An open letter to Rob Schenck — former 'anti-abortion crusader' who thinks pro-lifers are 'fools'

Dear Rob Schenck, 

In your propaganda piece (gleefully) published in the New York Time, entitled “I Was an Anti-Abortion Crusader. Now I Support Roe v. Wade,” you say that overturning Roe “should not be anybody’s idea of victory.”

Killing over 60 million innocent human beings and harming countless mothers and fathers shouldn’t be anybody’s idea of victory, “Reverend” Schenck.

This is the most ignorant promotion of evil I’ve seen from someone who clearly knows what he’s peddling is a lie. Imagine the equally incoherent Op-Ed title: “I Was Once an Anti-Slavery Crusader. Now I Support Dred Scott v. Sanford.” I can’t fathom what it’s like to fight the injustice of the slaughter of innocent human lives for decades and then put a stamp of approval on that very injustice. I’ve actually worked in impoverished neighborhoods ravaged by violence, poverty, crime and hopelessness. I can guarantee you the solution was, and is, never more death. 

Your pro-abortion rhetoric is nothing new. It’s merely repackaged “pro-choice” activism that never remedies what it decries. I noticed you put “baby killing” in quotes and never explain why you claim abortion is a tragedy. How do you live with such dissonance?

Child abuse is a tragedy. Several of my siblings experienced horrific abuse at the hands of their biological parents. But they weren’t better off dead. They were better off loved. This brings me to yet another pathetic omission in your pro-abortion screed.

You wrote: “I can no longer pretend that telling poor pregnant women they have just one option — give birth and try your luck raising a child, even though the odds are stacked against you — is ‘pro-life’ in any meaningful sense.” You say you worked to fight Roe v. Wade for 30 years, yet adoption never made its way into your lexicon?

I was conceived in rape yet adopted and loved. I’m an adoptive father. I was not better off dead. My children were not better off dead. Did you ever extend your family and your resources to a vulnerable child in foster care or to an expectant mother who wanted a better life for her child?

Churches (e.g. the Catholic Church) are the biggest funders of pregnancy centers and outreaches to the poor. He ignores this and the work of the Salvation Army, Operation Blessing, Catholic Charities, and Samaritan’s Purse. Apparently, you’ve never visited phenomenal anti-poverty, pro-family, pro-life ministries like People for People in Philly, Bartow Family Resources in Cartersville, Georgia, or the Jericho Partnership in Danbury, Connecticut. The incredible people in these places do the work he claims pro-lifers don’t do. 

But it’s easy to pretend that hope and help don’t exist. Does it somehow assuage your unjustifiable conversion?

I’m sorry you think less of your “status” of being a white man. I thank God for the elected white men (and everyone else) who will fight injustice. I thank God for those “upper class white men” who abolished the “tragedy” of slavery so that I’m not on some auction block here in northern Virginia today.

You conveniently ignore the women who fight for the social injustice of abortion, legislatively and culturally, because that doesn’t fit into your tragic and borrowed narrative. You know, of course, that the majority of those leading America’s pro-life organizations are women.

Fighting for what’s right, though, knows no gender, socio-economic status, or “race.” Frederick Douglass started his own newspaper, the North Star, because mainstream media advocated for slavery, refusing to tell the truth about the dehumanizing institution. The same situation exists today, as the majority of mainstream media “journalists” have chosen advocacy over accuracy, opinion over objectivity, and feelings over facts. The motto of Douglass’ liberating paper was: “Right is of no Sex—Truth is of no Color—God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren.”

Brethren shouldn’t lie to each other or advocate for the destruction of one another.

I’m sorry you’ve decided to try to snuff out the Truth and millions of lives along with it. Your Op-Ed concludes: “Passing extreme anti-abortion laws and overturning Roe will leave poor women desperate and the children they bear bereft of what they need to flourish.” 

I flourished because of those people you call “fools”—prolife parents who believe that every human life has purpose.

Roe doesn’t eliminate poverty. It doesn’t erase desperation. And you can’t flourish if you’re never born.

Roe never empowered women; it empowered men to have sex and run. Fatherless families create vulnerable communities which are, in turn, devastated by the consequences of father absence: higher poverty rates, higher crime rates, higher drug usage, higher abortion rates, higher school drop-outs, higher incarceration rates. And a man who wants to stay, protect and provide for the life he’s helped to co-create can’t legally stop his child from being dismembered in the name of “choice”. Other men (aka the mostly male abortionists) have more power over the life of his child than he does.

I noticed you never mention the hundreds of women killed by botched abortions and the millions physically, emotionally, and psychologically harmed by it. Abortion is fake health that significantly increases risk of preterm births (one of the leading causes of infant mortality), triple-negative breast cancer and negative mental health outcomes. 

“There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.” As a minister, I’m sure you’re all too familiar with Proverbs 6:16-19.

You’ve chosen to rush into evil for the enabling of the shedding of innocent blood with an abortion industry that devises and daily carries out its wicked schemes. Your Op-Ed is a false witness that pours out fatal lies as you stir up conflict in the community for the benefit of those who profit from death.

It’s not your former allies you need to worry about. We’ll keep on doing the hard work of loving people (regardless of what decision they make) and sacrificially providing what those in crisis need to rise above. We’ll keep defending every human life made in the image of God, born and unborn. We’ll keep proving, in a Philippians 4:13 way, that we’re all stronger than our circumstances. It’s the God of Justice that you’ll have to explain your broken view of humanity to one day. 

Sincerely,

Ryan Bomberger
Co-Founder of The Radiance Foundation
Adoptee and Adoptive Father

Originally posted at theradiancefoundation.org