Author: KATIE YODER FEB 11, 2021 | Visit LifeNews.com
After Toyota’s Super Bowl ad captured the touching life story of Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long, the media raced to report on the athlete. But many of them bypassed crucial details about the 28 year old – including her Christian faith and pro-life position.
Toyota, a partner of Team USA, highlighted the 13-time Paralympic gold medalist on Sunday. Her story is one worth telling: She was adopted from a Russian orphanage as a baby and lost both of her legs as a toddler only to become the second-most decorated U.S. Paralympian in history. But there’s more to the story. She centers her life on God, she says, and advocates for adoption in place of abortion. That’s because, for her, “I would rather know that the baby would have a better life than I could give him or her instead of just terminating the baby.”
The minute-long ad doesn’t show all of that – but it struck a pro-life tone. The camera follows the champion athlete as she “swims” through her life story, beginning with her adoptive mother receiving a phone call informing her that little Jessica is available for adoption.
“We found a baby girl for your adoption,” a woman’s voice tells her mother, “but there’s some things you need to know.”
“She’s in Siberia, and she was born with a rare condition,” she continues. “Her legs will need to be amputated. I know this is difficult to hear. Her life, it won’t be easy.”
That didn’t deter Mrs. Long. “It might not be easy, but it’ll be amazing,” she responds. “I can’t wait to meet her.”
Steve and Beth Long – a Christian, homeschooling family in Baltimore, Maryland – adopted Jessica when she was just 13 months old. Her legs were amputated when she was 18 months old due to a condition called fibular hemimelia, which meant that she did not have fibulas, ankles, heels, and most of the other bones in her feet. In total, she has endured more than a dozen surgeries.
But that didn’t stop her from living life. God had a plan.
Instead of a phone call, her adoptive parents actually “went to a church meeting and they saw a picture of me,” she told I Am Second last year. “They were told that this little Russian girl has leg deformities and really needed to be adopted. And my mom just said, ‘We knew that you were the child that God wanted us to adopt.”
Jessica loves both of her mothers.
“I’ve definitely dealt with a lot of emotions and questions regarding my adoption, but I am so grateful she chose to give me life,” she wrote of her birth mom in an Instagram post in 2019. And “My mom who raised me is the most bubbly, fearless, incredible woman and I’m honored to be her daughter.”
In 2013, she traveled with one of her five siblings to meet her birth parents.
“I want them to know that I’m not angry with them,” Long said in an NBC film, shortly before a tear-filled reunion. “I think that was really brave, and I don’t know what I would have done if I was in her situation, at 16 and having this disabled baby that they knew that they couldn’t take care of. I want to tell her that when I see her that, if anything, I have so much love for her, my mom, because she gave me life.”
Jessica is pro-adoption and pro-life, according to a Celebrate Life Magazine (CLM) story published in 2014.
“If you truly can’t care for the child and can’t give the child the life he or she deserves, I would give the child up for adoption, because there is going to be a family out there who will love that baby—no matter what the diagnosis is,” Jessica said. “I know it can seem really discouraging, but in the end, I think that if you would abort the baby, you would definitely regret it. I think, for me, that I would rather know that the baby would have a better life than I could give him or her instead of just terminating the baby.”
Jessica also believes in the power of prayer and faith, telling CLM that “It gives me all of my strength.”
But her faith journey is just that: a journey.
“I can’t think of a single childhood memory that we weren’t always at church or with our church community,” she told I Am Second. “And what I heard a lot of is that, ‘God made me this way.’”
“I knew I didn’t want anything to do with this God that made me this way,” she added. Among other things, she struggled with anger and feelings of being unwanted.
Years later at a Bible study, that changed.
“I just think, I just couldn’t do it alone anymore,” she said, before walking over to a woman who prayed with her.
“I just said, ‘I want to give God my whole heart for once,’” she remembered. “And as soon as I prayed, it was the first time in my entire life that I felt enough.”
She stressed that it’s a process.
“I am constantly reminded every day that I need to give it to God,” she urged. “Every day when I put on these two prosthetic legs that are heavy and they still hurt me. My legs still cause me pain. And I think it’s honestly this really cool, beautiful reminder that I can’t do it on my own.”
At the end of races, she pictures God swimming along with her.
“When practices get tough or races have been hard, I just call unto Him,” she concluded. “God, this is hard.”
And she hears Him respond: “Just keep trying, Jess. I’m here with you.
Five months pregnant with her first baby, Desiree Rossette was heading out the door to a wedding when she happened to notice she had a message on the answering machine. The message was from the hospital, and it would change her life, though she didn’t think much of it at the time. The test results the doctor wanted to discuss would lead him to call for an abortion against her wishes. Rossette’s blood test had come back revealing that her baby had a one in 30 chance of having Down syndrome.
Then, during an ultrasound, the doctor noticed white spots on the baby’s heart along with other characteristics that can sometimes point to Down syndrome.
