NPR and Teen Pregnancy; Important Truths Left Unsaid

 

National Public Radio, Christianity, and Teen Pregnancy
Important truths left unsaid

 

I used to be a leftist. Back then, I was immersed in a worldview. I believed that we were right and they were wrong. Every now and then, though, I would experience cognitive dissonance. I might be reading an article in the New York Times, listening to a story on National Public Radio, or conversing with a fellow leftist. I would enter these exchanges feeling that we – I and the media source or my interlocutor and I – were on the correct side of things, and that we stood against all that was unholy and we would correct error with our righteousness.

 

But then I would hear something that would get me thinking. These thoughts would always be blurry; I unconsciously pressured myself not to pursue these thoughts to their logical conclusion, so they remained inchoate. I pressured myself because I did not want to contradict people who were smarter than I was. I had facts at hand to support a left-wing point of view. I did not have facts at hand to support a conservative point of view. And, I knew, even if unconsciously, that if I went too far in my transgressive thought patterns, I would be thinking and eventually saying things that I would be punished for. My interlocuter might mock my stupidity, and my missing the obvious flaw in my thoughts. Or I might upset someone. Or I might lose a friend.

 

In addition to lacking basic facts that might support a conservative point of view, I lacked rhetoric. I lacked the power of what linguist George Lakoff calls "framing." Lakoff calls frames "mental structures that shape the way we see the world." Blogger Joel Dignam offers a pithy explanation of framing. "Framing is the art of communicating such that one's language activates particular unspoken ideas and associations. Being intentional about framing as part of progressive campaigns means activating relevant values and encouraging more people to think in terms of our worldview."

 

Everybody uses framing, not just leftists. It's really common in break-ups. "How could you leave me? You are breaking my heart!" can be spoken by an abusive spouse, trying to turn him or herself into the victim, and the abused spouse into the victimizer. What the framer is saying here is true – the departing spouse may well break the remaining spouse's heart. It's the unspoken truths that might change the frame.

 

In the macrocosm, framers delegitimatize the existence of Israel, for example, by identifying Israelis as "European settler colonialists" rather than as what they are – descendants of people who have had a biological and formative cultural presence in Israel and the wider Middle East for four thousand years. Framers might identify Muslim Arabs as "indigenous," in spite of their having roots in, and sharing culture and language with, surrounding Arab countries, and their descending most recently from people who entered Israel for work after the Zionist movement began – see here. To end discussion of the moral complexities around abortion, framers identify a fetus as "a clump of cells." To advance the BLM narrative, framers identify Michael Brown as a "gentle giant."

 

If I mentioned any disagreement on any of these points, I would become a monster. To say that Israel has a right to exist within secure and defensible borders, I wanted Arab children to starve to death. To say that human life begins at conception, I was a misogynist. To say that Michael Brown committed crimes that resulted in his own death, I was a white supremacist.

 

It's been decades since I was a leftist. I've since done enough research, in solid, peer-reviewed publications, to support, with facts, many positions I previously could not defend. Recent advances in science and medicine, for example, powerfully support the phrase "life begins at conception."

 

The other day, though, I found myself slipping back into allowing myself to be bullied by framing. I was listening to an NPR broadcast. The topics were Christianity, motherhood, and the mother-child bond. The message was that wicked Christians were stealing babies away from loving mothers. The mothers whose babies were stolen should be pitied. The wicked Christians should be condemned and prevented from ever again stealing another baby. The broadcast argued that the overturn of Roe v. Wade facilitated wicked Christians in their baby theft.

 

Surely, if I objected to any aspect of this broadcast, I was a monster. I disrespected one of the most precious foundations of human civilization: the mother-child bond. I was cruel. I was inhuman.

 

As I listened to the broadcast, my mind was tossing out sentences that, of course, the NPR broadcasters could not hear. I kept saying, "Yeah, but what about – ?" There were other ways of looking at the data that NPR was presenting. I wanted the radio voices to address those other ways of looking at data. They never did. There were only two choices on the menu: agree with us, or you are a monster.

 

1A is a production of American University. It is broadcast via National Public Radio. The host is Jenn White. The September 10, 2025 broadcast was entitled "'Liberty Lost,' Maternity Homes, and Crisis Pregnancy Centers." Guests included T. J. Raphael, a journalist producing a podcast that criticizes maternity homes and crisis pregnancy centers, and Abbi Johnson, a woman who had been a resident at a maternity home run by Liberty University.

