#8: I Survived Roe v. Wade, but Roe v. Wade Did Not Survive Me
Some thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade (January 22, 1973)
Roe v. Wade was decided 50 years ago today.
If you’ve read my first essay in this series, you know that I was born to a 14 year old on November 22, 1973. I was adopted 2 months later, on January 24, 1974.
My birth mother was well into her second trimester when she saw a doctor for the first time. Based on belly measurements, my due date was set for October 22, 1973. I was born November 22, 1973, which also happened to be Thanksgiving Day.
The doctor got the due date wrong.
His error saved my life.
You can read more about my birth story here.
The Pro-Life Poster Child
I am the poster child for the pro-life movement and was staunchly pro-life until I turned 19, when my armor started to crack. Not because I changed my beliefs, but because it was inconvenient for me to continue to espouse them.
I had become sexually active and started reading feminist theory, including the lovely Kate Millett, author of Sexual Politics, for one of my Women’s Studies classes. It was required reading!
To give you an interesting perspective on Kate Millett, here's a very small excerpt from her sister Mallory Millett's story which was reprinted in the January 2019 Eagle Forum Report. I encourage you to read the full article, it’s quite fascinating.
Here’s Mallory Millett …
From Mallory …
In 1969 I attended consciousness-raising sessions in New York City with my sister, Kate, where a group of 10-15 women sat around a long oval table and plotted the New Feminist Movement and the founding of NOW [National Organization of Women]. Their template was Mao’s China and the group confessionals conducted in each village in order to ‘cleanse the people’s thinking.’ The burning objective of Kate’s 'consciousness-raising' was 'the destruction of the American family,' as she deemed it 'a patriarchal institution devoted to the oppression and enslavement of women and children.'
They went on to form NOW and, with that organization, achieve their stated goal of taking down the Patriarchy through a massive coordinated promotion of promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution, abortion and homosexuality. [emphasis added] Their proposed method was to infiltrate every institution in the nation: the universities, the media, primary and secondary schools, PTAs, teachers unions, city and state governments, the library system, the executive branches of government as well as the judiciaries and legislatures ...
My sister Kate decided her contribution would be to establish Women’s Studies courses at every U.S. college and university, which she efficiently executed. On examination, these courses emerged as nothing more than Marxism 101. Kate taught that the family is literally a slave unit with the man as the bourgeoisie and the women and children the proletariat. Two of her own books were required reading …
She taught girls to ‘be an outlaw; be a damned outlaw, cuz all the laws were made by evil white men. Be a slut and be proud of it!’ Now we have girls parading about with the word ‘SLUT’ emblazoned across their t-shirts. Orgies? “Absolutely! Try everything. There are no rules.” So the woman whose job it is to construct the basic rules threw them all to the wind. Then she ran away from home and from any babies she didn’t kill in order to run the world.
--
Yes, this was part of my college education, for which I paid dearly in money, emotional trauma, and psychological harm. It qualified me to be angry and to feel oppressed, neither of which is very marketable in the evil capitalist economy in which we live.
But, I got my degree! Yay for me.
I digress …
Outlaws, Damned Outlaws
To be a follower of Kate Millett, I had to throw my pro-life views to the wind. How else could I be an outlaw, a damned outlaw?
I’d lived a very conservative life and I was ready for some excitement. After all, I could get an abortion and wash my hands of "it" if needed, right?
That's what Kate said anyway.
Kate lied.
And so did her fellow feminists.
Every. Single. One. Of. Them.
The least of all, Germaine Greer, who famously wrote in The Female Eunuch:
“If you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your own menstrual blood - if it makes you sick, you've got a long way to go, baby.”
Guess I’ve got a LONG way to go.
P.S. Germaine Greer is now on the outs with radical feminism because she doesn’t accept transgender women as women. She’s dismissed as a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). Aren’t we women lovely in the way we eat our own? Just delightful … the new #ladylike.
Here’s Germaine Greer from 1972 and 2013.
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Confronting My Views
I have never been pro-abortion and I have never denied that life begins at conception. They said to follow the science, so I did.
Fertilization creatives a live zygote of the species homo sapien (humans can only reproduce their own kind) with all of the genetic material required to become a full human. Nothing further is required, except time …
Perhaps Axl Rose said it best in the Guns N’ Roses 1988 release Patience …
Said "woman take it slow, and it'll work itself out fine" … All we need is just a little patience … Said "sugar make it slow and we'll come together fine" … All we need is just a little patience (Patience) … Mm, yeah
So, there I was, sitting alone with the science, my thoughts, and Kate. Here were my thoughts:
Thought 1 - I knew that abortion was wrong.
I was raised to believe in the sanctity and value of human life from cradle to grave. Babies, the elderly, the deformed, the sick, the mad, the broken … are all created in the image of a Creator God who gives them value through their role as image bearers.
