I Am a Person

“Do you have any idea what her mother would have done if she knew?” my cousin asked my sister. “She would have killed her!”

I had only known my cousin Grace for about an hour. I first met my sister Bobbie – a biological half-sister but a complete sister in every other sense of the word – only the day before. It was a beautiful, sunny July day on Bobbie’s back deck. I listened as the cousins talked family history. Bobbie had said she was mad at our mother Lynn for keeping her out-of-wedlock pregnancy – me – a secret. Grace argued my pre-natal existence was a secret she had to keep.

I was born in 1956 and, contrary to nostalgic belief, the number of out-of-wedlock pregnancies was not insignificant. But it was still not socially acceptable – not by a mile. Families sent daughters to “visit out-of-town relatives.” Others, including my birth mother, hid their pregnancies. A few pursued so-called back-alley abortions. But mostly, adoption agencies suffered no shortage of available newborns to place with couples who could not conceive themselves.

My birth mother, Lynn Welch, was still married to her abusive husband when she fell in love with co-worker Angelo Barone, my father. She hid the pregnancy from everyone – possibly even him – and put me up for adoption with Catholic Social Services. Lynn and Angelo married after her divorce, and they later had two more sons – my brothers Joe and Marc. Angelo raised Lynn’s two previous children, Bobbie-Lynn and son Dana, as his own. My birth parents remained deeply in love until Lynn’s untimely death by heart attack in 1992.

I dearly wish I would have had the opportunity to tell my birth mother how eternally grateful I am that she made the excruciating choice to give me up for adoption. That I grew up in a wonderful family that would have otherwise been childless. That I had careers as a journalist and an educator. That, while I didn’t cure cancer, I impacted lives as a husband, father and friend.

If I had been conceived 17 years later, however, there would have been a much greater chance I would never have been any of those things. I would not have existed. Not after the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973.

Before that ruling in Roe v. Wade, abortion was quietly available, yes, but as socially forbidden as an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Today, abortion has been normalized in our society, as acceptable as buying a toothbrush. To believe otherwise is to be an unenlightened, paternal Neanderthal, dedicated to denying women the freedom to make decisions about their own health care.

Why did I have a right to live in 1956, but a person conceived after January 22, 1973, does not?

When I hear the argument that abortion is a legitimate choice to an unwanted pregnancy, this is what I hear: My humanity, my membership in the human race, is invalid. I am beyond any significance. Simply – I have no value. In the balance of nature, the world would be better off if I had never been born. In the politics of pro-choice, the person most affected has no choice at all.

I know all the arguments in favor of abortion. Many of them seem reasonable and sensible. But I have not yet heard one that matches nullifying my existence. Do I take it personally? Yes. Because I am, and always have been, a person.