The World and Everything in It: November 8, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. My name is Hannah Boettinger, and I live in Yunnan, Taiwan where I teach English to fourth graders. Though the time difference here makes it so that I get each WORLD episode at night instead of in the morning, I am so grateful for the ability to hear a biblical worldview on what's going on back home while living abroad. I hope you enjoy the program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! ‘Tis the season for taking polls. But what good are they, and how reliable?

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday. Also today WORLD Tour. And a stained glass artist finds clues to his family of origin after years of searching.

AUDIO: And so I was like, are you ok? What’s going on? And he goes: 'You're not gonna believe this.

And WORLD Opinions commentator Ryan Bomberger on National Adoption Month.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, November 8th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time for the news with Kent Covington.

BESHEAR: Thank you Kentucky!

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Election » A big Election Night win last night for Democratic incumbent Governor Andy Beshear. He held off Republican challenger Daniel Cameron, who was gracious in defeat.

CAMERON: And I ask that you pray for Gov. Beshear and his team and for all of our commonwealth.

But in Mississippi, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves defeated Democratic rival Brandon Presley.

Reeves told reporters hours earlier …

REEVES: We believe that we’re going to be very successful here today, and we believe that we’re going to win this thing outright.

That prediction proved accurate.

It was a disappointing day for pro-lifers in Ohio, though as voters passed a measure that will enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution.

Pro-abortion activists outspent pro-life advocates by a three-to-one margin in the campaign leading up to the vote.

Debate preview » Meantime, in Miami five Republican candidates for president will take the stage in a matter of hours for the third presidential debate, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who says his state is a blueprint for the rest of the country.

DESANTIS: I’ve had a lot of people flee California and New York who’ve fled here over the years. And that’s fine. We’re proud of that. But … I mean, we really want to make sure the country gets fixed.

DeSantis just received the endorsement of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. But he remains a very distant second in GOP polls … with about 13 percent support to Donald Trump’s 58 percent.

Trump is once again sitting out.

NBC News will host the debate at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

MRC report » And speaking of NBC, a new report finds that the traditional big-3 broadcast networks have shown little interest in Republican policy debates, focusing instead on Donald Trump’s legal issues. WORLD’s Carl Peetz reports.

CARL PEETZ: The conservative watchdog group, the Media Research Center analyzed three months of news coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC.

Its report finds that the networks have virtually ignored Trump’s rivals and policy issues.

It states that in the time networks spent covering Republican candidates, nearly 80 percent of the coverage focused on Trump’s legal battles, and that 93 percent of their Trump coverage was negative.

The MRC says the networks spent less than SEVEN percent of that time talking about GOP policy positions.

For WORLD, I’m Carl Peetz.

Israel-Hamas war 1-month mark, hostages » The Israel-Hamas war is now officially more than a month long with no end in sight.

In Washington, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle gathered for a candlelight vigil on the Capitol Steps. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries:

JEFFERIES: We gather to unequivocally condemn the acts of terror, honor the memory of those brutally murdered and pray for the safe return of those held hostage.

And at a news conference on Capitol Hill, the mother of a man believed to be among those hostages pleaded with U.S. government leaders for help.

LIEBER: I do need you now because there’s nothing helping me now. I pray, which I didn’t do before. But — just — please help me.

Israel 1-month, hostages » The White House has continued to press Israel for a humanitarian pause in the war, partly in hopes of securing the release of those hostages.

The U.S., however, is not calling for a full ceasefire. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby explained the difference saying of humanitarian pauses…

KIRBY: They’re localized in terms of geography. They’re limited in time or duration. And they’re usually for a specific purpose or purposes, getting stuff in, getting people out.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear once again on Tuesday that he will not agree to a ceasefire until Hamas releases hundreds of hostages …

NETANYAHU: As far as tactical little pauses, an hour here, an hour there, we’ve had them before.

Israel observed a four-hour pause on Tuesday.

The White House, though, is reportedly asking for a three-day pause. And Israel fears that would give Hamas too much time to regroup.

U.S. envoy in Beirut » Meantime, in Lebanon a U.S. envoy is picking up where Secretary of State Tony Blinken left off in his recent Middle East trip. U.S. officials met with leaders in Lebanon, trying to stop the Israel-Hamas war from spreading in the region.

Amos Hochstein is a senior adviser to President Biden:

HOCHSTEIN: The United States does not want to see conflict in Gaza escalating and expanding into Lebanon. Restoring calm along the southern border is of utmost importance to the United States, and it should be the highest priority for both Lebanon and Israel.

The Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah has fired rockets at Israel, and Israel has returned fire.

Reports say one of Israel’s rockets over the weekend killed four Lebanese civilians in a car.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: The highs and lows of political polling on Washington Wednesday. Plus, World Tour.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 8th of November, 2023. This is The World and Everything in It. Good morning, and thanks for listening. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Washington Wednesday.

Tonight, five Republicans meet in Miami for Republican presidential debate number three. The group has narrowed down to Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, and Vivek Ramaswamy. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson did not qualify…and former Vice President Mike Pence has dropped out.

REICHARD: On Sunday, the New York Times released a set of polls it conducted with Siena College. The results show Donald Trump leading Joe Biden by a range of four to ten points in five key battleground states.

But after missing the mark in the presidential election of 2016, many voters just don’t trust polls to give an accurate picture. So how do polls work, and can they be trusted in 2024?

EICHER: WORLD’s Washington Bureau reporter Carolina Lumetta caught up with a reputable pollster at a political conference over the weekend … political scientist Ryan Burge. He is an associate professor at Eastern Illinois University.

Here’s an excerpt of their conversation.

CAROLINA LUMETTA, REPORTER: Just to take this very granular, what is the process for polling that we can trust? And then what are some types of polls that you have found that do not lead to accurate data? How do we basically analyze the verity of polls?

RYAN BURGE, GUEST: Yeah. So there's a whole range of polling, right? From very, very bad to very, very good. And almost always that scale runs on very, very cheap to very, very expensive, very good polls are very expensive, very bad polls are very cheap. So the polls that you don't want to trust are what we call convenient samples. And a convenient sample is literally what it sounds like, we got you in this poll, because it was easy to do so. Right. So it's, we I just found 12 of my friends. And I asked them these questions. Those polls are not reliable, though, because they're a convenience and were not random sample of the entire population. Now, on the other side, you've got like Pew Polls, which are really, really expensive. I mean, the General Social Survey is what I use for a lot of my polling data. It costs 10s of millions of dollars to put together a General Social Survey, because it takes in depth interviews. Those polls tend to be more reliable, though, because they spent so much time trying to get them right, and they have a bigger sample that's randomly selected. So where we try to live is in the happy place between more rigorous but less expensive. So what we try to do is find the cheapest sample that we can get that is still academically rigorous. And so what a lot of what we're doing now are what are called panel surveys. And so there are lots of groups that do these. Qualtrics is the one I use, where they basically have recruited a stable of people who they know will answer polls, and they pay them to answer my poll. Is it truly random? No. Is it a convenient sample? No, it's somewhere in between those two things. So those are being used a lot more now, because they kind of meet both criteria being somewhat rigorous, but somewhat, you know, cost effective. The polls you see on, you know, making the news media run the gamut from being you know, very, very rigorous to very, very not rigorous. You've got to figure out who they're working with, an established polling firm or a fly by night organization. You want to stick with once you've been doing it for years and years, and years, Gallup, Marist, Pew. There's a lot of big names in the industry. And those are the ones we really want to focus on.

LUMETTA: Talk to me a bit about polling bias. There's another criticism that, well, someone of a particular political party is never going to get a favorable poll, because the people who answer might not also fall under those same beliefs. That's a very general example. But how can we trust polls from Gallup and stuff like that? How are they collected to make sure that all views are represented?

BURGE: So, one of the long tails of Donald Trump is that he made the polling industry much harder and less accurate, because he cast such doubt on how polls are done, and that they're inherently biased, especially against him. Really, that was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy thing, though, because Donald Trump was a guy who a lot of people voted for but wouldn't tell you they voted for him. So you know, when you lie to a pollster, we can't, we don't check that. We have no way to check that. So we don't know who you voted for or not. But then he made it worse by saying, “Oh, they're out to get me. And that's what they did in 2016, they were really trying to make me look bad.” We weren't trying to make you look bad. It's just a lot of people have voted for you were not proud of the fact. So they didn't say that. So that way the polls looked like you were doing worse when you weren't doing worse. So it created like this downward spiral effect. Now, I will say this, these organizations are I mean, every two and four years, they have a reckoning, which is are we being accurate? How far are we off from the actual result? And no, I mean, the bias, the bias there is we're biased towards trying to do the best job that we can. If you start putting out poll after poll and election cycle after election, that's far off the reality on election day, no one's going to take you seriously anymore. So all these organizations are working towards getting closer to the right answer. Now it's getting harder because people aren't answering the phone if you call them, people are are inherently shy about talking to polls, they don't have time, all these kinds of things. There's all these impediments to doing so. But that doesn't mean there's not lots of people working on these problems trying to make them better.

