January 20, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In the beginning, Adam and Eve were content in the garden. The serpent came to Eve and convinced her that eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would actually be beneficial. His lies were so convincing that Eve ate of that tree as Adam stood by silentlywatching. I strongly believe that the curse of Adam’s silence that we see in the Garden of Eden is destroying entire generations today through abortion.
As a child, I looked up to celebrities. I wanted the attention, the fame, and the money. I was introduced to pornography at the age of 8 and became sexually active at 14. I began a path of destruction with my sights set on becoming a professional athlete. After flunking out of college on a baseball scholarship, I was approached with the opportunity of moving to Orlando to be in a new “boy band.” Boy bands were all the rage then with the success of NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, and girls worshipped the ground these young men walked on. It was exactly what I had once wanted from sports.
I moved to Orlando a few weeks later and met a woman named Kelly at a concert. I was honestly just trying to meet any person who could get me into the entertainment business, and she had just ended a stint as a background singer for Britney Spears. I was 20 when we met and she was 23. We ended up becoming sexually active right away.
We became pregnant three months into our relationship. Kelly and I both grew up attending church and knew how our parents felt about sex outside of marriage, so that seemed to leave very few options for us. Kelly convinced herself she had to have an abortion so that we could try to hide what, honestly, our parents already knew was going on. Her friend took her to have the abortion, and we never discussed it.
Within one month, however, we found ourselves pregnant again, and we aborted the second child just as quickly to hide our shame. This time, I took her to the clinic. As I sat there in the waiting room, I could hear crying and saw women come out with tears running down their faces. This scared me because I was told “this was just a small procedure and it wouldn’t hurt Kelly or the tissue at all.” In my heart, I knew this was a baby, not tissue.
When Kelly came out, she was groggy and looked to be in a lot of pain, which made me furious about the lies we had been told. As we drove home, neither of us said a thing. We sat in silence as I contemplated our decision. Sadly, because of my inability to be a man, I put it all aside and we went on with our relationship.
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Kelly and I eventually got married, but many years after the abortions I realized I was in pain. My inability to protect those I was entrusted to care for created a domino effect of bad choices. I struggled with how to be a man and husband because I had become like Adam in my silence. I self-medicated my pain with pornography and alcohol and searched for ways to find my voice when really what I needed to hear was the voice of God. I was a broken man with a broken wife, two children in heaven, and was trying to pick up the pieces of what my indifference had done. I watched Kelly find healing from the abortions and eventually decided I needed help, too. The healing process made me realize that I was meant to be a Daddy to those two children and that my silence never allowed me to be that for them.
In November of last year, Kelly became a spokeswoman for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. I traveled to cities across the United States, supporting her and helping to tell her story. But city after city, people wanted to hear what I had to say, and I knew I had a choice. I could continue to be a silent bystander, or I could choose to be Silent No More. When I heard the statistics, it wasn’t a hard decision to make. Out of the 2,221 people who have registered their regret on the Silent No More Awareness Campaign website, only 268 of those were men. Where are the men? Silent! Another staggering statistic is that over 50 percent of children in America will grow up without a father. This means that if we haven’t abandoned our children before they are born, half of us will walk out eventually.
So men, I want to ask you a few questions, and I want you to answer them honestly… Have you been involved in an abortion in anyway? If so, do you recognize the blood on your hands? Do you want to find healing too? If you have answered yes to these questions, please go to www.iregretmyabortion.com, register your regret of lost fatherhood, and begin a journey to become whole and find your voice. Our children deserve better than the silent legacy we are leaving. Let’s stand together and say that we will be SILENT NO MORE.
Matt Clinger is an Atlanta resident and a golf instructor.