Your life matters. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Photo credit: Joonyeop Baek on Unsplash

Your life matters. It matters to me. It matters to God. It matters to your family. It matters because your individual, unique life gives joy and meaning to countless others. This is the most basic fact of life. Always remember it. 

In bouts of depression and despair, remembering that you are wanted by others will always bring you through. Not only is this a source of abiding joy, it’s the best suicide prevention there is. Those, especially, who feel unwanted and purposeless need to know that they are loved. Tell them that their life matters to you. Tell them why it matters. Remind them that it matters to others as well. 

Photo credit: Dan Meyers on Unsplash

When you remind people that their lives matter, you are not speaking empty words only to make them feel better. You are expressing the truth in its deepest and most universal sense. We know it instinctively. We know it by reason. And we know it by God’s revelation. It is one of the last abiding and unifying truths that we can all agree on.

For this reason, those who care about suicide prevention must recoil at the claim that life is meaningless. We should oppose this false idea wherever we encounter it. It’s not enough to whisper it in private conversations. It should also be embedded in medicine, taught in the academy, and framed in our laws. This is nothing less than our duty of love.

Every word or act that says otherwise—that some lives do not matter—is not only a lie, it is an evil word that deprives people of hope and drives them toward suicide. The cheapening of one human life cheapens every human life. It screams meaninglessness to the very people who are most in need of hearing that they matter. 

Against this backdrop of suicide prevention, I was chilled to learn that a new corporation, dedicated to aborting Wyoming children, has adopted the same name as Wyoming’s suicide prevention charity. Wyoming Circle of Hope is a chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. It exists to encourage people with the message that their lives matter. 

But if you Google that name in Wyoming, one of the first sites to pop up is an abortion corporation that exists for the express purpose of bringing surgical abortion to the Cowboy State. Scroll to the bottom of the page and it provides a corporate address: Circle of Hope, 712 H Street NE, Suite 1825, Washington, D.C. That piqued my curiosity. Who in Washington is so interested in aborting Wyoming children? Who wants to say that some lives don’t matter?

Circle of Hope corporate headquarters

The address does not help answer that question. Rather, it is only a run-down, non-descript storefront that serves as an anonymous mail-collection service. It has no office and no staff. But the website does list three “founding members,” who are “highly skilled in abortion delivery services.” 

Julie Burkhart is listed as the Founder. Her sister, Christie Burkhart, and Molly Oakley, are listed as “Founding Board Members.” None of these people is a doctor, none a nurse. Nor do they appear to have any medical or mental health training. Their main qualification is abortion activism. They have worked together for years to bring abortion to towns that were not asking for it.

Sisters Christie and Julie Burkhart

Julie Burkhart boasts of working for seven years with Dr. George Tiller, the notorious late-term abortionist from Kansas. He hired her, first, as a spokeswoman and, later, to run his pro-abortion political action committee. After his 2009 murder, she reopened his abortuary under a new name. Since then, she has opened two others, in Oklahoma City and Seattle. 

If none of the founders has medical qualifications, who will be doing the abortions? There’s no clear answer to that question. But, according to a 2019 article in the Guardian, Burkhart’s Kansas and Oklahoma enterprises have been unable to hire any local doctors. So, doctors are flown in from other states. Chances appear to be good that this pattern will be repeated in Casper.

Out-of-state abortion activists setting up an abortion mill, where out-of-state, anonymous doctors perform assembly-line abortions, do not do much to convey the warmth and meaningfulness of community. Presumably, that’s why Burkhart announced the existence of a 15-member “community advisory board.”

The leader of Casper’s Unitarian Universalists, Leslie Kee, has identified herself as one board member. But the names of the other 14 could not be found. Here, again, like the anonymous mailbox in Washington and the unnamed flying doctor, anonymity is the order of the day.

