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July 30, 2022 - The Michael Knowles Show
59:03
Choosing Life: Surviving a Medical Abortion - Claire Culwell
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So often it's hard for us to care about an issue, maybe even have a stance on an issue or understand an issue, unless we've been affected by that issue.
And for me, that was the case.
When I met my birth mother, I found out that I had been affected by abortion because I had survived my birth mother's abortion procedure that successfully aborted my twin.
I thought for sure that I would never be the type of person who'd been affected by abortion, but here I was.
The face, the name, the story of the aborted child in the name of choice.
From the beginning of the abortion debate, the pro-abortion side has always had one major advantage.
No one ever hears from the victims.
The victims are small, voiceless, and discarded before anyone ever knows their names, before they even have names.
We can see and hear from the mothers who procure the abortions.
We can see and hear from the abortionists.
Only the victims never have the chance to tell their side of the story.
Almost never.
In extremely rare circumstances, The victim of an abortion will survive.
No one understands the reality of abortion better than these survivors, better than people like Claire Colwell.
Claire lives with the scars of abortion every day, and she is using her unlikely survival to expose the reality of the abortionist's butchery.
Let's hear Claire's side of the story.
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And I would suggest that that's all rooted in people becoming less or really just anti-religious.
That's why it's more important than ever to keep our relationship with God strong.
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It is the perfect resource to deepen your relationship with God and find peace through audio-guided prayer and meditation.
Several of Hallow's meditations encourage you to choose life and to pray for others to choose life, such as their Litany for Life with Lila Rose.
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So do it.
Do it right now.
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That is hallo.com slash choose life.
My name is Claire.
I am an abortion survivor.
I'm a wife, a mother.
I live in Austin, Texas with my husband David and our four children.
So my sister and I are both adopted.
We actually grew up in Austin, Texas.
We're adopted by Texans from two different birth mothers from out of Texas, other states.
And we always knew we were adopted.
We actually don't remember finding out we were adopted.
But being adopted was this very positive thing.
We remember actually kids in school or at church, wherever we were, saying, gosh, sorry that you're adopted.
And we were really confused by that because our parents told us all our life that we were wanted, chosen, and loved.
And so being adopted, having birth mothers, being chosen in the way that we were was this great thing.
And I think it's because people had seen the movie Annie and they thought we lived with Miss Hannigan or something.
But we were adopted.
And so one day my sister decided to meet her birth mother.
And she was, I guess, around 18 years old.
And I'm a couple years older than her.
I was in college.
And I came home to meet my sister's birth mother.
And seeing them together was this experience I had.
I had never experienced before.
I mean, seeing how much they looked alike, how much they acted alike.
And it really humanized my birth mother for me in that moment.
And I was 20 years old at this time.
I had not taken the time to reach out to find my birth mother, had not even really thought much about my birth mother.
But I knew as I saw my sister's birth mother put a face with this woman who had given me my sister, Giving her her life that I wanted to just thank my birth mother because I had an incredible life because of her.
And I thought, you know, she probably thinks like she was the worst mom for me.
I mean, she placed me for adoption.
I don't know the circumstances, but I thought maybe there's something hard in my birth story.
And I wanted her to know that she was the best mother for me because she had given me my family and my life.
And so I went home that day and I talked with my family.
We all agreed we wanted to meet my birth mother.
And so I made the call the next day and a woman named Debbie answered the phone to my adoption agency.
And come to find out on the phone, Debbie was my parents' caseworker and my birth mother's caseworker now 21 years before I made this phone call to her.
And as I'm describing who I am and telling her my name and that I wanted to find my birth mother, she says, Claire, I actually know who you are.
I'm staring.
I have your baby picture on my desk.
I've had it here for 21 years.
And I thought that was the weirdest conversation.
I mean, who keeps somebody's baby picture?
I mean, mine, out of all the baby pictures she could have kept from all the placements that she's helped make happen through this adoption agency over more than 21 years, because she'd been there even longer than that.
Why would she pick Why would she pick me?
Why was I that special baby?
And come to find out, she knew what I didn't know in that conversation.
She knew that my life was a miracle.
And so Debbie was excited.
She said, your birth mother was very young.
She's still very young.
She's only 14 years older than you.
She was 14 when she had you.
She was 13 when she was pregnant with you and lived here in this home.
