Brian’s Story:

I was a stone cold Black nationalist and was proud to be called a “brother.” I did my share of sit-in’s, protest marches, forums and conspiracies. I would gladly have taken a bullet for my woman and for my race. When the time came to bring my contribution to nation building to life, “brother-man” ran with his tail between his legs, succumbing to fear and selfishness.

I am a former co-conspirator to murder. I was so fearful and self-centered that I put my own flesh and blood to the knife on an abortionist’s table in New York City.

There are consequences when we abandon our God-designed role as provider and protector of our families. Whether you drove your wife/fiancée/girlfriend to the “clinic” as I did years ago—or were an agreeable, non-present partner—something inside you died when your child died.

As for me, my manhood and self-respect died. The natural, God-given drive, leadership and protection instilled in a man for his family died. I lost a son who would have been twenty-eight this year. He would have been an older brother for my son and two daughters who are alive today. It did not stop there. Miscarriage, a common side effect of abortion, banged down my door and took my youngest daughter shortly after.

I lost the trust, respect and deep companionship of my wife —we behaved more like roommates than spouses. For years she loathed the sight of me because I didn’t have the courage to say, “let’s get married, have this child, and have a life.” Instead, I was derelict of all my manly duties and chose what I thought was the easy way out.

I remember my shame. I was unwilling to tackle the responsibility of raising a child and supporting a family. I wanted to continue “shacking up” and not pay any penalties. It was easy for me to buy into the lie “the unborn is not a child”—even though I knew in my heart I was wrong. My heart was stone.

“How can a wife trust a husband who will end his son’s life? What would people think of me if they knew?” Questions like these weighed heavily on my mind. Like most men, I “got on” with life. I buried myself in causes, ministries, vocations, newspapers and recreation. All the while, self-hatred anchored me to my albatross—mediocrity. This further pounded nails into my wife’s heart—and my own.

Maybe you’re the father whose child was aborted without your knowledge or consent. Maybe you pleaded with the mother to keep the child or choose adoption, only to be told you had no right or say in the matter. You are the real brothers because you fought for your family! You survived the legally imposed impotence that bludgeoned your fatherhood, leaving millions of our brothers grief stricken—with rage searing through your heart like a hot branding iron. The day your child died, you died too.

Want a snapshot of America? The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision devastated the family and destroyed whole populations.  And it is morphing into something worse.

Remember Terry Schiavo?  “Euthanasia” is a euphemism for adult abortion, and it is reaching for everyone regardless of age or capacity.  All of this is an example of how our culture is in desperate straights because we have cheapened life and deemed people disposable - all for the sake of convenience.

African American men: Listen to me! The leading cause of death for Blacks in the United States is not Aids, violence, accidents, cancer or heart disease – it’s abortion. Abortion kills four times more Blacks than all of these other causes combined!  Over a third of our race (35%) is gone  - I and maybe even you have contributed to the genocide of our own people!

This February, as Black history month approaches, let us reflect on the millions of potential Black scientists, social workers, pastors, engineers, teachers, business men and women, or leaders who tasted and felt the burning saline solution and the abortionist hardware before they saw the light of day. How many times have the researchers who would have found the cure for breast cancer that is killing our women by the millions, or diabetes, been dismembered in our women’s wombs without us as men lifting a finger to save our own flesh and blood?  Brothers, this is to our shame.

Millions of men, regardless of race or social standing, have become molesters instead of protectors; abandoning instead of providing; and seeking convenience instead of responsibility. Their hearts are cold and callused as mine was, and they are acting out in unsavory behaviors.  Or, on the opposite spectrum, there are the millions of fathers whose fatherhood was taken and whose hearts are bleeding in the form of alcoholism, drug and sexual addiction, or unable to trust or bond with a woman or children or other men.  These men seem outwardly “ok.” But inwardly they are descending in a lonely, dark pit that only others similarly situated can fully understand.

That is why I am passionate about supporting abortion recovery ministries and strongly urge men to participate in one if you, your wife or girlfriend have been involved with abortion. My wife and I were able to go through abortion recovery, and our marriage and family were restored. Individually, we have reconciled with God and our children and have experienced a peace that permeates our hearts. Together we founded Everlasting Light Ministries where we are reaching those devastated by abortion, one soul at a time.

As black men, let us take responsibility and have the courage to say—what I did not say many years ago—“Honey, let’s do the right thing, believe God, and bring this child into the world as husband and wife.”

