In a recent episode of her “Politely Rude” podcast, pro-life advocate Abby Johnson and author and speaker Robin Gerblick reflected on the devastation abortion often leaves in its wake and the grace available to every woman who seeks healing in Christ.
“I think everyone knows that my primary fight in our culture today is the fight against abortion, the fight against the murder of the unborn in the womb,” Johnson said to kick off the episode titled “From Pain to Healing: Robin Gerblick on How God’s Grace Redeems Even Our Deepest Regrets.”
“I wanted to take an episode to really focus once again on the harm that abortion does to women and their preborn children.”
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Gerblick, now an outspoken advocate for post-abortion healing, has lived through that harm firsthand. She had her first abortion in 1973, the same year the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade, and shared how it shaped decades of her life in ways she didn’t fully understand until she found faith in Jesus.
“I just moved to San Diego to start attending college, and he was my boyfriend, for sure, but also the love of my life,” she recalled. “I thought I was going to marry and have the 2.5 children, and the white picket fence … but it didn’t work out that way.”
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After discovering she was pregnant, Gerblick visited Planned Parenthood for a test. “There’s just no support, there’s no anything, and you’re just told … you need to have an abortion,” she said. “And I believed every word that they said, and pretty much what even my own parents were saying to me.”
She admitted that, like many women, she felt no connection to the life growing inside her. “At Planned Parenthood, it just seemed like it was the right thing to do, and without anyone telling me any different, I just went ahead with it,” she said.
The experience left her emotionally gutted.
“That feeling, I don’t think, ever leaves you,” Gerblick said. “The brutality of it was unbelievable to me. There was no compassion. There was just nothing. It was very void of feeling of anyone that was in the room. I felt very much alone and very, very much afraid.”
Johnson, who previously worked as a director at a Planned Parenthood facility before becoming a pro-life advocate, drew parallels between Gerblick’s story and her own time in the abortion industry.
“I wanted women to feel like they were receiving compassionate care,” Johnson said. “I wanted them to feel assured by my staff that abortion was normal and that it was the compassionate choice. And I did not want them to feel guilty.”
But both women now see that so-called compassion as part of a larger deception.
“It’s really interesting how normalized abortion has become, and how the abortion industry has done such a great job … of making abortion feel normal and compassionate for women,” Johnson said.
Gerblick described her life after the abortion as “40 years of wandering in the desert,” referencing the Israelites in the Old Testament. She struggled with shame, guilt, broken relationships, and a desperate need for validation that led her to seek worth in men.
“I was so desperate for love and so desperate for validation and worth,” she said. “I didn’t have any self-worth, and it showed.”
At 24, during her first marriage, Gerblick became pregnant again. The second abortion, she said, was performed under vastly different circumstances: in a doctor’s office, with what felt like genuine compassion.
“There were compassionate [people] who held your hand and weren’t pushing for abortion, but accepting of what I felt,” she said. “The one that I remember is always the first one, because it robbed me. It took away so much of my life and myself and my self-worth, my self-identity.”
It wasn’t until Gerblick encountered Jesus Christ that her healing began. “He could do what no other man on Earth could do, and that was love me unconditionally. And that was a life changer for me,” she said.
One turning point came during a visit to a crisis pregnancy center, where she saw fetal development images for the first time.
“I just lost it,” she said, recalling the overwhelming emotion. The counselor gave her a small model of a 10-week-old fetus, which Gerblick named Grace.
“She’s surrounded by all the things that would have saved her life and would have saved my life,” she said, describing the memory box she now carries with her to speaking events. “Crosses from like my mom, my grandmother, letters that I’ve written to her … she comes to speaking engagements with me.”
Gerblick emphasized the importance of naming the grief and walking through it, something she said took her nearly four decades to understand. “Although with our faith we know that we’re forgiven, we also have to be able to forgive ourselves,” she said. “And we have to be able to go through a grieving process.”
Her message to other women is simple: “There is grace for them.”
“I’ve met women that are 80 years old that have never told anyone that they had an abortion. … It’s such a huge burden to carry when you don’t have to carry it. That’s why we have a Savior, right? He came to deliver us from all that.”
Gerblick also spoke about her book Giving Up Grace: The Spiritual Rebranding of the Soul, which chronicles her journey and redemption. The title, she said, refers not to giving up God’s grace, but to surrendering a life she once carried and never knew she needed.
“Sometimes you need to give up the grace you don’t know in order to get the grace that you really need,” she said. “That was Jesus’ grace and the spiritual rebranding of the soul.”
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
