December 20, 2018 (Family Research Council) – When Ashley Bratcher decided to take on the starring role in Unplanned, she wasn’t unsure about life – but she completely exactly ethusiastic about it either. The thing to change all of this was an epiphany that changed her entire world. Ashley, the woman who was preparing to star as the leading character in a movie centered around abortion, had nearly been the victim of it herself.
Ashley’s moving real-life story came to light during a Tuesday interview with Fox & Friends, causing the project to take on an entirely new meaning — one that was not just for the actress. When she first auditioned to take on the role of Abby Johnson, Bratcher had no knowledge of who this person was. “I was given just six pages. Six pages that ignited my curiosity… How could this incredibly [devoted] woman one day change her mind about everything she believed in? There had to be more to the story.”
Johnson’s story, however, is one that is familiar to quite a few pro-lifers. As the former director of Planned Parenthood stood within the four walls of a Byran, Texas clinic room nearly a decade ago in 2009, she viewed the ultrasound of a baby who would never take its first breath. When the doctor began to take another unborn life, Abby Johnson knew that she had to change hers. After seeing the lives of 22,000 unborn babies taken, the woman who had been pro-abortion for eight long years changed her view. “I just thought I can’t do this anymore, and it was just like a flash hit me. [A]nd I thought, that’s it.”
Abby’s change of heart, however, is only one piece of the story. Due to the bravery of one mother, the cast of the film is living and breathing confirmation that choosing life changes lives. When Ashley received word that she’d been cast in the film, she recalls, “A fire was lit inside of me. I was convicted.” Things proceeded so quickly, she mentions, she hardly found time to inform her family about the project before she was on set in Oklahoma. When she finally spoke with her mother, she was worried that describing the details of the plot might trouble her. “When I was in high school,” Ashley recalls, “my mother shared with me that she’d had an abortion when she was 16.” It devastated her, Ashley reveals in a column on Fox. At the age of 19, “she became pregnant with me. ‘I knew I could never have an abortion again,’ she told me.”
What Ashley didn’t know, however, was how incredibly close she’d come. Braving the stream of tears washing down her face, her mother’s voice was shaking during a conversation over the phone. “I need to tell you something that I’ve never told you before.” She paused, “I was going to abort you.” Ashley remained silent as her mother continued. “I was at the clinic sitting on the table when the nurse who was very pregnant came in to talk to me. I felt sick. I couldn’t do it. I got up and walked out… and I chose you.”
Ashley called her dad later that night. “Is this true? Why didn’t someone tell me?” she pleaded. He told her that the couple thought that they were too young to have a child. “We didn’t have enough money, so I pawned a shotgun so we could pay for the abortion.” How do you possibly explain this to your daughter? Ashley thinks. “When is the right time to tell her that you were going to abort her? I don’t know how to put in words what it feels like to learn you were seconds away from never existing.” But, as her dad cried profusely on the phone, he said the words that give her story so much meaning. “You being there making this movie is proof to me that God is so real. That he has a plan for your life.”
Just like He had a plan for Andrea Bocelli, Celine Dion, Tim Tebow, Pope John Paul II, Steve Jobs, along with countless others we can’t imagine the world without. There are nearly 60 million other voices we will never have the chance to hear, inventions we will never have, football games we’ll never watch because of abortion. If Ashley’s story and Abby’s story and so many other mothers’ stories are able to save just one life, it will have been worth it.
“I’m grateful that God, through His providence, planted me here to tell my story – and that I have the privilege of sharing this film with the world. And yes, I do secretly hope that one of the outcomes of all of these ‘coincidences’ is that many will find the courage my mother found when she listened to her conscience and made the choice that gave me life.”
Don’t miss Ashley’s incredible interview with Ainsley Earhardt on Tuesday’s “Fox & Friends” below.
Photo courtesy: Luma Pimentel/Unsplash
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