That is right, in 1954 Joanne Schieble, an unmarried coed from the University of Wisconsin in Madison got pregnant. Her parents were not thrilled that the baby's father was a Syrian Muslim.
While she could likely have found a way to abort the baby, she instead chose to move to San Francisco and put the baby up for adoption. Lucky for him and lucky for us.
The couple who was matched with the baby refused to take him, as they wanted a girl. So another couple was contacted and they enthusiastically said yes. One stipulation that the biological mother made was that she wanted the adoptive parents to be college graduates. She initially refused the second couple, as the wife was a college dropout and the husband hadn't finished college. They promised to send their son to college, so she signed away her maternal rights.
Well, he went to college alright. For a whopping semester. Then he dropped out.
The rest of the story? His adoptive parents were Paul and Clara Jobs. And yes, the world was blessed with an initially unwanted baby named Steve. I for one, as a long time Mac aficionado, cannot image a world that never included Steve Jobs.
I am also an adoptive parent and I can't imagine what we would do today if our son's mother had opted for an abortion.
According to the CDC, abortions in the US peaked around 1990 at roughly 1.4 million. The current number is fairly stable at a little over a million/year.
I'm wondering what those babies would have invented had they lived?
Choose life.
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