“You should have been aborted!” The Harvard University student yelled this in my face while I was visiting the campus for a forum on abortion in the black community. It wasn’t the first time someone had said this to me, and it wouldn’t be the last.
I’ve been told this so many times throughout my life, I’ve lost count. It’s why my newly released autobiographical book and documentary are entitled “Should Have Been Aborted.” I am the 1% used 100% of the time to justify abortion. Even though my birth mom was a victim of the horrific violence of rape, I’m forever grateful she didn’t make me a victim of the violence of abortion.
That student’s cold and callous remarks were out of desperation. The pro-abortion side at that event was unprepared and unhinged. Interestingly, I had convinced myself that I was unworthy of speaking at an Ivy League school prior to the event. I thought students would challenge me with questions complete with citations. There were no citations, just incessant interruptions. The professor who was slated to informally debate me had an arrogance about her as well that was deeply troubling. Despite agreeing to the debate, she literally knew nothing about the premise of it: abortion’s devastating impact in the black community.
Harvard’s hostility to the truth is a common one I experience not only in secular university events but in Christian colleges as well. Too many Christian students have been propagandized into embracing a social gospel instead of the Gospel. Too many Bible-evading churches do the same. We have a crisis, not of White fragility, but of worldview fragility. We live in a culture that pretends, since Roe, an injustice that has caused the deaths of over 65 million lives created in God’s image is merely a “political issue” that we can biblically have different opinions on.
No, we can’t.
‘Still here’
The fact that I’m alive isn’t something “political.” It’s something spiritual, supernatural, and deeply moral. Because of a courageous birth mom, I’m still here. Because of two incredible parents who adopted and loved me despite how I came to be, I’m living out my purpose. Because of an amazing wife who adores me and vice versa, we are raising four children (both biological and adopted) to love Jesus and those He created. Because of God, I’m able to tell my story of how He enabled triumph to rise from tragedy.
The next time Satan tries to convince you that you’re not worthy of your calling, rebuke him. Don’t let him derail you from the direction and destiny God has intended for you.
I’m the tangible example of what so many people, in the abstract, can so easily dismiss. Lives like mine are the ones so quickly discarded by a society that claims to protect the marginalized. Yet here I am fighting for the most marginalized amongst the marginalized . . . because that was once me.
After years of pro-life, pro-family advocacy and speaking at over 1,000 events from coast to coast, including college debates, pregnancy center galas, conferences, capitol hill briefings and emceeing historic Supreme Court rallies, I finally have my God-sized story written. People ask me all the time how my parents raised 13 children, 10 of whom were adopted. Many want to know what it was like growing up in a diverse family of many colors. And others want to know what it’s like to fight for Truth in a culture that hates it.
Ever since my wife and I created The Radiance Foundation, we’ve been battling giants. I feel compelled to say the things that some Christians balk at because they don’t feel they’re the right color or the right gender to speak certain truths. My childhood hero, Frederick Douglass, had something to say about that. The motto of his liberating anti-slavery newspaper, The North Star, proclaimed this: “Right is of no sex — Truth is of no color — God is the Father of us all, and all we are brethren.”
Smeared, denounced, attacked
So never let anyone gender or color shame you into silence. Loving people with the truth is hard. Leaving people without the truth is Hell.
I’ve been smeared by mainstream media, denounced by the ACLU, attacked by Antifa, feared by Planned Parenthood, and even sued by the NAACP for my factivism. (After two years in federal court, free speech won and the NAACP lost.) I must be doing something right.
That confused Harvard student’s challenge wasn’t one that would break me. Abortion didn’t take my life. Severe depression in my 30s didn’t take my life. Bilateral blood clots in my lungs in my 40s didn’t take my life. And my recent battle with cancer didn’t take my life.
I’ve battled worse and lesser things. As the Psalm says, God has been my rock and my salvation, my refuge; I will not be shaken. Why? Because I know I was meant to be.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Ryan Bomberger and originally published by the Colson Center.
