Leah Darrow: ‘Babies Do Not Kill Dreams’
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 19, 2021 / 01:00 pm (CNA) – Leah Darrow is calling on society to recognize the beauty of children and to challenge the notion that abortion is necessary for women’s sucess.
Darrow rose to fame as a contestant on America’s Next Top Model. But at the height of her modeling career, she saw a vision from God that forever changed her life. She exited the industry and returned to her Catholic faith. Today, she juggles her time between caring for her six children and serving as a Catholic speaker and advocate for the unborn.
As a mother, she said, she embraces the pro-life position on a personal level.
“I can understand there being a fear of going into motherhood and all the concerns we have because it is such a grand vocation – it’s a beautiful vocation,” she told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly June 10. “But my babies have not kept me from my hopes and my dreams or aspirations.”
While some celebrities and, more recently, Texas high school valedictorian Paxton Smith, claim that abortion is necessary for women to succceed, Leah stressed that her children make her – and the world – better.
“They’ve helped me dig a new path that’s offered more clarity of what God has called me to be,” she explained. “My babies are a part of my dreams, they’re a part of my hopes and my aspirations. And the world is truly better for it, because of my children and also for who I am because of my children in the world.”
Even if the world doesn’t appreciate it, motherhood is a gift.
“Our culture has slowly and systematically convinced us that motherhood is the enemy. And motherhood is not a dream and it’s not an aspiration and it’s not a hope that young women should have,” she said. “That is a lie.”
Darrow’s comments came in response to Smith, whose valedictorian speech when viral earlier this month after she went off-script to speak about abortion and her state’s recent heartbeat legislation.
Smith told her class, “I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail, I am terrified that if I am raped, then my hopes and aspirations and dreams and efforts for my future will no longer matter.”
But Leah stressed hope in the midst of Smith’s fear.
“Now more than ever, mothers have more support and resources around them if and when they are ever faced with an unplanned pregnancy,” Leah said. Those resources include pregnancy centers, which offer pregnant women and new moms free help in the form of health care, clothing, educational classes, and housing.
Pro-lifers must also challenge the lie that abortion is necessary for women, Darrow said.
“That’s what we have to be at root at and to root out,” she emphasized, “because babies do not kill dreams, only abortion does that.”
Wonderful to hear what Leah is doing.
It is sad that women today are being taught that having a child will spoil their lives. Abortion has never been the answer and as midwife with 5 children of my own I have seen some sad outcomes from patients counselled to have an abortion. Especially when later in their lives look on with wonder at their planned baby. How often they have told me of regret at their earlier choice.
Motherhood is a wonderful time in one’s life.
What is the world of rational discussion coming to when an unscripted remark by a 16 years old US high school female graduate in her Farewell to High School speech goes viral? What sort of education has this young girl had up to this point about sexuality? What was she taught about the maturation process by which boys and girls learn to cope and react in an emotionally appropriate way with one another. The sex instinct has been described as an imperious urge. It cannot be given free rein. And yet this young girl appears to live in fear (terrified?) that her contraceptive might fail. The shame of this situation is that abortion has been turned into a partisan political issue, with Republicans advocating criminalising abortion and the Democrats thinking this will only drive the abortion industry underground – a bit like Prohibition of Alcohol did to the liquor trade in the 1920s.
And to the credit of the Canberra community, Karinya House for Mothers and Babies is a very worthwhile ‘charity’ for those who would otherwise lack support..
Exactly Luis! I can sympathise with a girl who finds herself, for whatever reason, with an unwanted pregnancy. Why is abortion nearly always the suggested first option? I can guess. For much the same reason that palliative care is not promoted widely in our society. Belief in the sanctity of human life is a minority creed.