Posted on 04/09/2018 4:57:45 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Kelly Clemente found out she was pregnant when she was 18. She had just finished her first semester of college, and up until then, described herself as your typical “all-American girl.”
She got good grades, was a member of a sorority, and ran on the track team.
When she saw that pregnancy test, “My life is over,” she thought.
“I was like, it doesn’t even matter. Nothing matters anymore,” Kelly told The Daily Signal.
Kelly, unlike most girls her age, was familiar with the implications of an unplanned pregnancy. In high school, she volunteered at HOPE in Northern Virginia, a nonprofit that creates gift baskets for mothers faced with an unplanned pregnancy.
Although she shared compassion for them, Kelly had bought into the stigmas about birth moms. “I’ll never be one of those women,” she thought.
But she was wrong. At 18, Kelly became an unplanned pregnancy statistic. “I was no better than these women that I was creating baskets for,” she said.
After crying and feeling nothing but noise and chaos, Kelly thought of her little sister, who her parents had adopted into their family from Central America.
“I thought of the joy she brought into our family, and for the first moment after hours of crying, I felt calm, and I felt peaceful,” Kelly said. “I knew that I needed to make the decision that my sister’s birth mom had made.”
Kelly would carry her baby to term, and place him—or her—for adoption.
But first, she’d have to tell her parents.
‘Parents’ Worst Nightmare’
Within days upon learning she was pregnant, Kelly had to figure out how to come clean with her parents. “I expected them to be angry,” she said. “Parents’ worst nightmare, right?”
First, she called her mom from school to say she wasn’t feeling well.
“I was concerned enough to go to school to see firsthand what was going on,” Susan Clemente, Kelly’s mom, said.
The two went grocery shopping together, but Kelly avoided sharing the news. Sensing something was wrong, her mom invited Kelly to come back home.
“That entire ride home, I never once told you that I was pregnant,” Kelly said, speaking to her mom about that day. “You told me later that you just knew.”
“I did,” Kelly’s mom replied.
When they got home, they sat on the living room couch and talked so intently that the sun went down without anyone noticing. When her dad, Mark, arrived home from work, he asked, “Why are you all sitting in the dark?”
At that moment, Kelly had to confront one of her biggest fears—telling her dad she was pregnant.
“I could tell something was going on,” he said of the two sitting in the dark.
Almost in the same breath, Kelly broke the news that she was pregnant—and going to place the child for adoption.
Instead of responding with anger or disappointment, Mark told The Daily Signal, “I just remember being so grateful and proud.”
“We’d hoped that we had raised you that way,” her dad said, speaking to Kelly. “So the fact that you didn’t even entertain that thought [abortion], to be honest, it was a very proud moment.”
After that, Kelly moved back in with her parents and set up an appointment with Bethany Christian Services, an organization that facilitates private, faith-based adoptions.
‘Little Treasure’
Walking into Bethany Christian Services, Kelly was expecting “the wrath of God” to be on her.
“I’m going to an adoption agency, and I’m going to be judged,” she said. But when she walked in there, “I never experienced any of that,” she said.
“They showed me what it was like to walk with someone through the hardest time of their life when they are feeling so down on themselves and so alone, they were there.”
Shawn and Dave Hansen were the second couple Kelly and her mom met with in the adoption process.
“It was so obvious that these were the people that would have her little treasure,” her mom told The Daily Signal.
But finding them was the easy part. Kelly was 18, in college, and still pregnant.
‘Where’s My Choice?’
“Being pregnant and being in college is never really a great thing,” Kelly said. “I found out very quickly who my true friends were.”
At one point, she told a friend on her track team that she was pregnant and placing her child for adoption. His response was less than supportive.
“If you don’t get an abortion, I will lose all respect for you,” Kelly remembered him saying.
“I was horrified,” Kelly said. “You call yourself pro-choice, but where’s my choice? It’s my choice to choose adoption.”
Then, two weeks before the birth, Kelly got a phone call from the baby’s father’s best friend informing her the father—Kelly’s boyfriend at the time—wasn’t being faithful.
