Celebrating the End of Roe
This OpEd/Commentary originally appeared in the World and Everything In It.
I’ll never forget where I was on June 24, 2022. I was alone in our Radiance Foundation offices. My kids were at summer camp for the week. My wife, Bethany, and our staff were at the Pro-Life Women’s Conference.
The phone rang. It was my wife crying as she tried to get out the words: “They did it. They did it. Roe was overturned!” It was an insanely surreal moment. I created a video for Instagram to announce the landmark Supreme Court ruling. I was so overwhelmed. With tears flowing, I tried to express my joy in this video.
I was conceived in rape but adopted in love. Ten of my twelve siblings were adopted – all marked with the dehumanizing and false label of being “unplanned, unwanted and unloved.” I’m married to the love of my life who was a single mom for nearly two years. She walked away from an abusive relationship only to find out she was pregnant. The biological “father” wanted the baby aborted, but Bethany refused. She named that precious baby girl, Radiance – the reason for the name of our pro-life organization, the Radiance Foundation.
Today, we’re the homeschooling parents of four awesome kiddos. Two were adopted. All are so deeply loved. And none of this would’ve happened if my life had been snuffed out by the violence of abortion.
This is why I celebrate the overturning of that supremely wrong 1973 Supreme Court decision. Roe enabled the most marginalized to become the most mutilated. It weaponized the myth of the “unwanted child” to enrich a corrupt industry rooted in fear and exploitation. It allowed Planned Parenthood and abortionists, nationwide, to prey on vulnerable women with substandard care.
But Dobbs changed the trajectory of limitless abortion-on-demand. The New York Times’ Tracking the States database reveals how much has changed. Since the monumental decision, fourteen states have banned nearly 100% of abortions. All include exceptions to save the physical life of the mother and most with rape and incest exceptions. Georgia banned abortions after 6 weeks. North Carolina’s 12-week ban begins July 1st. Nebraska and Florida banned abortions after 12 and 15 weeks respectively, although the Sunshine State recently passed a 6-week ban which is under judicial review. In fact, many states have had judges unjustly interfere with existing state laws or new legislation passed in Arizona, Utah, Indiana, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina, Wyoming and Iowa. Tragically, abortion is still currently legal in varying limits from 22 weeks up until birth in thirty states plus Washington DC.
This weekend I will rejoice over the historic Dobbs victory at the National Celebrate Life Day on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in DC. Even so, I know we have many battles to win before legal abortion is history.
I’m Ryan Bomberger.
