There’s always a good balance of women and men at March for Life UK and yet men can often feel side-lined on the issue of abortion, uncertain of when or how to speak up. For this reason one of the speakers at the morning part of March for Life’s event, Adam, specifically addressed the men in attendance.
Adam began by stating why he was speaking; that he had gone through a transformation himself from being ‘prochoice’ to prolife. ‘I’ve gone from paying to have my son killed in the womb of an ex-girlfriend’ he said, ‘from assisting in the abortion of approximately 30 first-trimester abortions, to standing here before you today and planning a 40 days for Life prayer vigil outside an abortion centre.’
Adam spoke personally to the men to say how glad he was to see so many of them present. ‘The abortion industry has done a very effective job of cutting men out of the conversation’ he explained ‘I want to tell men that morality has no gender’. The audience applauded this loudly and so Adam continued ‘It is men who introduced abortion into this country. A predominantly male parliament under David Steel, that law was introduced. It’s men who brought abortion upon this nation. Please don’t be put off by the pro-choice narrative that it isn’t a man’s issue.’
Those present in the room were then told a little of Adam’s own background. Of how he had ‘found abortion no more morally problematic than squishing a fly’. It was only when he himself assisted in abortions that he realised this issue was a problem for women and he realised it did have a psychological effect on them.
It was 18 years before the abortion of Adam’s own child had any real effect on him. During those years it hadn’t even crossed his mind, ‘It just wasn’t on my radar’ he admitted. Adam described how things came to a head one night when he had a dream. In his graphic dream there was of a table with a newborn child on it in a fetal position, in the dream Adam ‘took a large, bayonet style, knife and stabbed this baby’. Adam explained how it was a nightmare in reverse. Normally with a bad dream you’re relieved when you wake up, this was quite the opposite ‘I woke up and what horrified me was that in the dream I had felt absolutely nothing’ Adam said ‘no sense of shame, no sense of horror, as I butchered my own child.’
This was the starting point for Adam to understand what he had really been part of and the truth of what had happened after 18 years of ignorance. ‘That’s why today is so important’ Adam said passionately to the audience preparing them for the public witness they were about to go on ‘most people don’t even think about this as an issue and the theme for this year is Number One Issue which is absolutely as it should be’.
Adam’s own Christian beliefs helped form his final words ‘The Bible teaches us as men that we are to lay down our lives for our wives and families. I laid down my son’s life 20 years ago for my own personal career’. It was inspiring to see the transformation in this family man and zealous pro-life activist, who once paid for his son to be aborted and was now motivating a packed room to: ‘Go out there and spread this message, tell your sons, your fathers, your work colleagues: science, reason, logic, philosophy, theology, the Bible all tell us that you’re a father from the moment of conception.’