“I was devastated,” Kelly said. “This is someone I knew for eight years, this is someone I trusted. I’m having his baby. We had conversations about getting married.”
Hearing that news was the second hardest news to take over those nine months, Kelly said. Her entire identity had already been shattered, and her relationship now was, too.
At a low point, Kelly walked out to her parents’ driveway in the middle of the night. She laid down on the road, in the dark, and prayed that a car would come run her over.
“I want to die,” Kelly remembered thinking. “I can’t handle this. This is too much for me.”
At that moment, Kelly said she heard a voice from God telling her to get up. So she did.
“I got up, and I said, ‘OK, I know that this sweet baby did nothing wrong, so I don’t want him to get hurt, so I’m going to have this baby and then I’m going to take my life.’ Because I was so broken, I didn’t think there was any meaning left.”
But then the voice came back and said, “No, I’m not done with you yet.”
“At that moment, I knew that I was loved by a really big God who had a really big heart, that didn’t judge me by my pregnancy and still loved me so much,” Kelly said.
A few weeks later, her water broke, and Kelly gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
‘An Answer to My Prayers’
“Those three days I spent in the hospital, he was mine,” Kelly said of her birth son, Alex. But after those three days, it was time to place Alex with his adoptive parents, Shawn and Dave Hansen.
“I don’t sugarcoat that because it’s real life and I loved this child so much, but I couldn’t give him a father, I couldn’t give him brothers and sisters for a long time, I couldn’t provide him with what felt like anything he deserved.”
She then walked to the hospital chapel, said a prayer for everything to be OK, and at that moment, Dave and Shawn walked in.
“I was like, wow,” Kelly said. “They truly are an answer to my prayers.”
Handing her baby to another family wasn’t going to be easy, even though the family was the living embodiment of her prayers.
“I thought the hardest day of my life would be finding out that I was pregnant,” Kelly said. “It wasn’t.”
“The hardest day of my life was driving away from that hospital without a baby. I had never felt more empty in my life. I was physically empty, and I felt so alone.”
Kelly made a decision that in today’s society, few women do.
In 2014, the latest data available, 18,329 women in the U.S. chose to place their children for adoption. That same year, more than 900,000 women chose abortion. According to the National Council for Adoption, a nonpartisan group that advocates adoption, for every 1,000 abortions and births to unmarried women, there were only 6.9 adoptions.
‘It’s Over Now’
Kelly gave birth in September 2008, and returned to college in January. Much like the pregnancy, the transition back wasn’t easy.
“I remember everybody just telling me over and over again, ‘It’s over now. It’s over. Aren’t you so glad that this is over?’” Kelly said.
But she felt differently.
“I was fine without drinking, I was fine without sleeping around. I had lived a life I was proud of while I was pregnant, and I wanted that to continue but I was feeling so much pressure to just be that fun sorority party girl that I was before my entire life changed. No one seemed to wrap their head around the fact that my entire worldview had been shifted.”
Today, Kelly is 28 years old. She graduated from college and went back to receive a master’s degree in school counseling.
“My heart is for children,” Kelly said. For now, she’s teaching preschool and hopes one day to be either a school counselor or a voice for teen moms and teen birth moms.
“I want them to know that they have value and their life isn’t over. They have their whole life ahead of them.”
She also wants birth moms to know that children placed with adoptive families “are not lacking in love.”
Her son, Kelly said, “not only receives love from his adoptive parents. He receives love from me, he receives love from my parents, there’s so much love to go around.”
Kelly chose to have an open adoption with Alex and his parents, and sees him a couple times every year.
After enjoying time together, Kelly said, “You would think that it would be this emotional thing where I’m so upset that my birth son is going back with his adoptive parents.”
“It’s not,” she said. “It’s this beautiful thing where he’s happy that he’s seen me, I’m happy that I’ve seen him. He knows who is parents are. He knows that I’m not mom. One day I hope to be a mom, but I’m not his mom. I get to be birth mommy. And that’s OK with me.”
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I really don’t understand why people hate babies so much.
I can understand things like “I wasn’t prepared” “I’m not ready” “This will ruin my life”. The last one because a baby will ruin your life if you think that having a baby will ruin your life. And your life needs to be ruined and re-built anyway.