 

Crisis pregnancy centers provide resources that help pregnant women carry a pregnancy to term, thus avoiding an abortion inspired by poverty, isolation, or desperation. For this reason, crisis pregnancy centers are frequent targets of criticism from pro-abortion activists. A sample webpage for one crisis pregnancy center can be found here. Contrary to criticism that crisis pregnancy centers mislead women, this site states very clearly on its homepage, "We do not provide or refer for abortion; we do provide valuable services to support informed choices that will enhance your life and the lives of others. Please note that information provided on our website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical, legal or counseling advice."

 

Maternity homes go one step further, providing housing for pregnant women and girls. A sample webpage for a maternity home is here. "Since 1985 we've helped more than 8,000 homeless women and children move from a crisis situation to receive concrete help and build a brighter future," the webpage states.

 

Now, one might think, given that they offer concrete help to women in crisis pregnancies, that crisis pregnancy centers and maternity homes would be praised by National Public Radio. One would be mistaken.

 

The very first sentence in the 1A broadcast emphasizes a connection between abortion, crisis pregnancy centers, and maternity homes: "Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, the U.S. has seen a rise in the openings of maternity homes and crisis pregnancy centers." In other words, women are going to these facilities because of something bad, the repeal of Roe v. Wade. If abortion were more widely available, there would be no need for these institutions. The institutions sound benign, but the point of the 1A broadcast is to prove that they are in fact malignant.

 

1A continues. "These centers are often affiliated with religious organizations, are anti-abortion, and push for adoption." Three features are conflated, and are all worthy of condemnation: the centers are religious – bad! They are anti-abortion – bad! And they "push" for adoption – bad! If you question this, you are want to hurt mothers. You are a monster.

 

Host Jenn White informs listeners that a new podcast exposes evil at Liberty Godparent Home. Liberty Godparent Home's website is here. The website says, "The Liberty Godparent Ministry is a program for young, single, pregnant women. Located in Central Virginia, we offer a beautiful, modern, safe and secure home-like environment for women who may be faced with emotional, financial, or relational challenges."

 

The home is affiliated with Liberty University which was founded by Jerry Falwell. Falwell was a highly controversial figure. Focusing on a maternity home affiliated with Jerry Falwell will darken the image of maternity homes in the minds of many listeners.

 

1A host Jenn White says, "Some residents of Liberty Godparent Home describe a culture of control and coercion." White then plays a recording from a listener, who, speaking in a huffy tone, reports that "Evangelicals" condemn "women who had to give their babies up" and offer "no support" to these women. At this point, the broadcast is only a bit over a minute long and yet the listener has already been trained to regard Christians as wicked people who hurt pregnant women.

 

T. J. Raphael leads 1A's attack on Liberty Godparent Home. T. J. Raphael is a professional podcast producer, who has previously produced podcasts about the abortion pill, artificial insemination, and drag performer competitions. Raphael's 2022 podcast, They Did That, celebrates heroic figures who have been ignored because they were women, gay, or non-white. In that podcast, Raphael praises the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, a Puerto-Rican street gang in Chicago. Raphael says that the Black Panthers and the Young Lords improved health care for us all, and we don't appreciate that because they are non-white. "These young revolutionaries" "changed the American medical system," she says.

 

Raphael informs the 1A listening audience that women going to maternity homes "don't have access to a stable partner." Raphael will go on to use the word "access" six times in the broadcast. Women need "access" to a stable partner, to food stamps, to Medicaid. Her choice of the word "access" frames the women she is talking about as deprived. There are good things out there, like reliable men, food, and health care. Someone is denying women these good things by erecting barriers between women and good things. The women have no "access." To rectify the situation, the women's "access" must be restored by dismantling the barriers between the woman and the good things.

 

Is Raphael's framing accurate? Is a physically and mentally healthy woman really without a good man, or even food, because some bad person erected a barrier between that good woman and a good man? Or, rather, are the woman's own choices the cause of her lack of a good man or food?

 

Don't these women have access to food the way we all get access to food – by working and earning money and exchanging that money for food? Did not this woman make a choice to have sex with a man who would fail her and her child? Did not this woman make a choice to be a single mother, and thereby find it impossible to work to earn money for food? And is the solution here, not so much, the dismantling of barriers erected by wicked Christians or capitalists or what have you, but addressing women's sexual and financial choices?

 

We were only a few minutes in to the broadcast, and I was already thinking things I was not supposed to be thinking, and asking questions I was not supposed to be asking.

