8/26/2020
By Benjamin Siegel and Ivan Pereira
Former Planned Parenthood employee Abby Johnson took the stage at the Republican National Convention Tuesday, to decry her former employer and speak out against abortion rights in the country.
Long before the video of her highly-graphic speech was aired Tuesday, however, details of her story and facts about the organization — which she had spoken of in the past — had already been scrutinized, and serious questions had been raised about the validity of her stories.
Johnson gained attention in 2009 when she quit her job at the Texas Planned Parenthood and joined an anti-abortion rights group. She has spoken publicly about her time with the organization and has even written a memoir with details about her work there.
Johnson told viewers in the taped video Tuesday that 80% of Planned Parenthood’s offices are “strategically placed” in minority neighborhoods. Planned Parenthood, however, has said, “Fewer than 4% of Planned Parenthood facilities are in communities that are more than one-third Black.”
During her RNC speech, Johnson brought up one anecdote about her final day at the organization, when she allegedly witnessed an ultrasound-guided abortion.
“Nothing prepared me for what I saw on the screen — an unborn baby fighting back,” she said.
But Johnson’s account about her final day and the anecdote about the patient, who she claimed in previous tellings was 13 weeks pregnant, has been disputed by several reports.
A 2019 article by Texas Monthly looked at the medical records from the day that Johnson claimed the ultrasound abortion took place.
The records didn’t list a patient beyond 10 weeks of gestation, according to the article.
“Further, they reflect that the only African American patient — as Johnson has described the woman whose procedure she observed — was just six weeks pregnant, meaning there would have been no fetus to see on the ultrasound, only an embryo, and no medical need for an ultrasound to be used in the first place,” the article stated.
