Ray Hacke: Nebraska athletes’ stand for life

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, December 18th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

And I’m Lindsay Mast. Up next, making a stand for life.

Last month a handful of well-known collegiate athletes appealed to Nebraska voters to fight for the unborn. WORLD’s Ray Hacke says it was a courageous move, and one he hopes inspires others to speak up.

RAY HACKE: When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, prominent female athletes and women’s professional sports organizations responded loudly…screaming bloody murder. Some high-profile male athletes joined in…most notably Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrows, who opened his pro-abortion Instagram screed declaring that he wasn’t for murdering babies…he was for protecting women’s rights and their innocence.

On the other hand, not many sports figures have had the courage to use their platforms to advance the pro-life cause. Even fewer, from what I’ve seen, have been women. And whenever a male athlete is brave enough to stand up for the unborn, as Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker did earlier this year, voices on the left immediately bark that his maleness disqualifies him from opining on the matter.

That argument doesn’t fly with me for multiple reasons. One of them is that men who espouse the opposite viewpoint aren’t told to pipe down. In fact, they’re hailed as allies whose views are more enlightened than those of oppressive knuckle-draggers who supposedly want to control women’s bodies. More importantly, though, the loudest pro-abortion voices on the left seem intent on shouting down women who disagree with them, too.

So when six female University of Nebraska athletes joined forces in support of Nebraska’s recent pro-life ballot initiatives…it’s noteworthy.

Rebekah Allick, a 6-foot-4 junior middle blocker for the Cornhuskers’ nationally ranked women’s volleyball team, and softball players Jordyn Bahl, Hannah Camenzind, Lauren Camenzind, Abbie Squier, and Malia Thoms are all well known Nebraskans. They appeared in a television commercial—calling on fellow Nebraskans to support Initiative 434, which would amended the Nebraska Constitution to prohibit abortion after the first trimester with limited exceptions, and vote against Initiative 439, which would only have prohibited abortion after “fetal viability.”

And voters listened, adopting Initiative 434 and rejecting Initiative 439. By that standard, the athletes’ advocacy was successful. None of them were paid for their support.

The decision of these female Cornhuskers to speak out is worth celebrating. These brave women have lived out Proverbs chapter thirty one verse eight: they opened their “mouths for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die.”

I can’t help but think of the sad tale of Cherica Adams, whose ex-boyfriend, former Carolina Panthers receiver Rae Carruth, spent 17 years in prison for brutally murdering her when she wouldn’t abort their child. Their son, Chancellor Lee Adams, survived the attack and now lives with cerebral palsy. Adams surely isn’t the first woman to suffer such a horrific fate at the hands of a man who didn’t want to pay child support. If it’s all about “choice,” where is the outpouring of support for women like Adams who chose life?

Rebekah Allick spoke up for such women in the commercial while wearing a red T-shirt prominently featuring a cross:

ALLICK: 434 defends women from abuse, sex trafficking, and coercion…

I also can’t help but think of athletes like former U.S. track star Sanya Richards-Ross. In her 2017 book, Chasing Grace, the four-time gold medalist confessed to aborting her unborn child just weeks before running in the 2008 Summer Olympics in China.

More than that, though, Richards-Ross wrote that nearly every track-and-field athlete she knows has also had an abortion. Female athletes should know that even though motherhood may require them to put their athletic plans on hold temporarily, it doesn’t have to derail their athletic dreams entirely. Having written multiple stories about college basketball players and even high school soccer players who played interscholastic sports after giving birth, I know this for a fact.

One memorable moment from the commercial includes Jordyn Bahl pounding her softball glove:

BAHL: Nebraska, it’s time to get off the bench.

She’s right. It’s high time Christian college and pro athletes—both male and female—answered that call when it comes to fighting for life and standing against abortion.

Unborn lives depend on it.

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