And so she said, I knew your birth mother.
I haven't kept in touch with her, but I'll do my best to find her.
And so I got a call just a few weeks later on Christmas Eve of 2008 and Debbie said, Claire, I found your birth mother.
She would love to meet you.
And I was so excited.
My whole family, we were excited.
We planned for this.
We set the meeting up in March of 2009, just a couple weeks after I turned 21.
And she brought her family.
I brought my family.
We planned what we would wear, what we would eat, everything that you could ever think of.
I brought a stack of pictures from my childhood, from my life, because I wanted to show her how good Great my life has been because of her choice to give me life and family.
We had this great reunion.
I got to see who I looked like.
I was actually studying to be a nurse at that time, and I found out that she was a nurse.
We had these things in common.
It was really neat to be able to meet my birth mother.
We set a second meeting up because we I knew we wanted to continue our relationship, and I thought this would be our moment.
I opened up to her, and she opened up to me, and there was this redemption story.
And I had no idea, no idea what I was about to walk into.
I mean, nothing can prepare you for the conversation that I had with my birth mother when I thanked her for giving me my life and my family.
I actually prepared for that meeting.
I got her a ring and a necklace with my birthstone on it.
I flew to Oklahoma.
She still lives in the same area as she grew up and where I would have grown up if she had kept me.
I was excited to spend time with her family, and I brought this gift.
That evening, things settled down.
She had put her then-four-year-old to bed, my half-sister Peyton.
And things had settled down, and so I got the gift out.
And in the gift, I had a card, and I had written, thank you for choosing life for me.
And I signed my name.
I don't know why I just wrote that.
I think I couldn't even wrap my mind around what to say in that card, but for whatever reason, that's all I wrote.
And I gave her the gift.
And we were alone.
We were in her living room.
She was sitting in a chair like this.
And I gave her the ring and the necklace.
And she opened it up.
And she cried really happy tears.
She told me she was thankful for that gift.
And then I watched her open the card.
And I was actually fastening the necklace on her neck as she opened the card.
And she read...
What I wrote in the card, thank you for choosing life for me.
And like a switch, everything changed.
I mean, everything about her expression, the tears in her eyes that were happy turned to sad tears.
She was trembling.
And she just kept saying, Claire, I'm so sorry I didn't.
I didn't choose life for you.
I'm so incredibly sorry.
I mean, I'm confused.
I'm like, this is supposed to be our moment.
This is supposed to be the moment where I tell her everything she's longed to hear.
How great my life.
I mean, what is she even talking about?
She didn't.
And the walk...
She said, let's go into this other room so I can...
Tell you about what it was like being pregnant with you at 13 years old.
And so we walked to this other room and I remember she grabbed my hand as she led me into this other room as she was weeping and her hand was shaking so much it was shaking mine.
And I thought, what in the world could she be about to tell me?
And we sat on this bed and we turned to face each other and She said, Claire, I was 13 years old.
And she said, my mother told me that there was one choice for me by the time I got the courage to tell her.
I was around five months along in my pregnancy.
And she said, I wasn't ready to be a mother.
She said, we're going to go to this abortion clinic and you're going to take this to your grave.
Nobody's going to know that this ever happened.
You're going to shut up about it and you're going to do what I'm telling you to do.
And my birth mother was driven to a nearby abortion clinic in Oklahoma and she had a D&E dismemberment abortion that day.
And she said she was surrounded by a doctor and some nurses and her mother who Never even spoke to her, never acknowledged her, never asked her what her choice would have been.
All they told her was that her life would go back to normal, that everything would be fine.
She wouldn't even think about it.
She said the procedure was incredibly painful.
She actually still to this day can remember the smell, the instruments that were used, the sounds that were in that room.
There's so many things about that day and the coming days that can take her back to being that 13-year-old scared and unsupported little girl.
And she said after she went home, she tried to go back to normal.
She was in eighth grade.
She tried to do the normal things that she enjoys to do, be with her friends, play sports.
And something just didn't seem right.
The weeks went on and her belly was still growing.
She realized something was leaking out of her.
She didn't know what that meant, of course, being a 13-year-old girl.
Who would?
And so she finally went to her mother when she got the courage to go back to her mother.
And her mother took her back to the abortion clinic and they told her that she had actually been pregnant with twins.