Five months pregnant with her first baby, Desiree Rossette was heading out the door to a wedding when she happened to notice she had a message on the answering machine. The message was from the hospital, and it would change her life, though she didn’t think much of it at the time. The test results the doctor wanted to discuss would lead him to call for an abortion against her wishes. Rossette’s blood test had come back revealing that her baby had a one in 30 chance of having Down syndrome.
Then, during an ultrasound, the doctor noticed white spots on the baby’s heart along with other characteristics that can sometimes point to Down syndrome.
“After that ultrasound, he sat my husband and I down to discuss what our future held,” Rossette wrote in an essay for Love What Matters. “He said, ‘If you go past 20 weeks during pregnancy, there is a chance your son could pass away, along with you.’ I was sitting there in complete shock, sobbing like I never had before. He also said, ‘You could have an abortion, to at least save yourself.’ That is something I told myself I would never do.”
The family began to pray while at the same time planning a funeral for the baby boy, whom they named Dante. They were devastated but had no plans of having an abortion.
“A week later, I got a phone call from the abortion clinic to schedule an appointment,” wrote Rossette. “I was so upset I said some not very nice words and hung up. It turns out my doctor and his wife aborted their child with Down syndrome because he/she would be a burden. He thought I should do the same.”
Rossette never went to that doctor again and found a new group of “absolutely amazing” doctors. They welcomed her and her baby, gave her resources on Down syndrome, and said there was nothing “out of the ordinary” to be found on his ultrasound. Though she now regrets it because of the risk of miscarriage, she and her husband agreed on an amniocentesis to confirm the diagnosis of Down syndrome — an experience she called “horrific.” After the diagnosis was confirmed she said, “I wiped my tears, put on my mom cape, and went to work finding as many resources as possible.” She lined up the early intervention programs and therapies Dante would need.
Picture this: You are a 15-year-old girl in high school. Raised in a Catholic family. You go to church on the weekends. College is in a few years, and you’re pretty excited, but not too worried yet because your future is bright, and you have options. You have a good group of friends and are active in your school clubs, the choir in particular.
You have a boyfriend. He says he loves you very much. After all, what is more real than a high school relationship at this point in your life? He tells you that if you don’t give him what he wants, he will leave you for more popular and prettier girls at school. You feel pressured to do anything and everything you can to make him stay. Anything and everything.
You’re used to passing tests in school. After all, you get straight As. You just passed a test today but this time, it’s different. It is much worse than getting a bad grade on a math test. You sit on the bathroom floor sobbing, looking at a test that you passed. You shake your head and your heart is beating out of your chest. “No.” You don’t want this. You’re too young. You have your whole life ahead of you.
People tell you the loopholes out of your problem because you are just “too young” for this responsibility. They tell you to just go to a health center and have them handle it. They tell you to give it up once it is born. They tell you if you keep it, you are destined to not succeed in life. They tell you, “You will fail.”
That was my mom and here we are today. I am 19 and she is 35. Typically, when I tell people our ages, their eyes get wide and they don’t know what to say. I usually get responses that range from “Oh wow” to “That’s incredible!” One constant that almost everyone asks me is, “So what happened after that? Did she just drop out of high school?” I kind of giggle and brag about how rockin’ my mom is because she graduated not only from high school, but also college, with me alongside her. She would work nights to provide for me, and she graduated with a four-year degree. If I were in her shoes, I would have a three-year-old at this point in my life. College is stressful enough with studying, working, student teaching, clubs and attempting to have a social life. Add a child into that? Absolutely not.
My mom and I right before she dropped off for my freshman year of college, August 2018. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Lyons-Best.
It’s amazing how flawlessly my mother seemed to do the whole single parent, teen mother thing. Most people doubted her and continue to doubt her when we first mention our story. I feel that many of these judgments come from TV shows such as “Teen Mom” or “16 and Pregnant” that display women becoming famous for having a child at a young age, but then not doing much with their lives after. Because of the stereotypes these shows seem to depict, people form an idea of what they believe teen moms are, how they look and how their children turn out. If you ask me, they seem pretty trashy, based on these TV depictions.
But that’s just not the truth. If shows like that are the truth, then I suppose we should start turning to “The Bachelor” for our ideas of love and “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” for our ideas of success.
It was not easy. It was not normal. It was real. It was life. It was the truth.
Unfortunately, some teen moms do not have our same experience. Some believe they are not capable of this responsibility and take matters into their own hands. Some become famous and live off of MTV’s money for the rest of their lives. After all, as Katie Lowrey from “16 and Pregnant” said, “I did get two awesome blessings, but I haven’t gotten my bachelor’s degree yet because one, daycare is so expensive and two, how do you balance studying and having little ones at home?”
I’ll tell you, Katie, while it might be difficult to persevere, it can be done with a lot of hard work. After all, I have witnessed teen motherhood firsthand, and I promise it is not nearly the end of the world. I get it. Like I said, if this happened to me, I would probably feel the same way. I would feel hopeless. With that, I know and have seen that it is possible. If you have the mindset and determination, you will get through it, just like anything else in life.
