The reports of singer Joni Mitchell’s reuniting with a daughter given up for adoption 32 years ago sounded a pleasing mote for many pro-life supporters.
Mitchell, one of Canada’s most successful female recording artists, said reuniting with her daughter Kilauren Gibb has made her feel more complete. The singer revealed her state of mind 32 years ago when she found herself to unmarried and pregnant. “To be married and pregnant in 1964 was like you killed someone,” Mitchell told a Toronto newspaper.
Her comments may be somewhat overstated, but it is clear many single women in crisis pregnancies feel they are bearing an immense burden. Some in these circumstances are tempted to abortion as a convenient way out.
But as Joni Mitchell-Kilauren Gibb case reveals, there is a positive, life-affirming quality to adoption. It offers life to a new human being, it gives the adoptive parents an opportunity to begin their family, it provides the biological mother a sense of giving, and above all, it overcomes the finality and brutality of abortion.
These are the qualities which have inspired The Interim’s series of articles on adoption. For the last several issues, we have featured stories about abortion as a position alternative to abortion. After a slow start, the series is starting to generate some keen interest among readers. At least one of the articles touched on a happy reunion between a woman and the son she gave up for adoption more than 20 years ago. It expressed the same issues as those raised in Joni Mitchell’s story.
We congratulate Joni Mitchell and all women in similar circumstances who have made the choice for life.