And that one baby had successfully been aborted, but that I had survived my birth mother's abortion.
And they said, what would you like to do to her mother?
And once again, she's sitting in a room where decisions are being made on her behalf.
Nobody's speaking to her.
Nobody's acknowledging her.
Nobody's caring about the pain that she's experiencing.
They're just talking about this as if it's a medical procedure.
It has no implication or effect on her life, and so they decided, the doctor, the nurses, and her mother decided that she needed a second abortion.
Well, at this point in Oklahoma, she couldn't have a second abortion because it was too late.
She was around six and a half months along in her pregnancy at this point, and so that was an even later term abortion.
And so they referred her to Kansas.
In Kansas, this is where a lot of late-term abortionists were practicing abortion at that time.
And they did every type of abortion that there was.
And so my birth mother was referred to Kansas.
She remembers the drive.
She said it was her mom, her little brother, and her.
And they drove to Kansas.
They ate donuts.
It was just a regular day.
She was taken to this late-term abortion clinic in Kansas.
She was laying on the table, ready to have her abortion, just like she did the first time.
And these doctors, miraculously, they said, we can't do it.
And the reason that my birth mother was turned away was not because it wasn't legal.
It was because she had been leaking amniotic fluid for the few weeks since her abortion that aborted my twin.
And it was too dangerous for her to have that second abortion.
And so they said, not only that, but your baby's very small.
You're very close to delivery.
You need to go home and be on bed rest.
And so my birth mother was then driven back to Oklahoma She was dropped off at that adoption agency where Debbie was, who answered my phone call that day.
Debbie was then her caseworker.
At the request of my birth mother, Tanya's mother, she ended up placing me for adoption there through the adoption agency.
I was born, as you can imagine, very prematurely.
I was 10 weeks premature because my birth mother Was leaking amniotic fluid and because she then had a dry birth.
And so I weighed three pounds, two ounces.
I had a dislocated hip and I had club feet and a lot of complications that the doctors had to correct for me.
I actually stayed in the hospital for two months and then went home I went through multiple body casts and visited the Children's Crippled Hospital for numerous years as the doctors corrected these things.
And so my birth mother was told that because she was leaking amniotic fluid, because they ripped the sack that I was in during the abortion, That aborted my twin because she had this dry birth that that is what caused these physical complications that I had then that I'm still experiencing now.
I have a lot of chronic pain and different things that I can't do as a normal person would be able to do, although overall I'm very blessed.
I'm very fortunate that I can function pretty normally.
But doctors, you know, recently, over the past couple years, as they've reviewed my medical records, they think that there's a possibility that these are because I was a twin.
Because oftentimes, twins who are cramped in their mother's uterus, they're sharing that same space.
And so they can develop dislocated hips and club feet.
So, you know, if that's the case, the miraculous thing either way is that the abortion instruments that tore my twin's body apart limb by limb never touched my body.
And so that's pretty incredible as I've realized what I went through in the womb as my twin's body was taken apart, crushed, and pulled out of my birth mother's uterus.
When people hear your story, what's the most common response that you get for someone who's never even considered the idea that abortions might not be successful?
I get two responses.
I think the most common response is the exact same response that I had as I was sitting face-to-face with my birth mother learning that I survived an abortion that was meant to end my life.
And my response was, what?
What do you mean?
I mean, this doesn't happen.
Abortion survivors exist?
Is that a real thing?
I mean, that actually happened to you?
I mean, those were all of my reactions.
And that's the reaction that I have so often from other people.
Because Abortion survivors are not being talked about.
Abortion is often such a hush-hush topic other than in political settings.
We don't oftentimes sit around the table and talk about the reality of abortion in our homes, with our children, in our communities, in our churches, in the places where real-life conversations are happening.
So often we're not talking about this.
So if we're not talking about abortion...
We're certainly not talking about how babies can survive abortions, how abortion procedures, just like any other medical procedure, things can go wrong.
And abortion is not always safe, and I'm living proof of that.
And so I think that's the first response that I get.
The second response that I so often get is that, wow, Your survival, your existence, your very humanity sitting before me, it really makes this issue real for me now.
It's hard when you haven't been affected by abortion like me for so long.
For 21 years, I never talked about this in my home, in my circle.
I hadn't been affected by it that I knew.
And so I really just didn't think about it.
When you look at an abortion survivor, you see the humanity of that unborn baby.
