Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey Across the Life Line (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Hearing

Shawn told me later that when he left his house on the morning of November 10, the day of the hearing, Marilisa was nervous. “Don’t worry, babe,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. “It’s going to be fun.”

“Fun?” she asked skeptically.

“Sure,” he said, “and besides, I promise to use my one phone call to call you.”

Despite her nervousness, he managed to get a laugh out of her. And that reflects something for which I feel extremely fortunate. The same instinct that made him protect Marilisa from the tension of the court date by joking with her about it made him protect me. Between Shawn and Jeff, I must say that even if I didn’t always feel like it at the time, I was well protected. Not just from the injunction itself, or the tension of awaiting the hearing, but even from the intense preparation of the defense. I didn’t even have to ask myself,
How will I find a lawyer?
I was protected from all of that because Shawn and Jeff knew I wouldn’t be able, at that difficult point—having been betrayed by friends and threatened with legal action in the midst of wrenching personal changes both in vocation and in my entire value system—to maneuver through that minefield. So they negotiated it for me.

Even though Shawn was trying to set everyone else at ease, he was nervous. He, Doug, and I had agreed to meet at Jeff’s office so the four of us could drive to the courthouse together for the hearing. He wanted to get to Jeff’s office before me, and he did—by about forty-five minutes! And when he arrived, Jeff—who will be late to his own funeral—was already there, dressed for court. “How do you feel?” Shawn asked him.

“Good,” Jeff said. “I feel good.”

Right,
Shawn thought. Five minutes later, he asked again.

“Uh, pretty nervous,” Jeff admitted this time.

Jeff
was
nervous
? Jeff, who has won some pretty impressive cases against massive firms and their brilliant attorneys, Jeff who has sued the state of Texas, Jeff who exudes confidence—he was nervous about
my
case?

But by the time Doug and I arrived, any signs of that nervousness, for either of them, had disappeared, and they looked cool as could be. We got into Jeff’s car and headed to the courthouse—each of us looking pretty impressive, I must say, in our suits. We were all nervous, but none of us admitted it, trying as hard as we could to set the others at ease. Shawn and Jeff, as usual, laughed all the way.

We pulled up in front of the courthouse, and Jeff said, quietly, “My mom’s going to be here.” I was struck by the significance of this case to Jeff and his family. My lawyer’s mom was going to be here for my hearing. “There she is,” he said, pointing.

I couldn’t believe the timing as I said, “My mom’s here too. Look, there she is.”

And Shawn laughed and said, “Okay, the gang’s all here. Now let’s go beat this thing!” And then he grabbed my arm and whimpered, “Mom—hold my hand!” We all just lost it—total crack-up. Here we were, about to go in to face Planned Parenthood in a hearing we couldn’t afford to lose, scared out of our wits, and we were laughing like loons in front of the courthouse.

Some of this was probably just our way of releasing tension. Shawn and Jeff had been spending countless hours preparing for this hearing, trying to anticipate everything that might come up and then making sure they were prepared for it—even though most of it probably
wouldn’t
come up. “It was like preparing for a research paper that you’ll never write,” Shawn said later.

For Shawn, it was in many ways like a perfect storm of stress. Not only was there the legal stress of the hearing, he was traveling and speaking a lot.
And
he had just found out that the following summer he’d be uprooting his family to move to Virginia to work full-time on coordinating a national 40 Days for Life campaign. None of us had any idea how much stress he was under.

My mom and a friend of hers were walking toward us.

“Oh, you’ve got to meet my mom.” I was excited. In all the years I’d been with Planned Parenthood, my mom had never met a single person I’d worked with, and that had been more than fine with me. In contrast, I found myself wonderfully excited to connect Mom with the Coalition for Life people. Shawn told me later that he was nervous about meeting her. He had envisioned that my family—and my friends, for that matter—were probably all militantly prochoice. So imagine his surprise and relief when my mom came walking up to him, face glowing, threw her arms around him, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “Thank you for getting her out of there.”

