If it weren’t for my mother’s abortion, I would not be alive
If we're talking about the right to life, what about the lives of the wanted children, like me, who wouldn't exist if their parents hadn't been able to terminate a previous pregnancy?
When my mom was in graduate school at MIT, she was raped by her primary adviser. After that, she became pregnant, had an abortion, and dropped out of the program — this was a time before people believed women making accusations of rape, and before there was a wide network of support.
But the fact that my mother had access to abortion in her early 20s led irrevocably to something else: my life.
I only learned that an abortion made my life possible on Friday, when I talked to my mother after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Without that initial ruling in 1973, my mother might have been forced to carry her first pregnancy to term — as a single mom — and there’s no way she would have given birth to me two years later. She wouldn’t have taken the EMT course in Boston where she met the man who became my biological father. Without her abortion, the series of events that led to my own life would not have happened.
“My life would have been irrevocably changed if I had carried the pregnancy to term and you would not exist,” she told me via text. “I’m sure this is true of many (if not most) children of mothers who have had abortions.”
To realize this felt both dizzying and sobering at once. I have known about my mother’s abortion for nearly a decade, but I hadn’t paused to consider that if it weren’t for that abortion, I would not be alive. Now I know that there’s an alternate reality where I do not exist. To stare in the face of this possibility — and to think of the children who will not be born in the future — is chilling.
Often, the conversation about abortion focuses on the right to life. But what about the right to life for the children who were later conceived because their mothers had access to abortion, as my mom did in the early 1990s? If we force people to give birth to unwanted babies, where is the mourning for the lost lives of those wanted children who would have been deeply loved and cared for? What about my right to life?
Every child should be wanted. And I worry that the Supreme Court’s decision will only force people to become parents who are not ready — and the impact of those children not being wanted will last a lifetime. We simply do not have the social support systems in place in this country — in terms of access to health care, maternity and paternity leave, and affordable child care — to give those unwanted children a fair shot.
To be sure, parts of my childhood were difficult. My mother and I dealt with domestic violence at home. We were financially unstable and, at one point, relied on food stamps and government cheese. After she gained the strength to leave an abusive marriage, my mother became a single mom and worked multiple jobs to piece together a living. For a period of years, we moved in with my grandparents, who were able to provide housing and child-care support — two things that too many women lack. I shudder to think of where we would be if it weren’t for that family network.
Slowly, we got back on our feet. And our lives today are wonderful. I am grateful to be alive.
» READ MORE: Roe v. Wade was struck down because my generation dropped the ball
Disappointment doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling I have in reading the court’s ruling. Criminalizing abortion will not make it go away. It will only make it unsafe. The majority of Americans did not want Roe to be overturned. And I worry, too, about the implications that this case will have for access to contraception, same-sex relationships and marriage, in vitro fertilization, and trans health care. Justice Clarence Thomas has already indicated in writing that Friday’s decision is only the beginning.
For perhaps the first time in my life, I’m staring down a future in which my mother’s generation may have had more rights than I will, or than my future children will.
Sometimes rage is the only remedy. And so today I rage on behalf of not only my family but also all the wanted children who won’t have the chance to be born because of this ruling. In this, I am sure that I’m not alone.
Devi Lockwood is the commentary and ideas editor on the Opinion team at The Inquirer.