LUMETTA: Speaking more specifically now about what we're seeing, looking into 2024. We are as of this week, one year away from the election. How useful is it to be watching polls right now? And if it is, what types of polls will tell us a story?

BURGE: There's a lot that happens in the year before an election. And one is that people start paying attention to politics again, because they basically take some time off between election cycles. And so you know, what we're seeing in these early battleground states is that Trump is winning a lot of them and by significant numbers, but you also got to take into effect. There's a year of politics that has to happen between now and then whether it be international crisis that what's happening the Middle East right now our economic crisis is getting better. Is it getting worse? People have recency bias. So what happens right before an election is more important than what happens a year or two years or four years ago. I mean, remember, when Biden pulled us out of Afghanistan? Everyone goes, Oh, that'd be the end for Joe Biden. When's the last time anyone spoke about Afghanistan? Like we forget things very quickly. So what's happening now is less important than what happens in September and October and early November of next year. So they give us a good baseline to kind of see like what the large landscape looks like. But it's a very fuzzy picture right now. You know, it'll sharpen up as we get closer to election time, especially in the last three months of the election season.

LUMETTA: So overall, nationally, I mean, the main headline is that Trump is far and away the leader. And then there are more stories on, is it DeSantis? Is it Nikki Haley? What is useful to be kind of narrowing in on for those for basically the whole Republican field right now?

BURGE: ​​It's interesting to see who the Republican second option is right now. I think that's a really important story, because we know that Trump basically dominates the Republican Party, he's got 50- 55% of the vote, which is a lot in a crowded field, right. Who's the number two? Is it DeSantis or is it Haley? I think that tells you a lot about how you want the party, what's the party, what are the other Republicans up to? If they like DeSantis, it means they're more in the culture war area, right? He's very much combative. Nikki Haley's not that she's almost like an old school Republican like a George W. Bush Republican. So I think it tells you, who's the not-Trump vote, right, who are never Trump Republicans? Are they more like DeSantis voters? Are they more like Haley voters? And I think as Haley's pulling forward, I think it's telling you that they're coalescing around her as the counterbalance to Trump on the Republican ticket. But I still don't think she has a chance at all.

LUMETTA: Right, does that matter if Trump becomes the nominee?

BURGE: No. I mean, I think honestly, from a polling perspective, this is the most interesting that can happen in the next twelve months is will Biden choose to not run? Will Trump be indicted in such a way that he can't run? Because right now, it's a foregone conclusion that if Biden runs, he'll be the nominee, if Trump runs, he'll be the nominee. And really, it comes down to the general election at that point, which right now, it looks like Trump might have an advantage. But again, we're a year out.

LUMETTA: So talk to me now about the religious vote. Is it true that some of the religious votes are turning into what we would call nones?

BURGE: Absolutely, I mean, the share of Americans who are nones now is above 30% amongst younger people, Gen Z, it's over 40%. But what we're seeing a lot of is people who are Christian, but Democrats are leaving the Christian label behind and keeping the Democrat label. So what's happening is a lot of people who were voting for Obama, let's say, but were Christians, went to church on a regular basis, now have shed the Christian label because they just see incongruence there between their faith and their politics. So I think what we're seeing more and more is people, if you look at the data, 50% of liberals are non-religious. Now it's only 10% of conservatives. So what we call the Pew gap or the God gap has never been bigger than it is right now. Almost half of Biden's voters in 2020 were non-religious voters. Forty-five percent of all votes cast for him in 2020 came from atheists, agnostics, or nothing in particulars. That is the future of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is still majority white Christian. So the parties are going in completely opposite directions when it comes to race, and religion and how often you go as well.

LUMETTA: A question to start wrapping up is a lot of people get very tired during an election season with just the horse race. Now, this person's ahead, now this person is ahead. What benefit do polls give us in that sort of an atmosphere?

BURGE: I think they help us understand how close it is. I think that's more important than who's winning, who's losing is if it's close or not, you know, is it gonna be a blowout election? Or do we really need to go out to the polls? You know, for instance, in 2008, what we realized really quickly was that was a blowout election. We got to September and all the polls looked like Obama was way ahead. We look at the last couple elections that we knew it was very close. So I think for a lot of voters who are marginally attached, if they see blowout numbers, they turn out, tune off, don't even worry about it, right? They're not worried about the election. But they see it's close, especially when they're persons down, they start engaging, they start getting involved, they start voting. And so I think that really is more important. Is it close? That's what polls tell us more than anything else than who's winning who's losing is should I care, is it close?