 

Once women are in a maternity home, Raphael reports, women feel "stuck." And they can feel "obligated" to, as Raphael says, "surrender their baby for adoption … while they're living at this facility, they continually get the message that adoption is the best option for their child, that their baby deserves a two-parent … often heterosexual … household, and it's not right for them to be a single mom."

 

But wasn't the woman already stuck, and stuck by her own choices, and wasn't her being "stuck" what brought her to the home in the first place? Isn't the maternity home offering significant resources to get the woman "un-stuck"? And what facts can Raphael adduce to support her implication that a single mother can offer a child everything that a "two-parent often heterosexual" household can offer?

 

Host Jenn White next introduces Abbi Johnson. When Johnson was 16, she became pregnant. Her parents sent her to Liberty Godparent Home. Johnson describes feeling terrified and overwhelmed by her pregnancy. "It was all coming at me," she says. The "it" that was "coming at" Johnson was, of course, the inevitable consequences of her having had sex at 16. Throughout the interview, Johnson never voices her own agency. For example, her parents made the decision to send her to Liberty Godparent Home. Though Johnson is now in her mid-thirties, she sounds, throughout the interview, less like an adult recognizing personal responsibility for her own choices than like an adolescent who sees herself as a powerless victim. Who, exactly, does Johnson believe victimized her? What was the "it," in her mind, that "was all coming at" her?

 

Johnson is on TikTok. What she says on TikTok is not addressed in the IA broadcast, perhaps because 1A realized it would be difficult to sell Johnson's radical positions. In her TikTok, Johson announces that she is not just opposed to Liberty Godparent Home. She is opposed to all adoption. If children are raised by persons not their parents, those persons providing love and care for a needy child are to have limited rights and recognition. They aren't even to be called "parents," but, rather, permanent guardians.

 

In her angry TikTok video, Johnson takes no responsibility for her fate, or the fate of her illegitimate baby. Rather, she alleges, "I was isolated, manipulated, shamed, coerced, and pressured." She blames "affluent society, financially established couples, political and religious leaders" for her fate. Johnson also blames her heartbreak on "capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy," as well as a "society" – that's you and me – that did not immediately and unquestioningly provide her, an unmarried teenager, with all the cash she needed to be a single mother. Women's "fragility" must receive "systemic financial resources." But "by design" there are no "systems" "to help a single mother thrive on her own."

 

Liberty Godparent Home says that "A loving mother puts the needs of her child above the wants of her heart." Johnson finds that attitude despicable. Johnson says that her bond with her son is "sacred," but she also repeatedly uses the phrase "pregnant people." In the 1A broadcast, Raphael also refers to a "pregnant person." Thus, both Raphael and Johnson, in using the phrases "pregnant people" and "pregnant person," deny that only women can get pregnant and give birth. They do this even as they insist that the mother-child bond is sacred, and that that sacred bond is violated by Christians who facilitate adoptions for women with crisis pregnancies. Johnson says that separating a newborn from its mother causes permanent damage to the child's mind. Again, this is all from Johnson's TikTok video.

 

Back to the 1A broadcast. Host Jenn White and podcast producer T. J. Raphael mention that maternity homes often are affiliated with religious institutions. They assess this as a bad thing. Pro-abortion voices often insist that Christians who oppose abortion "don't care about the baby once it is born." Maternity homes prove that that is not true. To White and Raphael, Christians can't win.

 

Abbi Johnson says that, back in 2008, when she was at Liberty Godparent Home, she was very vocal about "wanting to parent." She was told, she says, that it would be "selfish" to keep her baby. She says that she was told that she was "a child wanting to play house … And there was never any language used to even validate the fact that my child was mine." Johnson emphasized the word "mine."

 

Nathan, the baby's father, was working to create an appropriate home for his newborn son. He got a job and a car. Johnson says, "It was very explicitly put to me that marriage was an option … marriage to me was not something I wanted at the time with him … [marriage to her baby's father] was not something I was ready for or wanting." Johnson is angry that "I was told that I needed to be grateful that I was being provided with food and shelter."

 

White quotes a listener comment, "The bond between mother and child is invaluable." 1A takes a schizophrenic approach. The one consistency in 1A's approach is that they take whatever position reflects badly on the Christians they are excoriating. When Christians facilitate adoptions, those Christians are disrespecting a "sacred" bond between mother and child. But 1A's rhetoric renders that "sacred" bond meaningless. Men can get pregnant; women's bodies are nothing special and don't deserve so much as the respect that merely accurate vocabulary accords. White and Raphael condemn Christians for placing babies in adoption because that violates the "sacred" maternal bond. But they also condemn Christians for opposing abortion, which violates the mother-child bond in a far more dramatic way.