And so people will say, Claire, the fact that you were a twin, that really makes it real to me because I realize when I'm looking at your face, I'm looking at your twins.
I'm looking at the aborted baby.
And that's so often what moves people.
I mean, I've had people say right on the spot as they hear my story, like I walked into this conversation thinking that I was pro-choice, that I cared about women.
But your humanity has changed me.
I realize that there are two people to care about, three, a family even.
To care about in an unplanned pregnancy situation.
And it's not just as simple as women need abortion.
Put us as the audience in the shoes of your birth mother for a minute.
Just the idea of being a 13-year-old girl and feeling totally powerless in that situation when she finds out that she is pregnant.
Can you kind of put audiences there and kind of walk them through what your birth mother was going through?
My birth mother had divorced parents and she lived with her mother who wasn't very loving towards her.
And my birth mother went to her mother and said, I'm pregnant at 13 years old.
And her mother said, well...
Nobody's going to know.
You're going to take this to your grave.
You're going to shut up about this.
I'm going to drive you to an abortion clinic, and you're going to have this abortion, and we'll go home and pretend like it never happened, and we'll never speak of this again.
And so my birth mother, that's what she did.
She had a DNA dismemberment abortion in an abortion clinic where no one spoke to her.
No one asked her what her choice would have been.
No one asked her what they could do to support her in her choice, in even the possibility of being a mother through parenting or placing her child for adoption.
No one asked her what her choice would have been.
And, you know, so often pro-choice advocates, I mean, even in their name, you know, even in the way they talk about abortion as, you know, a woman's right to control her own body and it's a woman's choice, you know, so much of an emphasis is put on the woman's kind of bodily autonomy in her decision.
Was that the case for your mom?
I don't even know that...
There was an argument for or against anything.
I think her mother knew that she was 13 years old and that she thought she wasn't ready or wasn't capable of caring for a child.
Her mother certainly didn't want anything to do with a baby, being a grandmother, and so her mother made this choice for her.
But that certainly is an argument.
I hear A lot.
People often say to me, well, Claire, don't you think women should have the right to choose what they do with their own body?
And I always say, yeah, absolutely, I do.
But the problem here is that I wasn't my birth mother's body.
There was a separate human being inside of my birth mother's body, and that was me.
And so women, yes, absolutely, they should have the right to do what they want with their body.
Right.
And to take that argument even a step further, many women, like your mom, don't actually feel like they have a choice in the issue and they feel forced into having abortions.
Right.
Women do feel forced into having abortions every single day.
Women feel desperate enough to have abortions every single day.
In fact, that's what's driving women into abortion facilities today.
It's not often a medical reason or these exceptions that we hear about and empathize with.
It's a desperation that women feel Because they're being forced, they're being coerced, they're being lied to, or they don't know that they have support and people that will walk alongside them.
They don't know that there are organizations readily available to walk alongside them through their pregnancy and help them financially With material assistance, with emotional assistance, and be that community to them that they're looking for, that they need in their moment of crisis as they experience an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy.
I would say that my birth mother is exactly like women that walk through the doors of abortion clinics today, especially if they're 13, 14 years old and they're going in with their parents.
I mean, if I think back to when I was 13 or 14 years old, who did I trust?
I trusted the wisdom of my parents.
I trusted that my parents were going to make The best choices for me.
And so at 13 or 14 years old, I can't say that I wouldn't have done the same thing if my parents had told me Abortion is your only option.
Abortion is what's best for you.
And so I think that my birth mother does represent the teenager that's walking into an abortion clinic today.
But I would go further than that and say that she represents the desperate woman in her 20s or 30s or 40s who is Feels unprepared, who feels hopeless, who feels like they don't know where else to turn, where else to go.
They don't know the resources and support that is available to them.
Those are the reasons that women are going into abortion clinics.
The lack of support.
I've noticed that, you know, People of faith, people of conscience, people just like the average human being that care about women and children and families.
So often we tend to remain apathetic.
We remain silent.
We remain in our comfort zone.
We don't like to talk about controversial or political issues, which unfortunately this issue has become.
And so, so often we're not talking to the people in our communities and our families and saying, you know, I hope that this doesn't happen to you.
I hope that you don't have an unplanned pregnancy.
But if you do, you can come to me.
I'm your safe place.
