This past convocation at Berea College there was a Christian doctor who was also an abortion provider, and since then there has been much conversation on campus about the issue.

I will not use this article to uphold moral or biblical arguments for or against abortion, but rather I want to provide personal insight into the life of a child born to parents who could not provide for their children, as well as practical changes that I, as one such child, see as necessary to support such children and their mothers.

In the political arena, we often fight so much about abortion that other extremely important services and policies are left to the wayside, and the ones who suffer are children like myself and my brother and sister, and I'm tired of pro-life advocates acting that abortion is the end-all be-all of what a pro-life stance should be, and I'm tired of pro-choice advocates who promise change in the area's these children so desperately need, but never delivering once in power.

Context: My name is Clara (Ana) Ruplinger, my parents were drug addicts. A few years after I was born, my mother gave birth to two more children with another man, my brother and sister. It soon became clear my parents weren’t capable of taking care of me or my siblings. We were thrown into a foster care system, and shuffled between houses.

I was lucky enough to be adopted by my grandmother at the age of 8, but my brother and sister remained in the foster care system until much later.

I will say this, I watched my brother and sister were shuffled between both "Christian" and secular homes, both in foster care, and in within our immediate family. Each time, the result was the same. Their behavior became too much, the resources were too strained. In the end, promises of protection, promises of "home" only extended as far as resources and compassion.

At the end of each of these endevors, I would hold my sister in my arms as she cried her very soul out, asking why no one loved her? Why no one wanted her?

I had no answers for her. I still don't.

You will promise help, but in the end, you find an excuse to back out. Know that children need more than a single moment of charity, they require a lifetime of love. Too often, I have seen the same people who would condemn a mother for abortion leave my brother and sister and I in the dirt when we needed help most.

Please listen, there are policies that we can change, ideals we can promote to help prevent the pain and suffering that this sort of life entails. It requires more than charity, but rather demands sustained political activism. Here are a few policies that are absolutely imperative for such changes.

1. Expand funding and administration for state court systems and social workers. Since January, Kentucky as lost 1/3rd of their social worker workforce, most quitting over impossible work hours and overload. Social worker evaluate and ensure that vulnerable children are placed in safe homes, and protected from emotional and physical abuse. It is not a service we can afford to make large cuts from for the sake of budgeting. Right now, vulnerable children's lives and futures are decided by a 15 minute briefing case briefing. This causes children to end up in homes that can't take them, or to be taken away from homes that are perfectly safe. I have seen both happen with my own eyes.

2. We need to advocate for free and accessible contraceptives and more comprehensive sex-ed. Free contraceptives are needed so that people of all incomes, identities and places can and will utilize this resource. Second, I call for a complete end to abstinence-only education, to be replaced by education informed by medical knowledge and professional advise. These sorts of initiatives don't have to be federal, they can be city and state-based, and will go a long way towards helping end unwanted pregnancies, and prevent children from being part of a cycle of poverty they shouldn't enter into.

3. We need to advocate for the protection of LGBTQ parent's rights. As it is in Kentucky only one LGBTQ parent of a couple can have legal rights over an adopted child. What this means for the child is that if the parent without legal status dies, the child can't inherit life insurance, or if the child is at the hospital the parent without legal access can't see them or sign off on any life-saving operations. Additionally, courts around the country have at various times taken children away from stable happy homes because there have been bigoted judges and very few legal protections available to these parents. Around the age of 13 my brother was adopted by a same-sex couple. Before his adoption, he didn't have a home, he struggled with misbehavior and school. Today, he is excelling, he is happy. Like with abortion, I will not discuss the "morality" of LGBTQ marriages in this article, but rather the focus is only on what policies and actions would better protect vulnerable children. Supporting LGBTQ parents will do this. As long as you are a household that can give a child a healthy and happy life, you should be allowed and empowered to do so.

4. Free/subsidized childcare and maternity leave. Childcare costs more than some private schools, and I have known children as young as 4 or 5 left at home alone because mothers could not afford to put them in daycare and are the only breadwinners in a family. Whatever means this can happen through, whether on a state or city level, or through Church and neighborhood communities, the need for a safe place to leave your child while you earn a living is desperate. Maternity leave is necessary so that a mother can know she will have a job to return to after her child is born. (If you have time, here is a great, reputable research article discussing the high cost of child care.)

5. Adopt children, not just the babies and the nice kids, but the kids with drug addiction, the kids with arrest records, the children with mental and physical disabilities who are older, and no one wants to adopt them so they remain floating through a system that breaks them down. At the same time, don't do this unless you're 100% sure you are able. These children need 20x the commitment, energy, and engagement level, and will challenge you in ways that other children wouldn't. To commit to them only to back out is the worst thing you can do to them.

6. Fight for de-criminalization of drug offences, and treat drug addicts rather than punish them. Many women and men from low-income neighborhoods need such policy in place to help them be competent mothers and fathers. Many times they are not violent criminals, but men and women who themselves have faced huge hardship in their life. Additionally, children a part of foster care, and victims of child abuse are doubly likely to be drug users when they grow up. Ending criminalization of drug abuses will do justice to these children as well.

I hope that some of the experiences I shared here give some context to the sort of struggles children from these sorts of households face, and have given some direction to steps we need to take to protect them.

Last of all, I ask, I beg of you, if you would call yourself "pro-life," help protect the life of the child after birth as well as before.