Better To Have Been Aborted

It may surprise a reader to know this, but many adoptees actually wish they would have been aborted. That is how painful it is to be given up for adoption and doubly painful if the adopting parents prove to further damage an already damaged soul.

I am pro-Choice and pro-life. Not pro-Life like most of those are. They are only pro-Birth, truth be told. They are not willing to fund adequate financial support to struggling mothers so that they can keep and raise their children.

The world has enough people already. We do NOT need to be fruitful and multiply any more. In fact, we have not needed to do that for a very long time. The population explosion first occurred on a small scale and with a relatively moderate intensity in Europe and America, more or less between 1750 and 1950. Enough is enough. If a couple wants to have children and is willing to fully support raising them, I’m all for it. Otherwise, trust women to make the best decision and stop stressing over the babies you imagine they have killed.

I fully understand what it feels like for a child to be born into this world unwanted and unprepared for. My maternal grandmother never had any other children because of the shame and guilt she felt at having surrendered a child for adoption. She died too young and I fear what happened to separate her from my mom haunted her for her entire life.

I am a woman who chose to have an abortion. The timing was wrong, the father was wrong to make any kind of commitment and the pregnancy was not developing normally. I am grateful I could go to a clean clinic, where I received counseling and good treatment. It still haunted me. I had a child before the abortion who I am forever glad I kept (even though some circumstances at the time of her conception suggested I should not have – I knew she would be just fine and she was/is). I am a woman who went on to have two very wanted sons when I entered into a marriage to a good man who wanted to be a good father and he is.

DNA Changes Everything

The thought that a woman can carry a developing baby in her womb for the full gestation term and give birth, then abandon that baby in harsh circumstances is truly beyond my own understanding. While I am Pro-Life (and my definition means not only birthing but supporting every mother and child, which some of the fanatics don’t go that far, just saying) and yet want abortion to remain safe and legal, there are better ways of dealing with a child if the mother can’t cope with raising that baby.

Yet another story of DNA discovering the identity of a mother who abandoned her baby came to my awareness today. Police have worked with forensic genealogists to analyze the DNA of deceased abandoned babies and their probable mother utilizing genealogy websites, the same technique that in 2018 helped investigators to identify the suspected Golden State Killer. The new technology understandably alarms privacy advocates while it honestly excites law enforcement officials who say that it provides a crucial new tool for identifying criminals.

On January 2 1988, police found a newborn swaddled in blankets, resting at the base of a tree that was hidden from the road. He had died of exposure to the frigid weather. The baby was named David Paul and buried in Walnut Grove Cemetery by police in Meriden Connecticut.

Not only is DNA matching helping adoptees in closed adoptions rediscover their original families as it has definitely assisted me but it is also discovering these tragic mothers. It was on the 32nd anniversary of the dead child’s discovery that two detectives confronted the woman who was indeed his mother.

She said that, “she had been waiting 32 years for the day in which the police would be knocking on her door regarding this incident.” What an awful secret to live for decades knowing. Colleen Fitzpatrick of IdentiFinders International chose to use this baby’s case to test whether autosomal SNP testing could help identify people from their DNA. In the months that followed, she used the genealogical website GEDmatch to map the baby’s and mother’s family trees.

The baby’s mother did express remorse for abandoning him. She admitted that she was in a bad state of mind when her baby was born. Then 25, she said she hid her pregnancy under loose clothing and delivered the child by herself at home. She also did try to save him by calling a local fire department and telling them in vague language that there was something they needed to look for in the parking lot. Sadly, the first responders did not know that they were looking for a baby and so did not find him.

The mother will not be charged because the state has a 20-year statute of limitations on manslaughter cases. She may feel some relief that what she did is no longer a secret.

Complicated

I’ve been following threads this morning that touch on a topic that I have struggled with before. It is complicated. I am pro-Life in a pro-Choice way. I believe it is a woman’s right to choose and I am deeply concerned about efforts to overturn Roe v Wade. I just read yesterday that an amicus curie brief was released in which 205 Republican lawmakers, including 39 senators, have asked the Supreme Court to consider whether the 1973 protection of the right to an abortion “should be reconsidered and, if appropriate, overruled.”

Personally, I once resisted the suggestion to have an abortion. My husband was a heroin addict and had developed hepatitis. We had a nephew with severe birth defects. My husband was concerned that our baby would also have negative impacts. I don’t know why but I just knew she was perfect and defended her life. She is perfect.

Yet, then I became pregnant under worrisome conditions. I was taking exotic drugs of a psychedelic nature frequently. My partner was not the kind of man who was going to be a supportive father. I was not in a financial position to raise a child on my own. I had already voluntarily surrendered my daughter to her paternal grandmother while I tried to get on my feet financially. Shades of my maternal grandmother and how she lost my mom to adoption.

I had an abortion because it was safe and legal. It was not an easy decision to live with, I will admit that. It haunted me a bit. I remember a message coming into my awareness that my son would come back when the timing was better. It would happen 25 years later. A son was born into a stable marriage with good circumstances. Interestingly, my daughter had a similar experience with a still birth and when she became pregnant again, had the same kind of knowing that this was the same son’s soul that was lost before.

I have some concern about a missionary zeal that takes babies from vulnerable young women in order to indoctrinate them into evangelical Christian orthodoxy. Yet, I also recognize that homelessness and drug use and a lack of financial and familial supports are a serious issue. I have concerns that Roe v Wade will be overturned and young women will return to back alley abortions in their desperation.

