Unwanted Child To Pro-Choice Community: Don’t Use Me To Justify Abortion

Written by Rosa Hopkins, Vice-President @ Life Defenders 

My parents had a rocky marriage. Ten years of tantrums, toddlers, fighting, and dealing with the clash of cultures and strong personalities, trouble boiled over to the point of breaking. My mother had plans to leave but began to feel sick. A year prior, her gallbladder had been removed, and in the late 70s, the 18-inch incision took about that long to heal.

She was barley passable.

At the first sign of distress, she assumed she was experiencing more issues related to digestion, but the doctor insisted she take a pregnancy test. With her first and second-born children aged seven and eight years old, she had absolutely no plans to have another child.

Divorce was on the horizon, and a job with the local post office was hiring.

A baby was not what my mother had wanted, and yet, the physician confirmed that I wasn’t a kidney stone she was carrying but a growing, twisting, expanding new life within her belly. I was there, but I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the exact conversation was like.

The notion of leaving my dad was gone, dividing cells multiplying rapidly beneath squamous tissue and nerve endings, becoming attached by the umbilical lifeline to my source. The feeling of being a burden only grew heavier over time, both within and without the womb.

She floated the idea of abortion by my father.

He was an atheist, but he did what many Christians won’t do – he said that abortion wasn’t right. And with that, my life was spared. Nevertheless, the attitudes that underlie abortion, as the pro-choice people rightfully surmise, fester not far below the surface.

Growing up, I felt I could not do anything right. I sensed I was somehow all alone in this life, and it made any problems I dealt with from the outside insurmountable. I was the ‘reason’ why everything was terrible, and like any good scapegoat, I carried the responsibility for the sins of the people. My mother’s rages were impossible to predict, and I checked her mood before entering a room the way one would read the temperature before venturing outside.

I was the escape valve for the tensions that brewed underneath the suburban façade and smiling faces we displayed for the outside world. Inside, I was broken. I often contemplated taking my own life and promised myself that I needed to wait until I was twenty-one to decide if this life really was worth living. After all, at thirteen my fate was not yet decided, as I could neither marry nor drive a car, hold down work or live independently on my own.

School was a nightmare, and I was bullied severely. It was not uncommon for me to be involved in physical altercations with the boys just while trying to get a drink from the water fountain. My self-esteem in shambles, I often wondered why was I even born. I had the deepest sense that nobody liked me or ever wanted me around. I continually questioned what was wrong with me the rendered me unworthy of love.

I knew that I never wanted children of my own. Children, I believed were annoying and stupid and a pain to everyone around them. I met my boyfriend in high school, and we were married at 21 years of age in early 2000.

I entered the corporate world, and we built our first home when I was 22. Despite our beautiful life together, my marriage began to fall apart. My husband and I fought continually, and the peaceful existence I had so long dreamed about would prove, yet again, to elude me.

After four years and a gallbladder removal, I pursued a divorce and sold my gorgeous house. Not wishing to go home to my parents and not having any friends, I moved into a homeless shelter for women and children.

What served as housing was a repurposed Victorian with a security alarm and code needed to enter and exit, and I was joined by a young woman and her toddler. Purple bruises weaving a trail of raw hatred from her biceps toward her throat, her wounds told a story of anger and abuse. Another, older, woman and her ten-year old son joined us as well. Same situation, less dramatic.

It was hard sleeping amid police sirens more in line with a crime drama than a safe place and the sounds of the residents next door, continually partying. Still, I left the next day to search for work and was promptly hired, working two jobs.

In time, my husband and I reconciled, and our badly busted marriage, as if with thin strips of glue, was painfully pieced back, tentatively, together. We purchased a second house and were still mostly unhappy for several more years. We sold our second house to move for his job, and we bought a third house.

One night, I heard a preacher say that all had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I knew I was a liar and was money-obsessed, but I had not before realized I would go to hell for my lifestyle. The man said that breaking any of the ten commandments or other regulations would send us to hell, whether we had stolen, committed adultery, hated our neighbour , served idols, failed to observe the Sabbath, or disrespected our parents.  

I immediately knew I was in danger of everlasting torment and desperately wished to be reconciled to God. I put my faith in Jesus as the only means of salvation and asked Him that night to save me.

I was born again.

The year was 2008, and nine months later, I would become seriously ill with a number of health issues that caused me to be bedridden most of the time. God got ahold of my husband and I during that time, and we reordered our lives to serve God. A year later, when I recovered, we opened our home for foster care, and I volunteered at a Christian private school, volunteering with heir pre-schoolers.

In 2010, God inspired me to begin writing gospel songs, and in 2012, I began recording my first record with Joe. In 2014, my album was finished, and it was played on country gospel stations throughout the country. I became pregnant with my miracle baby that same year, and in 2015, Ruby Alice Joy was born, and outcome that wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t been born.

In December of 2015, I released a two-disc Christmas album that was also played on country gospel stations, and I conducted press and promotions for the fledgling organization, Hoosiers for Life in Indiana, as they fought to pass the Heartbeat Bill in the 2015-2016 session. Though that attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, I met many key players that year, such as the bill’s author, Janet Folger Porter, and we became friends.