It is disturbing that a largely anonymous corporation is undermining Wyoming’s suicide prevention efforts by acting as if some lives don’t matter. For the record: you should know without a doubt that your life does in fact matter—now, and even before you were born.

What is Truth?

Ecco Homo by Antonio Ciseri

The world is facing a crisis of confidence. Whenever a once-trusted institution is caught in a lie, two things happen. First, those betrayed begin to look elsewhere for reliability and truth. Second, the level of proof that they demand becomes higher than before.

That higher level of scrutiny can, in turn, expose other lies. The exposure of these lies shakes confidence in still more institutions and raises the level of scrutiny even higher. Before long, the spiral of increased scrutiny applied to ever more institutions becomes an uncontrollable chain reaction.

Like the chain reaction at Chernobyl, the exponential release of destructive energy will lead to a smoking hole in the ground. That is what we are experiencing on a global scale. Legacy media, the intelligence community, globalist corporations, and international NGOs are nearing a meltdown as more and more information becomes available about their blatant and complicit lies. 

Fukushima nuclear meltdown

Unless they quickly restore confidence by public repentance for past lies and absolute transparency, they will sink into irretrievable irrelevance. They may still speak just as loudly as before, but their betrayed constituents increasingly tune them out as part of the background noise. 

Soon they are viewed as the anti-truth. People listen to them only to learn what NOT to believe. There has always been a fringe who viewed legacy media and government officials in this way. But today, that group may well be a majority. And, polls indicate that it is growing larger by the day.

From the perspective of news consumers, this meltdown is disorienting—even tragic. But it doesn’t have to be. It can also be a catharsis, a cleaning out of the cobwebs. It gives us an opportunity to ask a more fundamental question, namely, what makes any source reliable or unreliable?

That question is at the heart of epistemology—the study of why we believe what we believe. “What is truth?” That’s the question Pontius Pilate asked Jesus on the day of His crucifixion. On this Good Friday it still hangs in the air.

“What is truth?” The very question presupposes that truth exists. That is the very first truth. Modern philosophies that deny truth’s existence contradict themselves by claiming that the statement “there is no truth,” is itself true. In so doing, they discredit themselves and the entire system they have built.

This is good news for many who have been led falsely into the desert of nihilism. This dead-end philosophy destroys lives with a fundamental lie. It strips life of meaning and purpose and leaves behind a wake of despair, suicide, and murder. The lie of nihilism is the world’s most deadly weapon.

This leads to the second rule of epistemology: Once any source is caught in a single lie, the entire source becomes unreliable. It may still speak some truth from time to time, but it must always be judged by something outside of itself. We experience this whenever we are lied to. We are no longer able to trust that source. This is not a choice, it’s a consequence.

When we recognize this reality, it is immensely helpful. It narrows the field of competing truth sources—drastically. What human being has never told you a falsehood? Which of you has never deceived yourself? Honest answers to these two questions turn our eyes away from every human teacher. As the Psalmist says, “all men are liars” (Psalm 116:11).

Stripped of any confidence in humanity, but armed with the knowledge that truth nevertheless exists, we must conclude that truth transcends humanity. This observation discredits Humanism and Secularism as lying philosophies. Both falsely claim that human beings can find—or create—truth for themselves. 

It is no coincidence that those philosophies that deny the transcendence of truth are the same ones that now deny plain biology, math, and logic. This is simply the logical outcome of denying plain truth. 

Truth is an integrated whole. It is impossible to deny one aspect of the truth without distorting all of it. This explains why Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice” (John 18:37). 

It was not very long ago that we all knew this. Universities openly acknowledged theology as “the queen of the sciences.” Bacon, Newton, and all scientists knew that denial of Jesus would lead down a rabbit hole of nonsense and madness. Like it, or not, current events have proved them right.

But our situation is not hopeless. While madness is contagious, there is an inoculation against it. Jesus has promised, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). This, of course, refers to freedom from hell in eternity. But its blessed side benefit is freedom from today’s madness.

