A South Carolina woman who sought validation from men and alcohol to escape the pain of an abusive home found herself pregnant at 22. For the first time in her life, her formerly pro-choice stance was challenged. Revisiting a film from her high school biology class, she had a life-changing realization: her unborn baby was a living human being and deserved a chance at life.
Deborah DeClue, now 45, was born in the south of France and raised in South Carolina. Today she lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband, 43-year-old Richard, an author and lecturer with the Catholic ministry Word on Fire Institute. Together they parent DeClue’s three kids from her first marriage, aged 15, 13, and 10.
A waitress and stay-at-home mom, DeClue is connected to her oldest biological child, 23-year-old Gina, through open adoption.
“Before I got pregnant [with Gina], I would have labeled myself as pro-choice,” she told The Epoch Times. “I just had been brainwashed to believe that [abortion] was the only option. I didn’t have an understanding of what it was ... I was pro-choice until it happened to me.”
‘I Was Operating Out of Fear’
DeClue’s parents divorced when she was six. Her father returned to France and remarried, and her mother remarried as well. Her stepfather’s teenage son, who was twice her age, exposed her to pornography and abused her in the family home.“That was very traumatic. I was around seven,” DeClue said. “I don’t feel like it was dealt with appropriately, or ever got addressed. So it caused a lot of problems for me.”
At 14, DeClue, her younger sister, and her mother—by now divorced again—moved to a different city where they struggled with poverty. DeClue sought comfort in alcohol and validation in the arms of older men, one of whom would take her to Planned Parenthood for birth control pills. DeClue was diagnosed with anxiety and depression and dropped out of high school, working as a stripper with her mother’s support until she became disillusioned with the industry.
At 22, she got a new job in a health food store in Columbia, South Carolina, where she met a coworker her same age. After dating for only three months, DeClue became pregnant.
“He was very sweet and just said, ‘Whatever you want to do, let me know,’ because he had been in that situation before,” DeClue said. “We went to tell my mom ... she immediately flipped out. She wasn’t supportive or empathetic or anything, she just immediately said, ‘Do what you have to do, you need to go straight to Planned Parenthood,’ implying to get an abortion.”
DeClue made an appointment, saying: “It was just fear and adrenaline. It wasn’t anything rational. It was just this outside influence, my mom telling me to go, and me just being too afraid to stand up, or even stop and think. I was operating out of fear ... because of the way I was raised, and my mental health at the time. When you have a parent who’s mad at you, it’s just not fun.”
The Gift of Time
DeClue recalls being asked by Planned Parenthood staff if she wanted to see the ultrasound. She refused, “too freaked out” to look. She then spent ten minutes in a room with a woman discussing her options but remembers the conversation as “brief and cold.”“I can’t say that any woman in that position can really think clearly through these options in ten minutes,” she said. “I think she handed me a couple of little brochures and then I went to the desk. They said, ‘Well, you can’t schedule this for at least four weeks, because you’re so early.’ I was really taken aback by that.”
DeClue thanks God that the early abortion pill was not available back then. She scheduled an appointment for an abortion the following month. Little did she know, the gift of time would change her mind.
DeClue’s mother was the strongest pro-choice voice in her family. She had grown up in the 1960s attending Catholic school, where she learned that abortion was wrong, but had a renegade teacher who preached the opposite. And with most of her peers also being pro-choice, DeClue felt suddenly shocked by their nonchalance.
“I knew it was a child, it was my child,” she said, remembering a documentary she had seen in high school biology class, “The Miracle of Life,” that came flooding back to her in this moment.
“It showed the development from the embryonic stage, so I knew that the baby already had a heartbeat,” she said. “I just kept saying, ‘How can I schedule to have the baby killed? It’s already a human being with a heartbeat!’”
DeClue asked a friend for a copy of the DVD and watched the film again, through tears. “I realized this is what my baby looks like. Abortion is not an option. I cannot kill this baby,” she said.
‘The Biggest Relief’
Having decided against abortion, DeClue was still at a loss for what to do. Two weeks before the scheduled abortion, DeClue’s mom just happened to talk to her aunt over the phone.“That’s when God stepped in,” DeClue said. “My mom told my aunt that I was pregnant. My aunt told her that they had really wanted to have another baby, but for whatever reason weren’t able to get pregnant again. She said, ‘We’d love to adopt the baby. I didn’t hesitate for a second, I just felt the biggest relief of my life.”
DeClue’s aunt moved her pregnant niece to Berkeley, California, to live nearby for the last four months of the pregnancy. There, DeClue attended counseling, and her aunt and uncle chose an adoption agency to manage an open adoption, meaning the child would be fully informed of her family circumstances.
“She has access to me and I have access to her ... nothing is hidden from the child,” DeClue said. “I was reminded plenty of times that I could change my mind ... [but] it was the first time in my life that I felt very confident of something that I was doing, something that I knew was right. That gave me a lot of peace.”
DeClue experienced a traumatic birth and an emergency C-section after a long, painful labor. Her physical recovery was made more difficult by the pain of giving away her baby, but DeClue knew the choice was right. She and her baby’s parents chose a name together: Gina.
“I chose to breastfeed her for the first couple of days so she could have the natural immunity,” DeClue said. “When we left the hospital, that was very difficult, because I had to go home to my apartment and be alone with my boyfriend. I just wanted to see Gina in the house, I wanted to see her in her crib ... but I didn’t get that.
“I totally understand now, but that was painful. I cried, but you get over it, and it is just the best thing ever to see her in her family.”
While DeClue does not share the same religious or political beliefs as Gina’s adoptive parents, she credits them for raising Gina in “the most perfect environment.” DeClue last saw Gina at her high school graduation in 2017, and knows she is doing well; after three years of art college in San Francisco, Gina landed a great job as an animation artist and loves working from home.
‘We’re Created for a Purpose’
It took her own pregnancy for DeClue to change her stance from pro-choice to pro-life. When Gina turned one year old, DeClue moved to North Carolina and began attending church. Today, she is an active ally of the pro-life movement.She said: “I started going to abortion clinics to pray, or to help out with sidewalk counseling ... I just felt really drawn to that because I know the women going in are not necessarily going in because they want to be there ... most of the time they’re terrified, and don’t know what else to do.”
DeClue eventually married and was “very open to life,” knowing she wanted multiple babies. She was surprised by the amount of pushback from both her now ex-husband and society. “I noticed that in our society, your children are looked at as if, can you afford another one? Is it convenient? It’s just so pervasive ... we were poor, but I didn’t care. Why would I reject such a blessing? It’s one of the few things I don’t regret, having the children I have,” she said.
“My faith was a huge part in that because it wasn’t until my early thirties that I realized that contraception was such a huge part of the whole pro-life thing, and contraception kind of seeds the mentality that life is just disposable.”
DeClue’s first marriage ended in a divorce, and she married Richard five years later in 2019. Owing to their age, the couple did not have children of their own, but DeClue is happier in her loving, faithful blended family than ever before. It is her sincere hope that any woman with an unplanned pregnancy understands that she has the strength to choose life for her baby.
“You’re not saving your life by killing somebody else, and you’re not going to determine the course of your life by doing this,” she said. “You don’t know what this life could turn out to be. You don’t understand the potential that person has, despite the circumstances ... everyone has something to give in their life. And we’re created for a purpose.”
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