The World Would Have Been Fine if My Mother Had an Abortion

I love my life, and my mother still deserved a choice

The last time I saw my mother I was fifteen years old. We were in family court to finalise the process for me to become legally emancipated. Prior to that, we hadn’t seen each other since I was thirteen when I ran away from home.

My parents had never filed a missing persons report, they never attempted to look for me, they lied to the school about the reasons for my absence to prevent them from prying, and so no one was expecting a surprise twist or a sudden desire to be parents. We were there merely as a formality to make our current circumstances legally recognised.

I recount this with no animosity or ill will. In fact, turning up that day, not contesting the proceedings, and not making the process any more difficult for me than it had to be is possibly one of the greatest acts they ever did for me as parents. I am genuinely, eternally grateful to them for going through what I am sure was a difficult process for them as well, with very little benefit outside of making my life easier to manage on my own.

It was the words from my mother as we were leaving that day that sticks with me, though

You know, you’re lucky you come from an anti-abortion family. I would have aborted you, if your father, grandparents and the church hadn’t forced me to keep you, you wouldn’t be here. I hope you do something with the life we gave you.

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time to that moment, as my current self, with twenty years more life experience, accomplishments, and all the hindsight I currently possess under my belt.

At the time all she got was a stunned look as my dad pulled her away to walk out of my life and back into their own world. She may have gotten an “uhhh, okay”, which I suspect is actually worse than no last words at all.

If I could go back to her now, this is what I would tell her.

I love life. I have tried to make the absolute most out of it, and I fought pretty dang hard to make a good life for myself. Not everyone can go from homeless school dropout street rat at thirteen to masters qualified homeowner by thirty-five, it takes a certain level of grit and tenacity to pull that off, but I did.

I have travelled the world, I have been to Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, China, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Scotland, a sizeable number of countries in Europe, and all over Australia, this vast, beautiful, amazing island that has always been home.

I have dedicated my life to helping others. I volunteer, I protest, I write to my local members, and I partake in random acts of kindness. I will go above and beyond for my friends, those people who became my found family.

I get paid to work with some of the most vulnerable people in our community, those with highly complex psychosocial needs, I do so with kindness, compassion, empathy, and ethics. I have won awards for the work I do and the programs I have designed to help others.

I have a fiancé whom I absolutely love and adore. She’s one of the best human beings I’ve ever met, we make each other laugh, and we see each other through the hard times. Our differences balance and complement one another, and our similarities drive us to build a pretty fabulous life for our family.

Speaking of family.

I’m a parent to two amazing kids. They also had a bit of a rough start, but they’re surrounded by love, support, and encouragement every single day. They’re curious and playful and kind, and I’m sure they’re going to grow up to be pretty awesome adults. I’m going to make sure they always have the freedom to be unapologetically themselves, while also still always having a safe place to fall and falter when they need it.

This life thing isn’t always perfect. There have been hard times in the past, there are hard times in the present and I’m sure more await me in the future. But I really, really love life. I try to make the most of the life I’ve been given, both selfishly and selflessly where either is warranted.

All of that is true, and so is this;

You deserved a choice. You deserved the right to say no to going through pregnancy, to say no to giving birth, to say no to being a mother. I am so sorry that you were ever in a position where you had no option other than to be a petri dish for a cluster of cells to become a fetus, then to go through the process of giving birth to be left with a baby you never wanted nor cared for.

I am sorry you were given no support with the logistics or with the mental health treatment of raising that baby. I’m sorry that when you turned to substances to cope there was only stigma and shame rather than compassion and care.

I’m sorry that the only people who are willing to step in and give you a break from looking after your child are people with terrible intentions who caused unspeakable harm through unspeakable acts toward the kid.

I am sorry you were tarnished with the label of “bad mother” when you had never wanted to be a mother at all. Good or bad.

You deserved better. You deserved a choice.

Both of these things can be true at the same time because they are. I absolutely adore life, and I absolutely abhor that my mother was not given the choice.

I know there are others out there.

Mothers who express gratitude that they did not have an abortion because they love their children and cannot imagine life without them now.

I know there are other human beings loving a life that would never have been lived had their mother had an abortion, just like I am.

My mother's story, and my story, do not invalidate any of those other stories out there. The plural of anecdote is not data, after all. There will always be countless stories and anecdotes that seem to clash, contradict, and do all the wonderful, chaotic things we expect from life as lived by diverse, unique individuals.

The world would have been fine if my mother had an abortion.

The lives I have touched and changed would not have been touched or changed by me, just as they would not have been touched or changed by me had I not run away, or had I ended up in a different group home, or if I chose a different career or…countless other butterfly effect moments hadn’t happened.

It would have been as noteworthy and real as the hypothetical impact I would have made had any one of those choices been different or luck or circumstance fallen in a different way. There are probably countless people in the world I would have met and formed relationships with but didn’t for any number of reasons, yet I don’t miss them and likewise they don’t miss me.

There is one life that would be significantly different though. There is one person who would have been aware of my hypothetical existence and the impact it may have had, the sacrifices that would have had to have been made, the lost opportunities, perhaps she would have foreseen some of the hardships. My mother would have known. My mother was always going to be the one left with the rewards or the consequence of her choices.

She deserved for it to be a choice.

All women and all those assigned female at birth have the absolute right to decree “my body, my choice”.

Even if going through pregnancy results in a human who one day, years down the line can decree “I really, really love my life”.

~Lottie