Con te partirò by Andrea Bocelli
Born with congenital glaucoma, Andrea Bocelli turned completely blind by the age of twelve. The story goes that Edi Bocelli, his mother, was hospitalized with appendicitis several months into her pregnancy. Fertility doctors in Tuscany warned Edi that there was a good chance the baby would be born with a disability, although they didn’t know what. They urged her to abort the child. A devout Catholic, she refused.
Sure, the message that comes from pro-lifers is clear, sentimental, a touch insensitive, and like most religious credos without any tint of contemporary nuance, devoid of logic—we know you’re poor and anxious, that your kid might be disabled and you don’t have the time or resources to take care of it (we won’t help either), that you might become seriously, or even fatally, injured during childbirth, but do you really want to take a chance at leaving the world without another Andrea Bocelli?
While listening to Bocelli, or Ray Charles, I can see how it's possible to be taken by this message. Figures like Bocelli, Stephen Hawking, and Charles, geniuses who are exceptions to the rule, are the strongest arguments against aborting a potentially disabled fetus, a child that could bring light into the world. Historical characters such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco are rarely discussed when this odd debate comes alive.
Regardless, yes, Bocelli was born. His music is great, his voice divine. Imagine if we never heard it? The truth is, given the rule that ignorance is bliss, we’d all probably be listening to more Pavarotti and Caruso. Now that we know of Bocelli's gifts, his family’s health, of course we can all say he should never have been aborted, that the world would have been greatly deprived of an immense gift. Anyone reasonable would also agree that Hitler should have been aborted. The argument rages on, stupidly. No one can know who or what a fetus will turn out to be, what things, whether monstrous or beautiful, it will grow to be capable of. That uncertainty, which in my mind is romantic, is the only possible argument that makes sense.