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Abby Johnson speaks inside the Lilly Family Gallery.
Set against a backdrop of red and blue panels printed with the Young America’s Foundation (YAF) logo, pro-life activist Abby Johnson spoke for nearly two hours in opposition to Planned Parenthood and abortion. Titled “Abby Johnson: Exposing Planned Parenthood,” the lecture took place in the Lilly Family Gallery this past Wednesday, April 9.
“After working at Planned Parenthood for eight years, eventually becoming a clinic director, she [Johnson] began to question the organization’s priorities, feeling that they were more focused on selling abortions than they were on genuinely helping women,” Cynthia Huang ‘25, president of Davidson’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, explained during the event’s introduction.
Johnson’s anti-Planned Parenthood viewpoint, coupled with her firsthand experience, has allowed Johnson to promote her pro-life advocacy broadly, from Fox News to her own memoir: Unplanned.
Johnson primarily took a storytelling approach to her lecture, relying on personal anecdotes to describe the change in her perspective over the course of her life. Johnson cited Sept. 26, 2009 as the day everything changed. “I was called in that day to assist with [an] abortion procedure. My job was to hold the ultrasound probe on the woman’s abdomen during the abortion procedure so that the doctor would be able to, in his words, ‘visualize his target,’” she explained. “I see the suction tube go in […] When it finally gets close to him and finally touches the area he’s in, he jumps, and he begins moving his arms and legs as if he’s trying to get away […] in just minutes, I see this tiny body be torn apart.”
This sequence of events has been criticized for its inaccuracy. In an article published by the Texas Monthly, a search into the records of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas, where Johnson worked, turned up no abortion on the day of Sept. 26, 2009 that matched her description. Johnson has provided details to this story, including that the patient was a Black woman and 13 weeks along in her pregnancy.
These proposed facts match no documented abortion carried out at the clinic that day.
Nonetheless, this vignette moved some audience members. “I think I’m more sympathetic to the pro-life position after this,” Gabriel Russ-Nachamie ‘27, attendee and president of the Davidson College Libertarians, said.
Changing opinions was YAF’s desired outcome. “Part of our [YAF’s] mission is to change the hearts and minds of people in the middle. So for people that don’t know what an abortion really is, when they realize […] what actually goes on, we hope that they will change their minds,” YAF Communications Director Hannah Fay ‘25 expressed.
Johnson’s talk was met with resistance from Davidson’s Planned Parenthood Generation Action (PPGA) chapter. While Johnson spoke in the Lilly Family Gallery, PPGA, alongside Students Against Imperialism (SAI), hosted a counter event held in the Alvarez College Union amphitheater, located outside the entrance to the building. As Johnson spoke in Chambers, nearly 75 people gathered over the course of two hours to learn about the history of reproductive rights in the U.S. and share thoughts on the conversation at hand.
Beneath a banner that displayed, “We support people who get abortions,” with a QR code that led to abortion support resources, students wrote different pro-choice phrases in chalk including, “We support people who get abortions” and “Keep your laws off my body.” As students dropped by to write or to listen, organizers passed out pamphlets including “Who is Fit for Motherhood,” a zine that explores how reproductive rights issues disproportionately affect women of color, poor women and immigrant women. Anaya Patel ‘25, former direct action chair of PPGA and active member of SAI, helped to organize the gathering.
“For this event, we were trying to think of ways we can show our support for people who get abortions, ways we can have an educational component [and] a discussion, which is what we ended up doing,” they stated.
In doing so, Patel believed that this event served as a productive space to foster conversation surrounding the issue. “I just thought it was necessary to combat some of the harmful rhetoric that was going to be coming out of the YAF event,” they emphasized. “I thought having an event not only to spread information, but also to show people on campus that they are supported in their choice to get an abortion and to obtain their full reproductive freedom, [and] that there’s people on campus that believed in that and loved them for it [was important].”
Mallie Roley ‘25, an attendee, felt that the environment allowed for community members to gather thoughtfully. “The most meaningful experiences I’ve had at Davidson have come from conversations—both in and outside the classroom. Abby Johnson […] failed to acknowledge the students and professors who came together to engage thoughtfully over scholarly literature, exchanging perspectives, values and historical context.”
YAF defined this counter event as an acceptable form of free speech. “I am obviously a big proponent of free speech. They can say whatever they want. They can do whatever they want. It’s America,” Huang declared.
Additionally, PPGA engaged directly with those attempting to attend the lecture. Two members stood near the Chambers Building entrance, handing out flyers that outlined Johnson’s viewpoints and advocating for people to attend their gathering instead. Nearby chalk art also pointed attendees in the direction of the PPGA event. The use of art to protest the event was continually disparaged by Johnson throughout her lecture. “Let’s draw flowers and talk about it. It’s adorable. So freaking adorable. And in the meantime, why don’t you draw a picture of what it looks like for a baby to be decapitated inside of an abortion clinic,” Johnson said. “These are grown-up conversations to be had, not something to chalk art on a sidewalk at a university.”
Huang reiterated these sentiments. “This is not just something that you should be playing around with art [about]. It’s a very serious issue. It’s the genocide of this generation. There are over a million babies every year being killed. I don’t think that’s something to joke around about.”
Members of PPGA also posed questions to Johnson during the Q&A section, including questioning Johnson’s lack of acknowledgement of the non-abortion health services provided by Planned Parenthood. Johnson brought up this question again in a later response to a different attendee. “They’ll [Planned Parenthood] feed them their talking points, like the one that you saw up here just a minute ago, and they’ll say, ‘This is what we want you to say, this is the program that we want you to follow,’” she expressed.
Toward the end of the event, PPGA members filtered into the back of the Lilly Gallery, purposefully taking seats on the floor rather than in the available chairs near the front. While describing how she and her colleagues at Planned Parenthood made fun of patients in their most vulnerable state, Johnson directly addressed their presence. “When our doctor would sit on his little chair, and the women would […] have their legs wide open in the stirrups, and the doctor would roll up right up next to them, he would act like he was sniffing their vagina. We would all, you know, laugh and think that was so funny, like they’re laughing back there because they think that’s so funny, because they’re all pro-abortion,” Johnson stated. “See, they’re not honoring women. It’s probably because they’re not honorable women.”
Despite the back and forth, PPGA members stressed that their counter event brought unity for those who were looking to get involved with pro-choice discourse.“I think people are a little scared just because abortion bans are on the rise, so it was really cool to see people come together for something that’s being increasingly criminalized right now,” Patel said.