Why My Parents Chose Life

I was born on February 22, 1990, the year with the highest incidence of abortion in American history, to two unmarried 18-year-old parents. My father had spent much of the previous summer in California and had planned to attend Michigan State University on a partial scholarship. My mother's aspirations were unfixed but, I think, equally unremarkable. She told me recently that she drove half an hour to buy the pregnancy test for fear of being recognized at the local pharmacy. Family legend has it that she broke the news to my father at an exurban McDonald's, though she thinks it must have been somewhere more private.