“It’s more than just a passion, it’s more than just legislation, it’s more than just action for us.”
Washington, D.C. – On Thursday, U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a father of six kids—three of whom are adopted, stood beside U.S. Senators James Lankford (R-OK), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Roger Marshall (R-KS), and abortion survivors in a press conference ahead of the March for Life. During the press conference, Republican Senators called out Senate Democrats for blocking the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act on the Senate floor Wednesday. Senator Mullin then shared his family’s personal story in the fight for life.
Watch the senator’s full remarks here.
On he and his wife’s attempts at starting a family:
“I was asked to share our story. My wife and I’s story on why were so pro-life. It’s more than just a passion, it’s more than just legislation, it’s more than just action for us. My wife and I, we got married when we were 19 and 18. We were high school sweethearts, elementary sweethearts, she just knew she couldn’t do any better once she got me. For seven years, we tried to have kids. Seven years into it we got pregnant for the first time and we found out on Christmas morning. So exciting, Christmas morning of 2001. It was actually what my wife gave me for Christmas was a pregnancy test. We went to the doctor several weeks later, and we heard the heartbeat for the first time. And how excited I was, and how excited I was that we started picking out names. As the pregnancy progressed there was more information coming out and we were getting very excited at this point. Unfortunately, at one of the later doctor’s appointment, the heartbeat was gone. That was a death to us. It was no longer a fetus, it wasn’t this thing, that was a death. That was a death of a child that my wife and I had been praying about, been seeking for years. The worst part is it affected me, it affected my wife even more because her body had been through the changes along the way.”
On gratitude for his family, and the ongoing fight for life:
“Fortunately for us, it was nine months later, almost exactly nine months later that we got pregnant with our first biological son. After that we went on to have three more biological kids and now today were the proud parents of six kids. As I say we have three that came natural and three we chose. So which ones do you think we love the most? The ones we got stuck with or the ones that we got to pick? We have two beautiful twin girls that are 14 years old now and we got a wonderful guy that wrestles at Oklahoma State and he’s 21. All three of them came into our lives at different stages. The girls came into our lives at two years old, Jace came into our lives much later. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think their birth mother made such a brave decision to give Christie and I, an opportunity to be loved by them.”
On the importance of adoption:
“I know people say ‘well no you’re loving them’ and people always come up to us all the time and say ‘hey, I bet you’re just such a blessing to them.’ No, they’re a blessing to us every single day. Every single day my heart grows because I have six kids. But if we’re gonna be pro-life, than we also have to be pro-adoption. Because if we want the mother to go through the process, than we have to make sure that child lands in a loving family along the way. If you think, ‘well I don’t have the resources or the capability,’ I promise you, you do. If you were concerned like I was with my wife who talked to me for months trying to get me to agree to adopt our twins, and I would say ‘babe, we’ll write a check, we’ll support them financially, that’s easy.’ And she said, ‘babe would you just pray about it?’…
“I think all of us that are pro-life have a responsibility to all the born [and unborn] children who are on the way.”
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