Park County can lead the way to restoring voter confidence

The commissioners of Park County are considering a proposal to boost voter confidence while satisfying every legal requirement. The plan was presented at an April 5, 2022, meeting of the commission, which is posted on YouTube. (It begins at the 4:07 mark).

Park County resident, Dave McMillan, explained: “This is not a partisan issue.” Americans across the political spectrum lack confidence in our ability to conduct an honest election. An ABC/Ipsos poll conducted in late December reveals that only 20 percent of the public is “very confident” about election integrity. That is a 46 percent drop from only one year ago. 

A major cause for the precipitous decline in confidence is the advent of the computerized polling machine (A.K.A. e-voting). These entered Wyoming elections in 2006, but their history goes back to the contested presidential election of 2000. 

Two years after the infamous “hanging chad” shenanigans in Florida, President Bush signed into law the “Help America Vote Act” (HAVA). This sweeping federal legislation established the “Election Assistance Commission” (EAC) consisting of four unelected appointees. The EAC was empowered to rewrite election standards and to establish a bureaucracy to enforce them.

Formally, the EAC is prohibited from imposing “any requirement on any state” (Part 2, section 209). Nevertheless, through multi-million-dollar grants it entices states to follow its “recommendations,” and through threats of investigation by the Department of Justice, it bullies the reluctant. 

Responding to the carrot and the stick, Wyoming eventually abandoned hand counting in favor of the newly emerging technology of e-voting.

Immediately, the new technology was called into question. A year after the EAC began pushing e-voting, the New York Times published an exposé on its inherent security vulnerabilities: “How to Hack an Election.” Likewise, CNN detailed “The trouble with e-Voting” in August 2004. Since then, there have been over 100 other such articles that document the numerous ways election hardware and software can be hacked. 

Malignant algorithms can be hidden in the software or hardware of machines at the factory. They can also be introduced through removable memory, or they can be uploaded to machines that are plugged into a network. 

But even if you disable the removeable memory ports, and unplug the network cable, a simple 120v power cord can be made to upload data. Embedded modems, sometimes invisible to the naked eye, make the machine accessible, even if it is hermetically sealed in a box and running on batteries. For proof of this, simply place your cell phone in a locked safe and send it a text. 

In 2020, Wyoming bought DS200 tabulators from Election Systems and Software. But only two months earlier ES&S admitted to NBC News that “14,000 of their DS200 tabulators with online modems are currently in use around the country.” That’s why tamper-proof security tape and “look, no cables” demonstrations may impress the impressionable, but only heighten the concerns of cyber-security experts. 

Voters concerned about hacking do not have the burden of proof. Election officials do. No law or constitutional principle requires citizens to trust elections. Rather, election officials are required by law to earn the trust of the electorate. And every county clerk already knows how to earn that trust. 

Wyoming Statute 22-10-108 spells out exactly how to match up the numbers on the tabulator with an actual hand-count of ballots. That simple act verifies the electronic count and satisfies even the most Luddite witness. What it cannot do, given the wonders of technology, is to prove that the program remains unchanged for the next count. That’s why the Park County Commissioners are considering a simple proposal to extend the rigors of the pre-election test to a post-election test as well. 

The EAC has assured Wyoming that ES&S’s software (EVS 6.0.4.0) is certified. But that dodges the question. The question is whether the certified software on any given machine has been altered; and that is not so easily dismissed. First, it is logically impossible to prove a negative. But on top of that, three recent filings testify that it can be hacked.

First, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) blocked release of a forensic report on Georgia’s e-voting arguing that the report can expose the already-existing vulnerabilities. Second, President Biden’s nominee for the Federal Election Commission has stated under oath that Georgia machines switched votes in the 2018 election. Third, Wisconsin’s Office of Special Counsel reported: “The OSC learned that all machines in Green Bay were ESS machines and were connected to a secret, hidden Wi-Fi access point” (p. 14).

