Whose Choice Anyway

Page 66

I am a biased supporter because my eldest child is adopted. He was socially unacceptable to his natural mother but an abortion would have robbed me of a lifetime of pleasure and pride. That looks as if she did not want him. She did, but for reasons I understand she felt she could not keep him. I know she felt guilt about the adoption, but how would she have felt if he had had no life at all?

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I was born in 1955 - my natural mother was single. I was adopted at six weeks and I thank God that abortion laws were what they were that I might have been allowed to live. Every child deserves a chance to live.

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Sometimes I feel guilty about being allowed to live. My natural mother was single and had me adopted. But with all the things that people say about the women choosing I wonder what my mother went through to have me. My adopted parents love me a great deal and I feel as if they are truly my own. But every day I think of my mother , and I hope that what I have done in my life would make her proud. I am a nurse and I have married a doctor. We have three children of our own and all of that would not have been if my mother had had me aborted. But I do feel guilty sometimes that I must have put her through a lot. The last letter of this section arrived anonymously with permission to use as we wished. It was such a lovely thank you to all the women who have given up their children to others if they could not keep them that we publish it here. Sometimes I wish I had known you. I wish I could have shared him with you as he grew up. What it must have been like for you all these years - never to see him as he learned to talk, to stagger about after his kitten. His first Christmas, his christening when he had to have so many godparents because everyone wanted to be more than just an aunt or uncle. His hair curled, you would not have known that, nor how very good looking he was, and is. I think the best part of me wanted you to know that he would be loved and admired all his life even when I handed the shawl back to the lady who had brought him from your arms to mine, in another room. You wanted the shawl as a memento and that is all you have had.


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