 

Johnson signed the forms allowing her son to be adopted, but then she changed her mind. "Can I take back my rights? That's what I want to do. Is it possible? What would happen? And you know, in that position at 17, I'm just terrified." Johnson blames others for her signing the forms, and she blames others for her son's being adopted.

 

Abbi Johnson and Nathan, the father of her baby, married. The adoption of their baby was open, and the adoptive parents allowed the child to be the ring-bearer at Abbi and Nathan's wedding. Abbi and Nathan now have two more children.

 

Abbi Johnson sought more contact with her son who had been adopted. She wanted to talk about "fertility" with him. She cites her own choices around her own fertility when she was an unmarried 16-year-old. After this request to have the "fertility" conversation with her teenage son, the adoptive parents closed the adoption and Johnson was no longer able to initiate contact. She has a public presence on the web and she is sad that her son has not reached out to her. "It's so wild to me to think he hasn't looked me up and at least seen that I'm reachable," she says.

 

To this listener, it is not "so wild" that a teenage boy would not seek out his biological mother in order to have a conversation with her about "fertility." It's hard enough being a teenage boy.

 

White reads a comment from a listener. "Children should be given a chance to be with their birth mother … It's appalling that such discrimination is still occurring … It's hypocritical for Christian homes to talk about family and yet be so harmful." White then makes her framing overt. "I want to place this discussion within the shifts that we've seen since Roe v. Wade was overturned."

 

Maternity homes, Raphael says, are "part of a larger pipeline. Women find themselves going to crisis pregnancy centers. They then may be directed to a maternity home and then maybe finally … they will find themselves at a faith-based adoption agency … With the end of Roe, we're … heading towards a perfect storm where I think more women are going to be faced with this choice of relinquishment or feel, rather, that it is their only option."

 

Raphael negates women's agency. Women are in a "pipeline" that "directs" them to faith-based agencies that steal their babies. How did this happen? Women "find themselves." Women exercise no agency here. They do nothing that places them in a Christian "pipeline" of baby stealers.

 

1A, via National Public Radio, broadcast a hit piece on Christian institutions that provide extensive help for women in crisis pregnancies. 1A's authorities were not academic sociologists or medical professionals, but a podcast producer and a disgruntled opponent of all adoptions. During this broadcast, Christians were called hypocritical, harmful, discriminatory, unsupportive, and judgmental. No Christians were allowed airspace to contest these accusations. No crisis pregnancy center or maternity home personnel were allowed to respond.

 

1A claimed that they offered Liberty a chance to respond, but received no reply. But there are hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers and maternity homes, who have served thousands of women. 1A could not find one single grateful recipient of aid from these centers? Could not find one employee of one center? Of course they could. They did not try.

 

In a seconds-long internet search, I was able to discover, here, heartfelt testimonials from women served by one crisis pregnancy center. One woman, Hailey, says, that the personnel who helped her "were so sweet and so welcoming and so calming. … They didn't give me an inkling of feeling judged or any uncertainty." The center provided a free ultrasound. "Honestly, seeing him and actually believing that I was pregnant—it literally changed my life. I became a mom in that moment." Staff helped Hailey throughout her pregnancy. "To see so many people excited for me and happy that I'm happy, and happy that the baby is happy—it was just insane to me … I never thought I would feel welcomed anywhere like I had there."

 

I also searched "maternity home" and "testimonials" and I found a page so overwhelming I burst into tears. Women described being prostituted as children, and growing up in abusive homes. One testimonial is typical.

 

"I never believed in God before. I never even opened a Bible or wanted anyone preaching to me. But after some time here I learned how important my baby was to God and so was I. I was rescued. I was saved. The difference is unbelievable … I cannot not believe in God with all that I have seen and received here. God walks with me every day. He doesn't leave. I feel worthy here."

 

How about women who put their babies up for adoption? There are many testimonials and studies on the web addressing that question, as well. One birth mother says, "I knew that what I was doing in placing Charlotte for adoption was 100 percent out of love. I loved her so much that I had to be selfless." Another birth mother testifies that her baby is "no longer mine, but I knew in my heart that everything would be okay. Seeing how happy she made [the adoptive parents] and their family and seeing how happy their family was just reassured me that I had made the right decision … I know that she's going to have the best life she could ever have. I don't ever want anything to stand in her way, and I know she has two people that she can look up to."

