GUEST OPINION: The circumstances of my conception didn't lessen my value

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this guest post are solely those of the author.

As our nation marks the fourth anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I find myself reflecting not merely on a legal decision, but on a deeply personal reality: I am here because a woman facing overwhelming circumstances chose life.

This reflection is dedicated to the mothers who made that same choice when every visible factor suggested otherwise.

Circumstances didn't determine my value

In contemporary discussions surrounding abortion, much attention is given to difficult circumstances, and rightly so. Poverty, addiction, relational instability, fear, abandonment, and uncertainty are genuine hardships that deserve compassion and practical support.

Yet amid these conversations, we often fail to ask a fundamental question: Does the difficulty of a circumstance diminish the value of the life growing within it?

My own story compels me to answer that question with a resounding no.

I was conceived in adultery. My father was married to another woman, and his wife was approximately eight months pregnant with their son at the time of my conception. The timing was so close that my brother Cam and I were both born in 1992, only 10 months apart.

By every modern metric, my conception represented a situation many would classify as undesirable, complicated, or irresponsible. Yet the moral failure surrounding my conception did not diminish the inherent worth of the life that resulted from it.

That distinction matters.

A society committed to justice must be able to condemn sinful or irresponsible behavior while simultaneously affirming the dignity of every human life involved. The circumstances surrounding a person's conception may be tragic, painful, or morally wrong, but they do not determine that person's value.

Courage in the face of addiction

My parents' circumstances were equally complex. My mother was a Black woman recovering from crack cocaine addiction, with little financial security and already raising five children. My father also had a history of drug addiction.

After finding recovery, he founded a drug rehabilitation center in Florida, where he served as a counselor. It was there that my parents met. My mother entered the program as a client seeking freedom from addiction, and my father was among those helping others pursue the same recovery he had experienced.

Their story was already marked by brokenness, redemption, and human frailty long before I was conceived. Yet despite their shared history of addiction and recovery, my conception occurred within a deeply complicated situation. My mother now found herself carrying a sixth child conceived with another woman's husband.

Under the legal framework of Roe v. Wade, she could have chosen abortion. Many would have considered that decision understandable. Few would have blamed her.

Instead, she chose life.

Not because her circumstances suddenly improved. Not because financial security appeared. Not because the future became clear.

She chose life because she believed that the existence of her child carried greater significance than the difficulties surrounding that child's conception.

I share these details not to shame my parents, but to honor the courage required to choose life amid circumstances that many would have viewed as hopeless.

Through faith in Jesus Christ, both of my parents experienced redemption and restoration. Like every believer, their stories are not ultimately defined by their failures but by the grace of God that transforms lives.

My mother's decision to carry me to term remains one of the clearest demonstrations of courage I have ever witnessed. Her story also exposes a troubling assumption that often underlies abortion advocacy: that some lives become less valuable when conceived under undesirable conditions.

Yet if human dignity is intrinsic rather than conditional, then its value cannot fluctuate according to income, parental readiness, relationship status, social approval, addiction history, or the circumstances of conception.

A child conceived in stability possesses no greater humanity than a child conceived in chaos.

Character cultivation can't come from courts

The timing of my conception also carries a unique historical significance.

I was conceived in 1992, the same year the Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. While the Court was preserving the protections established by Roe v. Wade, my mother was making a different choice, choosing life despite circumstances that many would have viewed as justification for abortion.

Three decades later, the Court reversed course, returning the authority to regulate abortion to the states.

Whether one celebrates or laments that decision, it has forced America to confront questions that legislation alone can never resolve.

The abortion debate has always been about more than law. It is fundamentally a question of human dignity: What does it mean to be human? When does human life possess value? Upon what basis do we assign rights and worth?

Courts may answer legal questions, but they cannot form moral character.

Laws can restrain behavior, but they cannot cultivate virtue.

For that reason, the long term health of any society depends not merely upon its legal framework but upon the moral convictions of its people. A culture that values human life must also cultivate the virtues that help sustain and protect it.

This reality requires us to address subjects that modern culture often avoids: self discipline, sexual responsibility, accountability, and the virtues necessary for human flourishing.

Among those virtues is chastity, the biblical conviction that sexual intimacy is reserved for marriage between one man and one woman.

Such a view is often dismissed as outdated or unrealistic. Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that societies thrive when they uphold standards that govern human desires rather than surrender to them. Freedom without discipline eventually becomes bondage. Liberty without virtue eventually deteriorates into disorder.

Scripture teaches: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor" (1 Thessalonians 4:3–4).

These teachings are not arbitrary restrictions imposed by a distant God. They are expressions of divine wisdom intended to protect human flourishing.

One of the greatest failures of modern discipleship is that we often tell young people what behaviors to avoid without adequately explaining why those behaviors matter. We warn against consequences while neglecting to teach God's design.

A generation deprived of moral reasoning will eventually reject moral conclusions.

Young men and women deserve more than prohibitions. They deserve truth.

They deserve to understand the relationship between virtue and freedom, discipline and purpose, obedience and blessing.

They deserve examples of people willing to speak honestly about past mistakes while pointing to the redeeming power of Christ.

Testimony remains one of God's most powerful instruments for discipleship. Redemption stories remind us that failure need not be final and that obedience remains possible through the power of the Holy Spirit.

My Right to Exist

Returning to the central theme of this reflection, I remain profoundly grateful that my mother chose life.

I was her sixth child and my father's eleventh. My existence undoubtedly represented pain, complexity, and difficult consequences for multiple individuals, especially for my father's wife. Those realities should neither be ignored nor minimized.

Yet neither should they be used as an argument against my right to exist.

Many who read this article may sympathize with the circumstances of my birth. What I hope they will also consider is whether the very hardships that evoke their sympathy would have been sufficient grounds to justify my elimination before birth.

That question lies at the heart of the abortion debate.

As we remember the overturning of Roe v. Wade, may we do more than celebrate a judicial milestone. May we pursue a deeper cultural renewal rooted in compassion for mothers, reverence for human life, personal responsibility, and moral courage.

And may we pray that this generation learns to seek righteousness above convenience and God's wisdom above cultural trends.

For every child conceived, regardless of circumstance, bears the image of God.

I know this not merely as a matter of theology.

I know it because I am one of them.