November 21, 2025 • 32 mins
Celebrate this Adoption Special with Leah Outten’s powerful story of choosing life at 16 and embracing open adoption. Discover the truth about birth parents, the benefits of open adoption, and resources for unexpected pregnancies.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. Michael
Verie Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm cool to tell you today that I's time to
break without law rut or forever We'll begn robbing.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
At five minutes.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
The highlight of the year for me is any of
you know, and some of you have said it is
for you as well. Is our adoption special, which of
course is today. It's very important to me on a
personal level, but it's very important to.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Me on a moral andrit large level.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
There are more people who are adopted than you would
believe because you don't know that they're adopted, because you
didn't have any reason to know that. They don't wear
a shirt that says I'm adopted. But when we think
about the process of parenting and what our parents mean
to us, and what it means to be a parent,
which is so much more than just providing food and shelter.
(01:02):
It's discipline, it's love, its presence, it's so many things.
It's teaching. You know, our children should learn first and
foremost from parents before the schools. If you don't like
what the schools are teaching, it should never override what
you've already taught at home. The only time it's the
problem is if you're not using that opportunity to teach
at home. And that's about household finances, but that's about
(01:24):
our faith, that's about who we are as a people,
what our culture is. These are the things that a
parent should be instilling in a child. Well, the world's
not perfect, but God has a plan. And sometimes a
mother or a father dies early. Sometimes they abandon, sometimes
they leave. There are all sorts of things that can
(01:44):
occasion a child in a situation where there's not a
direct parent to parent them, and the adoption as well
as foster can be opportunities because don't we want every
child to have some sort of a chance. Don't we
want every child to have some sort of love like
we had from our parents. I know I certainly did,
so it's our adoption special and thank you for being
(02:07):
with us. In an op ed in Evy magazine, Leah
out And shared a story her story of experiencing an
unexpected pregnancy at the age of sixteen, and she talks
about that every year when we do this, we most
years we've had someone call up because we'll have people
(02:27):
who are adopted and they tell their stories or parents
who adopted, and they tell their stories. More often than not,
it's a kid who was adopted and they're so thankful
for their parents, and sometimes they've lost that parent. But
years ago, we had the first one where someone called
up and said, Hey, I know I'm the bad guy
in this story, but I had a child and I
gave that child up for adoption and it was an
(02:48):
act of love and it really made people think differently.
And ever since then, every year we typically have a
caller who made that choice.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well, Leah Out is one of those.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
She had pressure to seek an abortion, but she chose
life for her child, and she did something that's very
difficult to do. She put her child into the adoption
process and another family could enjoy that child. And Kaylee
grew up a beautiful, wonderful child. And that's what she's
here to tell us about. So Leah Out, and welcome
to the program.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to share more.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
So to start with, what made you want to share
this story? It's deeply personal and not everyone will consider
you the hero I do out of it.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
For me, it changed my life and you know, I
was at sixteen on a trajectory that I wasn't proud of,
and to be able to now twenty two years ago,
since that moment of seeing those positive lines on a
pregnancy test, of just the healing and the journey God's
(03:51):
taken me on, and I want to share that with
other people as one part of why this is important
to me, but also because I was so well loved
by my church, by my family, by the agency I used,
by my daughter and her family, which is not always common,
and especially twenty two years ago, and so to be
able to help communities and parents to know how to
(04:14):
support a woman or a girl, whatever the age, that's
walking through this very difficult experience of unexpected pregnancy and
along with if she chooses adoption, how to do that better,
how to love her more. Dispelling some of those myths
about birth parents and that we aren't necessarily the bad
guy in the story. We've been an invisible, you know,
(04:34):
silent often voiceless part of this, you know adoption tried experience,
and so it's been very helpful for more birth parents
as you shared, to speak up and to share it's
not an easy decision. It's not that we just walked
away or didn't love or didn't want our children. It
was a decision that was difficult and made out of
(04:55):
love to help our children to have a better start
to life. So I fare just to help undo some
of those myths and showing just what it can look
like to not only walk through this experience, but also
to have an open adoption with an adopted parent and
how that can benefit everybody as well.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And to start, let's define what an open adoption is,
because people outside the adoption world don't know what an
open and a closed adoption is.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
So why don't you start with that.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Yeah, so I know when I found out I was pregnant,
all I thought was close adoption of where I would
never see her or her know how she was doing,
or have photos of what she looks like. And that's
for a long time, that's how it was done. And
then the last few decades we're starting to see a
shift of realizing that having access to worth family to
answer medical questions, to know more of their adoption story,
(05:48):
their roots, their identity, medical all the things have become
important to know. And so with open adoption there it
can look lots of different ways, but there's some kind
of content with birth family for us that looks like
including visits along with photos and updates.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yeah, so it's almost more of a collaborative process. And
I realized that's not for everyone.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
We didn't.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
We have a closed adoption in our case, and that
was important to us. And look, everybody is different, and
that's okay. You have to decide you know who and
what you are. But the fact that that was important
to you and led you to adoption, I think is
the important part of this conversation. Let's talk about where
you were in your life when you find out you
(06:35):
are pregnant. You're only sixteen years old. I'm assuming you're
probably a sophomore junior in high school, and how that happened.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Yeah, so I was just scarring my junior year high school,
had just turned sixteen, and I had been dating someone
through most of my sophomore year and we had just
really broken apart. You know, he was heading in one
way and I didn't like that and we were just
not getting along and so we had just for and
I found out I was pregnant a few weeks later,
(07:03):
and he really said, you should choose abortion or choose adoption.
But you know, I'm not ready to be a parent.
And we're not ready to be parents, and didn't have
a lot of contactors, you know, support from him after that,
and so I really was left to decide what to
do and really felt like parenting was going to be
(07:26):
my option because abortion did not feel right to me.