This church is your safe place.
This community of people, this family of ours, this is your safe place.
Meanwhile, the abortion industry is shouting from the rooftops.
That we are your safe place.
You can come to us.
You're welcome through our doors.
And so I think that my birth mother and probably her mother even, who took her into this abortion clinic and made that choice on her behalf, ran to an abortion clinic out of desperation because she didn't know where to turn.
Because nobody in her community was talking about these things.
And she felt like there was no hope, there was no grace, there was no forgiveness, there was no path forward other than just covering it up and pretending like it never happened.
We've got a lot more with Claire coming up.
First, though, text PRO-LIFE to 47581.
Because as the country grapples with the aftermath of overturning Roe v.
the pro-life movement has come under fire from far-left pro-abortion extremists.
Not only have leftists firebombed and vandalized pro-life clinics in multiple states, but online pro-life groups have experienced mass censorship by Google, Facebook, TikTok, you name it.
That's why Live Action has been working tirelessly to find ways to spread the truth about abortion and share resources with those who need it most without relying on biased big tech.
If you want to join Live Action's Fight for Life, text pro-life to 47581 and opt in to receive updates from Live Action about their ongoing work to end abortion.
texting pro-life to 47581 means you won't be at the mercy of the big tech sensors in the ongoing fight for life.
So many women rush to abortion because they just don't know that there are that there are support and resources in communities that are wanting to help them.
But is that true?
Are there no resources or are they just not aware of them?
Most women, I mean even like me, when I learned that I had survived my birth mother's abortion, I have no idea that there are resources, there are organizations, there are people just like you and I who are ready to walk alongside women and men and families and their children as they navigate an unplanned or difficult or any pregnancy situation.
I actually serve on the board of my local pregnancy resource center and that was something that was new to me when I I learned that I had been affected by abortion.
I started learning about all of these incredible organizations and resources that are available.
And one of them was a pregnancy resource center.
And pregnancy resource centers, there are so many in every single state.
Most cities across the country have some type of pregnancy resource center within maybe 50 or 100 miles of that city and so they offer free ultrasounds, free pregnancy testing, material assistance like free baby wipes and diapers and clothing and maternity clothes for the mom, even financial assistance.
Some offer STD testing, even more medical services and so it's really incredible.
There are And resources.
There are people that want to help women like my birth mother.
And my birth mother actually told me just a couple years back that if there had been a place that she could go to that she knew about, that her family knew about, that had told her that they would help her.
They would help her be a mom.
They would help her finish school.
They would help her with all of the things that they thought they couldn't afford with having a baby at such a young age that she wouldn't have felt like she needed to have an abortion.
And then when that didn't work, give me away.
Those are her exact words.
And so the resources that are available are absolutely incredible.
And that's why there are people that pray outside of abortion facilities today so that they can direct women in the direction of the resources and the support that is available to them.
Because so often women that are walking through the doors of an abortion clinic, they're looking for a sign and they're looking for a place like a pregnancy resource center.
So for a viewer who's pro-life and knows that there shouldn't be an alternative to protecting life.
Thank you.
What would you say to those people watching this film in terms of how do they help make an impact on saving life?
I think we've spent far too long staying comfortable, staying silent, staying in our zone or our gifting, our...
Unique set of things that we're good at, that we're comfortable with.
And I think that we're living in a time where it's life or death for someone like me, for someone like my twin.
It's similar to that for someone like my birth mother who's lived with the agony and the pain and the regret that she's experienced because of the two abortion attempts that she had on my life.
And the lack of support.
And so I think that we're living in a time where we have to decide that we're going to be people of integrity.
We're going to be people who speak truth, who no longer sit on the sidelines, who get out of our comfort zone for things that matter, and who decide that we're going to stand for life.
But not only stand for life, we're going to do something about it.
And every single one of us can do something about it.
If you're a prayerful person, you can pray about this every single day.
You can volunteer with your Pregnancy Resource Center.
You can get involved in pro-life ministries and organizations and activism.
You can vote.
Take your pro-life vote to the polls.
That's incredibly important right now in our country as we see.
We just have to be bold.
We have to decide that we're going to do something.
Because if we don't, we will continue to see a culture and a world that values death instead of life.
What would you say to the pro-choice person who, and I think maybe you addressed two different people.
