She gifted me with my life, even though at first she was uncertain about it, and even though she had to change the plans she had made for herself and her future.
My mom, Naomi Barber, was courting my dad, Rev. A.D. King, in 1950. She was a freshman at Spellman College in Atlanta and she had big dreams. But as their relationship got more serious, they made the choice not to wait for the wedding night. When she realized she was pregnant, her first thought was to have an abortion.
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Abortion wasn’t legal then but it was available. The American Birth Control League, the forerunner of Planned Parenthood, tried to convince my mother the baby growing in her womb was just a lump of flesh and that she should try a procedure called a D&C, which they described as a clever solution to female problems.
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Thankfully, before she made that fatal choice, my mother told her mother about her pregnancy and her plan to end it. My grandmother suggested seeking the counsel of their minister, who just happened to be the man who would be my paternal grandfather, Rev. Martin Luther King Sr.
My Uncle Martin – Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. – famously had a dream that helped change the nation. My grandfather also had a dream, and it helped save my life.
Daddy King, as he’s known in the family, told my mother, “Naomi, you can’t abort this baby. I saw her in a dream three years ago. She is not a lump of flesh. She is a little girl with light skin and bright red hair.” That was me.
By stressing the humanity of the child in my mother’s womb, Daddy King employed a strategy we still use to this day in the pro-life movement. Just this week, Priests for Life – where I am a pastoral associate and head the Civil Rights for the Unborn project – kicked off a campaign called “My Heart Beats Just Like Yours.”
In 1950 there was no ultrasound to show my mother the flashing white light of my heartbeat, but Daddy King knew it was there.
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