Paper ballots are the actual instruments of democracy. They, and not the machines, settle elections. Why not adopt the simple solution offered in Park County? Is there any better way to prove an accurate count? Wyoming’s secretary of state could lead the nation in restoring voter confidence.

A blueprint for grassroots rebuilding

Every day I meet people who are concerned by current events. They see schools, municipalities, states, and federal alphabet-soup agencies pushing globalist agendas and opposing the people they are supposed to serve. But people only speak of their grave concerns in hushed tones, if at all. And most of them, lacking clear direction, are paralyzed into inactivity.

Last week I used this space to lay the cornerstone of an effective response. It begins with in-person gatherings at the local community level. Today, I want to extend that foundation and show how one community is coming together. Perhaps it will inspire others to do the same.

Evil wins by isolating individuals and discouraging them from acting. That’s why the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights specifically protects “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” There is power in personal connection. Our founders knew it, and so does every tyrant.

But it’s not only state power that can prevent peaceful assembly. We also see psychological manipulation used to isolate us. Media companies employ swarms of behavioral psychologists whose task is to keep us glued to the screen. By mass hypnosis, they have isolated more people and crushed more communities than any tyrant in history.

Thankfully, the spell of social media is not irresistible. As rational creatures, we can choose a better way. When we break the grip of social media and get people together, we are empowered. Assemblies of people are force multipliers. Like the dying embers of a campfire, physical proximity rekindles the flame.

Once gathered we are positioned to fight the next dragon, discouragement. In war, psychological operations are designed to undermine the enemy’s will to act. They do this by exaggerating the power of the enemy and belittling the power of any resistance. People who feel powerless lack the courage to act. But the propaganda that makes you feel powerless is a lie. 

The truth is that even the smallest resistance is infinitely powerful. You can resist the power of lies by refusing to adopt their language. You can resist the destruction of families by keeping your own family together. You can push back against the forces of secularization simply by going to church. These—and a thousand other acts—are more powerful than you know.

And courage is contagious. By acting you encourage others to act. If you are looking for a list of meaningful actions to give you a starting place, you will benefit from an article written by Joy Pullman titled, “85 Things You Can Do To Help The United States Shake Wide Awake.”

Joy Pullman, Executive Editor, The Federalist

Pullman compiled assorted ideas from The Federalist staff. Suggestions range from the simple act of playing a board game or reading with your kids to writing a book or running for office. The fourth suggestion on the list is, “Start a neighborhood group — present yourself under an umbrella that welcomes all other responsible members of your community who are sick and tired of being sick and tired, and who are willing to stand up.”

Inspired by Pullman’s article, several people from Evanston, Wyoming did just that. We called a meeting on a cold January morning. A baker’s dozen showed up. Many had never met one another. But soon friendships were forming. We decided that the answer to global and impersonal problems is to focus on local and personal solutions.

Our second meeting doubled in size and brainstormed a list of key decision-makers in Evanston. Since nobody can attend to everything, tasks were divvied up. Some volunteered to cover the school board, while others went to the legislative session, local party meetings, or the city council. We share what we learn with each other and recommend action when needed.

We are unabashedly Evanston-first. We are not careless about other communities, but confident that Evanston’s success will benefit them, as well. By the third meeting, we adopted a motto: “We gather to build, not to tear down. We focus on local solutions, to distant problems. We work to support neighbors for a better community.” 

Evanston is defined by geographical boundary lines. We have had enough of the false language of “neighbors” in Timbuktu, and “communities” that will never occupy the same real estate. Our commitment is to real flesh and blood community. Real-world encounters expose the fraud of divisive ideologies.

That makes us non-partisan. We invite participation from everyone. No political, ideological, or religious requirements are needed, only a desire to share ideas and work for the mutual benefit of our friends and neighbors. 

Try this in your community. Don’t wait until you have figured all the angles. Just get people together and get out of the way. The Bill of Rights protects assemblies because they have amazing power to build.