LUMETTA: Great. Well, thank you so much for being here today.

BURGE: Thank you so much.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our Africa reporter, Onize Ohikere.

AUDIO: [Singing performers]

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: U.S.-Africa trade deal — Today’s global rundown starts in South Africa, where singers welcomed trade delegates from the United States and Africa, who were deliberating the future of a two-decades-old trade initiative.

The U.S. first introduced the African Growth and Opportunity Act—or AGOA—in 2000. It grants more than 30 participating countries duty-free exports of more than 1,800 products into the U.S. market.

The act has been renewed twice—in 2004 and 2015—and is set to expire again in September 2025.

U.S. business associations say African countries need certainty over AGOA to reduce dependence on China.

Katherine Tai is a U.S. trade representative.

TAI: So we're actually in a good place where we're talking about it now and we've gotten congressional attention on it. This is light years ahead of where we usually are, if you are following our funding process.

South African Trade Minister Ebrahim Patel said African governments have mostly agreed on a 10-year extension.

Last week, President Joe Biden said he planned to exclude Gabon, Niger, the Central African Republic, and Uganda from the trade program. He says the decision follows the four countries’ failures to protect human rights, which is a requirement for participation. Uganda has lost out on foreign funding after approving a law in May that implements a maximum death penalty for some homosexual acts.

SOUND: [Aid offload]

Nepal earthquake impact — In Nepal, aid has started arriving after a deadly 5.6-magnitude earthquake rocked the northwest late on Friday.

India’s capital of New Delhi felt the rumble of the quake more than 500 miles away.

More than 150 people have died and more than 300 others are injured. Nearly 4,000 homes were damaged.

An Indian Air Force plane loaded with tents, blankets, and medical supplies landed in the city of Nepalgunj on Sunday.

Soldiers started clearing rubble from blocked roads to allow rescuers to rush to some of the worst-hit communities.

SURVIVOR: [Speaking Nepali]

This survivor says her family finally got a tent and some food on Sunday night—their first since the disaster.

Nepal’s Communications Minister Rekha Sharma said authorities are now focusing on supplying food and temporary shelters to those affected.

SOUND: [Cars driving]

Germany hostages — Over in Germany, authorities arrested a 35-year-old Turkish man, ending hours of a shutdown that suspended flights out of Hamburg’s airport.

The suspect barricaded himself and his 4-year-old daughter inside his car, parked at the foot of a Turkish Airlines plane on Saturday evening. He demanded to be allowed on board the plane following a custody battle with the child’s mother.

SPOKESWOMAN: [Speaking German]

A Hamburg police spokeswoman says here that the authorities negotiated with the suspect in order to ensure the child’s safety. They evacuated passengers already on the Turkish plane and in the airport and diverted incoming flights.

Authorities said the man had psychological issues and had previously kidnapped his daughter and took her to Turkey last year.

The man eventually surrendered Sunday without resistance.

AUDIO: [Chanting]

Colombia abduction — We close today in Colombia with the family members and friends of Colombian soccer player Luis Diaz.

They are demanding the release of Diaz’s father after his parents’ abduction two weeks ago in their hometown of Barrancas. Police rescued his mother hours after the abduction.

Authorities have blamed the kidnapping on the National Liberation Army guerilla group—commonly called ELN. The government’s peace delegation is currently negotiating with the group.

SOUND: [Helicopter]

The Colombian army’s anti-kidnapping unit dropped leaflets from a helicopter on Friday, asking for information on the case.

Talks restarted between Colombia’s government and the ELN last year, hoping to end a six-decade conflict.

PETRO: [Speaking Spanish]

Colombian President Gustavo Petro says here that the kidnapping is a step against the peace process.

Diaz—a 26-year-old striker with the UK-based Liverpool soccer club—was absent from a Sunday match against Nottingham Forest.

That’s it for today’s WORLD Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well Mary, it’s national cappuccino day.

It comes every November 8th: the day to enjoy Italian espresso with heated milk and steamed milk foam. I hear the cappuccino is named after the capuchin friars. And when you think about it, it does make sense.

An Italian religious order, the tonsure haircut, that white bald spot, kind of looks like the top of a cappuccino.

