The story of Abby Johnson’s decision to leave her job at Planned Parenthood and become pro-life continues to get a lot of media attention. Just yesterday, on Jill Stanek’s blog, I found out about a particular act of love by a teenage girl that ended up playing a role in Abby’s conversion:
As a teen Elizabeth often prayed in front of Abby’s mill, and she tried to befriend Abby. Once Elizabeth even brought Abby flowers. Abby’s friends inside the mill dissuaded her from retrieving the flowers but when they weren’t looking, she did anyway. Abby always kept the card, which said something about Jesus caring for her, in her office.
Elizabeth (McClung) is now the director of Austin Coalition for Life. Thanks in part to her act of love for Abby years ago, and for her continued prayers, Abby left the abortion industry and is now pro-life. Other people who used to work in the abortion industry — including former abortion clinic guard Mark Bomchill and former abortion clinic owner Carol Everett — have also talked about loving acts of kindness shown to them by pro-lifers that, more than anything, helped give them the final push they needed to get out, and to become pro-life. (Bryan Kemper, who spoke at our TeenSpeak conference this year, tells a similar story of kindness shown to him by a Christian doctor at a very low point in his life. And although he wasn’t part of the abortion industry, he candidly admits that the way he was living at the time was definitely not pro-life, and it was the love shown him by that Christian doctor that helped him turn things around and give his life over to God.) We can’t remind ourselves enough that our enemy in the battle against abortion is not women who have abortions, or the men who allow (or even force) their wives or girlfriends to have abortions, or even the people who are actually in the abortion business. No, our battle is “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph. 6:12). For those here on earth who are — for whatever reason — deceived by the devil or his demons into thinking there is nothing wrong with abortion, we can’t ever hope to win them over to Jesus Christ by hating them. The only way we can hope to convert them is by loving them.