Rediscover the joy of in-person community.

Photo credit; Braxton Apana

We human beings are social creatures. We are designed to live in community. This is not just an occasional activity. It is who we are, the way we are born. It is our immutable, unchangeable nature. Put a man in solitary confinement and he will go mad. It runs against his nature and contradicts his identity.

Human beings are not only social creatures. We have other commonly shared and unchangeable traits as well. Health and sanity require that we live in such a way that all of these aspects of our nature be respected. Just as surely as we need air and water, human thriving also requires a well-ordered community. That’s where governments fit.

Good governance understands human nature and legislates in harmony with it. Bad governments don’t. Bad governments tell lies about human nature and create human misery. The roots of all societal evils are lies about human nature.

We can use the terms good and bad because they have objective content. These are not merely value judgments. Human nature is what it is. To have a nature means that some things are natural and others, not. Some things are in keeping with the way we were born, and their opposites are unnatural. 

Just as external governments are either good or bad depending on their accounting for human nature, so also self-government—personal choices—are either good or bad depending on whether they contribute to your health and welfare, or not.

Both governments and individuals must give an accounting to realities outside of themselves that cannot be denied, changed, or wished away. It is a lie to say that we can be anything that we want. A zebra cannot change its stripes. Nor can a man become something other than what he is. The One who made both man and zebra must be acknowledged and obeyed.

The punishment for disobedience does not usually involve thunderbolts from heaven. More often, it comes in the form of sickness, sadness, broken relationships and run-down neighborhoods. Rebellion against our nature as social creatures is the direct cause of broken societies.

Sociality and community have to do with gatherings of people. When people gather in person, communities arise. They arise organically. They arise out of love and affection, friendship and marriage. When these communities break down, the cure is to return to their roots. That means in-person gatherings.

For the past three decades, we have increasingly experimented with ways of doing community that do not require bodies. By connecting minds, interests, and ideologies through electro-magnetic waves, we have not succeeded in improving communities. We see degeneration, instead.

On a personal level, we have all experienced the empty dissatisfaction of virtual business meetings, virtual school, and even virtual church. That hollow feeling in your soul is not something that is wrong with you. It is your perfectly natural human nature crying for recognition and respect. It is the hunger for community that remains after you have tried to satisfy it with imaginary food.

Every attempt to replace bodily gatherings with technology fails. And it fails for two reasons. One reason is that the warmth, body language, facial expressions and human touch that bodies make possible are cut off and denied.

The second reason is more sinister. Technological “gatherings” destroy community because they ignore the bodies of your real neighbors while devoting time and energy to those who do not share your space, but only your ideology. Real neighbors keep us sane because they keep us grounded. The real needs of real neighbors keep us human by keeping us accountable to human nature. 

Any community that does not take into account every single person within its boundaries, is a community off the rails. So-called “global communities” consist only of ideologues who have no accountability to real human beings or any actual geographical community. Such anti-communities are responsible for untold human misery.

The good news is that you already have the cure. Since every community was built by people who gathered together, any community can be rebuilt by people who gather together. Turn off your computer. Pocket your phone and lace up your shoes. Walk across the street and introduce yourself. Invite your neighbor to a cook-out. Call a community get-together.

In a time of crisis, these are the people who will come to your aid. After Armageddon, it won’t be pundits and politicians who show up at your door. It will be you and your next-door neighbor who will either live or die together. So, it’s not too soon to start talking now. 

As you talk and build side by side, you will be pleasantly surprised to discover an incredibly deep satisfaction. That’s the feeling social creatures have when they rediscover the joy of human community.

Dear Rebecca...

Rebecca Kiessling, human being

On the Ides of March, Governor Mark Gordon signed into law HB 92 Abortion prohibition-supreme court decision. This was one of the most important pieces of legislation to be passed in years. Its importance lay in the fact that 45 of 60 representatives, 24 of 30 senators, and the sitting governor of Wyoming all acknowledged that Wyoming law should, by right, protect all human life from conception to natural death.

