Nashville event to host pro-life advocate on fatherlessness in America, 'the most ignored crisis by the Left'
Ryan Bomberger, co-founder and chief creative officer of The Radiance Foundation in Loudon County, Virginia, has long spoken out about his pro-life beliefs.
This year, he will be speaking at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, which takes place from Feb. 20 to Feb. 23.
In advance of the event, he told Fox News Digital on Monday morning, "The climate change we should all be most concerned about today is the one in the home. The U.S. sadly leads with the most single parent households in the world — and the vast majority (80%) of those are single female-led homes."
FOUNDER OF SAFE HAVEN BABY BOXES SHARES HER STORY AND HOPE FOR THE FUTURE: ‘A GOD-GIVEN PURPOSE’
He added that the absence of fathers in the home "is an epidemic — and its impact on the family, the community and society is devastating."
Bomberger called this "most ignored crisis by the Left, which falsely insists that mothers and fathers are either interchangeable or disposable."
Bomberger said that "nothing can replace a father. Not a woman. Not a live-in boyfriend. Not government insistence programs (which insist that fathers stay out of the picture)," he added in comments included in a press release that was shared with Fox News Digital.
"Today’s popular culture would like to think that family can be defined in any way, but there are clear differences in outcomes for children," he added ahead of his appearance in Nashville.
"Neither nature nor God intended for women to play both the role of mother and father. We don’t disparage single parents, especially those who do all they can to provide for their child(ren) — but we must highlight the ideal, the model that brings the most benefit to our children and to our society," said Bomberger.
Recent data from the U.S. census (2022 data) indicated some 18.3 million children in America live without a father in the home — comprising roughly one in four children.
Kids raised in homes without fathers or father figures are more likely to "face abuse and neglect, drop out of school, abuse drugs and alcohol, suffer obesity, and even go to prison," according to the same census, said Bomberger.
The Radiance Foundation stresses the importance of fathers as part of a "happy, healthy family" — and believes that "masculinity should be celebrated, not discounted."
Bomberger himself was adopted as a child — and in previous comments to Fox News Digital, he praised the parents who took him into their home years ago and embraced him as their own. "My mom and my dad are the most amazing people I’ve known," he said.
He said his "birth mom experienced the horror and violence of rape" — and that he, Bomberger, is the product of that rape.
He is grateful, he said, to have been given the chance at life and to have been welcomed into a loving, compassionate family that includes 12 siblings, nine of whom were adopted from neglectful, abusive or poverty-ridden situations.
"None of us would've been better off dead," he said. "We're better off loved."
Bomberger's wife, Bethany, co-founded The Radiance Foundation with him — and experienced dramatic circumstances herself.
NEW BOOK, A DEVOTIONAL CALLED ‘LIGHT FOR TODAY,’ MAY HELP OPEN EYES TO GOD ‘AS A LIVING REALITY’
Before the couple met, she left an abusive relationship, learning later that she was pregnant.
At the time, "she felt a sense of shame that, as a teacher in the inner-city Philadelphia schools, she herself was in the [very] place" that she hoped her own students would not occupy, Bethany Bomberger told Fox News Digital previously.
However, she held firm, saw herself through the pregnancy — and gave birth to a daughter.
"That little girl radically and beautifully changed her life," said Ryan Bomberger. "Her name is Radiance — we call her Rai Rai. We named the foundation after her."
The Bomberger family today includes three other siblings as well, two of whom were adopted.
In Nashville, Bomberger plans to speak about faith, fatherhood and masculinity, Fox News Digital is told.
He stands strongly against abortion.
"When a child is conceived, a man becomes a father," said Bomberger. "The abortion industry has created a culture of abandonment that denies this biological and social reality."
CDC data indicates that 87% of women who have abortions are unmarried.
"Responsibility has become someone else’s concern, and the solution to ‘unplanned’ pregnancies — the natural result of sexual behavior — is death," said Bomberger.
"Most often, an innocent child is left defenseless by the absence of a father."
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER
Added Bomberger, "We emphasize love over anything else. Identity politics are not going to help us regard human dignity any better — but loving one another does."
Pro-abortion groups and mainstream media really "don't know what to do with me," he also said.
"I’m brown, adopted, passionately pro-life — and also an adoptive father."
The Radiance Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit group that "affirms that every human life has a God-given purpose."
Deirdre Reilly contributed reporting.
For more Lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews.com/lifestyle.