Rev. Brian & Rev. Denise Walker founded Everlasting Light Ministries, which is dedicated to exposing the lies about abortion and revealing the truth about its genocidal effects, and re-establishing the culture of marriage in the African American community.  They co-authored and conduct Rich in Mercy, an abortion and miscarriage recovery program, and Everlasting Love, a marriage enrichment and restoration course.  The Walkers are seasoned communicators, appearing as guests and co-hosts on radio; keynote speakers at statewide and local conferences and pro-life events; and seminar presenters.

To contact the Walkers, call 763-560-8383 or visit www.everlastinglightministries.org
http://www.humanlife.org/didyouknow_brian.php


Denise’s Story:

I should have been playing with dolls. Instead I was playing with the notion of having sex—fully armed with free birth control from our neighborhood Planned Parenthood and eager to lose my virginity—all by the age of 12.

Then came April 4, 1968 – the day Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was shot and killed. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. It was a day of great sadness for all of us in the Black community. It was also, tragically and ironically, the day that the death certificate for my first child was signed in my heart.

My mother was hot-combing my hair and the news bulletin about King blasted through the air. Our spokesman for civil rights was dead. It was the only time I had ever seen my mother cry. But she marshaled the strength to try to inspire me in the midst of her grief. She said, “Denise, you go on; you go to college and make a way for other blacks; don’t be like your sisters; make something of your life.”

But what I heard was something my mother never meant or intended. What I heard was the devil’s translation: “Denise, the burden of the entire black race is on your shoulders. You have to go to college to make a way for others. Don’t be like your sisters – they were failures because they got pregnant out-of-wedlock and became poor and lived on welfare. You go on and become a very successful professional. Don’t let Dr. King’s death be in vain.”

That day I learned what it meant to be a failure and I vowed to live up to what “I heard.” Unbridled ambition coupled with the 60’s sexual revolution and lust sealed it – I would never be like my sisters. I wanted to have the fun they had without the consequences. I would be a success.  I would never be unmarried and pregnant, or poor. Not ever.

Tragically for me and much of my generation unregulated by Jim Crow, the upheaval during the 1960’s for us was not really about civil rights. We lived in the north and were already living the American dream of home ownership in a nice neighborhood with great schools. We did not live in segregation.  No, it wasn’t about civil rights.  It was about something else.

Like so many, I too was taken captive by the free love movement and the Pandora’s box opened by my seventh grade sex education classes. Encouraged by media and pop culture, we were given the green light to adopt the requisite loathing of traditional values of purity and abstinence until marriage, in order to “live the life we wanted.” No, for us it was not about civil rights, it was about civil license.

College dorm life was a sexual free for all. By age 25, I had been with 49 sex partners, aborted 3 babies, (what a sanitized way of saying that I killed 3 people), contracted one STD and became part of an ill-fated marriage.

Throughout my adolescent, college and young adult years I was spiritual, but not moral. I was my own god and I worshipped me. I made up the rules. I was determined to have my career and fulfill my mandate. Nothing, no one, and no circumstance were going to stop me. And my sibling’s example of the single parent, welfare-funded lifestyle was not part of my package.  Life was about having fun without consequences. With racial and sexual roadblocks gone, abortion was my guaranteed ticket to the American dream of endless fun and prosperity: two-kids, suburban home, cruise ship vacations, camper, boat and a dog.

The initial relief I felt after the abortions was supposed to last forever. But immediately following the third abortion, a deep, unconscious rage gained fervor and began to silently roar. I coped by following my boyfriend Brian’s (later became husband) advice to “forget about it; let’s not talk about it anymore” and dismissed my pain. Inwardly I was appalled, but outwardly his advice seemed right since all that was lost were “blobs of tissue” – right?

I buried the truth that I had taken lives so deep that we didn’t talk about it for decades. I tried over and over again to get on with the American dream, but it continued to elude me. I had unknowingly joined the ranks of the millions of post-abortive walking wounded, and it put my life into a total subconscious tailspin for the next 20 years.

The first 17 years of my marriage were plagued with emotional firestorms. Where was all this rage coming from? Why couldn’t I seem to get on with life, or get my life in order? My husband is a faithful, hard-working, kind, loving and handsome man, yet I could not stand the sight of him. Four months prior to our African wedding he abdicated his role as my hero and protector by insisting on the abortion of our first child together. To make matters worse, after the birth of our first child a year later, he sent me to the welfare office. Wasn’t abortion supposed to keep me off of welfare and propel me into the American dream?

Even though I unconsciously despised him for it, and blamed him for everything that was wrong with our lives, I did not realize until many years later how tortured, fractured and bleeding both of us were because of our abortions.