I innately knew that she had a purpose in this
world and it wasn't my decision and my right to
take that away from her. And you know, grateful for
parents who supported me in that decision. I never felt
forced to make a different decision, and you know, they
were willing to help me and walk through me through
(07:47):
this process. And so thought I was going to pair
it for many months, but as I wrestled with it,
I just could not find peace with parenting and that
led me to just being courage to make an informed
the vision that if parenting is not feeling right, explore
adoptions to make sure that that's not what you want
to do, or just learn more about it. And as
(08:09):
I have had mentioned, I came into this process with
my own bias of closed adoption as all that the world.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf
of Mexico to the Gulf of Michael Varry, which has
a beautiful way.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Leah is our guest.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
We're talking about adoption because of course this is our
adoption special and we're talking to Leah Auten. She wrote
an op ed an Evy magazine about an unexpected pregnancy
at the age of sixteen. You can imagine a sixteen
year old girl, how frightened she is. And she was
pressured to get in an abortion, and she said, no,
(08:46):
I'm going to choose life for my daughter, whose name
is Kaylee. And she did, and she pursued an open
adoption and it has worked beautifully. Not every open adoption
or closed adoption is going to work well. Not every
situation is going to work well. But I think by
and large, this is a solution for most people. And
it does honor life because we didn't choose life.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
God did.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
And I think it's an incredible testimony in addition to
an experience, and that's why we've asked her to join
us today. Let's talk about how y'all worked through the
open adoption. How much did you see Kayleie did that
change over time? How were you referred to by her?
How much did you get to attend her events and
(09:29):
those sorts of things.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Oh, yeah, so our agreement was two times a year,
and so her birthday falls in the summer, so that
was a great meeting point. I went to every birthday
party for eighteen nineteen years. And then we also had
a Christmas tradition where we would get together and have
lunch and exchange gifts and just have fun catching up.
So those two were always upheld through her childhood into adulthood.
(09:54):
And for us, we love spending time together. So there
were other opportunities and visits that would come through through
different seasons of her life or just what worked for
our schedule, and so yes, I was invited to things
like kindergarten graduation and her high school graduation and those
kinds of things, or just hanging out to have dinner
(10:14):
and getting to know each other as extended family might.
So though, they were just very intentional about upholding that
commitment to me, which was really meaningful to me and
to her. As as big group, we knew when to
expect the next visit together. So She's one question that
she that her parents asked me when I was pregnant
(10:36):
is what do you want to be called? And I
love that they asked me that question and kind of
gave me some voice into our experience together. And you know,
because mom don't get a lot of say typically about
what all this can look like. And so they were
great at asking me questions and really inviting me into,
you know, creating this relationship together. And so they offer
(10:59):
a different suggestions and their ideas, and nothing only felt
right with me. So I decided just to be miss Leah,
which is what they called any you know adult that
I and they called me birth mom as well, so
she knew me as her birth mom, miss Leah. And
then now that she's older and we've she and I
have more directly created a relationship in her teen years.
She now calls me mother Goose, which is what my
(11:21):
children that my parents called me as a joke because
I have five of them and they follow me around
and I read a lot. So it's fun that she's
kind of felt comfortable to add another name to me.
And her mom is her mom, but I have another,
my own little name now that she's comfortable with that.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
So tell me how she first called you mother Goose?
Did she ask? She did? She just say it? Tell
me about that moment.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
So my my children here, as I said, they they
call me mother Goose, and so I think as she
has come to visit, she's she's come to visit us
and kind of immersed herself into, you know, her siblings here,
and so I think picking that up just being around
because sometimes we would have longer visits in the summer
(12:06):
for a weekend or a week and so it was
a much more immersive experience where it felt more comfortable
to include something that was more personal like that. So
I don't think she asked, It was just kind of
started to become part of the normal conversation as we
grew closer together more naturally.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
And how often did you see her? Have you seen
her over the years? Just have more or less now?
And how has that changed? What's the nature of that interaction.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Yeah, I think it's esen flows through different seasons. And
the first three years we had a lot of visits
as we were building this foundation of our relationship together.
So the first three years we had visits probably every
other month. I was sixteen with a frustrator's license, and
so I loved to be able to come visit them,
and they invited me, you know, to come stan time
with them and have dinner and those those dinner table
(12:56):
moments really shaped how our really and ship was building
then and what it looks like now. The elementary years,
it was we were all busier, you know, her was school,
me with growing, my family, married and all those kinds
of things. So that was really just the two times
of year that we knew to expect for Birthday and Christmas.
And then her teen years is when she started to
(13:18):
ask more. She was the third, you know voice, it
became the more important voice in our adoption relationship. And
she has always known who I am and her story
and wanted to know more as she was heading into
those identity for me years and really the wheels turning
about adoption and her terming sixteen and really understanding, wow,
(13:39):
this is what you This is the age you were
when you had me, and I can understand more now
about why you would choose adoption, and you know, just
having more opportunity to grow and to learn from one another.
And so her teen years she started to ask for
about quarterly, and so that's where we've probably from sixteen
up to now with her being twenty one, we aimed
for probably one per season least.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
That's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
What led you to write the Upbed in ev magazine,
I think again.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
I always just felt like I needed to share the
story because all that God has done in my life
helping other women to know that there is support out there,
whether they choose adoption or whether they choose the parent,
that you know, resources like her plan exist and are
can be so helpful to find community and resources and
support for whatever the path is, because there's no easy path.
(14:34):
All of it hard. And this was choosing your heart
and knowing to go to and where to go to
to define that support. And I just want women to
know that there is hope, that you know there is
a path forward beyond this this moment that can feel
you know, a crisis or devastating, or you know the
(14:54):
world's upside down, and that there's there's hope. Yeah, that
it's and the seeking the Lord and for that guidance
and for that piece of.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Whatever that looks like, hold with me for just a moment.
