Her Mamas Were Prolife

No “smooth operator” would ever discuss abortion on a first date. But then I’d been single a long time, and nobody had ever accused me of being a smooth operator.

Filling out questionnaires over dinner would be extremely unromantic (even I knew that), but one’s opinion on abortion does say much about a gal’s worldview. Anyhow, I needed to ask my date the question.

“Are you prolife?”

She looked at me as if I were dumb as a post. “Duh! Hello! I was adopted,” she said. “I wouldn’t even be here otherwise.” Her name was Meg, and her quick answer showed rare and refreshing humility.

Meg’s parents had been unable to conceive a child, but they wanted to share their love as only a mother and father could. So in 1968 they adopted Tommy. In 1969 they adopted Meg. “We wanted to adopt a third one later,” Meg’s father told me. “But by then there weren’t any left. They were all getting aborted.” They lived in California, where Governor Ronald Reagan had signed a milestone pro-abortion bill in 1968. California’s abortions jumped from 518 in 1967 to an average of 100,000 per year from 1968 to 1974.

A few days after I met Meg, her adoptive mother, Patty, was laid low by cancer that left her bedridden for the remaining months of her life. Despite her constant pain and nausea, Patty never complained. In my few visits to California while she lived, she amazed me with her spirit and love. Shriveled down to 90 pounds and unable to walk, Patty clung to life just long enough to see her daughter marry, before passing away a few weeks later. Her close friends were so sure she was a saint, they actually sought relics from her.