 

I'm not an NPR investigative reporter, but I was able to find testimonials like these within seconds.

 

To fortify its hit piece on Christians. 1A had to frame Johnson and other women as helpless, powerless victims. Christians are all-powerful victimizers. Johnson participates in this framing. "It was all coming at me," "I was isolated, manipulated, shamed, coerced, and pressured." Who did this to her? "Affluent society, financially established couples, political and religious leaders … capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy … society." All these victimizers didn't provide Johnson with "systemic financial resources" "to help a single mother thrive on her own."

 

Let's say what we are not supposed to say. Abbi Johnson, as she reveals in her own words, was unfit to be a single mother thriving on her own, no matter how much cash "society" or "colonialists" or "patriarchs" tossed at her. She thought and spoke as a child. She's speaking, now, in her mid-thirties, and she does not acknowledge her own role in her fate.

 

She made a decision to have sex. Sex makes babies. That's what sex is primarily for. I was once 16. I had a really hot boyfriend. My brain was mush like other 16-year-old girls' brains. I made two decisions that made my life different. I chose a really decent guy as a boyfriend. He was a gentleman and he understood the word "No," and why I said it. And, in spite of my immaturity, I said "No." I said "No," for religious reasons, and I'm really glad I was raised in a Catholic worldview that protected my innocence, my anatomy, and my future. I shudder for girls who lack that protection. And I said "No" for practical reasons. I knew that having a baby at 16 would ruin my life, and the life of my kid.

 

Any NPR listeners reading this will no doubt denounce me as a monster. How dare I "judge." I judge because I have a brain. People make decisions. Decisions have consequences. To make these basic truths unsayable is to undermine society.

 

Johnson wants to make society responsible for her choices. And she doesn't talk about what her choices would have meant to her baby. Sandra L. Hofferth is the former Health Scientist Administrator in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. In chapter 8 of Risking the Future, Adolescent Sexuality, Pregnancy, and Childbearing, Hofferth offers a pithy summary of the burden that children of unmarried, teenage mothers must bear.

 

"Being a child of a teenage mother often entails numerous risks: low birth weight, complications of the mother's pregnancy and delivery, and health problems associated with poor perinatal outcomes; greater risk of perinatal death; lower IQ and academic achievement later on, including a greater risk of repeating a grade; greater risk of socio-emotional problems; a greater risk of having a fatal accident before age one; and finally, a greater probability of starting one's own family at an early age … children of teen parents are at greater risk than children of older parents for a host of health, social and economic problems."

 

Johnson didn't feel ready to marry Nathan, the father of her baby, though she did eventually marry him. She wanted "to parent" alone. Being raised in a father-absent home burdens children. Numerous studies not just from the U.S. but globally, show that children raised in father-absent homes are more likely to do poorly in school and to drop out of school, more likely to exhibit behavioral problems like aggression and crime, more likely to be depressed or anxious, more likely to be poor, less likely to have healthy relationships, more likely to abuse drugs, and more likely to have eating disorders. They are more likely to suffer abuse. Children raised in father-absent homes are more likely to go on to have children out of wedlock and raise children in a father-absent home.

 

If Johnson had raised her son as a single, teenage mother in a father-absent home, her son would have likely suffered many of the negative effects of that childhood. It wouldn't have been Christians or patriarchs or colonialists or "society" victimizing Johnson. It would have been Johnson victimizing herself and her child.

 

Yes, Johnson should have been grateful to Liberty Godparent Home, though she sneers at the concept of gratitude. Her sneer isn't doing her any good. No less an authority than Harvard Medical School reports that "Gratitude enhances health, brings happiness — and may even lengthen lives."

 

1A would not allow any of these realities to enter into its broadcast. 1A refused to broadcast any positive impact of crisis pregnancy centers and maternity homes. It would not allow any personnel from those institutions to speak. It would not allow any mention of the agency of women in crisis pregnancies.

 

I don't want to be like 1A. I allow myself to think a full spectrum of thoughts. With 1A, I feel sorry for sixteen-year-old Abbi Johnson. If her report is accurate, I'm sorry for any abuse she suffered at the maternity home. I feel for her confusion and fear. I feel for her now, as she pursues her TikTok crusade against adoption, a position I do not share. She reports sadness that her son, now 17, has not reached out to her. I hope that they both find happiness. I can think all these things and speak all these truths at the same time. Would that NPR took the same approach.

 

Danusha V. Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.