Leah Outon is our guest. The op ed she wrote
in Evy magazine Cut Our Attention a few months back,
and it was about it was about her decision at
sixteen with an I don't want to call it unwanted.
(15:26):
I want to call it unexpected, which I think is
the term she used. As National Adoption Month in November
and our Adoption special roles on we celebrate those mothers
who make the decision of life.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
It's not an easy thing to do.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
It's not an easy thing to do, but I think
she proves it's a rewarding and wholesome and godly thing
to do.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I will die for the country. I will die for.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Discribe to Michael Barry Joe, it's the big honor to
be living in the United States.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Leah Oughton is our guest.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
She wrote an op ed in ev magazine about having
an unexpected pregnancy at the age of sixteen and she
did not intend to supplant God's will that child was there,
and under pressure to seek an abortion, she chose life
for her daughter, Kayleie and an open adoption, and she
has had a rewarding relationship with her daughter, who was
(16:22):
adopted by another family. And her daughter is now twenty
one years old. And we're talking about how she's navigated
this and why it's important to her to share with
other people. And I love that. I absolutely love that.
I read that you have become a prolific advocate, public
speaker and writer on the joys of open adoption? How
(16:43):
did you get involved doing that? And I'm curious what
kind of questions people ask about this.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
So I heard started speaking just a few months after
she was born because my agency wanted to share with
local nurses at the hospital of you know, how to
love a birth parent well, who's choosing adoption in the
hospital setting, and the most vulnerable parts of the placement process.
(17:13):
And so it's those opportunities have just come up through
the years and just been asked to write about it
and to share about it. I also blogged and wrote
through my pregnancy and their early years, and that's continued
to grow to the books I write, and writing with
such a healing part of my journey to process my
(17:36):
emotions and capture those moments that I got to share
with her through the years, and to connect with other
birth moms and adoptees and adopted parents, because there's everybody's
coming into this with curiosity, whether they have a personal
experience with adoption or they're outside the experience, and it's
something that's completely new. And so I think writing speaking
(18:00):
has just been such a connecting experience to help other
people to know you're not alone in this and here's
what's worked in our journey and what's been helpful in
our journey and my personal journey too. So common questions
You've asked a lot of them of what does this
look like? How often do you visit? What does she
call you? But I think another one is, you know,
(18:24):
navigating boundaries and conflict and open adoption, because it's not
always easy. It's an adoptioned relationship is just like any
other relationship that takes work and effort. And you know,
through the years, her parents and I have worked through
to navigate, you know, wanting to honor each other. Yet
(18:47):
they are her parents and I respect that, and they
also respect that I'm her birth mom, and we both
come together knowing that there's things that we can provide
and speak to into her life that the other can't,
and within that there can still be conversations that we've
had to have, especially as I've shared my story more
publicly and making sure that I'm sharing things that are
(19:08):
still respectful of their privacy, and especially as she was
under eighteen, navigating what's okay to share, what photos are
a kay to share? And if there was ever real
line that was crossed, whatever that was that they gently
came to me and said, hey, you know, we're noticing this.
Can we do this differently next time? And they modeled
(19:29):
healthy communication for me and what that can look like.
And I think since open adoption can be very intimidating
or scary when you are just beginning the process of adopting,
that there's still a lot of fears in this and
being able to understand that boundaries are a good thing,
and that open adoption is not co parenting, it's you know,
(19:50):
you're still the parents, that you have an open heart
and a bridge to those connections, to those answers that
are part of their life too, and being able to
advocate and work through that together.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Tell me about your own children, your children that you
parent as you say, you said you have five?
Speaker 4 (20:12):
I do I have five?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Wow? All right, go ahead. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
So I had another unexpected pregnancy in my college years
and had thankfully a wonderful man by my side at
that point, and we got married nineteen twenty and so
that daughter is now eighteen, and then our youngest is eight.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
This is.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
A story of bounty.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
You know, so many women have so much trouble getting
pregnant and you just keep having babies. And you know what,
God bless you for loving these babies no matter what
the relationship is, no matter whether they were planned or not.
You know, I have so many friends that they're seemingly
the youngest.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Wow, this has happened with my generation.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
But they're the youngest and they had, you know, their
next in the order is you know, ten fifteen years
ahead of them, and they call themselves oopsie babies, and
yet they're smailed rotten because by that time, the parents
have you know, raised all these other kids and then
here comes the kid that they didn't expect and they
didn't think mom could get pregnant anymore, but she did.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Yep, we were definitely been wasn't our plan to have five,
but we're definitely still very fortunate for these children that
God's given us. And having worked I work with adopted
parents every day and they struggle with fertility, and so
I especially realized the just the humbling gifts that it
(21:45):
is that I was able to.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
I think that's absolutely right. And I think that you
have been, as most true faithful Christians are, you have
been open to God's direction in your life that may
not have seemed like the perfect journey or the perfect film,
But somehow, with enough love and care and hard work
(22:13):
and you know, plenty of tears, you get there. And
I see these journeys you know, somewhere down the road,
and you do.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
You just get there.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
You figure out how to make it work, and it's
not always easy, but at the end of it all,
you're delighted that you did, Leah before we let you go.
