Juda Myers says every person has worth, regardless of the circumstances of their birth.
The year was 1956, and the streets of St. Louis, bustling by day, had all but emptied for the night.
It was late, and the bright neon lights of the movie theater gave way to darkness as Ann Phillips walked home alone.
A movie would be the perfect end to her night off from her work as a live-in nanny, Ms. Phillips had thought.
She had no idea how that decision would upend her life.
It was hours before she managed to pick herself up off the pavement. Beaten and left for dead, Ms. Phillips had lain there waiting for her eight shirtless attackers to come back and finish the job. When that didn’t happen, she went home, packed her things, and left for her parents’ house in Jackson, Mississippi.
Three months later, she realized that she was pregnant.
“And then the fight begins,” Juda Myers told The Epoch Times, recounting her mother’s story.
Ms. Phillips’s parents pushed her to abort her baby—despite the procedure’s illegality—with the help of a doctor who had promised to “take care of it.”
Unwilling to end her child’s life, Ms. Phillips instead chose adoption.
Ms. Myers, inspired by her mother’s selflessness, now advocates on behalf of other babies conceived in rape—a group often dismissed in the national abortion conversation.
Out of the Abyss
Ms. Myers was born on Feb. 14, 1957—Valentine’s Day—and was adopted at 3 months old.
She grew up knowing that she was adopted but waited until she was in her mid-40s—after her adoptive mother had died—to look for answers about her birth parents.
The truth wasn’t easy to find. To conceal the circumstances of Ms. Myers’s conception, the adoption agency had lied and told her adoptive parents that her birth mother was dead.
“I guess they figured the infamous ‘rape baby’ wasn’t wanted by anybody,” she said.
When Ms. Myers tracked down the agency, the staff remained evasive. Finally, after some effort, she extracted the truth.
“I felt like a brick had hit my face,” she recalled.
Ms. Myers stumbled back to her car in a daze, the word “raped” still echoing in her mind. What a horrible way to enter the world, she thought. And as she sat there reeling in the driver’s seat, consumed by anguish and shock, her thoughts turned dark.
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