Faithful watchers of the Olympics experience a letdown after the games are over. This year, with viewership in a freefall, there was likely not enough enthusiasm for there even to be a letdown on Monday morning. Many have tired of the politicization of this year’s games, which started before the opening ceremonies. Patriotism, courage and even “historic performance” were redefined in Tokyo, and for the worse.
However, there is one protest, a quiet one, that demands our respect from the 2021 Olympics. Female athletes who are mothers earned well-deserved attention. Not merely with social-media statements or corporate endorsements, but for winning medals and advocating for life. This Olympic narrative is not only heroic but counter-cultural in women’s sports.
In 2008, gold-medal favorite Sanya Richards-Ross boarded a plane for the Beijing Olympics Games after visiting an abortion clinic. Her husband, Aaron Ross, was in practice with the New York Giants, so Richards-Ross terminated her pregnancy alone. She came home with a bronze medal, writing later, “I made a decision that broke me.” Richards-Ross went on to say that every female athlete she knows has had an abortion.
This year, the U.S. Women’s Olympic track-and-field team replaced a star runner in the 200-meters hurdles after she was slapped with a five-year ban on competition. The runner failed to follow anti-doping procedures because she was “traumatized after having an abortion.” Her trauma lingers now even as she is facing repercussions for responding as she did to the anti-doping process. McNeal now speaks out against the pressure female athletes face in choosing career over motherhood.
Now a truly historic performance in the 2021 Olympics Games may change this narrative in profound ways. Allyson Felix is the most-decorated track star in U.S. history. Tokyo was her fifth and final Olympics games, and she has left with two more Olympic medals. Perhaps she will display them beside a picture of her 2-year-old daughter, whom she carried and gave birth to despite pressures to abort her. The decision to carry her child nearly cost Felix her life.