Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. I had to keep reloading the Supreme Court’s official page. Was today finally going to be the day that justice would be done?
Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Every 10 minutes the Highest Court in the land incites high blood pressure on Order Issuance Day. Famously giving a play-by-play on SCOTUSblog, those posting their thoughts and predictions had no more insight than I did.
Refresh. Refresh. Re-. There it was. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization! My heart pounded in disbelief. The final ruling had been released! Just as I was going to click on the link, my phone rang. It was my wife, Bethany, crying. I could hear a lot of noise in the background. She couldn’t get her words out. For a moment, I was terrified. It’s crazy how a split-second can feel like eternity.
“They did it. They did it. Roe was overturned,” she said weeping.
My soul cried out: “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!”
Bethany was at the annual Pro-Life Women’s Conference and had to go, but we shared that historic moment as a couple who have been fighting this battle for years with everything within us. Through death threats, smeared reputations, losses of life-long friendships, near bankruptcy, health collapse, lawsuits, and triumphs…we knew we would one day see this day. We just didn’t know the time was right around that seemingly elusive corner.
How many people give up just moments before the awaited miracle? How many retreat from the battle when the other side was just about to raise the white flag?
When we stepped into this fight through the organization we created – The Radiance Foundation – we quickly learned what Scripture means when it says: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” We never could have made it on our own. That strength is not natural. It’s supernatural.
That’s what this whole battle for Life is about. It’s far beyond the political. It’s spiritual. The world claims “you’re strong” but then peddles weakness. It casts the sacrifice of others as empowering, but it’s merely a lie stitched together by weak euphemisms. Our national wound, 64 million lives deep, can never be healed by hucksters offering their latest pink bandages of fake feminism. It can only be healed by a renewing of our hearts and minds, prompted by moral laws and a spiritual revival.
June 24, 2022. More importantly than remembering where I was on that date, I will remember who I was when Roe got aborted. I was someone rescued from the violence of abortion by a birthmom’s singular decision that will have reverberations for generations. I was a child in the foster care system written off as “unwanted.” I was someone adopted and loved into my God-given purpose by my mom and dad, Andrea and Henry Bomberger. I was someone married to an incredible woman who had rejected abortion when she faced an unplanned pregnancy as a single mom. I was someone loved by four wonderful kiddos (both biological and adopted) who know me as a Dad who would give my all for them. I was someone who believed every human life – planned, unplanned, able or disabled – has undeniable purpose.
Where I was isn’t nearly as important as who I was, at that moment, and will continue to be. I will always be that someone who rushes in to rescue the defenseless and discarded. That’s what love does. That’s what Love did for me.
“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled.” These words, from Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in the history-making Dobbs case will forever stir my heart. Finally, these supremely wrong rulings were supremely corrected. And now, the States that have not already enacted moral laws to protect every member of the human family will become a battleground of conflicting political principles. The difference is, literally, between life and death.
The task ahead seems daunting, especially with the cowardice of pro-abortion domestic terrorism that is threatened by the presence of life-affirming choices. State by state, we have to bring the message of liberation from abortion like Major General Gordon Granger and the 2,000 Union Soldiers delivering the news to Texas that slavery had ended. We have Big Tech, academia, Corporate America, the entertainment industry, the near entirety of the news media, and the Democrat Party heavily preaching ideological bondage. Granger had to bring the truth to the people. And so it is with those who believe we’re all created equal by God, not by government.
It’s tragic how many times we, as humans, choose to remain in chains that have already been broken.
But God’s a chain breaker. I don’t have the strength to do this on my own. My wife, as amazing and resilient as she is, doesn’t have the strength to do it on her own. Our remarkable colleagues and friends in the Pro-Life movement don’t have the strength to do it on their own. But we do know where our help comes from.
© Ryan Bomberger