First, the pro-choice person who says, oh, well, I'm a feminist and I support, you know, women's rights and I support women's access to healthcare.
And, you know, I would never tell a woman what to do with her body.
I think I would just ask a pro-choice feminist who cares about women's rights what were mine.
As a woman, as an unborn woman in the womb who had no rights, had nobody speaking on my behalf, could have very well been dismembered in the name of Women's rights in the name of choice.
I mean, what were my rights?
Because I think that in order to empower women, in order to uplift women, as we both want to do, that it's not telling women that she's not strong enough to be a mother, that she's not capable of being a mother.
It's actually telling a woman that She can.
She is strong enough.
She is worthy.
She is worthy of walking alongside of and that she is capable of being a mother.
That is women's empowerment to me.
And what would you say to that woman who has recently found out that she's pregnant?
And is scared and is being told by her boyfriend or her husband, oh, this isn't a good time.
We need to get rid of the child.
Or is being told by her parents, this is a shame on our family.
We can't talk about this.
Or is alone and doesn't have anyone speaking into her life, but is scared about whether or not she can do it.
What do you say to women who are struggling with those pressures?
If you're pregnant today, I would just say that you should know that you're capable of being a mother.
You are worthy of walking alongside of, that as an abortion survivor, as an adoptee, as a mother even, that I'm so grateful for my life and for the woman who gave me my life.
And You get to do that for your child, too.
And I know that it might feel scary right now, and maybe you don't know where to turn or what to do, but there are people like me who want to walk alongside you and that will do that for you.
And so I would encourage you to reach out to your local pregnancy resource center or to call Loveline.
Because there is somebody that is ready to talk with you and walk alongside you because you can do this and you are strong and capable.
Beautiful.
You know, so the pro-choice movement right now is making a lot of noise about how there's no validation to the claim that women experience regret after having abortions.
And I think Was it the Guttmacher Institute who said, oh, well, 90% of women don't have any regret or whatever the statistic is right now?
And there are a lot of statistics, a lot of claims that women aren't emotionally impacted by abortion.
Was that true for your birth mother?
Yeah.
My birth mother has deep pain and regret from her abortion experience.
In fact, I hear from women all across the country and across the world.
I share my story about 30 to 40 times a year in front of 500 to 1,000 people, and every single time a woman comes up to me and says, Claire, you're the first person I'm telling this to, but I had an abortion 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 years ago, and it has been the deepest pain and regret of my life.
When I met my birth mother, she told me that she did exactly what her mother asked her to do, which was take this to your grave.
Don't tell anyone about this.
This will be your secret.
And she did for 21 years until she met me.
And she felt like she just needed to get this weight off her shoulders.
She needed to tell me the truth about who I was, about what she had done.
She said that this was her deepest, darkest, most painful secret.
And that's what I hear across the country from women just like my birth mother who are deeply pained and scarred from their past abortion experience and don't know that they're...
That there is hope after abortion, that there are resources for them, people that even want to walk alongside them through navigating what their abortion experience did to them.
What kind of damage does it do to a woman to be told constantly by the pro-choice movement, oh, abortion doesn't hurt women?
There's no emotional impact on women.
And to know inside that they're hurting, And just to feel like, oh, am I the only one?
It's hard.
I mean, I remember.
I haven't had an abortion.
I know that that's been hard for my birth mother to hear.
But I know for me, if you remember when Newark lit up the Empire State Building, Pink, celebrating a woman's right to choose, celebrating this new law that made abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy.
Abortions could be performed by non-doctors.
Abortions could be performed for any reason.
So many different things.
This law was pretty extreme.
And I remember sitting there as they were celebrating.
They were celebrating their right to abortion.
And for any reason, at any stage, any type of procedure, including the procedure that dismembered my twin, I remember sitting there and thinking, what about me?
What about me?
Did they not see?
Did they not see me?
Did they not see my birth mother?
Did they not see our pain?
I mean, is anyone listening as they shout from the rooftops and celebrate their right to choose abortion when they're really choosing to end the life of someone like me?
And I feel like that's got to be how women feel.
I know I hear from women across the country.
I've heard from my own birth mother that when abortion is being celebrated, We feel ignored and dismissed and like we're the garbage under their feet because nobody even acknowledges what abortion actually does to a child like me and to a woman like my birth mother.
