On Saturday [Oct. 12, 2013], she was voted Miss Homecoming 2013 by the student body at Auburn University after weeks of sharing her platform, which tells of how Dutton’s birth mother made the decision to sacrifice her marriage and give Dutton up for adoption, as opposed to having an abortion, after surviving a sexual assault.

AUBURN, Alabama — When Auburn University senior Molly Anne Dutton elected to share the story of her birth mother’s decision to choose adoption over abortion as part of her “Light up Life” campaign for Miss Homecoming 2013, she was worried about how her fellow students would respond to it.

In the months of planning, it never occurred to the 22-year-old that she might need to consider how the nation would perceive it as well.

“I keep saying the word bananas,” said Dutton, who hasappeared on ‘Fox and Friends’ and in national publications since her crowning. “It’s been bananas. A good word for it is surreal because it’s hard for me to believe. I don’t think I was on national television, but I guess I was. When we were getting this campaign ready, we worried about how the Auburn student body would take it. Never in our minds were we trying to comprehend how the national public was going to take on this story.”

Dutton’s concern was completely, 100 percent unnecessary.

On Saturday [Oct. 12, 2013], she was voted Miss Homecoming 2013 by the student body at Auburn University after weeks of sharing her platform, which tells of how Dutton’s birth mother made the decision to sacrifice her marriage and give Dutton up for adoption, as opposed to having an abortion, after surviving a sexual assault.

While Dutton said she wasn’t quite prepared for the attention her back story brought on, it has been a pleasant surprise that has created more opportunities to tell a wider audience about her experience.

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