by Blair Mahoney

Created on: June 20, 2008

It's hard for me to write this objectively, since my mother was adopted. Those four words, "my mother was adopted", are part of my identity as much as my last name or my blond hair or blue eyes. On paper, this fact means very little to outside observers. To my brothers and sisters and I, however, it means the world to us and my sister's new family. Although this subject isn't something I talk of often, it's easy to put into words a logical reasoning behind my anti-abortion stance.

My mother's mother decided my mother was worth keeping even if she couldn't financially or physically take care of my mom herself. So instead of aborting her, my mother's mother carried my mom to term, delivered her, and then put her up for adoption to a married couple who couldn't conceive. This couple is known to me as Grandma and Grandpa. My Grandma passed and continues to pass her love and knowledge to my parents and siblings. She's over 80 and is a stong, independent grandmother we in my family admire. My Grandpa lived a wonderful life, had a distinguished career, served in WWII, and loved model trains. I'll never forget watching his model train set in action down in their basement. He passed on, though he's my true Grandpa. Who, then, is my mom's mom?

She was brave in her own way. Although she couldn't care for my mother, she determined to give my mother a chance at life through the care of another couple. She promised never to follow up on my mother, going on faith that a strange couple could raise her own daughter as their own. This takes a great leap of faith, one I can never fully comprehend. And, there are two current developments in this story.

Recently, a former friend of the family chose to advocate abortion publicly. I have a very strong anti-abortion stance stemming from my own mother's experience as well as personal moral and religious objections to killing innocent baby human beings in the womb. When I explained my objections to abortions, I was essentially spit on. So I decided I could not be friends with her anymore due to the intensity of her refusal to at least consider my point of view on the subject. Although I can respect this former friend, and always will, I can not be friends with someone so adamantly for abortion.

Second, my mother recently tracked down her birth mother through the help of my older sister. Although her real mother died before my mother could finally meet her, she was blessed in another way. She met her two real brothers for the first time. Both have families and look forward to seeing my mother again this summer. I've never met them and plan to see them for the first time this summer. The cold, hard, logical truth goes something like this: if my mother were aborted then my mother, her marriage to my father, and my siblings and I simply would not exist.

If we are God's children (and I believe we are), it is not up to us to determine who lives and who dies before they're given a chance at life. Although I don't go on a hot anti-abortion tack, I do tell abortion supporters my mother's story in the hopes it will sway their hearts to support life and oppose abortion.

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