Melanie Martinez

As an adoptee how do you feel about the issue of abortion?

It’s obviously complicated. I was adopted at birth by a Catholic family and grew up in the 70s amid hard-core anti-abortion propaganda. Under the age of 12, I bought into it all because I saw the grisly photos of supposedly aborted fetuses. In adolescence I began questioning Catholicism as a whole, as well as the government, and began to absorb information from outside sources. While those images of fetuses still disturb me today, I realize I was manipulated by propaganda. In time, I learned to understand how complicated life is, and how so many variables. A woman should have control of her own body and medical choices. As a teen who was anxious to leave home and start my own life, I understood how having a baby could derail my entire future. It would be a nightmare for anyone who did not want a child at that time. 

Many adoptees have been asked "Aren't you glad you weren't aborted?", what is your response to that? 

My response is “Sometimes I wish I WAS aborted.”  As a logical person, I understand that I could have been aborted and would never know about it. Was I even a person then? I have often wished I’d been aborted so I would not know the pain I’ve felt related to being adopted. Both my birth parents and adoptive parents were/are good people so it’s not even about my upbringing. It’s simply a soul wound. I found my birth mother and she told me that she did go to Mexico to have an abortion (me—1963), but got scared and a friend came down and got her home before she did it. I am not at all hurt by thinking I could have been aborted.