Kelly Clemente, who chose life and put up her son for adoption. / EWTN Pro-life Weekly/Screenshot

Denver Newsroom, Nov 16, 2021 / 16:01 pm (CNA).

Adoption doesn’t mean giving up. It takes courage and love. That’s what Kelly Clemente says she discovered through her adoption journey.

Kelly describes herself as a typical all-American girl. Early on, while in college, she worked for straight A’s, joined a sorority, and dated the man of her dreams. 

Everything seemed to be perfect until, at age 18, Kelly found out she was pregnant. 

“Being a parent, a mom, I wasn’t ready for that,” Kelly told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly in a 2018 interview that CNA is highlighting for National Adoption Month.

“I didn’t have a stable job. I knew that my parents weren’t going to help me raise the child.”

However, the night she found out she was pregnant, she chose life and adoption for her unborn child. 

While the ultimate decision to choose adoption was easy for Kelly, the journey leading up to it was anything but easy. At eight months pregnant, Kelly found out that her “dream” boyfriend, and the father of her child, had been unfaithful. 

“I was really devastated. I felt like trash,” she said. At that moment, her life no longer seemed worth living. 

“I walked out to the road and I was in the middle of the street. I laid in the street…I was just laying there and I’m like, ‘Well, you know, I would be okay if a car ran me over,’” she recalled. 

That’s when Kelly heard a small voice speak to her. She now believes it was an encounter with God that not only saved her life, but also the life of her unborn baby. 

She described the voice as “this new voice from within me, but not from me.” 

“Get up. I’m not done with you yet,” the voice told her. Startled, she said she thought to herself, “Okay, I’ll get up because this baby didn’t do anything wrong. This baby doesn’t deserve to get run over. This baby isn’t trash. I’m trash.”

But Kelly said the voice spoke to her one more time, saying, “No, I said I’m not done with you yet.”

Kelly gave birth to a healthy baby boy, named him Alex, and placed him with a family she met through a Christian adoption agency. 

Adoptive mother Shawn Hansen described Kelly as “part of our family and part of Alex’s life.” She added, “There has never really been a day that Alex hasn’t known about Kelly.”

Alex is also a proponent of adoption.

“It’s fine to place your kid for adoption,” said nine-year-old Alex, who is now 12. “There will be other parents that will come and take care of them for you and you don’t have to be scared for your child.”

As for Kelly, she has embraced her— perhaps miraculous— role as a birth mom.

“I love that I’m birth mommy,” said Kelly. “It’s a beautiful part of my life.”