Stacy Long
AFA Journal staff writer
June 2013 – You may have seen evocative slogans like “Black Children are an Endangered Species” on billboards across the country. But you may not know who is behind those messages; he is a man whose story demands to be heard and celebrated.
Ryan Bomberger champions pro-life causes at every base: adoption, life, family, fatherhood. Living for those causes comes naturally to him, because they describe the chapters of his own life story.
Conceiving through rape, Bomberger’s birth mother chose not to abort, granting her unborn child a beautiful legacy of life – a legacy he has ardently cultivated. Henry and Andrea Bomberger adopted Ryan, the first of 10 children adopted into what would become a vibrant family of 15. Now a husband, father and Emmy award-winning creative professional, Bomberger lives as a powerful witness for life.
Defending life with adoption
“It’s amazing for me to do what I do, focused on my own story,” he told AFA Journal. “It’s a huge blessing to look at my life and see how God has put together all these incredible pieces. I use my own story to elevate awareness of adoption and show the beauty of it.”
Bomberger added that his story of adoption denounces abortion because the two issues are inseparable. “It’s impossible to talk about abortion without talking about adoption,” he noted. This is especially true for Bomberger, who came out of a situation of rape, often considered ample cause for abortion, into a life full of love and family, dispelling the ugly myth that such children are “unwanted.” In fact, exposing the hideous lies propagated by the abortion industry is the mission of Bomberger, his wife Bethany and their co-founded organization, the Radiance Foundation. One outreach of the Radiance Foundation, TooManyAborted.com, specifically exposes the realities of the pro-death, anti-family culture of abortion.
Defending life in the family
Most blatantly obvious is that abortion matriarch Planned Parenthood markets death and opposes anything that exists to propagate, protect and nourish life, specifically intact, healthy families.
“Just as there is no way to talk about abortion without talking about adoption, you also can’t talk about abortion without talking about the complete deterioration of family and the absence of fathers,” Bomberger said. “What Roe v Wade has done is empower men to have sex and run. That’s the reality. When you look at the yearly 1.2 million abortions in our country, 89% are among unmarried women. The more family is dissolved, meaning the father is out of the home, the weaker the family unit becomes. The more vulnerable families become, the more vulnerable the community becomes – which means they are perfect prey for organizations like Planned Parenthood.”
As someone whose own life was endangered by an absent biological father, Bomberger fights abortion by fighting to keep fathers in families. His efforts are visible in one of his attention-getting billboard campaigns.
“We came up with the ‘Fatherhood Begins in the Womb’ campaign begun in late 2012 because that’s the simple truth,” he explained. “We want young men to understand that when they engage sexually, they are making a decision to potentially become a father.
“We also want to highlight the culture of abandonment that has resulted from Roe v Wade. Men are taught that they don’t have to be responsible, so we’ve got this mass exodus of fathers. Forty-one percent of children nationwide are born into homes without fathers. The fatherlessness epidemic is ravaging the black community in particular, affecting 72.3% of black children.”
Defending life in the black community
The issues of abortion and family in the black community are special concerns of Bomberger, who is bi-racial and has siblings and children through trans-racial adoption. Acutely aware that Planned Parenthood is continuing the racist ideologies of its past, Bomberger uses his creative gifts to reveal that agenda in a far-reaching way through various billboard campaigns, such as “Black & Beautiful. TooManyAborted.com.”
“When you look at the birth control crusade, it was rooted in hateful eugenic racism,” Bomberger said. “The philosophical underpinnings of Planned Parenthood today are completely unaltered and un-severed from that past. Planned Parenthood is all about controlling the population and eliminating those who are considered a burden to the rest of society. We’ve now placed 550 billboards [exposing that racist agenda] across the country.”
The Bombergers’ outreach through creative media productions – including videos, speaking engagements and well-researched articles – has produced a clamor from both sides of the abortion debate.
“The reaction from the pro-abortion side has been completely venomous,” Bomberger said. “We’ve been denounced by the ACLU, the NAACP and of course by Planned Parenthood, and we’ve had a massive response from media frenzy. But more importantly, we’ve received so many positive emails from post-abortive women, post-abortive men, people who were adoptees, adoptive parents.”
In particular, Bomberger heard a loud outburst from the NAACP when he wrote an article in January 2013 satirically re-naming the NAACP the “National Association for the Abortion of Colored People” and exposing its support and praise for the exceptionally high rate of abortion in the black community. The NAACP made a claim of trademark infringement against Bomberger and the Radiance Foundation. Confident he was within his rights, Bomberger responded with a lawsuit of his own.
“We didn’t alter their logo in any way, shape or form,” Bomberger said. “We only exercised free speech, using news articles and documented information from their own website. The NAACP has a rich and incredible history that apparently they’ve decided to divorce themselves from. Over the past few decades, they’ve shown themselves loyal to one thing, and that is liberalism. They radically support abortion; they radically support Planned Parenthood at every turn. The lawsuit threat was an attempt to bully us into silence because we called them out on that.”
Defending life with truth
Bullying and silence are two things Ryan Bomberger does not accept. Speaking out boldly is something he has done on many platforms, including Values Voter Summit 2012, Students for Life, 2013 March for Life and the liberal MSNBC network. Through the Radiance Foundation, he hopes to equip others to speak with the same boldness and conviction.
“Our slogan is illuminate, educate and motivate,” he said. “We want to illuminate the simple truth that all are born with intrinsic value. We want to educate the public about crucial issues. And we want to motivate them to act.
“We encourage people to get informed so they won’t fear because they don’t know what to say or don’t know the numbers. We direct people to the ample documentation and let the empirical evidence speak for itself. The ultimate goal for the Radiance Foundation is to set people free, because we believe as Christians that the truth sets us free.” 
To inquire about a speaking engagement or sponsoring a billboard campaign:
▶ The Radiance Foundation, P.O. Box 61941, Virginia Beach, VA 23466, 1-877-517-4463
For more about Bomberger’s life and ministry:
▶ Visit The Radiance Foundation Bio page.
Other outreaches on the website
▶ Shine – community action and character development.
▶ Sally’s Lambs – celebrating birth moms.
