'You should have been aborted': Why Harvard students greet my pro-life testimony with hate

As I've spoken on the topics of adoption and abortion all across this nation, woke professors, miseducated student activists, politicians, and fake feminists have told me that I should have been aborted. It isn't always in those exact words, but it's always the exact sentiment.

I heard it most bluntly at Harvard.

We live in a culture that says if you're unplanned, you will be unwanted and unloved. It's simply untrue.

I'd been invited to speak at one of the inaugural events for Harvard Law Students for Life. The night before, lying in my hotel room, my mind kept betraying me: I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. I don't come from an Ivy League school. How could I possibly hold my ground on Harvard soil?

Speak, man

The next morning, standing in the shower, still telling myself I couldn't do this, I looked up to shift the water and reached for the nozzle — and just laughed. Printed on the showerhead was a single word: SPEAKMAN. Speak, man. I'd never seen that brand before in my life, but it branded my heart with a divine confidence. I was made to do this.

The room, when I arrived, was packed. The Harvard professor invited to offer the opposing view showed up late with nothing prepared. I shared my personal story, dispelled the myth of the "unwanted" child, and laid out the numbers: More black babies are aborted than born alive in some American cities; abortion rates among blacks is up to six times higher than among whites — a gap poverty and insurance rates alone can't explain.

They didn't like my take on history, equality, or abortion's violent inequity. The hour-long Q&A that followed was a cacophony of ad hominem attacks and jeers that had almost nothing to do with the subject matter. The professor called my adoption story — a story where a woman proved she was stronger than her circumstances and chose life for her child — "a cute story."

Afterward, several students came down to share more of their animosity. One called me a vulgar name. Another asked how it felt to be a puppet. And one activist leaned in and told me, flatly, that I should have been aborted.

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Hate, not debate

At another Christian college, a dean pulled me aside after a similar talk and told me, "Thank you so much for that. You handled that with so much grace." Two days later, his own department sent a school-wide email denouncing me, claiming my comments made students "feel unheard, underrepresented, and unsafe." Truth, it turns out, is unsafe. Victimhood is potent.

This has been my experience at too many colleges and universities. They want to hate, not debate. Higher learning has become mired learning from coast to coast. It's not every school, not every professor, not every student. But it's endemic to academia. The solution is courage. Like fear, it's contagious. Unlike fear, it illuminates, educates, and motivates.

Brokenness into breakthrough

I can never let lies like that faze me. My own story is reflected in so many other lives the world is quick to write off — lives that need someone to care, someone to speak, someone to act. I fight for the most marginalized among the marginalized, because that was once me.

We live in a culture that says if you're unplanned, you will be unwanted and unloved. It's simply untrue. My life began in violence but became one of victory. I'm forever grateful my birth mom didn't remove me from the frame of life. That painfully courageous decision sent ripples through time — to my own marriage, to my four children, to family I didn't even know existed until last fall.

None of us can control the circumstances of our conception. None of us can control much of what happens in our lives for that matter. God turns brokenness into breakthrough all the time. How we rise when we’re faced with the seemingly insurmountable shows the true beauty and resilience of our humanity. In a world that is constantly searching for meaning, this simple truth is sometimes the most evasive: We’re all meant to be.

This article was adapted from Ryan Bomberger’s new memoir, "Should Have Been Aborted."