I sent to the editor of the local paper today. The republicans successfully sued to make voter registration available via a website the republicans operate. Being a criminal defense attorney, I work hard at hiding my address because having a client show up on my doorstep could be disastrous. Several years ago, a client tried to burn down my house. I checked the website, and my name, street address, party affiliation, and the last time I voted is available to anyone with access to the internet. I thought hard about whether it would be worth the risk to have the letter published. Today, I decided silence was too high a price to pay to avoid a potential risk.
This is the letter I sent.
“No one bothers to ask unwanted children about abortion. Ours are the only voices not heard when the topic is abortion. We need to be heard, and you need to listen.
My mother wasn’t married when she had me. That was a big deal in 1952, especially in the rural area we lived. I was never around kids until I went to kindergarten so I had no idea I was supposed to have a father. Out of the urge to avoid the embarrassment of sending me to kindergarten without a father, she and her husband married a month before my 4th birthday. I remember my grandmother taking me by the plum tree and saying: Your mother and father are getting married today.
What followed was violent hell until I got married. My mother was a violent, drunken narcissist. Her husband was a violent drunk. I was hit, pulled around by my hair, beaten with a belt, yanked off a chair by my mother’s husband when he grabbed my hair, screamed at and told I was worthless. I knew full well that my mother and her husband hated me. I used to think that if I had been born a boy, they would have liked me. I’d come home from a sleep over and my mother would tell me, “It was so peaceful while you were gone.” I’d hear my mother’s husband tell my brother not to be like me because one like that in the family is enough. Once, he was arguing with my mother and told her, “Now I know why Debby is the way she is.”
My mother and her husband had a cottage at Rushford Lake. My mother would take my siblings to the lake during the week. When I asked to go to the lake with them, my mother refused to take me. I had to stay home and babysit her husband. I’d spend most of the day going through cookbooks to find a recipe for dinner. Then, when the dinner was ready, I’d wait for my mother’s husband to come home. He was always late because he had been sitting in a bar. He’d tell me he had already eaten and then go to bed. I was stuck with the dinner I had made. When I asked my mother to take me with her and my three siblings to the lake, she refused.
When I got married, the complex PTSD – although the diagnosis didn’t exist at that time – was so bad I couldn’t think about growing up without crying. 50 years later, I still have flashbacks. They aren’t debilitating, but recently for the first time I had an emotional reaction to a flashback. I saw the horror of what I went through.
I put myself through college and earned two degrees, biology and journalism. I put myself through law school. I ran my own solo law practice. I moved 2000 miles across the country by myself. I’m the only one of the four kids who never had an abortion, got divorced or used illegal drugs. Obviously, I’m every mother’s worst nightmare.
My father, who I never met until I was 35, is a drunken selfish jerk. I was 34 when I went to get a copy of my birth certificate and was told by a clerk in the vital statistics office that I was adopted. I felt as if someone slammed me against a brick wall. I remember thinking that even my feet hurt. Until that moment, I didn’t know my mother’s husband had adopted me.
After the revelation at the vital statistics office, I walked two blocks to the library and went through a couple rolls of microfilm to find a birth announcement and discovered my father’s name. I spent the rest of the day thinking I was handling the news well. I woke up the next morning and the shock hit me. This is real, and it’s not going to go away. It took 5 months and a lot of determination, but I found my father. It took a year and a half for him to decide I was too much reality for him and he shoved me out of his life. I’ve no idea if he’s still living although I’ve never been able to find a death notice for him.
When I talked to my mother about being adopted, I asked her why she didn’t have an abortion. She was quiet and wouldn’t look at me. I asked her if she tried to have an abortion. She said it was illegal. Later, when my sisters were young adults, our diehard Catholic mother told them that if they get pregnant before they get married they should have an abortion.
My grandmother was horrified that I knew I was adopted and who my father was. She blamed the clerk at vital statistics for telling me I was adopted. Once my mother discovered that I knew I was adopted, I was shoved out of the family. I was never told that my youngest sister was sick or that she had died. I only knew my mother died because I subscribe to Legacy.com. I had to crash her funeral.
I’m glad I’m alive, but being aborted is 1000 times better than the hell I went through.
Every one of those right-to-life fanatics should be forced to raise all the unwanted children they just created.”
Deb's Art 