I don’t really have answers to any of this. Just concerns that are on my mind this morning. Personally, I believe we live these lives to learn and develop at the soul level and that there are no mistakes, no death and an eternity in which to expand our awareness.

The Modern Foundling Wheel

Safe Haven Baby Box – Indiana

I first read about this concept in the book Mother Nature by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy while I lay in hospital having just delivered my oldest son. Mothers could abandon newborn babies anonymously in a safe place known as a Foundling Wheel. This kind of arrangement was common in the Middle Ages and in the 18th and 19th centuries.

A modern form, the baby hatch, began to be introduced again from 1952 and since 2000 has come into use in many countries, notably in Germany and Pakistan but exists in countries all over the world under various names.

Now in the United States, there is the Safe Haven Baby Box which is found in Indiana. Although every state in the US has a Safe Haven Law, anonymity is the benefit of the Baby Box. A Safe Haven Law requires the one relinquishing the baby to actually walk in to an authorized facility and physically hand the child off to a person. The one relinquishing is going to be asked some questions.

I am decidedly pro-Life because 9 months is a lot to ask of any woman who does not want to or cannot for whatever reason parent a child. However, if abortion is not accessible for whatever reason, an anonymous method of giving the child away safely is preferable to infanticide. And no, I do not think abortion is infanticide though there are plenty who would argue the point with me.

Although a baby left in a Baby Box is not going to know anything about their origins, inexpensive DNA tests and matching sites could still reveal some things about their origins in a future time once they reach adulthood. I know, it worked for me. No, I wasn’t relinquished but both of my parents were.

Supporting Mothers and Children

It is not surprising that more women are delaying motherhood in our current time. It can be difficult to find the kind of support that gives a woman confidence in becoming a mom. In my mom’s group, we also have women who chose to have children without a spouse, having given up on finding the quality of person they felt would be a supportive parent.

After I met my husband, I told my doctor that he was the kind of person I would be willing to become a mother again with and after ten years of marriage, we made the decision to add parenthood to our life as a couple. Previously, I had a child who I still adore and found there was no support for myself as a single mother after I felt compelled to divorce her father. So, I was understandably reluctant to go into motherhood again but this time it worked out. There are always bumps along the way in any relationship but we have made it through them so far and our two sons are almost grown.

70% of all moms are working mothers. 25% are the primary breadwinner in their family. Almost half of all two parent families find both parents employed outside the home. The realities of modern life are – it is difficult to support any family on one employment option. And our society only cares about the unborn and not children once they are born when a woman has to support her family without any financial assistance from a partner. That I think is a real tragedy.

In a Pew Research Center analysis – there were 9 million mothers living with a child younger than 18 without a spouse or partner. Solo motherhood is particularly common among black mothers (56% are in this category). By comparison, 26% of Hispanic moms, 17% of white moms and 9% of Asian moms are solo parents. (Solo parenthood is far less common among fathers: 7% of dads are raising a child without a spouse or partner in the home.)

For my own self, Pro-Life would be full support for parents raising children if the available resources fall below what is adequate to provide the basic necessities. Until then, I believe we fail the morality test as a society.

Abandoned Babies

Gary Gatwick

Today, I read the story about the baby that was abandoned in 1986 at the Gatwick Airport. He was later adopted, had a decent childhood and attempted to locate his birth family after having a child himself. He has been successful but much like my own mother, discovered that the woman who gave birth to him has died and thus, he’ll never get the answer to the question closest to his heart of “why?”.

Not that long ago, I also read a story titled The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me by Paul Joseph Fronczak. His was also the story of a search for his authentic roots.

People who are not adopted or abandoned often do not understand why knowing one’s true identity is so important to some of us. A writer friend of mine once asked – “If the adoptive family was good, why does it matter?” As I talked to her about it, she came to understand how most people actually take such a deep knowing for granted. Indeed, many don’t really care about it at all until they are much older, if they ever do.

A piece in the Huffington Post some years ago realized that “this was a shared narrative with no fixed racial or cultural background: my own search for identity, though anchored in part by my own experiences, is part of something larger. It is a collective and contemporary identity crisis.”

Maybe this explains the popularity of DNA testing and the matching sites of Ancestry or 23 and Me. I also wonder, given the pushback on women’s rights taking place at the moment, if beyond threatening women’s health and autonomy, an unintended consequence could become more abandoned babies . . . and depending on where and when, may result in death.

Fair Responsibility

The way things are going, it seems like this idea would be fair, if at least this was the law of the land. My mom’s mother lost her when she was exploited by Georgia Tann, because my mom’s father did not take financial responsibility for her life. There is no other perspective I can see as valid. I think he was a good and kind man but why did he abandon them ? That is a question I will never have an answer for.

Though unwed, the married man who impregnated my paternal grandmother did not take any responsibility for his existence either. I don’t know that the man ever knew he was a father, though my grandmother was clear enough about it to give my dad his father’s middle name and keep a head shot photo of the man with his name and the word “boyfriend” next to a photo of her with my dad on her lap.

People who are pro-life are usually only pro-birth. They don’t consider either the prolonged gestation, during which a woman may not be able to work, nor the life-long commitment that having a child entails. Condemning a woman and her children to poverty is not being a supporter of life that has any good qualities beyond love (and of course, love is very important) but that it is okay for them to starve and not have shelter or clothing.

Regardless of the personal hell they will live through, that baby must be born. The new Jim Crow ?