Are there any other resources you would recommend for folks
who are going through some aspect of all of this.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
One would be that I have a book if you're
curious about more of the details of what it's on,
the emotions of the experiences and in the hospital experience,
and how her parents and my support system important being
loved me through the years, and also just what it
looks like up until she was eighteen. So have a
nonprofit called the Ampersan Initiatives, and that is our post
(23:05):
placement resource to help not just birth parents, but also
adoptive parents and adoptees and kinship care foster care to
have retreats that are in a really safe, beautiful environment
and having fun, because you know, cultivating community and healing
can be a lot of heavy, you know, peers and
hard work, but it also you know, there's a lot
(23:26):
of healing that comes with joy, laughter, and you know,
being in beautiful places. So we have that as well,
and we have educational topics online that will help with
adoptive parents or just anybody involved that wants to learn
more about from a birth mom and just other people
in the adoption community. And then her Plan of course
(23:50):
is a great resource that someone is struggling with an
unexpected pregnancy and needs resources that they can guide you
national wide to to find those support networks near you.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
God bless you, Leah Alton. Thank you for sharing your story.
You just never know who'll hear it and it'll make
a difference for them. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
I looked at him, and they looked at me, you know,
and I just looked at her and I have to
just get yourself and get out that Michael Verysho I
read over.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
And got a newspaper and I wrote it up.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
I slapped him on the nose that.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Our great annual tradition on our Thanksgiving edition, which is
the Friday before the following Thursday, is to play Rush
Limbaugh's The Meaning of Thanksgiving in honor of the Great,
the irreplaceable Rush Limbaugh.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
The true story of Thanksgiving, The story of the Pilgrims
begins in the early part of the seventeenth century. The
Church of England, under King James the First was persecuting
anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil
and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those
who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned,
(25:07):
and sometimes executed.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
For their beliefs. A group of separatists.
Speaker 5 (25:11):
First fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years,
about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey
to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships,
but could live and worship God according to the.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Dictates of their own consciences.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
On August first, sixteen to twenty, the Mayflowers set sail.
It carried a total of one hundred two passengers, including
forty Pilgrims, led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford
set up an agreement a contract the established just and
equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective
of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed
(25:52):
in an eight flower compact come from?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
They came from the Bible.
Speaker 5 (25:55):
The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons
of the old.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
And newteil estimates.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example, and
because of the biblical precedent set forth in scripture, they
never doubted that their experiment would work.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
But it was no pleasure cruise.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
The journey to the New World was a long and
arduous one, and when the Pilgrims landed in New England
in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren,
desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote,
There were no houses to shelter them. There were no
inns where they could refresh themselves in The sacrifice that
(26:34):
they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the
first winter, half the Pilgrims, including Bradford's own wife, died
neither starvation, sickness.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Or exposure.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to
plant corn fish for cod and skim beavers for coats.
Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet
prosper and this is important to understand because this is
where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually
explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the
(27:07):
Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives,
rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in
the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Here's the part that's been omitted.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their
merchant sponsors in London called for everything they produced to
go into a common store, and each member of the
community was entitled a one common share. All of the
land that they cleared and the houses they built belonged
to the community as well, and they were going to
distribute it equally. All the land they cleared, the houses
(27:41):
they built belonged to the community. Nobody owned anything, they
just had a share in it. It was a commune.
It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in
the sixties and seventies out in California. And it was
a complete with organic vegetables, even just like the communes.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Of today are.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
God No, there's no question, it was organic vegetables. Bradford,
who had become a new governor of the colony, recognized
that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive
to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter which had
taken so many lives.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
He decided to take bold action.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
Bradford assigned a plot of land in each family to
work and manage, thus turning loose to power in the marketplace.
Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had
discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism,
and what happened. It didn't work, but nearly starved, never
(28:40):
has worked. What Bradford in his community found was that
the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to
work any harder than anybody else unless they could utilize
the power of personal motivation.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
But while most of the rest of the world has.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
Been experimenting with socialism for well over one hundred years,
trying to refine it, perfect it, and reinvent it, the
Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford
wrote about this social experiment should be in every school
child's history lesson if it were, we might prevent such
needless suffering in the future, such as that we are
(29:15):
enduring now. The experience that we had in this common
course and condition, This is Bradford, the experience we had
in this common course and condition, tired or tried Sunday years,
that by taking away property and bringing community into a
commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they
(29:36):
were wiser than God. Bradford wrote, for this community, so
far as it was was found to breed much confusion
and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been
to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were
most able and fit for labor and service, did repine
that they should spend their time and strength to work
for other men's wives and children without being paid for.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
It was thought injustice.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Why should you work for other people when you can't
work for yourself?
Speaker 2 (30:04):
What's the point, That's what he was saying.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to
do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's
community try next? They unharnished the power of good old
free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private
property every family was assigned its own plot of land
(30:31):
to work, and permitted to market its own crops and products.
What was the result, Bradford wrote, this had very good success,
for it made all hands industrious, so as much more
corn was planted than otherwise would have been.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Is it possible that supply side economics could have existed
before the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (30:54):
Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis forty one.
Following Joseph's suggestion, Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to
twenty percent during the seven years of plenty, and the
earth brought forth in heaps well. At no time the
pilgrims found that they had more food than they could
eat themselves. Now this this is where it gets really
(31:15):
good if you're laboring under the misconception that I was
as I was taught in school. They set up trading posts,
they exchanged goods with the Indians. The prophits allowed them
to pay off their debts to the merchants in London,
and the success and the prosperity of the Plymouth settlement
(31:37):
attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known
as the Great Puritan Migration. But this story stops when
the Indians taught the newly arrived suffering in socialism pilgrims
how to plant corn and fish for cod. That's where
the original thankshaving story stops. Story basically doesn't even begin there.
(31:59):
The real story of Thanksgiving is William Bradford giving thanks
to God for the guidance and the inspiration to set
up a thriving columny that socialism caused near starvation.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
The bounty was shared with the Indians.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
They did sit down, they did have free range turkey
and organic vegetables. But it wasn't the Indians who saved
the day. It was capitalism and scripture which saved the day,
as acknowledged by George Washington in his first Thanksgiving Proclamation
(32:43):
in seventeen eighty nine.