HB 92 recognizes unborn children as proper subjects of the law’s protection. In so doing, it also recognizes that current Wyoming abortion law has been hijacked by the Supreme Court. In 1973 seven men in black robes propounded a novel doctrine based on an arbitrary division of gestation into three trimesters. 

With this non-scientific and morally arbitrary doctrine, the Warren Court stripped protections from the youngest and the weakest—based precisely on their age and size. Up to that point, Wyoming had protected all members of the human race equally, while allowing for tragic circumstances when the life of the mother was threatened by pregnancy complications. 

Photo by Lennart Nilsson

Not only was Roe v. Wade bad law and bad medicine, it also violated the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by denying states the right to protect their own citizens through sound legislation. In Wyoming, Roe also violated our State Constitution. Wyoming’s entire governance is constituted upon the truth that “In their inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all members of the human race are equal” (Art. 1, Sec. 2). 

By these deliberately chosen words, the framers of Wyoming’s Constitution chose not to discriminate against any member of the human race—whether because of race, sex, religion, age, or any other accident of birth. So, when the Supreme Court mandated that Wyoming give less protection to some members of the human race, and more protection to others, this was in violation of our most basic value. 

Every legislator who voted to enact HB 92, the governor who signed it, and the countless Wyoming citizens who supported its passage with emails, phone calls, and personal visits, should all be commended. The passage of HB 92 truly exemplifies a constitutional republic at its best.

Around midnight after the signing, one email sounded a somber note: “It’s sad for my people group because of the targeted, lethal discrimination expressly contained within it.” The author was Rebecca Kiessling, President of “Save the 1.” 

According to its website, “Save The 1’s mission is to educate everyone on why all pre-born children should be protected by law and accepted by society, without exception and without compromise.” They fight what is commonly known as the “rape and incest exception.”

Rebecca and her birth mother, Joann

One week before Governor Gordon signed HB 92, senators Case (R-Lander) and Rothfuss (D-Laramie) jointly sponsored an amendment that denied protection to the unborn if “the pregnancy is the result of incest …or sexual assault.” The amendment squeaked through on a 15-14 vote.

Rebecca Kiessling was conceived during a violent assault by a serial rapist. Her mother was the sort of innocent victim that this amendment was intended to protect. But years later, after Rebecca came to know her birth mother, she became truly grateful that Michigan law had prevented her from aborting Rebecca.

Now, Rebecca is a mother of five, a successful attorney, and an internationally known speaker on human rights. She has a tendency to take it personally when people say she should be dead.

Her email haunted me. I could not push it out of my mind. While I woke up with a full day’s work ahead of me. I could not focus on any of it. I had to give her an answer.

So, I set aside my work and wrote: “Dear Rebecca, I can only imagine the sadness and injustice that you feel in your heart when you see fellow human beings devalue your life so callously. I can also imagine that the rage against injustice is not only felt towards those who worked to exempt you from law, but also against your friends and allies that did not fight hard enough to protect you.”

“I cannot blame you. I am certainly culpable for not doing enough on my part. Considering how many minds and hearts were changed by your brief appearance in the Capitol, imagine what we could have done if we had talked about this more openly for a period of months, not days. I am sorry. Please forgive me. And please don’t give up on us.”

Wyoming should be profoundly grateful for the accomplishment that is HB 92. It will make a difference for generations to come. But we should also recognize the legitimate needs of people like Rebecca, and never stop until every member of the human race is equally protected by Wyoming law.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, March 18, 2022.

Real women who conceived in sexual assault should be heard

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash.com

House Bill 92 “Abortion prohibition-supreme court decision” earned the unanimous approval of the Senate Labor committee last Monday. Before that, it cleared the House by a 43-16 margin. There, opponents of the bill raised the emotional issue of rape conception.

