Anti-Adoption

Be grateful you weren’t aborted!

February 8, 2008 · 9 Comments


“Be grateful you weren’t aborted.”

I wonder if a “non adopted” person has ever even been told that, in general.

I can’t think of a situation where I’ve heard a non adopted person release emotions from traumas in their life and had “be grateful you weren’t aborted” thrown back in return.

Oh you didn’t know? Yep, I’m told it at least once a week online and I don’t have enough fingers to count how many times I’ve been told that IRL offline too. I guess, based on my own personal experience I could come to the conclusion that the majority of the public believes that if I wouldn’t have been adopted , I would have been aborted. That or left in an orphanage(even though I’m a US domestic adoptee), or foster care, they just assumed adoptees are unwanted and that because of that we have no right to be equal human beings, we have to settle for second best of everything because, we were accidents, we’re unwanted mistakes, illegitimate bastards.

Everyone just “assumes” we should settle for second best, and that we’re second class. By the way the laws are shaped and ontop of the old “grateful you weren’t abortion” line, I’d say we ARE second class citizens. Replacement parents, replacement ID’s, replacement birth certificates, legal adult children who need our parents signatures for our own identifying information, rarely given the space to grieve our losses unless its in a group of our own, like minded adopted brothers and sisters, shut up and be grateful, bastards.

No, I am not grateful for ANY of that. And NONE of that has to DO with my conception. Dismissing that on the grounds of my conception and mother choosing to not terminate my life doesn’t even make sense?!?!

A man or woman today on Yahoo Answers has been reading here, and felt he/she had the right to speak for me in a question of his/her own, about MY positions on adoption. Another reason why I need to just focus on reform and not waste time especially when you have internet “stalkers.” Ewww Creepy.

He/she posted that I had started a question “is adoption an alternative to abortion” which I did, and said I was a self proclaimed “wished she had been aborted instead of adopted” person. That I’m the angriest person he/she has ever seen and of course… he/she would “pray” for me. Why do they always want to insult me and then pray for me?!?! No thanks, I don’t want prayers from him/her having ANYTHING to do with me.

I don’t wish I was aborted. There was a time in my life when I did. A long time. Years. I wanted to die, but obviously a part of me wanted to live, or else I would have succeeded I’m no idiot, I know how to end my life. So I was crying out, maybe I had to “feel” life, maybe I needed a “jump start” again, a chance to really remember “you’re alive.” It seems like in your weakest moments you grow, and become so strong, so wise.

It sucks to not know your beginnings, it leaves open wounds for too many years, too many unanswered questions that are important to the development of sense of “self.” Discovery of self is left to be based on assumption from those around you who aren’t primarily involved. Those around you thinking you would have been aborted and dismissing your pain from adoption due to that assumption.

Ha! and you know whats funny, I came out of that “hating life” experience and somewhere, somehow managed to be “grateful I wasn’t aborted.” I don’t know how I crossed the bridge from feeling like I wished I was aborted to being grateful I wasn’t but nevertheless the theme of being a “saved abortion” echos my life which is my point.

When I found my mother the FIRST sentence I wrote to her was “thank you for life.” ( I was living in the saved abortion”fog”still )

A lifetime of outside influence and assumption became a foundation of my sense of “life” so much that the first words to my mother from me were under the impression that if I hadn’t been adopted, i would have died and yet still reaching out to her to thank her and I then closed with “I love you.”

Abortion was never an option for my mother. All those years, thinking she didn’t love me, she didn’t want me, she didn’t care about me, that I would have been dead, I would have been aborted, when infact I wouldn’t have been aborted, I would have been kept. She DID love me. Imagine that.

Many adoptees would have been kept.

Categories: adoptee · adoption
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9 responses so far ↓

  • Robin // February 10, 2008 at 8:58 pm | Reply

    i really appreciate that post…

    it’s almost harder to find out you would have been loved/kept/taken care of, isn’t it.

    i just learned that too. :(

    thanks for that post.

  • sume // February 11, 2008 at 6:17 am | Reply

    Lovely how you’re offered a choice between death and “languishing” isn’t it? Oh and there’s that dumpster possibility that a few other bloggers mentioned months ago.

    After all the lies, deception and manipulation that’s been uncovered in adoption over the last few years, you would think people would stop trying that one.

  • Gershom // February 11, 2008 at 11:36 am | Reply

    seriously!! You would “THINK” they’d have dropped that one by now, ignorance, is it always bliss? I don’t think so.

    I definitely think that finding out my mom loved me and would have kept me rather than aborting me was hard. I mean, wonderful, healing, but hard. Like MAN, look at what we missed. My mother is AMAZING, she defines perfection to me, shes… everything. I missed out on alot. And yet, i still don’t call, why don’t I just pick up the phone and call. I love her so much.

    eh…

    thanks for stopping by ladies!

  • Anonymous // February 13, 2008 at 9:48 am | Reply

    I have to say a big thank you for this site. You put a lot of what I’ve felt down in a way that I can agree with, yet it’s amazing how simple it is and people just don’t, no, not don’t, refuse to understand. Everyone thinks because I am against adoption that I hate my adoptive parents. I don’t. My mom wouldn’t have had an abortion, she was mislead into the idea that she would be unable to care for me and got pressure from nurses, family and everyone, she couldn’t see another way out. All my life I have had abandonment issues though because of it and having a c-section and being seperated from my son for the recovery time and not being with it to see him before I went into recovery is something I have been mourning since he was born. And then I get the “At least you have a healthy child” thrown at me by everyone including my mother and husband. Yes, I have a healthy child (although that was never an issue since the only reason for my c-section is that the doctor wanted to go home that night (it was 11.40pm when Alex was born)). Yes, I am glad I wasn’t an abortion (although that was never an issue either). I am not ungreatful, although I must admit I am bitter at times.
    But agagin thank you for this website.

    Amy

  • Allison // February 13, 2008 at 11:16 am | Reply

    When I participated in the March on Washington in 2004, I came home and my DAD said that to me.

  • Rosaries // February 14, 2008 at 5:17 pm | Reply

    Great posts! Life will prevail.
    I pray for it and you should too.

  • Kim Myung-Sook // March 17, 2008 at 9:24 am | Reply

    Hi Gershom,
    Great posts!
    Thanks for the link to adultadoptees.org you posted on my blog. I really appreciate it

  • forever grateful « Anti-Adoption // July 29, 2008 at 3:35 pm | Reply

    [...] Be grateful you weren’t aborted [...]

  • Marilee // November 9, 2009 at 9:01 am | Reply

    This made me tear up a little. I can’t believe anyone would ever say this to you, but then again people are harsh and never think before speaking. =( I’m a newer reader to your blog and am enjoying it so far. It has some really interesting if not depressing articles.

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