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. Michael
Verie Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm cool to tell you today that I's time to
break without law rut or forever We'll begn robbing.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
At five minutes.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
The highlight of the year for me is any of
you know, and some of you have said it is
for you as well. Is our adoption special, which of
course is today. It's very important to me on a
personal level, but it's very important to.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Me on a moral andrit large level.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
There are more people who are adopted than you would
believe because you don't know that they're adopted, because you
didn't have any reason to know that. They don't wear
a shirt that says I'm adopted. But when we think
about the process of parenting and what our parents mean
to us, and what it means to be a parent,
which is so much more than just providing food and shelter.
(01:02):
It's discipline, it's love, its presence, it's so many things.
It's teaching. You know, our children should learn first and
foremost from parents before the schools. If you don't like
what the schools are teaching, it should never override what
you've already taught at home. The only time it's the
problem is if you're not using that opportunity to teach
at home. And that's about household finances, but that's about
(01:24):
our faith, that's about who we are as a people,
what our culture is. These are the things that a
parent should be instilling in a child. Well, the world's
not perfect, but God has a plan. And sometimes a
mother or a father dies early. Sometimes they abandon, sometimes
they leave. There are all sorts of things that can
(01:44):
occasion a child in a situation where there's not a
direct parent to parent them, and the adoption as well
as foster can be opportunities because don't we want every
child to have some sort of a chance. Don't we
want every child to have some sort of love like
we had from our parents. I know I certainly did,
so it's our adoption special and thank you for being
(02:07):
with us. In an op ed in Evy magazine, Leah
out And shared a story her story of experiencing an
unexpected pregnancy at the age of sixteen, and she talks
about that every year when we do this, we most
years we've had someone call up because we'll have people
(02:27):
who are adopted and they tell their stories or parents
who adopted, and they tell their stories. More often than not,
it's a kid who was adopted and they're so thankful
for their parents, and sometimes they've lost that parent. But
years ago, we had the first one where someone called
up and said, Hey, I know I'm the bad guy
in this story, but I had a child and I
gave that child up for adoption and it was an
(02:48):
act of love and it really made people think differently.
And ever since then, every year we typically have a
caller who made that choice.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well, Leah Out is one of those.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
She had pressure to seek an abortion, but she chose
life for her child, and she did something that's very
difficult to do. She put her child into the adoption
process and another family could enjoy that child. And Kaylee
grew up a beautiful, wonderful child. And that's what she's
here to tell us about. So Leah Out, and welcome
to the program.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to share more.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
So to start with, what made you want to share
this story? It's deeply personal and not everyone will consider
you the hero I do out of it.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
For me, it changed my life and you know, I
was at sixteen on a trajectory that I wasn't proud of,
and to be able to now twenty two years ago,
since that moment of seeing those positive lines on a
pregnancy test, of just the healing and the journey God's
(03:51):
taken me on, and I want to share that with
other people as one part of why this is important
to me, but also because I was so well loved
by my church, by my family, by the agency I used,
by my daughter and her family, which is not always common,
and especially twenty two years ago, and so to be
able to help communities and parents to know how to
(04:14):
support a woman or a girl, whatever the age, that's
walking through this very difficult experience of unexpected pregnancy and
along with if she chooses adoption, how to do that better,
how to love her more. Dispelling some of those myths
about birth parents and that we aren't necessarily the bad
guy in the story. We've been an invisible, you know,
(04:34):
silent often voiceless part of this, you know adoption tried experience,
and so it's been very helpful for more birth parents
as you shared, to speak up and to share it's
not an easy decision. It's not that we just walked
away or didn't love or didn't want our children. It
was a decision that was difficult and made out of
(04:55):
love to help our children to have a better start
to life. So I fare just to help undo some
of those myths and showing just what it can look
like to not only walk through this experience, but also
to have an open adoption with an adopted parent and
how that can benefit everybody as well.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And to start, let's define what an open adoption is,
because people outside the adoption world don't know what an
open and a closed adoption is.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
So why don't you start with that.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Yeah, so I know when I found out I was pregnant,
all I thought was close adoption of where I would
never see her or her know how she was doing,
or have photos of what she looks like. And that's
for a long time, that's how it was done. And
then the last few decades we're starting to see a
shift of realizing that having access to worth family to
answer medical questions, to know more of their adoption story,
(05:48):
their roots, their identity, medical all the things have become
important to know. And so with open adoption there it
can look lots of different ways, but there's some kind
of content with birth family for us that looks like
including visits along with photos and updates.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yeah, so it's almost more of a collaborative process. And
I realized that's not for everyone.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
We didn't.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
We have a closed adoption in our case, and that
was important to us. And look, everybody is different, and
that's okay. You have to decide you know who and
what you are. But the fact that that was important
to you and led you to adoption, I think is
the important part of this conversation. Let's talk about where
you were in your life when you find out you
(06:35):
are pregnant. You're only sixteen years old. I'm assuming you're
probably a sophomore junior in high school, and how that happened.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Yeah, so I was just scarring my junior year high school,
had just turned sixteen, and I had been dating someone
through most of my sophomore year and we had just
really broken apart. You know, he was heading in one
way and I didn't like that and we were just
not getting along and so we had just for and
I found out I was pregnant a few weeks later,
(07:03):
and he really said, you should choose abortion or choose adoption.
But you know, I'm not ready to be a parent.
And we're not ready to be parents, and didn't have
a lot of contactors, you know, support from him after that,
and so I really was left to decide what to
do and really felt like parenting was going to be
(07:26):
my option because abortion did not feel right to me.
