Evansville anti-abortion banquet: 'Your baby has 10 fingers and 10 toes'

EVANSVILLE — Walking into an abortion clinic 29 years ago, David Scotton's teenaged birth mother passed anti-abortion activists who were praying and beseeching her and other women not to go through with it.

One of them looked at her and uttered a few words that changed everything, Scotton told more than 2,000 people Thursday at Right to Life of Southwest Indiana's annual banquet.

"(She) said, 'Your baby has 10 fingers and 10 toes,'" Scotton said.

More: Actor Kirk Cameron will headline Right to Life banquet in August

Some of the crowd inside Old National Events Plaza's cavernous ballroom leaned forward, listening intently. A few murmurs could be heard.

The teenaged girl continued inside the clinic, Scotton said, and "was actually on the abortion doctor's table ready to abort her child when she thought back to what the lady outside the clinic had told her."

"She felt the calling from God and realized that her baby was real, that her baby was special and that her baby was meant for someone special," Scotton said. "She decided to leave that abortion clinic and choose adoption. And that's how I'm here today."

Scotton, an attorney and prominent adoption advocate, saw his story made into the documentary film, "I Lived on Parker Avenue," which was in turn the basis for the 2022 film "Lifemark," starring Kirk Cameron.

Cameron, a Los Angeles-based conservative actor-writer-producer, shared the stage with Scotton Thursday night. Best known for co-starring in the 1980s sitcom, "Growing Pains" and the "Left Behind" film series, Cameron urged banquet attendees to embrace adoption as an alternative to abortion.

More: Crowd of 2,400 hears Pence, former Planned Parenthood worker at Right to Life banquet

And he urged his listeners not to buy into media narratives or lose heart in the face of fierce opposition.

"All throughout history, the times where revivals have happened, where great awakenings have taken place, around the world and in this country — have always been at times of moral decline, spiritual apathy and economic collapse," Cameron said. "And God has always worked through a small group of people who were outnumbered, outfunded, outgunned, who were principled people who didn't quit."

Christians and anti-abortion supporters can't counter all the evil in the world around them at once, Cameron said.

"But what we can do is everything that is in us while God has given you and me the breath and placed us on the stage of his world, at this chapter in his story, to fight for what is right," he said. Cameron landed forcefully on the word, "fight."

Abortion rights protests lacked last year's punch

Banquet attendees made it clear they share Cameron's moral certainty.

College student Maura Kluesner said her faith helps explain her anti-abortion beliefs, but "I honestly think it's mostly about morals."

"God created everyone in his image, and I don’t think he made a mistake forming something in the womb," Kluesner said.

Evansville resident Gretchen Miller said abortion is wrong.

"I love human beings, and I think people should be able to have the right to live, no matter any circumstance," Miller said. "Any circumstance. There’s no circumstance where a human shouldn’t get to live."

More: Ohio held a referendum with repercussions for abortion. Here's why Indiana won't do that.

Outside Old National Events Plaza before the banquet, several abortion rights protestors chanted and waved signs. Miller said they "need to feel loved, maybe."

"I think there’s a lack of love and understanding of what true love is, so I think maybe they’re missing out on that, unfortunately," she said.

This year's Right to Life banquet did not attract the level of abortion rights protests that marked last year's event, held two months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark legal decision that had established a federally protected right to abortion since 1973.

Last year, more than 50 protesters stood outside of Old National Events Plaza in support of abortion rights. The majority of the group had traveled down the block from Someplace Else nightclub as a part of the "Woe vs. Rage; We’ll CEED You in Hell" event planned by local group Collective Efforts for Equity and Diversity.

Anti-abortion banquet is an event with a history

In a special legislative session last year, Indiana lawmakers passed a near-total abortion ban.

For instances of rape or incest, abortion is allowed up to ten weeks. Fetal anomaly abortions are permitted up to 20 weeks. In addition, a person who has a religious objection to not being able to receive an abortion would still likely be able to receive an abortion because of the Hoosier Jews for Choice court case that has yet to be decided.

The annual spring banquet — Right to Life of Southwest Indiana calls it the largest "pro-life" dinner in America — is an event with a history.

The dinner drew more than 3,000 people when 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin and conservative author and commentator Candace Owens spoke in 2009 and 2021, respectively.

In April 2009, Palin, then Alaska's governor, chose the event to make her first major public appearance outside her state since her unsuccessful 2008 vice-presidential campaign. Palin was, at the time, one of the nation's hottest political properties.

The banquet also is Right to Life's primary fundraising event. A table for 10 cost $680, and individual tickets could be purchased for $68 each.

The organization says the funds raised support programs and projects such as installing and maintaining Safe Haven Baby Boxes at local fire departments, providing diapers to local pregnancy resource centers, "educating students and empowering them to make healthy life choices" and funding the Go Mobile Clinic, a traveling pregnancy resource center that provides care for pregnant women in Southwest Indiana.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Evansville anti-abortion banquet: 'Your baby has 10 fingers and 10 toes'