And this will seem like an obvious question, but are you glad that you got a chance at life?
I'm so glad that I got a chance at life.
Because I got a chance at life, I've had the privilege of being a daughter to my parents who raised us in an incredible way.
I had an incredible childhood growing up.
My sister and I, we were just like any other We played.
We fought.
We played orphanage.
That's pretty funny, being adopted children.
That's how positive adoption was in our home.
But our life was incredible.
And I grew up.
I met my birth mother.
And then I met my husband.
I was navigating the What it meant to be an abortion survivor, what it meant to live in a world that didn't want me to exist, that didn't want my humanity to be exposed, that said things like, I wish your body was thrown in the dumpster with all the other baby body parts.
And I had a hard time.
Time at first.
I actually met my husband, and before we got married, I became pregnant.
And so here I was sharing my story across the country, and I was the woman having the unplanned pregnancy.
And I had a little bit of a panic with that.
I felt like I had let a lot of people down.
I felt like...
I felt like I let a lot of people down.
I felt like I was raised better than that.
I knew better than that, that this wasn't how my story was supposed to go.
But I had what my birth mother didn't have.
Even though my life was spinning out of control, I was living in this world that didn't want me to exist.
I was experiencing this unplanned pregnancy that wasn't part of how I thought my story would go.
I still had what my birth mother didn't have.
And that was the support of my husband, the father of my child, who's now my husband, my parents, And my friends, the biggest voices in my head and my heart At the time of my unplanned pregnancy.
And so I married my daughter's dad.
He had three children of his own who I've had the privilege of being mom to.
We've raised our four children in Austin.
And I've been able to share my story across the country in support of organizations that are making a difference, organizations that are welcoming women like my birth mother, Tanya, Through their doors and it's been an incredible journey.
I'd like to pinpoint a couple of things in that story you just shared.
A lot of pro-choice advocates say, oh, well, if you don't abort all these unwanted pregnancies, all these unwanted children, they'll just flood the foster care system or orphanages.
Can you maybe address some of those arguments just with your own life story?
I don't think that...
Death is the answer to poverty or to any argument we can make about how hard or difficult or unfortunate the life of a child may be.
I mean, gosh, what kind of place have we gotten to where we think that death is a better alternative than actually what Making a difference.
Being people that can adopt and foster and walk alongside people who are and give to ministries that are making a difference in these children's lives.
That argument could go for me as well.
You know, what about the disabled child?
Wouldn't their life be so incredibly hard?
Well, I can tell you that I was born with dislocated hip and clubbed feet.
I I had body casts until I was two years old.
I wasn't nurtured as a very young infant in the hospital because I hadn't gone home to my parents.
I wasn't able to be nurtured in a quote-unquote normal way because I had all these casts on my body.
I've visited the Children's Crippled Hospital all my life.
My feet are still a little bit turned.
I still have pain.
I'm still what people who argue for abortion for babies who are disabled, I am disabled.
What they're talking about to a certain degree, and I am thankful for my life.
Regardless of disability, regardless of hardship, I would rather live than die.
I would rather live than be dismembered in my birth mother's womb.
And so who are we to say that a child who might have difficulty—I mean, we all have difficulty— Who are we to say that their life doesn't have meaning, that their life doesn't have value, that we should throw them in the dumpster with the rest of the baby parts?
Who are we to say that?
And, you know, you mentioned that you wrestled with living in a world that said that it didn't want you.
Have you actually had people say something that horrific to your face?
Have you had pro-choice advocates say like, oh, we wish, you know, that that had happened to you?
Or is that more something you were wrestling with just kind of in the abstract?
No, that's been...
So people have actually said that to you?
Yeah.
I've had...
A lot of people say a lot of horrific things.
That's one that stands out to me because it happened within the first year or two after I met my birth mother.
It was during my time of navigating, struggling with, is this really my story?
Did this really happen to me?
I was grappling with the truth that I was an abortion survivor and And then grappling with the truth that society didn't want me to even be a part of it, didn't want to acknowledge me, my name, my experience, my pain.
And so I had somebody say that to me.
And since that day, I've learned not to read many comments, not to listen to the noise, and just faithfully Tell my story because someone like my birth mother deserves to be fought for.
Someone like my twin deserves to be fought for.
A lot of times when I speak, especially if it's not a private event, I have people come and protest my existence by holding up signs that say things similar to that.
