'I, a child of rape, extol my mother's heroism'

Since pro-abortionists first lobbied for the legal right to suppress a baby’s life, it has always flaunted extreme cases to convince the public their concern was for women to justify their cause. The immediate death of the baby was unquestionably better than the prolonged distress of a pregnancy, they claimed. Indeed, if the pregnancy resulted from the barbaric gang rape of an orphaned teenager with the mental age of an 11 year old, as happened in the United States to Glenda Holt, pro-abortionists would cry out: “you see how necessary and good abortion is”. That the death of the baby would at least eliminate the life changing consequences of such a horrific crime, even if it can never heal the psychological trauma.

Instead, Glenda Holt fled the State institution ordering her to have an abortion to save her son today called Steventhen Holland. Then with the same selfless love gave her baby up to adoption because she couldn’t take care of it herself. Their miraculous story and reunion is retold by Mr Holland in his autobiography, The Journey: Brokeness to Wholeness.

Today, Mr Holland, 41, is an author, singer-songwriter, motivational speaker, national pro-life speaker, and ministry founder of Broken not Dead. He is happily married and lives in Alabama, USA, with his wife Rachel Holland, and their three daughters. Looking back on his life, (watch video here) he still marvels at the gratuitous love he has received beginning with his mother’s courage “to choose life for him”. “My mom was mentally challenged, she was raped, she was homeless, all these things that were against us or against me”, but she knew the value of life. “God put in my mum’s heart to fight for me” because “God had a purpose for my life”, says Mr Holland.  Every part of my story, the good and the bad, has a role to play”, he says.

Glenda Sue Holt, Mr. Holland’s birth mother was a ward of the state of Georgia her entire life. Mr. Holland knows little about his mother’s health except that she “only functioned at an 11-year-old’s mental capacity.” When Ms. Holt reached 18, she had to leave her group home and moved to a psychiatric facility where she was set up with a work program walking distance from the campus. “One evening on her way back from that job, she was raped by five men of colour  and from that attack on her, from that rape, she got pregnant with me”, Mr Holt recounts. Glenda decided not to tell anyone about what had happened to her and months passed before her pregnancy began to show. When it did, the staff immediately pressured her to terminate the pregnancy. But, Glenda wanted to keep her baby and felt  her only option was to run away to save its life.

Ms Holt found her way to Whitwell in Tennessee. When she was nine months pregnant she was discovered by a 16-year-old boy, playing truant from school, living in a cardboard box behind an old grocery store. The boy profoundly moved by her plight took her home to his family who let her stay with them until she gave birth to her son. “Seven days later, she dropped me off at Human Services,” Mr. Holland said. “I was on the same bottle of formula I left the hospital with. Literally, I was so malnourished, my legs were drawn up into my body. I was so weak I couldn’t suck a bottle. ... She couldn’t take care of me so they dropped me off there, hoping that I would have a chance at life.”

Steventhen was taken into foster care by the Holland family who worked night and day to save his life, “squeezing milk into his mouth and massaging his legs”, he says. He had no idea he was adopted until he was eight years old when kids at school began to tease him about his skin colour which was different to members of his family. “They weren’t hiding it from me, they were just waiting on the time for me to realise,” Mr Holland said speaking about his adoptive parents to The Epoch Times. “This family, even though my colour was different than theirs, they believed that love goes deeper than DNA, our colour, or our blood, so they told me, from the moment that I was placed into their arms as a 7-day-old child, that I was their son.”

But, the question, “Why didn’t my birth mom want me?”, tormented Steventhen from that moment on. The traumatic experience of his wife Rachel miscarrying their first and third baby, left him wondering if it was his fault. Perhaps there was a medical problem in his biological family. It prompted Mr Holland to try to find his birth-mother. He knew her name was Glenda Sue Holt from his birth certificate, and those of other members of the family from records his adopted mum had kept for him. On the third day of his research, he found Ms Holt’s older brother, his uncle, Steve Holt, a magician and ventriloquist from South Carolina. Two months later, they arranged to meet. This is when Steventhen discovered his mother had been one of six siblings who had lost their parents at an early age and had entered foster care or group homes. Steve Holt is the only sibling without a disability. Mr. Holland also learned that his mother was still alive, aged 46 at that time, and was living in a residential facility in Georgia. The day after the meeting, Mr. Holland 27, and his uncle Mr. Holt drove down together to visit her.

We decided “my uncle did a magic show for the residents,” Mr. Holland said. “We knew it would be heavy and we didn’t know how she would react, so we kind of wanted to lighten the mood. This plan that we had was to do this private interaction in her room, away from everyone, but God just had a different plan. I had a camera rolling ... we were able to capture that reunion. Mr. Holland took the stage and began to sing Amazing Grace (watch video here) with his mum by his side. When he faltered at the second verse, overcome with emotion, his mom stepped in and finished the song: “I’m crying, I’m speechless, I can’t say anything, and she looks at me, and she says, ‘Son, I love you. I always have and always will, and I would have never given you up if I could have kept you.’” After that first encounter, Mr. Holland has always called his mum “my hero”. His family enjoyed 11 precious years with Ms. Holt before she passed away on Thanksgiving night of 2020 at the age of 57.

Since then, Steventhen Holland has dedicated himself to the life movement and for the last two years is one of the top three most booked pro-life speakers in the America. “If it wasn’t for the Lord, I don’t think any of this would have happened. I have a story that He’s given me that I can share with the world to bring hope to people. I hope, and I pray it saves other babies,” he says.