I innately knew that she had a purpose in this
world and it wasn't my decision and my right to
take that away from her. And you know, grateful for
parents who supported me in that decision. I never felt
forced to make a different decision, and you know, they
were willing to help me and walk through me through
(07:47):
this process. And so thought I was going to pair
it for many months, but as I wrestled with it,
I just could not find peace with parenting and that
led me to just being courage to make an informed
the vision that if parenting is not feeling right, explore
adoptions to make sure that that's not what you want
to do, or just learn more about it. And as
(08:09):
I have had mentioned, I came into this process with
my own bias of closed adoption as all that the world.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf
of Mexico to the Gulf of Michael Varry, which has
a beautiful way.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Leah is our guest.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
We're talking about adoption because of course this is our
adoption special and we're talking to Leah Auten. She wrote
an op ed an Evy magazine about an unexpected pregnancy
at the age of sixteen. You can imagine a sixteen
year old girl, how frightened she is. And she was
pressured to get in an abortion, and she said, no,
(08:46):
I'm going to choose life for my daughter, whose name
is Kaylee. And she did, and she pursued an open
adoption and it has worked beautifully. Not every open adoption
or closed adoption is going to work well. Not every
situation is going to work well. But I think by
and large, this is a solution for most people. And
it does honor life because we didn't choose life.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
God did.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
And I think it's an incredible testimony in addition to
an experience, and that's why we've asked her to join
us today. Let's talk about how y'all worked through the
open adoption. How much did you see Kayleie did that
change over time? How were you referred to by her?
How much did you get to attend her events and
(09:29):
those sorts of things.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Oh, yeah, so our agreement was two times a year,
and so her birthday falls in the summer, so that
was a great meeting point. I went to every birthday
party for eighteen nineteen years. And then we also had
a Christmas tradition where we would get together and have
lunch and exchange gifts and just have fun catching up.
So those two were always upheld through her childhood into adulthood.
(09:54):
And for us, we love spending time together. So there
were other opportunities and visits that would come through through
different seasons of her life or just what worked for
our schedule, and so yes, I was invited to things
like kindergarten graduation and her high school graduation and those
kinds of things, or just hanging out to have dinner
(10:14):
and getting to know each other as extended family might.
So though, they were just very intentional about upholding that
commitment to me, which was really meaningful to me and
to her. As as big group, we knew when to
expect the next visit together. So She's one question that
she that her parents asked me when I was pregnant
(10:36):
is what do you want to be called? And I
love that they asked me that question and kind of
gave me some voice into our experience together. And you know,
because mom don't get a lot of say typically about
what all this can look like. And so they were
great at asking me questions and really inviting me into,
you know, creating this relationship together. And so they offer
(10:59):
a different suggestions and their ideas, and nothing only felt
right with me. So I decided just to be miss Leah,
which is what they called any you know adult that
I and they called me birth mom as well, so
she knew me as her birth mom, miss Leah. And
then now that she's older and we've she and I
have more directly created a relationship in her teen years.
She now calls me mother Goose, which is what my
(11:21):
children that my parents called me as a joke because
I have five of them and they follow me around
and I read a lot. So it's fun that she's
kind of felt comfortable to add another name to me.
And her mom is her mom, but I have another,
my own little name now that she's comfortable with that.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
So tell me how she first called you mother Goose?
Did she ask? She did? She just say it? Tell
me about that moment.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
So my my children here, as I said, they they
call me mother Goose, and so I think as she
has come to visit, she's she's come to visit us
and kind of immersed herself into, you know, her siblings here,
and so I think picking that up just being around
because sometimes we would have longer visits in the summer
(12:06):
for a weekend or a week and so it was
a much more immersive experience where it felt more comfortable
to include something that was more personal like that. So
I don't think she asked, It was just kind of
started to become part of the normal conversation as we
grew closer together more naturally.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
And how often did you see her? Have you seen
her over the years? Just have more or less now?
And how has that changed? What's the nature of that interaction.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Yeah, I think it's esen flows through different seasons. And
the first three years we had a lot of visits
as we were building this foundation of our relationship together.
So the first three years we had visits probably every
other month. I was sixteen with a frustrator's license, and
so I loved to be able to come visit them,
and they invited me, you know, to come stan time
with them and have dinner and those those dinner table
(12:56):
moments really shaped how our really and ship was building
then and what it looks like now. The elementary years,
it was we were all busier, you know, her was school,
me with growing, my family, married and all those kinds
of things. So that was really just the two times
of year that we knew to expect for Birthday and Christmas.
And then her teen years is when she started to
(13:18):
ask more. She was the third, you know voice, it
became the more important voice in our adoption relationship. And
she has always known who I am and her story
and wanted to know more as she was heading into
those identity for me years and really the wheels turning
about adoption and her terming sixteen and really understanding, wow,
(13:39):
this is what you This is the age you were
when you had me, and I can understand more now
about why you would choose adoption, and you know, just
having more opportunity to grow and to learn from one another.
And so her teen years she started to ask for
about quarterly, and so that's where we've probably from sixteen
up to now with her being twenty one, we aimed
for probably one per season least.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
That's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
What led you to write the Upbed in ev magazine,
I think again.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
I always just felt like I needed to share the
story because all that God has done in my life
helping other women to know that there is support out there,
whether they choose adoption or whether they choose the parent,
that you know, resources like her plan exist and are
can be so helpful to find community and resources and
support for whatever the path is, because there's no easy path.
(14:34):
All of it hard. And this was choosing your heart
and knowing to go to and where to go to
to define that support. And I just want women to
know that there is hope, that you know there is
a path forward beyond this this moment that can feel
you know, a crisis or devastating, or you know the
(14:54):
world's upside down, and that there's there's hope. Yeah, that
it's and the seeking the Lord and for that guidance
and for that piece of.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Whatever that looks like, hold with me for just a moment.