My gratitude towards family members who clothed my young children masked the awful secret that I dreaded the baby section of department stores. I would experience deep feelings of fear and foreboding wrapped up neatly in grief bows whenever I would look at baby shoes and socks, and I could not figure out why.

Unfilled imaginary chairs were cruel reminders at family dinners and holidays that my children were missing – they were gone. Day after day I wandered around in a hopeless sea of silent unconscious grief – hating my husband – but hating myself more. I finally got to go to law school, but I ate my way through it and gained 100 pounds more.

Suicidal thoughts frequently rattled through my brain; not because I wanted to die, but because I just wanted to stop the pain. My friends had no clue that I was suffering, but my children were worried. Days turned into months; months into years. Inwardly and silently I would cry this pitiful cry: “oh God, help me; please help me.” Some days I refused to cry, fearing I would never stop. My life continued to plummet as I rode the emotional rollercoaster: one day happy go lucky; the next day I was in the depths of despair and depression.

These were not fleeting, momentary feelings of the blues. No, what I was going through was much deeper, very scary and more disturbing. It was that penetrating and lasting feeling that something is not quite right; that something is very wrong with me.

Somehow on my way to the American dream it did not even dawn on me that the Creator built into me the instinctual capacity to nurture and raise children, and that by killing my own I would be left with a broken heart—a bottomless pit of emptiness, shame, rage, remorse and regret. And tragically worse is the knowledge that even if someone would have warned me, I doubt that it would have made a difference, because my heart was rock solid hard and my soul was far away from God.

The good news is that God led Brian and I to support groups where compassionate men and women helped us to recognize that post-abortion trauma is a real wound that causes deep pain and suffering. They lovingly administered the aid and help we needed to be healed and made whole again. As a result, abortion/miscarriage recovery and marriage enrichment has become our life’s work. Rich in Mercy, our abortion recovery program, is a safe and confidential place. If you have had an abortion, or you are a post-abortive couple, or the father, mother, grandparent, sibling, of an aborted child, or one who helped someone get an abortion, including clinic staff, it is our joy to administer that same hope and healing that was given to us to you.

I can never bring my babies back, but I can warn others that abortion is not the solution you think or have been told it is. Abortion will destroy whoever you are inside, and your baby. Like a cancer, it will grow and attach itself to others in emotional and spiritual places you would never dream possible. This cancer has reduced the African American population by 39.6%—3 times more than our representative percentage in the total population of the United States.

Do yourself a favor and take this warning seriously. Or pass it along to someone you know who is contemplating abortion. It can save their life and the precious life of their child.

If you have had an abortion (even if you feel like you do not need it) give yourself a great gift and get into a support group. It has been our experience that the clients who initially felt that they did not need it (like we did) are very glad they came.

Rev. Brian & Rev. Denise Walker founded Everlasting Light Ministries, which is dedicated to exposing the lies about abortion and revealing the truth about its genocidal effects, and re-establishing the culture of marriage in the African American community. They co-authored and conduct Rich in Mercy, an abortion and miscarriage recovery program, and Everlasting Love, a marriage enrichment and restoration course. The Walkers are seasoned communicators appearing as guests and co-hosts on radio; keynote speakers at statewide and local conferences and pro-life events; and seminar presenters.

To contact the Walkers, call 763-560-8383 or visit www.everlastinglightministries.org

http://www.humanlife.org/didyouknow_denise.php

Did You Know?

Get the best African American pro-life information for your church, campus or organization!

Abortion is the leading cause of death among African Americans. Did You Know? is shattering the silence of this great tragedy. Written by African Americans for the African American community, Did You Know? contains powerful articles written by leaders such as Dr. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr., Star Parker, founder and president of CURE, and many others.  12 pages.

Powerful Pro-Life Literature

Main articles include:

• The True Meaning of The Dream by Dr. Alveda King
• Reproductive Racism by Akua Furlow
• Our Heritage is on the Verge of Extinction by Dr. Johnny Hunter
• Reflections of an Ex-Abortionist by Dr. Noreen Johnson
• The Aftermath of Abortion by Star Parker
• The Real Story: How Abortion Affects Families by Brian and Denise Walker
• Watchman to Watchmen: An Appeal to Pastors by Rev. Arnold Culbreath
• Love on a Two-Way Street by Lorey Kelley
• We Shall Overcome… Abortion by Day Gardner

Download Now

Did You Know? is also available for viewing on the web and in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. To view the images on the web use the viewer above. If you wish to download, print or email the publication as a PDF you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader that is available here. To download, print, or email the entire publication (slower) click here.

http://www.humanlife.org/did_you_know.php