I’m happy to join in and wish you a Foamy Happy National Cappuccino Day.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, November 8th.

This is WORLD Radio, and we’re glad you’re along with us today. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

This week on Concurrently: The News Coach Podcast, Kelsey Reed and Jonathan Boes explore an age-old method of engaging conversation. It can help parents and educators sort through the news. Here’s a preview:

REED: We're using this classical tool for looking at something that is by no means classical unless, of course, you're looking through the lens of Ecclesiastes that there's nothing new under the sun. But news doesn't come across to me as a classical idea. So a classical methodology for all things current. Dynamic learners, they like to ask the question, What can I do with this next? And so I've looked at this tool and I go Ah! This is something that we can use to help give structure to our conversation on what is going on on a day to day basis in our world.

BOES: We're using something very old to talk about things that are very new. I'm reminded of a quote from Dr. Leland Ryken, a Christian literary scholar who said old swords are better than new ones, he was talking about the story of Beowulf and how the new sword was not able to defeat the monster. But it was this ancient sword with all this history that was equipped to face the new threat. That comes to mind when I think of using this kind of old tried and true tool to attack this new thing, or any new thing we might be facing in the news, something that seems new to us, but maybe this tool will even help us discover ways that's not entirely new under the sun as you brought in from Ecclesiastes.

You can hear the entire episode of Concurrently today wherever you get your podcasts. And find out more at concurrentlypodcast.com.

REICHARD:  Coming next on The World and Everything in It: making connections.

Today we're going to meet a man who learned a new skill during the pandemic, and also gained a relationship he’d hoped for a long time.

AUDIO: [Sound of glass on table]

JULIE SPENCER, CORRESPONDENT: Terrell Baker leans over a piece of green glass on a table in his home studio. He uses a small tool to cut around one side of a paper pattern glued to the glass.

AUDIO: [Cutting]

TERRELL: So now I'm just going to go around…

He lifts the glass to display a groove where the cutting tool has scored a faint line. Applying pressure with his thumbs, he gently snaps the glass along the line, and the shape of a green leaf begins to emerge. He smooths the edges with a small grinding machine.

SOUND: [Grinding]

TERRELL: I think that's good.

SOUND: [Water spraying]

Within a few days, A few days later, the finished piece of stained glass is leaning against the window in Baker's dining room. The sunlight brings out the different shades of green in the leaf. A patchwork of clear rippled glass surrounds it.

TERRELL: Stained glass is a lot like a puzzle–but you have to make every piece, and then you have to put all the pieces together–and every piece could cut you, because it's glass.

Baker started creating stained glass in early 2020, but not because of pandemic shutdown boredom. Instead, this new hobby is a result of Baker's decades-long attempt to put some of the puzzle pieces of his life together.

TERRELL: I knew, my parents told me that I was adopted, I was young, I was probably 5, 6, 7.

Baker had always wanted the chance to meet his biological mother. Every few years he did some sleuthing, but had no success.

Around his 50th birthday, Baker reached out to an adoption search organization that helps people connect with biological relatives. A case worker told him she would contact him when she had any new information.

TERRELL: That's right before we went on a trip. 

Baker and his wife, Sheila, left on a cruise out of New Orleans to celebrate their 25th anniversary.

TERRELL: What do you do when you get back to port in New Orleans? You turn on your phone…

Sheila remembers the moment vividly:

SHEILA: I don't know if I'll ever forget his face. He's sitting across from me. He almost went white–his eyes kinda got big. So I was like, “Are you okay?” He goes, “You're not gonna believe this.”

The case worker had found Baker's biological mother.

TERRELL: She cracked the code.

After a week doing some research of his own, Baker composed a letter to his biological mother, Karen.

TERRELL: There's two things I wanted to share with her: One, thank you for having me–my life is good. Second thing is, I thank her for putting me into a situation to be adopted into the family that raised me.

After receiving the letter, Karen sent him an email. He called her the next day.

And soon after that Terrell and Sheila finally met Karen face-to-face.

SHEILA: And I think the neat thing about that, from my perspective, was watching her. She would not take her eyes off of him. She was taking him all in. She saw him when he was a little over 5 lbs. He was a little bitty thing and now he's a 6'3" great looking guy sitting in front of her.

This initial meeting led to weekly phone calls and other in-person visits.

TERRELL: The only time that Sheila and I were able to visit with her at her house, I saw that stained glass piece in the window that was sitting on the edge by her couch on the coffee table.