Leah Outon is our guest. The op ed she wrote
in Evy magazine Cut Our Attention a few months back,
and it was about it was about her decision at
sixteen with an I don't want to call it unwanted.
(15:26):
I want to call it unexpected, which I think is
the term she used. As National Adoption Month in November
and our Adoption special roles on we celebrate those mothers
who make the decision of life.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
It's not an easy thing to do.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
It's not an easy thing to do, but I think
she proves it's a rewarding and wholesome and godly thing
to do.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I will die for the country. I will die for.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Discribe to Michael Barry Joe, it's the big honor to
be living in the United States.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Leah Oughton is our guest.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
She wrote an op ed in ev magazine about having
an unexpected pregnancy at the age of sixteen and she
did not intend to supplant God's will that child was there,
and under pressure to seek an abortion, she chose life
for her daughter, Kayleie and an open adoption, and she
has had a rewarding relationship with her daughter, who was
(16:22):
adopted by another family. And her daughter is now twenty
one years old. And we're talking about how she's navigated
this and why it's important to her to share with
other people. And I love that. I absolutely love that.
I read that you have become a prolific advocate, public
speaker and writer on the joys of open adoption? How
(16:43):
did you get involved doing that? And I'm curious what
kind of questions people ask about this.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
So I heard started speaking just a few months after
she was born because my agency wanted to share with
local nurses at the hospital of you know, how to
love a birth parent well, who's choosing adoption in the
hospital setting, and the most vulnerable parts of the placement process.
(17:13):
And so it's those opportunities have just come up through
the years and just been asked to write about it
and to share about it. I also blogged and wrote
through my pregnancy and their early years, and that's continued
to grow to the books I write, and writing with
such a healing part of my journey to process my
(17:36):
emotions and capture those moments that I got to share
with her through the years, and to connect with other
birth moms and adoptees and adopted parents, because there's everybody's
coming into this with curiosity, whether they have a personal
experience with adoption or they're outside the experience, and it's
something that's completely new. And so I think writing speaking
(18:00):
has just been such a connecting experience to help other
people to know you're not alone in this and here's
what's worked in our journey and what's been helpful in
our journey and my personal journey too. So common questions
You've asked a lot of them of what does this
look like? How often do you visit? What does she
call you? But I think another one is, you know,
(18:24):
navigating boundaries and conflict and open adoption, because it's not
always easy. It's an adoptioned relationship is just like any
other relationship that takes work and effort. And you know,
through the years, her parents and I have worked through
to navigate, you know, wanting to honor each other. Yet
(18:47):
they are her parents and I respect that, and they
also respect that I'm her birth mom, and we both
come together knowing that there's things that we can provide
and speak to into her life that the other can't,
and within that there can still be conversations that we've
had to have, especially as I've shared my story more
publicly and making sure that I'm sharing things that are
(19:08):
still respectful of their privacy, and especially as she was
under eighteen, navigating what's okay to share, what photos are
a kay to share? And if there was ever real
line that was crossed, whatever that was that they gently
came to me and said, hey, you know, we're noticing this.
Can we do this differently next time? And they modeled
(19:29):
healthy communication for me and what that can look like.
And I think since open adoption can be very intimidating
or scary when you are just beginning the process of adopting,
that there's still a lot of fears in this and
being able to understand that boundaries are a good thing,
and that open adoption is not co parenting, it's you know,
(19:50):
you're still the parents, that you have an open heart
and a bridge to those connections, to those answers that
are part of their life too, and being able to
advocate and work through that together.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Tell me about your own children, your children that you
parent as you say, you said you have five?
Speaker 4 (20:12):
I do I have five?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Wow? All right, go ahead. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
So I had another unexpected pregnancy in my college years
and had thankfully a wonderful man by my side at
that point, and we got married nineteen twenty and so
that daughter is now eighteen, and then our youngest is eight.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
This is.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
A story of bounty.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
You know, so many women have so much trouble getting
pregnant and you just keep having babies. And you know what,
God bless you for loving these babies no matter what
the relationship is, no matter whether they were planned or not.
You know, I have so many friends that they're seemingly
the youngest.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Wow, this has happened with my generation.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
But they're the youngest and they had, you know, their
next in the order is you know, ten fifteen years
ahead of them, and they call themselves oopsie babies, and
yet they're smailed rotten because by that time, the parents
have you know, raised all these other kids and then
here comes the kid that they didn't expect and they
didn't think mom could get pregnant anymore, but she did.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Yep, we were definitely been wasn't our plan to have five,
but we're definitely still very fortunate for these children that
God's given us. And having worked I work with adopted
parents every day and they struggle with fertility, and so
I especially realized the just the humbling gifts that it
(21:45):
is that I was able to.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
I think that's absolutely right. And I think that you
have been, as most true faithful Christians are, you have
been open to God's direction in your life that may
not have seemed like the perfect journey or the perfect film,
But somehow, with enough love and care and hard work
(22:13):
and you know, plenty of tears, you get there. And
I see these journeys you know, somewhere down the road,
and you do.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
You just get there.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
You figure out how to make it work, and it's
not always easy, but at the end of it all,
you're delighted that you did, Leah before we let you go.