Representative Provenza (D-Laramie) shared her own story of sexual assault and wondered, “what would happen if I was pregnant?” It’s a fair question. Even well-meaning people who speculate about the needs and feelings of such women, are only guessing. So, I sought out two women to give them voice. 

Meet Kristi Kollar. This native of Afton, Wyoming, had just earned acceptance into the American Musical and Dramatic Academy—a world-renowned acting school in New York. Then her life changed. A classmate driving her home from school assaulted her in his car and she became pregnant. 

“When I found out I was pregnant,” she said, “I remember just, immediately, knowing that I had a life.” This motivated her to learn the facts and write about them. “I felt her [my baby] like, kicking and moving, and she had hiccups while I was writing this essay.” This was her 20th week, “And I remember thinking, I don’t know how anyone can feel this and still go through it [abortion].”

Kristi and Addy Kollar

At that point in our conversation, her three-year-old daughter wandered into the room. Kristi apologized for the interruption, but it was no interruption, at all. This child was the reason for our conversation. We were speaking, not about abortion, but about a person. Still, with the child in the room, the question I planned to ask caught in my throat.

When she left and was no longer within earshot, I swallowed hard and asked: “Was there ever an impulse where you just feel like this baby growing in me is a daily reminder of what happened to me?” Kristi’s reply was immediate: “No.” There were a thousand challenges that the pregnancy brought on, not the least of which was the prospect of losing her dream education. But, “it was never, like, because it was ‘a reminder.’” 

“When I look at Addy, and when I looked at her the day she was born, and every day that I look at her, I don’t see ‘a reminder.’ I see the person who got me through all that… I don’t know how I would have recovered from my assault if it had not been for Adeline. I think that would have been an even deeper wound than it already is.”

Ashley Sigrest agrees. She doesn’t just think it; she knows it. Ashley was drugged and raped in the spring of 1998. When she learned that she was pregnant, she didn’t want an abortion. She wanted an escape. But she believed those who promised her that abortion would give her escape.

Choiceless, she remembers “thinking, every day, that I HAD to go to the abortion clinic.” Still, she secretly mused, “If someone was out there screaming at me, maybe I’ll be too scared to go through with it… or [maybe] someone would intervene on my behalf.”

Ashley Sigrest

Once at the clinic, she told the receptionist that she had been raped, and said, “I don’t want to do this.” “No one cared that I had been raped. No one cared that I was not sure [about the abortion].” Instead, she laments, “they tell you THE BIG LIE, that you can just have the abortion and go on with your life as if nothing had happened.”

Too late, Ashley learned the truth. “My abortion did not help my rape… I ended up getting diagnosed with PTSD because of the abortion.” The escape she sought only took her son, Joshua Schuyler, and gave her another injury, deeper than the first. “Abortion is not the answer for a rape victim.” Rather, “It just really prolonged my healing from my assault.”

Representative Lebeau (D-Ethete) claimed otherwise in debate on the House floor. She supposed that this bill would “allow the pregnant victim to be reminded every living moment of the very intimate horrifying crime done to them.” I asked Ashley and Kristi if that is true.

“Regardless, the rape victim is going to think about the attack, always,” Ashley replied. “But if you add abortion on top of that, then you’re adding a whole new layer of trauma and victimization.” Kristi answered, “People who think that way aren’t bad people. They just don’t understand. And they have been lied to by a system that knows how to lie very well.”

Kristi didn’t miss her dream education, either. Last spring, she became the first mother, ever, to graduate from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. “The narrative is that you can’t continue life afterward. But I felt so empowered that I could do both. That I was capable of going to school and still having Addy—that I was capable of healing and being a good mom despite what had happened.”

Ashley, also, has healed from both the assault and the abortion. Now she advocates for women like herself: “Women deserve better than abortion. Rape victims deserve better than abortion.”

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, March 11, 2022; and in the Cowboy State Daily, March 9, 2022.