Planned Parenthood Prez Says Christians Can Support Abortion, Here's What Billy and Franklin Graham Have Said
Planned Parenthood's new interim president, who stepped in after Leana Wen was fired for not promoting abortion enough, says she's a Christian who believes abortion should "be left to a woman, her doctor and her God."
Alexis McGill Johnson served as chair of Planned Parenthood's board for many years, and told The Christian Post in 2014 that Christians can and should support abortion.
"We all recognize that abortion and terminating a pregnancy is a very complicated decision, but that issue needs to be left to a woman, her doctor and her God, not a politician," Johnson said.
While Johnson never cited the Bible to support her argument, she said Planned Parenthood has a "wide variety of support" from female ministers and other "members of faith."
She pointed to Sister Simone Campbell, a Catholic social justice activist and nun who does not believe abortion should be outlawed.
"Sister Simone Campbell ... always makes this distinction to me, which I think is so important, which is that we can have these really false dichotomy debates about who's pro-life and who's pro-choice but we can't just have conversations that are about pro-birth," said Johnson. "And if we want to have a broad conversation around how we advocate for creating the opportunities to bring women to term, then we need to have a full conversation about what it means when that child is here, what kind of impact it's going to have on a family's life, on a community's life, and we have to commit to all of the other resources that will support that."
However, pro-life Christian leaders argue the Bible offers no support for abortion. In fact, the Bible affirms the value of life at conception.
"I know it's common today to think of abortion as a simple answer to an inconvenient problem—but it is actually a far more serious issue. Your child isn't simply a mass of tissue; he or she is a human being in God's eyes," the late evangelist Billy Graham once said.
His son Franklin has also argued that Scripture is full of examples of God considering unborn children as precious and worthy of protection. He points to one particularly profound Bible verse.
"Abortion is a tragedy and a sin against God. Every life matters and is precious in the eyes of God who created us in His image. Throughout Scripture, God declares the value of human life—from children in the womb to the elderly. 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart' ( ). I hope our nation can begin to realize this value once again and better protect the unborn. Don't you?" Franklin said.
On another note, Johnson criticized the pro-life movement, especially pro-life activists who argue that African-American babies are some of the biggest victims of abortion in America.
"I feel like it's an assault on black women's ability to make a decision," Johnson said.
The Christian Post cited a 2014 report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that said more than half of unborn black children whose mothers lived in the city were aborted.
Johnson argued that the report doesn't tell the full story.
"Black women have less access to healthcare for a whole variety of reasons, and so trying to create those causal links are not always the easiest ways to understand really what's underlying the challenges that black women are facing," she said.
But some black Christian leaders argue that abortion is one of the deadliest threats to the black community.
"It is the number one killer of all African-Americans in the nation," Charles Blake, the presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ, told CBN News. "You can add cancer. You can add AIDS. You can add car accidents, homicides, crime, shooting. Name the gamut and put those together and it will not equal the amount of lives that we lose to abortion."
He believes churches, especially black churches, need to do more to save the lives of unborn African-American babies.
"Black women according to the statistics are almost four times as likely to have an abortion as white women. And almost 65 (percent) of those who've had abortions have never been married. You're killing a human being. It's a human being from the moment it's conceived," he said.
Meanwhile, former Planned Parenthood president Leana Wen said she was forced out of her position "because the new Board Chairs and I have philosophical differences over the direction and future of Planned Parenthood."
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