I wasn’t dumb enough to believe I’m the accident of an impersonal universe and that through matter randomly bumping into itself for millions of years I suddenly emerged from an ape.
If you think believing in Creation takes faith, how about believing in Evolution? That takes way more faith than I have.
Thought 2 - I knew that having sex outside of marriage was wrong.
It was wrong because it was dangerous. It was dangerous because it carries huge consequences for women - unwanted pregnancy being just one of many.
But birth control could solve that, right?
Never mind the emotional or psychological toll of promiscuity. That’s libidinal liberation - women don’t have feelings or desires for intimacy, they just want to be free and Freud, Darwin, Marx, Marcuse, and Millett knew best.
Thought 3 - I knew that I didn’t have the courage of my convictions.
I didn’t know how to defend my beliefs well-enough against this intoxicating promise of freedom.
And, I was far away from home. No one would “know” that I was a radical and therefore I wouldn’t embarrass my mom. I thank God daily that the Internet was still being invented by Al Gore in the early 1990s and that social media was getting together with friends and playing the rad new media - CDs.
Young girls today don’t have a chance to find their “wide open spaces” or “room to make a big mistake,” from which they can recover.
As an aside, to mamas of teenage daughters, hold them close and make it safe for them to tell you anything, even if it’s the last thing you think you can bear to hear. There can be no bad questions and no bad confessions.
Only when we shed light on things can we find healing. Girls are being sold a pack of lies and they’re becoming suicidal when they finally realize the deceit and suddenly their “friends” are nowhere to be found.
Simply put ..
There is no free love.
There is no sex without consequences.
There is no bodily autonomy without responsibility.
FYI - I know boys are in a heap of trouble too, but I’m focusing on the girls given today’s topic.
Ceding Power Is Not Powerful
I spent my college years as a bundle of nerves, always playing Russian Roulette with my future over stupid choices.
Now, I ask myself …
How exactly is giving male sex partners unearned decision-making authority about the rest of one’s life powerful?
I’m still waiting for Millett and her NOW colleagues to answer that. Oh, wait, they’re all dead, many sadly by their own hand. I guess their brand of freedom wasn’t so free after all.
—
Like Roe, I will turn 50 this year. With time and space, I understand why I was such easy prey for these predatory ideas, and I have done the deep work to heal the hurt from being turned into chopped liver.
But, if I could go back and trust myself long enough to save me from my indiscretions, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Therefore by the grace of God go I …
I got lucky.
Actually, no, God protected me from having to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, just like He did for my birth mother before me. Neither she nor I deserved His protection, but He gave it nonetheless. You can imagine that I’ve spent many moments asking myself why God chose to spare my life …
But, if I’d stayed true to what my parents taught me - that choices have consequences - and trusted my ability to own that wisdom, I would not have been in knots about whether or not I was pregnant and I could have avoided the whole scenario altogether by doing a fewer (well, a lot fewer) shots on Saturday nights and watching reruns of the Golden Girls instead.
By the time I was a senior in college, I had hit my wall.
I was all marched out. My tank was empty. I wasn’t free. I was in a self-designed prison from which I could only escape through another radical change …
So, I dropped out of college and got married …
Not my finest hour.
Again, if I’d stayed true to what my parents taught me - that choices have consequences - and trusted my ability to own that wisdom, I would not have tied the knot and I could have avoided the whole marriage and divorce scenario altogether. This time it was worse because it wasn’t just my life at issue, it was my first husband’s as well. He didn’t deserve the pressure of having to “free me from myself,” only to be punished when he failed to meet the unspoken demands I placed on him.
Choices, my friends, have consequences.
I have made many terrible choices. But I have made many more awesome choices, including marrying my current husband, Chris, who is also grateful that God spared me in the womb.
Just ask him how it feels to be married to a girl who shouldn’t have been … it’s a powerful ask and he has a special answer.
Here’s a summary …
The day that Roe died Chris looked at me and said: “Babe, you survived Roe, but it sure as hell did not survive you. God has always had a call on your life and it’s finally time for you to answer it, whatever the cost may be. As your partner, I will always be the wind beneath your wings and the boot in your butt … pushing you and encouraging you to live the life to which you were called and for which you were saved.”
And so it begins …
In my next post, I’ll close the loop on my wedding and the crazy pastor’s comments. I’ll also set the stage for what came next …
Hint - it was like a bizarre version of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride!
Some final thoughts ….
Feminism and its unholy alliance with promiscuity and abortion carry enormous consequences for women and girls. And, it's the denial of those consequences in our current discourse that fuels my interest in understanding their origins.
I’m not really interested in the normative debate, I’m interested in guarding young women’s hearts so they, too, have the chance to live the life they were called to. But, first, they must be brought back from the edge of total emotional and psychological destruction.
Perhaps King Solomon said it best …
Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23).
Thank you for reading my content. Somehow, it feels safe to send to my subscribers knowing you have chosen to be here. For that, I am grateful …
xo,
K
January 22, 2023