Baker gestures to a round piece of stained glass hanging in his workshop window. The sun glows through blue, pink, and pale red glass.

TERRELL: I just pointed it out and I said, “That is beautiful.” I was thinking she got it at an antique store. She said, “No—no, my father made that.”

Karen walked him through her home that day, showing him the stained glass pieces she had made, as well.

Even at their first meeting, the Bakers could tell that Karen was unwell.

TERRELL: She was declining, and we knew that. So when Miss Karen got to a place where she was bedridden we decided: Now's the time for us to take a class in Bossier City.

Every two weeks, the Bakers made the hour and a half drive from their home in Arkansas to attend stained glass classes in Bossier City, Louisiana. Then they'd drive across the Red River to visit Karen in her hospital bed in Shreveport. Their classes began in January 2020, and came to an end in early spring as Karen's life was also ending.

TERRELL: It was a sweet time that we had. It was short, it was the blink of an eye. But I wouldn't change anything and I think God was in this the whole time. A lot of the stained glass I do now is to honor her memory.

SOUND: [Toolbox]

When Baker helped to clean out Karen's home, he inherited several of her things.

TERRELL: Everything that you see here dates back at least 40 years.

Tools that she and her father had used, and about fifty pounds of glass, some of which Terrell has incorporated into his stained glass creations.

Baker is working on Christmas gifts now. He'll start the long process of designing a piece and selecting the right shades and styles of glass to make something beautiful or whimsical. Terrell knows about waiting, about piecing together facts, and about the joy of discovering—and creating—something worth sharing.

TERRELL: I never even thought I was going to have a name and I had a name–I never thought I was going to ever get to see her face and I saw her face–I never thought I would hear her voice, and I heard her voice. All these things that I never really had any expectations–those things happened.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Julie Spencer, in El Dorado, Arkansas.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, November 8th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: adoption. Here’s WORLD Opinions commentator Ryan Bomberger.

RYAN BOMBERGER, COMMENTARY: I know adoption.

I was the first of ten children adopted and loved in a family of fifteen: black, brown, mixed, white, Native American, Vietnamese, able, and disabled. Most of us were deemed “unwanted” by a world that saw us as burdens; my parents only saw blessings. Granted, I was a daily handful that tested the very limits of their patience and sanity sometimes, but I’m certain it helped them to be better parents.

I am who I am because adoption rescued me, and their love shaped me. It’s why I’m an adoptive father today. And through my work with the pro-adoption non-profit, The Radiance Foundation, I want everyone to know, “We’re all wanted by someone.”

November is National Adoption Month, and in a 2023 National Adoption Month Proclamation, President Joe Biden said: “Children are the kite strings that hold our Nation’s ambitions aloft, and every one of them deserves to grow up in a safe and loving home.”A beautiful sentiment. Sadly, the once sorta-pro-life politician spends much of his time ensuring millions of those kite strings are cut through abortion. He clearly doesn’t believe every one of them deserves to grow up.

Last year, Biden’s annual proclamation included woke nonsense about combating “biases” to advance “equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals.” Real equality for kids dealing with sexual confusion means an equal chance of having both a mother and a father who can help usher healing into their lives. With so much time spent on all things LGBTQ, Biden never mentions the tragic bias against disabled childrens, even though they make up an estimated 24% of all foster care cases.

In 2021, President Biden invoked racism…not in the abortion industry that kills for a living, but in foster care and adoption. He claimed: “During this month, we also acknowledge the history of injustices and racial bias in our Nation’s child welfare system.” History is one thing. But Planned Parenthood is currently the leading killer of black (unborn) children – over 360 per day. No child welfare state will ever come close to that negative disparity. But President Biden is fully biased towards the nation’s largest abortion business.

Contrast Biden’s words with those of former President Trump’s 2020 Proclamation: “Adoption also offers a loving option for women who experience unexpected pregnancies or are unable to provide for their children…My Administration believes that every human life has inherent value, and encourages adoption as an alternative to abortion. All children, born and unborn, deserve a chance to have a better, more prosperous future.”

That’s exactly what adoption made possible for me. My birthmom chose to be stronger than rape and abortion. My story started in violence. Today, it’s steeped in victory.

I’m Ryan Bomberger.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: WORLD’s Lifebeat reporter tells us what happened in Ohio on the abortion vote. And, a mission to honor veterans in their final hours. That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways!” —Psalm 119, verses 1, 2, and 3.

Go now in grace and peace.

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