I m fairly sure if one of our daughters got pregnant out of wedlock, my wife and I would raise the child. I do not think I could ever get used to one of my grandchildren being “somewhere” else.
A family member adopted a child after being unable to conceive one of their own. It is a true blessing. Kelly did right and I pray the right man will come into her life. She deserves it.
What a great story. The real winners there are her parents. They could have destroyed that girl with one comment yet they chose to love her through a personal crisis and failure.
I remember listening to some guy talk about this on a Christian radio station. He said he and his wife were in bed when their daughter came in and told them she was pregnant.
He said he looked at her and said “I love you.”
Sometime later it changed to “Now, let’s work it out.”
She made the same choice of adoption.
Abortion is never a reasonable solution. Never. It kills the child and destroys the mother, and often the father.
I was surprised a faith-based adoption agency worked with “Shawn and Dave”, unless Shawn is a woman.
Amen.
None of that would have happened if she’d had the sense to keep her damn pants on. That sounds harsh, but the truth is not all unicorns and lollipops.
The studies of grandparents and single mothers raising children are pretty conclusive. It damages the child (lesser outcomes than children raised by 2 parents). What this mother did for her child was the greater love. She did what was best for the child.
“I really don’t understand why people hate babies so much.”
Propaganda that comes out of the glowing box.
“The last one because a baby will ruin your life if you think that having a baby will ruin your life. And your life needs to be ruined and re-built anyway.”
That’s the best thing I’ve read in quite a while! I’m using that! Do I owe you a royalty?
I know several women named “Shawn”.
Show the studies. Especially about grandparents.
Babies are great.
It makes no sense when women say that having a baby means that their life is over.
Having adopted a grandchild, I see another side not yet visited in these responses.
There is a “syndrome” called “Adoption Syndrome”. It occurs when the adopted child at 10-12 suddenly realizes according to his or her own definition of love, “My “mom” didn’t love me enough to keep me.” and then later, “Look, she’s had two more kids but I am not part of her family.” Then the the s..t* hits the fan and you all get on an emotional roller coaster ending in one form of disaster or another.
Social services and psychologists were absolutely no help. Maybe knowledge about this problem has increased in the last 35+ year.... Maybe there are forewarning signs we weren’t aware of.
I would never repeat the experience. Abortion is not an option even though our society seems to think it is O.K.
I think we need to teach boys and girls with visual teaching aids the consequences of promiscuity. And we must hold boys as accountable as the girls. No ands, ifs or buts.
I have a niggling suspicion that our lack of spirituality in the USA may be due to lack of love and respect for our progeny, intrauterine or extrauterine.
I’m pretty sure this Shawn is a woman. The event happened 10 years ago, well before the militant homosexuals achieved their foothold. As late as two years ago, per my brief internet search, Bethany Christian services was holding strong in only adopting to traditional married couples. I expect them to continue that.
Hey Freepers, on the pro-life side of things, the City of Baltimore has been suing and repeatedly losing to a pro-life women’s ministry. They have been trying to force the ministry to offer abortion referrals before their traditional pro-life counseling services and helping the mother keep or give up her baby for adoption.
A couple months ago, Baltimore lost in US Circuit Court of Appeals, so naturally they are taking it to the Supreme court. I know a couple of the lawyers on the pro-life team. If SCOTUS picks up the case, I expect the City will get absolutely destroyed by these guys.
I’m with you on that.
Ping
Did she get married?
I had 3 rules for my daughters in high school and I repeated them every time they’d go out at night
1. Don’t drink and drive
2. Don’t ride with someone that has been drinking
3. Keep your underpants on at all times.
They survived high school
I don’t know what era you’re from....
....but when I was growing up Judeo/Christian tenets were still in place in our country......and supported the church, parental structure and morals
...they aren’t now.....they’ve been replaced by a hedonistic, Godless society...
one that celebrates the culture of death...
...one that has allowed the murder of 60 million babies
Yes she got pregnant.....and against extreme societal pressure, she gave her baby life
Yes, it IS something to celebrate
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