One aspect of coming to the March for Life is that you never know who you will meet and what their story may mean.
I used to be, by definition, “weak” on opposing rape and incest exceptions when it came to considering abortion. I didn’t support them, but I didn’t have the fire for opposing them. This was probably due to being resigned to what will likely get passed in a law. Regardless, it wasn’t something I took on.
Looking back I clearly did not put sufficient thought into it, because I was in effect able to let the reality slide that we’re talking about human beings here as much as with every unborn child.
With a powerful culture of death and its lobbyists, and an absence by and large of teaching and preaching the faith, an entire generation-plus has been allowed to selectively choose which of God’s children to acknowledge, albeit unconsciously. I think that must have rubbed off on me some – fight the battle, but pick your battles.
But that’s a sign of the real issue, we often don’t even really think about what’s right in front of us.
Real people in real situations are really dying or facing real devastation and pain, while most of us can hide behind talking points, “choice,” not-really-well-formed consciences, superficiality, and a little bit of giving up.
While the last generation or so has been enabled to fall off the reality wagon when it comes to facing up to the elimination of the “imperfect” unborn, in that same timeframe voices have begun to emerge and step up to fill the silence on the truth of “exceptional” life.
Enough time has passed since Roe v. Wade improved the lives of women everywhere that those who have escaped execution in the womb are now adults walking around with a story to tell.
And it needs to be told as much as anyone’s, as much as the plight of mothers in unplanned pregnancies that pro-lifers supposedly don’t care about. It needs to be told because both are God’s children deserving of our love.
And it needs to be told because pro-lifers need to hear it as much as anyone.
It’s been a while since I logically came to full realization that rape and incest exceptions are wrong, as well as with fetal abnormality. But there’s nothing like being face to face with another human being who’s living the reality to bring home the raw truth of life conceived in rape and incest.
LifeSite readers may recall the story of Kristi Hofferber. She was conceived when her grandfather sexually abused her mother as a child. She was the second of six children conceived in this same manner, the first dying of miscarriage through physical abuse, and the four siblings following her killed by abortion.
Hofferber has wonderful adoptive parents who raised her with rock solid faith, which she still has today and which has probably been fundamental in saving her. She also has a happy marriage with a supportive husband and a son, both of whom were adopted.
It’s not at all lost on her that she was not safe from abortion when she was born in 1978.
And she’s had the complex reality of discovering as a young adult that her grandfather was her father, and discovering what life will be going forward for her and her family after meeting her birth mother several years ago.
While her situation is not new, it does continue to unfold.
Hofferber and her associates Monica Kelsey and Pam Stenzel formed the pro-life education organization Living Exceptions, also something LifeSite readers may be familiar with.
Each has a fascinating story to tell, but the three raped-conceived women are using their stories to school the world, including the pro-life world, on the definition of “100 percent pro-life,” coming from the perspective of someone with skin in the game.
Hofferber and Kelsey brought Living Exceptions to the 2015 March for Life for the first time since the outreach’s 2014 inception. They came to perform outreach at the March expo, but then were also invited later to sit on a panel on the myths of rape conception.
It’s still new for many people to hear from someone who could, if they chose to, look them in the eye and ask, “Did I deserve to die because of what my biological father did?”
It cuts to the heart of the matter. This is no clump of cells. This is no longer a dismissible inconvenience, and it’s certainly not a choice. This is a soul who is right in front of you, who is as viable as you.
At the same time God chose to bring me to meet Hofferber and Kelsey at the March for Life, he also took Hofferber another step on her path as well.
Her experience serving on the panel provided for her the first time the ability to meet someone in her exact same circumstances via another panel member. She told me it was encouraging for her to see where the other woman was in her growth as well.
Hofferber has peace knowing that God has a plan for her in her situation. Her faith has given her the perspective to know she is God’s child above all else.
“It’s for his design that I’m here,” she said to me. “It makes no difference that I was conceived in rape and incest.”