the womb the same way we punish them as someone who kills a child outside the womb.
Michael Voris: Is it they don’t see it or they don’t want to deal with the political ramifications?
Abby Johnson: Both. I think it’s both. We worry about optics. We worry about optics instead of just worrying about justice. Instead of worrying about doing what’s right. Worrying about doing what’s holy. Worrying about doing the things that honor God. We worry about how it looks.
Pro-life Expert Abby Johnson on Church Leadership Failure
Michael Voris: Last question, you opened the door to you said “holy” and God. So, you’re Catholic. What would you say is the reason for at least the hierarchies falling down on the abortion question.
Rarely would you find bishops in the national Right to Life march? You know, on stage speaking, you know, no solidarity. There’s never been in 53 years there has never once been a national collection for the pro-life movement.
Out of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of collections, not on most of the pro-life offices, diocese by diocese or just you know, sort of the offices of one or two people in the USCCB doesn’t do much in this area. What is the Catholic Church’s leadership problem in the pro-life world?
Abby Johnson: I think we have made the pro-life movement a political issue instead of a human rights issue, instead of a sin issue. And we are so scared to talk politics in our churches, which is weird because God demands that we are involved in government.
So why can’t we have a voter guide out in our churches? We should! Not to tell you who to vote for but to tell you where candidates stand on issues and where the Catholic Church stands on these issues.
Why not? I mean, we should be able to do that.
Michael Voris: Well, the bishops will say they do. And then they put out say, Well, you know, we’re talking about abortion. There’s also immigration. There’s also gun control. There’s also climate change.
Abby Johnson: I think that’s another thing so I think we have we have conflated issues in the pro-life movement. I think Catholics have done a really, really bang-up job of conflating issues in the pro-life movement.
Pro-life movement is about one thing and one thing alone, and that is ending the destruction of human life in the womb. And that’s it. It’s not about immigration, immigration and immigration issue. It’s not about the death penalty. Death penalty is about death. That’s the death penalty issue. It’s not about GMOs. GMO is GMO issue, right?
Pro-life movement is about ending abortion. That’s it. That’s all it should be about, right? And now we’re lumping so many things into the pro-life movement that we’re weakening the issue of abortion.
Michael Voris: We’ve just deluded it.
Abby Johnson: Yeah. We have deluded it. And that’s, that’s an error that the Catholic Church has done. We’ve fallen into this consistent life, the seamless garment, which is I think evil. And so we’ve really deluded the pro-life we’ve really deluded the abortion abortion issue, but we should be involved in politics.
The Church should be involved in politics, and we should be saying where can it stand and where the Catholic Church stands. That should be passed out in every parish, as far as I’m concerned. But we shouldn’t just be caught up on the fact that abortion is a political issues. It’s not, this is a human rights violation.
I think one of the reasons… that our priests aren’t really taking the lead on, is because their feet aren’t really being held to the fire. I mean, we have priests are standing up at the ambo, at the pulpit and they’re pro-choice.
Where’s the repercussions? Where’s the repercussions for being pro-choice? Now we’re canceling priests? We’re canceling good priests who are actually speaking out for the right things. But priests who are you know, giving pro-abortion people communion and, you know, telling people it’s fine to be gay and people who are holding pride festivals in churches and in their parishes and standing up and saying it’s fine to be pro-abortion. We’ll let them, not that it’s just okay with them, we’ll elevate them.
And so I think because there’s been no one holding anybody to the fire, it just that sin grows. It’s like a cancer, and it grows. And so I think we do need though to see anything that is a sin issue, is anything is a Jesus issue, as a church issue.
We need leadership to really be addressing these sin issues. We need the church. We need the leadership in the church to be calling people out. Why is James Martin allowed to say the thing? Why is he allowed to be a heretic in the church? Why is he allowed to say the things that he says?
Michael Voris: Some people would say the logical answer to that, least the most obvious answer, is that the people above him are also heretics.
Abby Johnson: Yeah. Why is he so close to the Pope? Why isn’t he being like, sanctioned? Why isn’t he, why? It doesn’t make any sense! There’s the problem with the leadership. We’re elevating people who are literally heretics and we’re canceling people who are speaking out and who are really good holy priests. And I think that creates confusion.
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