\nThere are too many premature obits today of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computer. \u00a0After all, as the Wall Street Journal points out, \u201cMr. Jobs, while seriously ill, is very much alive.\u201d \u00a0Clearly, though, it doesn\u2019t look good for him at the moment. \u00a0Meanwhile, we might take this opportunity reflect on Jobs\u2019 wonderfully serendipitous (one might suggest \u201cprovidential\u201d) career path, as he described it memorably in his\u00a0famous \u201cStay Hungry\u201d valedictory address<\/span><\/a>\u00a0at Stanford University\u00a0back in 2005. \u00a0 We might begin by considering how, as others have noted in the past, one of America\u2019s great tech visionaries is also a wonderful pro-life story.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\n
From his Wikipedia entry:<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cJobs was born in San Francisco, California\u00a0and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs (n\u00e9e Hagopian)\u00a0of Mountain View,\u00a0California, \u2026 Jobs\u2019 biological parents \u2013 Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian\u00a0graduate student who later became a political science professor,\u00a0and Joanne Simpson (n\u00e9e Schieble), an American graduate student<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/span>who went on to become a\u00a0speech language pathologis<\/span><\/a>t\u00a0\u2013 later married, giving birth to and raising Jobs\u2019 biological sister, the novelist\u00a0Mona Simpson<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/div>\nJobs tells his own story this way in his Stanford speech:<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cMy biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: \u2018We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?\u2019 They said: \u2018Of course.\u2019 My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n
Of course, abortion was not legal and easily available when Jobs was born back in 1955, although a pregnant college student probably could have found an illegal abortionist if she was desperate enough. \u00a0 Obviously, Jobs\u2019 mother chose life for her son, and we are all thankful for it. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
After high school, Jobs dutifully fulfilled his birth mother\u2019s desire that he go to college \u2014 and was bored stiff. \u00a0 Concerned about the high tuition bills for his working-class parents, Jobs dropped out. \u00a0This freed him to audit courses that really interested him \u2014 including calligraphy, which is why the Mac put so much emphasis on type design.<\/span><\/p>\n