Unified, bound in spirit, we headed inside, Doug clasping my hand tightly. Other than our moms, we weren’t expecting much of a crowd. In fact, we’d sent an e-mail to our Coalition for Life supporters and staff asking them
not
to attend. Jeff knew enough about this judge, J. D. Langley, to know that having four hundred Coalition supporters on the sidewalks, holding up signs and chanting “Free Abby!” wouldn’t exactly endear us to him. And he’d banned cameras from the hearing—the media could attend, and did, but no cameras were allowed. So we knew the number of people in the courtroom would be small, and that was fine with us.

It was all very awkward, of course. The people I was facing in this hearing, the plaintiffs, were all people I’d worked with daily until a month before, people I considered friends. But their attitude now was anything but friendly. Walking into the courtroom, I found myself entering side by side with a Planned Parenthood board member and his wife. The board member’s expression seemed closed and cold, as if he felt I’d gone over to the enemy, and I understood that from his perspective, I had. He looked at me once and then just turned away.

Most of the Planned Parenthood people were already there when we entered. We’d subpoenaed Megan, Taylor, another staff member, and one of the abortion doctors (I’ll call him Dr. A). Along with the board member, Cheryl and several others from Planned Parenthood were there, including Planned Parenthood’s New York PR team.

Dr. A’s presence there had a power and influence all its own. He was there at
our
request—we’d subpoenaed him. The reason we wanted him there was to establish that his identity was not a secret, as Planned Parenthood alleged in their petition. They said that my knowledge of his identity was a threat to him and to their operation. But his presence there was a production. The courthouse had called Jeff ahead of time to let us know they would be bringing him in secretly through a back entrance. He was represented by an attorney of his own, and he even had a security detail—courtesy of the National Abortion Federation, all the way from D.C. It seemed, on one hand, completely unnecessary to provide that kind of security to protect Dr. A from a peace-loving organization like Coalition for Life. But it’s also true that it had been less than six months since Dr. George Tiller, the soft-spoken abortionist much vilified by antiabortionist groups, had been gunned down during a Sunday morning service at his church. The memory of that was fresh in everyone’s mind.

The courtroom setup resembled the typical courtroom I’d seen on TV, though it was smaller than I’d imagined. The judge’s bench was front and center with a witness stand to the right of it. Planned Parenthood and their legal team of two, along with the abortion doctor’s lawyer, sat at a long table on the right as we faced the bench, and we took our places at the table on the left. The room was surprisingly plain and worn, our table scratched from years of use.

Sitting behind us on our side was a select handful of supporters. Besides Doug, our moms, and just a few friends, there were some visiting pro-life attorneys. Though not handling our case, they had expressed their willingness to help us out later if necessary, depending on how the hearing went.

Jeff was still laughing and joking as we entered, trying to keep things light, maybe for his own sake as well as ours. But as Shawn and I took our seats, Jeff strode confidently to the two attorneys for Planned Parenthood and courteously introduced himself. A few moments later they followed suit, coming over to our side. Shadow Sloan, a tall, red-headed woman I knew from a number of meetings, and her cocounsel, Deborah Milner, introduced themselves to Shawn courteously. They’d ignored me up to this point, but then Shadow smiled tersely at me. “Hi, Abby,” she said.

“Hi, Shadow—how are you?” I said. I hated the awkwardness of it. It hurt that other than Shadow and Deborah, none of the others made any effort to greet me or even nod in my direction. I’m sure they’d been told not to, but still, these were longtime friends and former coworkers. I looked at Megan and Taylor. I couldn’t believe that, as much as we’d gone through together, especially in those final days at Planned Parenthood, they wouldn’t even look my way. I was trying to imagine what they could possibly say at this hearing, given the accusations in the court papers. Surely they weren’t going to take the stand and actually testify against me, were they? How could they? Why would they? They were my friends.