For the current teen mothers, you got this. For the people who know teen mothers, please do not be quick to judge. For girls pregnant and worried, it will be okay. Lastly, for teen mothers who got through it, cheers to you. You are amazing.
This piece originally appeared in the Opinion section of the Beacon, the student newspaper at University of Portland (UPBeacon.com)
By Elizabeth Lyons-Best
I am twenty two years old, and this is my story. when i was seventeen i was in a bad place…i had moved out of my parent’s house and was living in a different house every week. i was heavy into meth, selling and using. after about nine months my periods stopped and i thought i was pregnant…it was then that i made the decision to quit drugs and get my life together.
As it turns out, when your body rapidly loses weight it can stop your period…since i thought i was pregnant already i wasn’t practicing safe sex and it was because of this that i got pregnant for real. luckily, i had quit doing drugs before i conceived…and nine months later i gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. he saved my life by giving me the will to improve myself. i had gotten my GED and had enrolled in college…none of which would have happened without him. i loved him more than anything…he was my world, my reason for living.
My parents were giving us a place to stay, rent free, so long as i was in school…unfortunately my parents were only interested in helping me as long as it wasn’t getting in the way of them making money…so the week i graduated from college, my parents kicked me and my son out of our house…we had one night to get all of our stuff out…i remember starring at my son as he slept…crying because i was letting him down with my inability to care for him.
After that, i made the hardest decision i have ever made…i sent my son to go live with his father…who had not been in his life at all up until that point…and once again i was homeless. i didn’t have a car…i didn’t have a job…and i didn’t have any friends or family to help me. i was in an awful place.
After almost a year of drifting around…hardly seeing my son. one of my friends asked if i wanted to go live with her at her grandma’s in Mississippi. we could stay there while we looked for jobs..have roofs over our heads and a car to drive. i accepted…and that is when started looking up. i found the man of my dreams and we got a house together…i finally felt comfortable and like i belonged. i found out that my parent’s had petitioned for and received custody of my son…and although i hate them for what they had done…they were well off and gave him all the love and care he needed, all the things i could not give him. in pictures they sent he looked so happy and cared for…when i spoke to him on the phone he was so smart and cheerful. i didn’t want to take him away from the only happiness he had known…even if i could support a child…i knew that to take him away from the only home he could remember just to fufill my own maternal desires would be selfish. i am currently awaiting the day that i am completely stable financially and mentally, and when that day comes my son will live with me again…he does not deserve the uncertainty that comes with money problems, and emotional problems.
Not long after all this…i found out i was pregnant again. i was frantic…i already had a child that i could not care for on my own. i knew the heart wrenching pain that comes from not being able to give the baby you created everything they need and deserve…it is a pain i deal with daily. i felt like abortion was my only choice. i could not stand the idea of giving up a child again…to think of it now, it seems so ridiculous and selfish that i would rather kill than give up this baby. i was sick all the time…i couldn’t go to work because i was constantly throwing up…i think i convinced myself that for the sake of keeping my job i had to have an abortion. i also think i was ashamed…that people would not understand why i was not keeping my child. because of the shame i already felt for my inadequacies with my son, it all seemed unbearable…so at nine weeks, i had an abortion.
This was about two months ago…and i am in the denial stage i believe. the only person who knows is my boyfriend…and even we don’t really talk about it. i have been having some pretty severe emotional issues…i feel like i am in a permanent state of p.m.s…i will fly off the handle at the drop of a hat, i am really tired all the time, and have been having cramps and headaches. i am terrified to see the doctor…i can’t stand the thought of someone touching me down there. there haven’t been any sexual problems, but the thought of being in a hospital atmosphere, and someone putting medical instruments inside of me makes me have panic attacks.
I go from a manic desire to be pregnant again to never wanting any more children…even thinking about my son makes me want to cry because i know that my other child would have been as special to me as he is. i am not religious, but i believe that killing is wrong…i don’t know how i am going to get through this without professional help, but i can’t bring myself to actually speak to someone about it…i feel like it is all still so new and i need some positive reinforcement. any help you could give me would be great.
A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bank balance smaller, home happier, clothes dirty, the past forgotten…and the future worth living for.
Waiting behind the veil is my beautiful son
He died when i killed him.
Abortion is a pain, cant even have a funeral.
I always heard his little cry calling me to save him
I feel so sad for what i did
I was too scared
I didn’t believe i was ready to hold him in my arms.
Just thinking about looking at that little boys smile breaks my heart.
I shouldn’t have done what i did.
But what was a 15 year old to do?
I didn’t have a job and was way too young
my mom was too strict, my dad was all strung out.
Out in the harsh world lost for things to do.
Didn’t have a full high school education yet so there wasn’t very many jobs to choose.
I shouldn’t have done it baby, I’m sorry.
I’ve cried for what seems like forever.
I shall never forget you.
And soon we’ll be together again, i’m sure of it.