In 2016, I co-hosted the radio program, The Joe and Rosa Show, on Richmond VA’s WDZY AM & FM. On the first Sunday in 2017, I began co-hosting Mountain Heartbeat radio on WEMM, Huntington, WV, the largest Christian station in the state, reaching over 50 counties and parts of Ohio and Kentucky.

I interviewed people from all walks of life who had had abortions or who had conceived their children in rape or were themselves conceived in rape. We spoke to guests who had been born with fetal abnormalities or who had chosen life despite dire circumstances. We shared stories to encourage women in the Huntington area to keep their babies if they should find themselves in the midst of a crisis pregnancy.

Today I host Gutsy Christianity, a syndicated program in four cities on 8 stations, conveying biblical messages from some of today’s biggest names in Christianity.

My writings were featured by the Huffington Post, and I would write true stories of triumph over the darkness of abortion in the lives of those who chose life. My husband and I unsuccessfully attempted to introduce Heartbeat legislation to the state in which we live, and we lent support to the federally-filed Heartbeat Protection Act by appearing in person at a congressional hearing in Washington D.C. We also used our radio program to ask voters in three states to call their representatives, requesting that they sign on as sponsors.

My articles on various subjects have been printed in the Baltimore Sun, The Cumberland Times, the Hampshire County Herald, the Bedford Gazette, and more news outlets. I am a gospel singer who has penned over 1,000 songs, and I play the guitar, banjo, ukulele, harmonica, mandolin, as well as some fiddle and piano. I have conducted interviews on air to support them on radio stations in several states.

I’ve actually offered my first two albums online for free, because each record’s second-to-last track contains a gospel message of salvation. My husband and I play concerts at schools, youth groups, and nursing homes, sharing the good news of the kingdom, handshakes, and hugs with people of all ages. I also write devotionals on biblical topics online on my site and on my Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/rosahopkinswriting

I know it’s fashionable these days to say that unwanted children are better off if they are aborted, because they will know they were not desired. It is true that I did not feel my life had value or that I should have been born, and that I suffered immeasurably because of this. It is true that I had no self-esteem and was repeatedly targeted for abuse by classmates and was even raped at the age of 15 by a boy in my neighbourhood. 

It is true that I was called names and developed an orphan mentality, and it is true that I have suffered as if by lacerations on my very soul. It is true that the abortion mindset causes far-reaching consequences and that I deal with depression and anxiety because of the mere idea that my existence was a choice that, perhaps, was made unwillingly.

What is not true, however, is that people get to play God, deciding who gets to live and who gets to die. It is not true that anyone has the right to take the life of somebody else, and being unwanted is not a cause to deprive a person of life, property, or the pursuit of happiness guaranteed in our Constitution. That train of thought takes us down an abhorrent path if any of us should ever become unwanted in the course of our existences.

If we become old and unwanted, what then? What if we’re deemed unattractive or burdensome? What if we’re not considered valuable enough to remain on planet earth? Does this automatically grant others the right to kill us?

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not find out. I’d rather believe we are all endowed by our Creator with the right to live and to reach our destinies as He would grant us power to do. I’d rather believe that all men were created equal and not just those who were wanted.

To proclaim a death sentence upon nearly one million children per annum on the flimsy basis that they were not wanted is tantamount to saying you can kill anybody for any reason. A dangerous and violent society cannot be trusted to keep even its ‘wanted’ members in perfect peace and security when these beliefs form its basis.

So, please do not use me or people like me to proclaim “compassion’’ on the unwanted by saying they are better off at the bottom of a biohazard bag left to rot in a dumpster. Do not claim to care about the pain of those who were not planned by saying one million of them each year are happier never having been born.

I am here to tell you that is blatantly false.

I am grateful to be here each today and every day that God grants me breath. I am also grateful that my daughter is here, as her life would have been snuffed out as well, for abortion renders generations silent like a candle blown out by a harsh wind. The death toll is much greater than we know, for those 60,000,000 lost lives since the Roe V. Wade decision would have been parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on and so on and so on.

We have a veritable holocaust on our soil.

Being unwanted is part of the story, but it isn’t all of it. We can overcome, and by God’s grace, we can forgive those who have hurt us. We can carry our crosses with His strength, and we can get through whatever we need to with Him by our side.

Our parents don’t get to decide if we’re wanted. God does. He is the One who creates life. He is the One who ends life. Not us and not our mothers and fathers. God and God alone. It is Him who we must fear. It is Him who we must answer to. Let’s choose our words and our actions wisely.

Rosa A. Hopkins is a singer of songs, a dreamer of dreams, and a writer of words; child of the King, gloriously saved. She hosts a syndicated radio program and can be found at www.gutsychristianity.com and www.facebook.com/rosahopkinswriting. She lives in the hills of Appalachia with her husband, miracle baby, a Jack Russell, and a shapeless hound named Lou. She hates coffee and thinks her own jokes are hilarious.