After the two attorneys went back to their side of the room, Jeff continued with his clever comments to ease my tension, and I was glad he was doing it, but a storm of thoughts kept running through my mind. I was worried, obviously, about how this would turn out—what the judge would decide. But I knew, at least, that the burden of proof didn’t lie with us. Jeff had assured me that, since Planned Parenthood had filed the petition, the burden of proof rested with them to prove that I had done something wrong, to prove that I was a threat to them, and he was convinced that they didn’t have a case. I just hoped he was right.

One thing gave me real confidence: Jeff was a seasoned trial lawyer, and he’d handled some big cases. The Planned Parenthood team had far less courtroom experience than Jeff. But they certainly must have prepared for this within an inch of their lives because they had brought
boxes and boxes
of material—they were surrounded by the boxes of what I imagined must have been supporting material, if they needed it. Either that or they were moving out of their apartment. Jeff wasn’t impressed, though. “Just pomp,” he told me later. “Trying to intimidate us. It didn’t work.” Well, maybe it didn’t work on him.

I didn’t know whether I’d get up on the stand or not that morning. Jeff was prepared to call me if needed, though he seemed confident it wouldn’t come to that. And in one way, I
wanted
to be called—I wanted to tell my story in my own words. I hoped I would get that chance. I was fired up! But more than that, I wanted to hear what Planned Parenthood had to say. What on earth was their case going to be? I couldn’t imagine.

I looked at Taylor and Megan and Cheryl and my stomach did flip-flops. I knew they would put those three on the stand, and I was ready—ready to face them, to hear their testimony with my own ears. But on the other hand, I was nervous about what they would say. How would it feel to hear a friend contradict what I knew to be true?

Mostly, though, I was pumped. Feeling up to the challenge. Yes, I’d initially felt bewildered and hurt by Megan and Taylor’s statements, but now the adrenaline was flowing. I was ready for them to say directly to my face what they’d said in the petition. I knew I was telling the truth and so had nothing to worry about.

Both Jeff and I had a nagging fear, though, that Planned Parenthood had something up its sleeve—some bomb to drop into the hearing that we hadn’t anticipated. They were supposed to have revealed everything to us, of course, but we’ve all watched enough courtroom dramas to know there can be last-minute surprises. We simply kept wondering, given how weak their case appeared to be, if there could be something of which we were unaware that made them willing to take this case to the courtroom.

Everyone rose; the judge entered and asked us all to be seated. The attorneys introduced themselves, including Dr. A’s attorney. The plaintiffs, Planned Parenthood, got the opportunity to present their case first, since the burden of proof lay with them. If they couldn’t prove their case, then there
was
no case, and that’s what Jeff was hoping for. Early on, Jeff wisely requested that the judge have all witnesses removed from the courtroom so they could not hear one another’s testimony. The judge agreed.

Shadow Sloan called Cheryl to the stand first.

Starting with Cheryl was, I suspected, not going to be a good strategy for Planned Parenthood. In my opinion, Cheryl tended to be ill at ease in front of groups of people, so I didn’t think she’d be a convincing or eloquent witness. I believe I was right.

After Cheryl testified that Planned Parenthood had confidential information, Shadow asked, “Can you describe, please, what that confidential information consists of?”
19

“Patient records, which we protect at all costs,” Cheryl said, “HR personnel records, our security procedures, and our policies and procedures regarding how we operate in the clinic.”

“Now, ma’am, you told us about confidential information regarding patients, staff, and service providers. Is the identity of the service providers also subject to confidentiality at Planned Parenthood?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why is that, please?”

“Because we’re concerned for our providers’ safety and we don’t want anything to happen to them.”

This, of course, was a crucial issue: did I possess knowledge that, if I decided to divulge it, would endanger the lives of Planned Parenthood’s “service providers”—in other words, the abortion doctors?

Shadow questioned Cheryl about these records at some length—was this information known outside Planned Parenthood, was it known by all employees, would Abby Johnson have had access to this information, and so on. Then she concluded her questioning of Cheryl, and Jeff began his cross-examination.

“You’ve identified information that you and counsel claim to be confidential. Let’s start with the patient records. Specifically I presume you’re talking about patients who come to the Bryan clinic for services, be they family planning, contraception, or abortion services; is that correct?”