A pro-life student group announced Tuesday that it will host Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who has become a pro-life advocate, at Georgetown University on the same night that Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards is scheduled to address the Catholic campus.
The move was organized by Georgetown Right to Life, which will also set up a pro-life display outside of the building where Ms. Richards is scheduled to speak and plant 3,600 flags on campus to represent the number of abortions in America per day.
“It is important students learn about Planned Parenthood’s careless disregard for human life, and why Planned Parenthood is bad for women and children,” said Michael Khan, president of Georgetown Right to Life, in a press release.
Ms. Johnson, who was once named employee of the year at Planned Parenthood before she had a road-to-Damascus moment, said it is important to counter the pro-choice lobby when it tries to spread “anti-life propaganda.”
“In this case, because a Catholic university has asked the president of the largest abortion corporation in our country to come and speak, we are more than happy to respond with life-affirming truth,” Ms. Johnson said in a press release. “If there was ever a time to take a stand against the abortion-promoting agenda of Planned Parenthood and their untruths, it is now. We must not allow them to infiltrate our Catholic institutions without resistance.”
Ms. Richards was invited to speak at Georgetown by the Lecture Fund, a nonpartisan, student-run group that has previously hosted conservatives such as Ann Coulter.
The university was criticized by Catholic groups for allowing the talk to continue, despite the Catholic Church’s teaching that abortion is a grave evil.
“Instead of educating students of the Catholic Church’s doctrine on the protection of life, they bring in the president of the nation’s largest abortion provider, who last summer was revealed to have been involved in the harvesting and selling of baby body parts,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, referring to a series of undercover videos that purport to show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the trafficking of fetal body parts.
Georgetown defended the invitation on the grounds of academic freedom.
“We respect our students’ right to express their personal views and are committed to sustaining a forum for the free exchange of ideas, even when those ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable to some,” the university said in a statement.
Ms. Johnson will speak at the Dahlgren Chapel on April 20 at 7:30 p.m., while Ms. Richards will speak at the Lohrfink Auditorium on the same evening.
• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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