And that's the reality of the pro-choice movement in our country, that they will acknowledge certain experiences, but if your experience exposes the narrative that's a lie, that women need abortion, that women have the right to choose, that the unborn baby is not a human being, then they disregard you and they dismiss you.
Can you basically tell the audience some of the things that pro-choice advocates or people in the pro-choice movement have written to you or yelled at you or held signs up saying about you?
People would be shocked.
I've had people say things like, your body should have been thrown in the dumpster with the rest of the baby body parts.
You should never have been born.
And things like, you made that up.
There's no such thing as an abortion survivor.
And I hear all of these things.
I have to process all of these things that I'm living in a world that would rather dismiss, disregard, and be hateful towards me than acknowledge my story, my existence, and my humanity.
Because in order to acknowledge my My existence, my story, and my humanity, they would have to come to grips with the truth about the unborn baby, about what abortion is and what it does.
And so it's easier for them to shout from the rooftops and be hateful and angry and mean instead of saying, you know what?
This person has a real experience.
She survived an abortion and her humanity is sitting before me, pointing me in the direction.
That there's life in the womb and that it is worthy of being protected.
Right.
So, you know, the pro-choice movement paints itself all the time as, you know, the friends of women.
The pro-choice movement is not a friend of women.
They're not a friend to a woman like my birth mother who is desperately looking for someone to walk alongside her for answers, for support.
They sold her an abortion and they left her hanging.
They sent her home and they didn't help her navigate her pain in the years that would follow.
So the abortion industry, the pro-choice movement is not a friend to a woman who's experienced an abortion and certainly not a friend to a woman who survived an abortion like me.
And, you know, what would you say, you know, intellectually honest people on both sides of, you know, the debate, whether they're pro-choice or pro-life, are there any common things that people can agree on?
You know, oftentimes, you know, it's said that, you know, the best way to convince someone who doesn't agree with you is find the common ground and go from there.
Is there a common ground that can be agreed on?
I don't see much common ground between the pro-life side and the pro-choice side.
I would say that our similar or the same talking point that we use is that we both care about women.
And I think that is true to a certain degree.
On the pro-life side, we care about women, but we also care about the unborn child.
So often the pro-choice movement paints us as only caring about the child.
But you just heard my birth mother's story.
And I and all of my other friends that I know, the people that are leading the pro-life movement, we would all say that not only do we care about the child, about the child like me that's fighting for its life, that deserves about the child like me that's fighting for its life, that deserves to be born, to have a birthday, but just as much we care about the woman like my birth mother because we don't want a woman to
But just as much, we care about the woman like my birth mother, because we don't want a woman to experience the pain and the agony that abortion has caused so many like my birth mother, Tanya.
And the pro-choice movement has used that same argument.
We care about women.
We care about women so much that we care about her body and her right to choose.
And I think that so many people that are working in the abortion industry right now have bought into a lie that they're doing something that is good for women, believing that they care about women enough to fight for her in that way.
But really, what they're doing is causing a lifetime of pain and regret.
And so I think that we both care about women, but we need to change that narrative of how do we care for women?
We care for women by walking alongside them and saying, you're strong enough, you're capable, you're worthy, you can be a mother.
There's so many resources available to women who do carry their pregnancy to term, who do decide to parent.
I hear so often how a woman graduated from college and it was her child who motivated her, her unplanned pregnancy child, who motivated her to We're
We're so uneducated and so unaware of what is out there and what the truth is that we buy into that lie.
And so as a culture, even as individual people, it is our responsibility to expose those lies.
I can do that through my humanity, through my existence as an abortion survivor, and you can do that through using your voice, through educating yourself, and Through sharing the truth about what abortion is, what it does and being that safe place for the people in your community and your life who experience unplanned pregnancies.
The abortion industry uses women for their own profit.
Claire's mother was coerced, pressured, deceived by her mother and by doctors.
These lies are pervasive.
They're not difficult to refute, but it can be difficult to penetrate that culture of lies to get the truth out there.
We have to do it.
We have to do it because it's right.
We have to do it for the victims of abortion.
We have to do it for the women who are taken in by this industry, who are used for dollars, even to their own detriment.
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I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Choosing Life Podcast.
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The Choosing Life Podcast is a Daily Wire production produced in association with Outer Limits.
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