'I Wish Mitt Romney Would Meet People Like Me,' Rape Conceived Pro-Lifer Says
Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Mo.) recent "legitimate rape" gaffe has brought greater scrutiny to the issue of whether pro-lifers should support abortions for women who get pregnant after getting raped. While the Republican Party platform does not include a rape exception, the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, supports a rape exception. In a Saturday interview with The Christian Post, Ryan Bomberger, a pro-life activist who was carried to term and given up for adoption after his mother was raped, said Romney and other politicians who hold that view should meet with people like him.
"I wish politicians like Mitt Romney would actually connect with a tangible real-life example of the possibility that resulted from a choice of life instead of a choice of death," Bomberger said.
Bomberger believes that Akin's comments were "unfortunate," because he allowed "himself to get sucked into that typical thing" where "they use the extreme cases to justify all the other cases."
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"The reality is," Bomberger added, "I wish Mitt Romney would meet people like me ... and understand that it's more than just a one percent fringe case and we can just immediately write them off, because the assumption is always that abortion is the natural follow-up to a rape."
Bomberger was speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. While at the conference, he had spoken to three women who shared that they had gotten pregnant after being raped. Two of them gave up the child for adoption while the third kept and parented her child.
"These are stories that are worth hearing, but the abortion activists don't want to hear that side of things," Bomberger argued. "They don't want to hear from an actual woman's perspective who has been through that ... . I'm able to speak from a perspective of someone who was given life despite my mom's traumatic experience."
Bomberger also pointed out that, while there was "uproar" over Akin's "legitimate rape" comments, Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, is based upon an illegitimate rape, because the plaintiff, Norma McCorvey, lied about being raped in order to get the court to hear the case.
"They should be upset about that, but, of course, you don't hear pro-abortion activists being upset about that," Bomberger complained.
Akin's controversial remarks came in an interview aired on Aug. 19. He said that a "legitimate rape" rarely results in a pregnancy because "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." He later apologized and said he misspoke.
Bomberger is the co-founder of The Radiance Foundation, which is, according to its website, "an educational life-affirming organization that tackles social issues in the context of God-given purpose."
