Abby Johnson was fortunate to grow up with two amazing parents who taught her the value of love and education. With a desire for their daughter to make an impact on the world, they instilled in Abby a passion to give back. It was a principle that Abby held close to her as she headed off to college.
“During my college years, I felt a real calling to give back,” Abby recalled. “I wanted to make the world a better place, especially for young women.”
While in college, Abby got involved as a volunteer at a Planned Parenthood facility. The abortion clinic was so impressed with her that they offered her a job a month before she graduated. Abby accepted and began a career in the abortion industry that would last for eight years.
“Working at the clinic felt good. I was finally fulfilling this yearning to give back,” Abby said.
During those eight years, Abby worked her way up the ranks. She eventually became the clinic director of an abortion facility in Bryan, Texas, and was even named Planned Parenthood’s Employee of the Year in 2008. But it was around this same time that things began to change for Abby.
“It was probably about seven years in when things began to change for me,” Abby shared. “I believed that I was doing the right thing for women. But suddenly, I wasn’t sure what the right thing was.”
As Abby began to take on more responsibilities, she came to a realization that what was best for women always seemed to match up with what was best for the abortion clinic. She became disturbed by the increase in her clinic’s abortion quotas and the desire to expand late-term abortion services. Women’s health appeared to become secondary to the system of the clinic.
“The bottom line seemed to be the only thing that mattered, not women’s healthcare,” Abby said.
In the end, Abby was eventually pushed over the edge in October 2009 after watching a 13-week-old baby struggle for his life during an ultrasound-guided abortion. She quit Planned Parenthood and instantly became a national news headline after the abortion giant sued her.
As her story spread, other abortion workers began contacting Abby, saying that they wanted to leave the abortion industry, too. But they didn’t know how to quit without another job lined up, and they were concerned about the potential for legal retaliation from the abortion industry.
Abby began praying for God to appoint someone to start a ministry to help abortion workers who want to quit the industry. She knew they needed a strong set of resources to help them exit safely, find life-affirming employment, and heal from their experiences.
It didn’t take long for Abby to realize that God was appointing HER for this special mission.
“I started And Then There Were None because I realized that there must be many people like me, people who want to leave the abortion industry but feel alone,” Abby reflected. “We often say that women deserve better than abortion, but clinic workers do too. So, I wanted to create an exit strategy for those abortion industry workers.”
Abby officially launched And Then There Were None (ATTWN) in 2012 to ensure that a lack of money or fear of acceptance were never reasons for someone to remain in the abortion industry. With this mission in mind, ATTWN began offering a support system like no other. To this day, the ministry offers services like transitional financial aid while an ex-abortion worker finds a new job, professional resume writing, job search support, scholarships for higher education, counseling with licensed therapists, healing resources and retreats, and a tribe of over 725 (and counting) former abortion workers who relate to one another and heal together.
“No one should have to go through this alone. No one should have to heal alone,” Abby shared.
While ATTWN has been actively supporting its tribe of former abortion workers every single day since its founding, the ministry has also been proactively reaching out to over 3,500 current abortion industry workers at the same time. Through prayers, handwritten cards, social media, and more, ATTWN has always had a heart to ensure that abortion workers know there’s a safe way out of the industry.
It was this mindset that led Abby to come up with a bold, new way to inspire multiple abortion workers across the country to quit on one single day. The day would be called “Exodus,” playing off the Book of Exodus in the Bible, where God delivers the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to freedom. Exodus Day would offer abortion workers a similar opportunity—finding freedom from the abortion industry by walking out together.
“The first Exodus we did was in 2013,” Abby explained. “I thought that it would be cool if we did a day where we ask abortion clinic workers to just leave—put in their resignation letters that day and walk out. I didn’t know if it would be successful or not, which made it a little scary. But we did it, and God was moving even more than we realized at the time.”
A quick search for Exodus 20:13 in the Bible pulls up one of the most famous quotes and famous Ten Commandments, “You shall not kill.”
“I wish I could say we planned it that way,” Abby shared. “But it was a coincidence.”
During the first Exodus, about 15 abortion workers quit their jobs that day. And it gained the attention of the abortion industry, particularly Planned Parenthood. The abortion giant was so concerned that it actually sent an all-staff email telling people about the campaign and telling them about ATTWN.
“We were like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is the best thing ever,’” Abby remembered. “Planned Parenthood was telling people about us and who we are. They have to be the worst PR people ever. But I don’t know if it could have gotten any better for us. They had already told the media about me quitting. And then they send out multiple staff emails—to the people we are trying to reach—about our ministry. Every time they do something like that, it backfires on them. And that was definitely the case with our first Exodus, where about 20 abortion workers quit.”
Despite the success of the first Exodus, it didn’t become an annual event until 2023. But the idea always remained with Abby. She knew that if there were no more abortion workers, there would be no more abortion clinics. And if there were no more abortion clinics, there would be no more abortions. It’s a simple formula that ATTWN still believes in to this day, and it’s one that guides the now-annual event that Exodus has become.
“For the abortion industry to lose a large number of employees in one day is devastating to them,” Abby said. “Exodus provides an opportunity for abortion clinic workers, staff, hourly staff, medical assistants, doctors, and executives to walk out for good. It doesn’t matter who it is. We want anybody in the abortion industry to turn in their resignation and walk out the door that day. And they can have the confidence to do that because And Then There Were None will be there to help them. We will help them financially. We will help them heal. We will help them with their bills. We will help them with whatever counseling they need. And we will help them pick up the pieces because every single worker is better than the abortion industry.”
She continued, “Abortion is a spiritual battle, and abortion workers have been participating in a grave evil. They have dehumanized mothers and children, and because of that, they have become dehumanized themselves. Satan uses that. He wants to try to trick abortion workers to keep them at their jobs. He wants to convince them that they’re not strong enough to leave—that they’re not good enough to find another job. But we know that’s not true,” Abby shared.
With a desire to protect its own interests, Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry only stoke even more fear as they add to these lies.
“Abortion workers are just told so many lies. I could give example after example of just the financial pressure that’s put on them by the doctors in a lot of these private clinics,” Abby said. “Doctors will give these workers loans to help them when they’re behind on their mortgage or car payments, or to help pay off medical bills, whatever it may be. But those are all strategies of manipulation because then these doctors will turn around and tell the workers that if they leave, the doctor will sue them for not paying them back. It’s sick. But it makes the abortion workers feel trapped. They feel stuck. But we’re here to tell them, ‘Let that doctor sue you. He’ll be taking us on.’”
All this help is important, but for Abby and ATTWN, the most important part of this ministry is introducing abortion workers to Christ. Whether an abortion worker walks out the door on Exodus Day or calls or texts ATTWN’s hotline on any other day of the year, it is the power of Christ that leads to true healing.
“Abortion workers start to feel confidence when we introduce them to the love of Christ, the power of Christ that dwells within them,” Abby explained. “When we start taking off those shackles that the enemy has put on them, when we start giving them practical solutions, when we start showing them friendship and walking with them, they can truly begin the journey of healing—whether it’s their body, mind, soul, marriage—all of it.”
If all of this sounds like a miracle, that’s because it is a miracle. Abby is happy to be out of the abortion industry for good, but she is even more grateful that she still has the opportunity to give back while serving the Lord through this ministry. As Abby has been reminded daily since launching ATTWN, “God is in the business of miracles. He worked a miracle in my life, He’s making miracles with every single Exodus, and He’s helping us make miracles happen each day at And Then There Were None.”