"What if you were aborted?"
I could take up about 3 pages answering this question... but I'll try to make it a little shorter than that, so please bear with me.
My supposed story is that I was found in a cardboard box in front of a theater, then taken to the police, and then to an orphanage. The people there had guessed that I was about 3 days old, and so they assigned me a birth date based on that assumption, along with a name they could call me.
I always thought that was my story, and people in the church would unwittingly say, "Oh, how wonderful, Moses was found in a basket, and you were found in a box!" I know they meant well--that God still saves unknown babies, even today--but it never erases the feelings of being rejected and unwanted straight from birth, if not conception.
A few years ago I read that many Korean adoptees are given this same story as their background, and that it is actually a fairy tale handed out to make people (both the adoptees and their parents) feel better. The truth is often much more unsightly, and rarely known or given. I have to admit that I was a little shaken after reading that, since I had believed in that fairy tale my entire life. I had so wanted to believe that someone had loved me. But the truth is, I won't know my truth until I get to heaven.
I was born in a country where single motherhood basically doesn't exist--your only option is to get rid of the unwanted offspring, by whatever means necessary. I once met a Korean woman about 15 years older than me, and even though her parents were married, her father was killed by shrapnel during the Korean War while her mother was pregnant with her, and because she was born without a father, she was seen as "bad luck" her entire life. Her own grandmother told her mother to throw her in the river as soon as she was born. And as she grew up, people in the village would regularly beat her because they blamed any bad thing that happened on her existence.
Knowing this, I have often wondered if my own mother considered aborting me if it was an option for her at the time. I think the most dominant feeling I've ever had about either of my birth parents is one more of sadness than of anger (though of course, sometimes there is anger as well.) However, after having grown up and spoken to a few girls who had abortions (and seeing the suffering and agony of their situations), I couldn't bring myself to hate my own mother, even if she had considered that.
I understand that she probably went through daily shame and humiliation, and I have also wondered if maybe she considered taking her own life, because she lived in a culture where that would be seen as more honorable than dishonoring one's family with a (possibly mixed), illegitimate child (assuming that was the situation--but I have no way of knowing for sure.)
I came to a conclusion long ago that if I had been able to communicate with my mother from the womb, I would have told her, "You do what you feel you have to do, Mama. I have no right to judge you. I know you have to be going through a lot, and I'm sorry that people are saying these things about you, and making you suffer so much because of me. I don't know what you're going through, but whatever you decide to do, be at peace, because God is going to take care of me."
When I was about 18, I wrote a poem about my birth mother, and it ended with these lines:
"Did her heart break, when her little girl would cry?
I hope she loved her much indeed, for that little child... was I."
I have always wondered if I look like someone, anyone... or take after them in any way. I suppose that in heaven I will either find out the answers or else they just won't matter anymore.
But I think... that if or when I meet my birth mother (and I hope I do...)
I would give her a hug, and I would tell her the same thing that I was trying to tell her in that poem--that I love her, that I have thought about her often, and that I have missed her (as well as my birth father) all of my life, and, unless God takes this feeling away...
I always will.
Thank you for asking this question (and giving someone who has seriously thought about it a chance to answer.)
Peace, and God's blessings to you.