Are there any other resources you would recommend for folks
who are going through some aspect of all of this.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
One would be that I have a book if you're
curious about more of the details of what it's on,
the emotions of the experiences and in the hospital experience,
and how her parents and my support system important being
loved me through the years, and also just what it
looks like up until she was eighteen. So have a
nonprofit called the Ampersan Initiatives, and that is our post
(23:05):
placement resource to help not just birth parents, but also
adoptive parents and adoptees and kinship care foster care to
have retreats that are in a really safe, beautiful environment
and having fun, because you know, cultivating community and healing
can be a lot of heavy, you know, peers and
hard work, but it also you know, there's a lot
(23:26):
of healing that comes with joy, laughter, and you know,
being in beautiful places. So we have that as well,
and we have educational topics online that will help with
adoptive parents or just anybody involved that wants to learn
more about from a birth mom and just other people
in the adoption community. And then her Plan of course
(23:50):
is a great resource that someone is struggling with an
unexpected pregnancy and needs resources that they can guide you
national wide to to find those support networks near you.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
God bless you, Leah Alton. Thank you for sharing your story.
You just never know who'll hear it and it'll make
a difference for them. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
I looked at him, and they looked at me, you know,
and I just looked at her and I have to
just get yourself and get out that Michael Verysho I
read over.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
And got a newspaper and I wrote it up.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
I slapped him on the nose that.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Our great annual tradition on our Thanksgiving edition, which is
the Friday before the following Thursday, is to play Rush
Limbaugh's The Meaning of Thanksgiving in honor of the Great,
the irreplaceable Rush Limbaugh.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
The true story of Thanksgiving, The story of the Pilgrims
begins in the early part of the seventeenth century. The
Church of England, under King James the First was persecuting
anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil
and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those
who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned,
(25:07):
and sometimes executed.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
For their beliefs. A group of separatists.
Speaker 5 (25:11):
First fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years,
about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey
to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships,
but could live and worship God according to the.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Dictates of their own consciences.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
On August first, sixteen to twenty, the Mayflowers set sail.
It carried a total of one hundred two passengers, including
forty Pilgrims, led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford
set up an agreement a contract the established just and
equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective
of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed
(25:52):
in an eight flower compact come from?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
They came from the Bible.
Speaker 5 (25:55):
The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons
of the old.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
And newteil estimates.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example, and
because of the biblical precedent set forth in scripture, they
never doubted that their experiment would work.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
But it was no pleasure cruise.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
The journey to the New World was a long and
arduous one, and when the Pilgrims landed in New England
in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren,
desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote,
There were no houses to shelter them. There were no
inns where they could refresh themselves in The sacrifice that
(26:34):
they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the
first winter, half the Pilgrims, including Bradford's own wife, died
neither starvation, sickness.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Or exposure.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to
plant corn fish for cod and skim beavers for coats.
Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet
prosper and this is important to understand because this is
where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually
explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the
(27:07):
Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives,
rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in
the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Here's the part that's been omitted.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their
merchant sponsors in London called for everything they produced to
go into a common store, and each member of the
community was entitled a one common share. All of the
land that they cleared and the houses they built belonged
to the community as well, and they were going to
distribute it equally. All the land they cleared, the houses
(27:41):
they built belonged to the community. Nobody owned anything, they
just had a share in it. It was a commune.
It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in
the sixties and seventies out in California. And it was
a complete with organic vegetables, even just like the communes.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Of today are.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
God No, there's no question, it was organic vegetables. Bradford,
who had become a new governor of the colony, recognized
that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive
to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter which had
taken so many lives.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
He decided to take bold action.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
Bradford assigned a plot of land in each family to
work and manage, thus turning loose to power in the marketplace.
Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had
discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism,
and what happened. It didn't work, but nearly starved, never
(28:40):
has worked. What Bradford in his community found was that
the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to
work any harder than anybody else unless they could utilize
the power of personal motivation.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
But while most of the rest of the world has.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
Been experimenting with socialism for well over one hundred years,
trying to refine it, perfect it, and reinvent it, the
Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford
wrote about this social experiment should be in every school
child's history lesson if it were, we might prevent such
needless suffering in the future, such as that we are
(29:15):
enduring now. The experience that we had in this common
course and condition, This is Bradford, the experience we had
in this common course and condition, tired or tried Sunday years,
that by taking away property and bringing community into a
commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they
(29:36):
were wiser than God. Bradford wrote, for this community, so
far as it was was found to breed much confusion
and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been
to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were
most able and fit for labor and service, did repine
that they should spend their time and strength to work
for other men's wives and children without being paid for.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
It was thought injustice.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Why should you work for other people when you can't
work for yourself?
Speaker 2 (30:04):
What's the point, That's what he was saying.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to
do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's
community try next? They unharnished the power of good old
free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private
property every family was assigned its own plot of land
(30:31):
to work, and permitted to market its own crops and products.
What was the result, Bradford wrote, this had very good success,
for it made all hands industrious, so as much more
corn was planted than otherwise would have been.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Is it possible that supply side economics could have existed
before the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (30:54):
Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis forty one.
Following Joseph's suggestion, Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to
twenty percent during the seven years of plenty, and the
earth brought forth in heaps well. At no time the
pilgrims found that they had more food than they could
eat themselves. Now this this is where it gets really
(31:15):
good if you're laboring under the misconception that I was
as I was taught in school. They set up trading posts,
they exchanged goods with the Indians. The prophits allowed them
to pay off their debts to the merchants in London,
and the success and the prosperity of the Plymouth settlement
(31:37):
attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known
as the Great Puritan Migration. But this story stops when
the Indians taught the newly arrived suffering in socialism pilgrims
how to plant corn and fish for cod. That's where
the original thankshaving story stops. Story basically doesn't even begin there.
(31:59):
The real story of Thanksgiving is William Bradford giving thanks
to God for the guidance and the inspiration to set
up a thriving columny that socialism caused near starvation.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
The bounty was shared with the Indians.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
They did sit down, they did have free range turkey
and organic vegetables. But it wasn't the Indians who saved
the day. It was capitalism and scripture which saved the day,
as acknowledged by George Washington in his first Thanksgiving Proclamation
(32:43):
in seventeen eighty nine.
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