Pro-life activist Toni McFadden, staff member with Students for Life of America, wrote a powerful rebuttal against Paxton Smith’s speech in Dallas.
The unexpected speech given by the valedictorian differed from the one that had been approved and focused on speaking against the “heartbeat bill.”
McFadden emphasized how she felt about the speech through a letter she wrote to her own two daughters, beseeching them not to look up to such examples.
“She may have the ability to string together emotionally driven words, but if they are not founded in truth it will lead to destruction,” McFadden said about Smith, according to The Blaze.
McFadden explained in the letter that when she was Smith’s age, she got pregnant and “believed the lie that ending the life of my child would restore my dreams, my goals and my aspirations.”
She deeply regrets her decision.
“After consuming poisonous pills to end the life of my baby, your sibling, that is not what happened. Nothing was restored. It was all a lie. The regret settled in, but I quickly pushed it down to survive. There is nothing natural about taking the life of your own child.
I do not care how empowering someone like Ms. Paxton may make it sound. The reality is I had no right to take the life of my innocent child for my own selfish gain.
The last thing I would ever want for my beautiful girls is to believe that lie.”
The conclusion in the letter is that “what makes you a powerful woman is unapologetically being who God created you to be. It's standing in truth even when the world is trying to convince you to live in lies.
She is also hopeful that positive change will come. “I pray Ms. Paxton will someday take her gift of intelligence and use it to protect life, not promote death,” is how the letter ends referring to the graduation speech.
“I have dreams and hopes and ambitions. Every girl graduating today does. And we have spent our entire lives working toward our future, and without our input and without our consent, our control over that future has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that my hopes and aspirations and dreams and efforts for my future will no longer matter. I hope that you can feel how dehumanizing it is to have the autonomy over your own body taken away from you,” part of Smith’s speech in Dallas said.