Barbara Walters "Born in My Heart: A Love Story"
More than 30 years ago, she and her husband, Lee Guber, wanted desperately to have children.
After Walters had three miscarriages, the couple decided to adopt a baby girl they named Jackie. Having a child, says Walters, "made her life complete."
Over the years, Walters discovered there were many others inside the ABC community who have made the decision to adopt, including weekend anchor Carole Simpson and former ABCNEWS correspondent Connie Chung, as well as talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell.
These parents and some of their children speak out about adoption and how it has changed their lives in an ABCNEWS special called Born in My Heart: A Love Story.
Though she has been generally private about her family, Walters, who co-produced the special, says she thinks the personal stories will resonate with the millions of people who have been touched by adoption. "Sharing our stories might make a difference in someone else's life," she says.
Connie Chung and Maury Povich
Though Chung and her talk-show host husband, Maury Povich, are almost as famous for their attempts to have a child as they are for their careers in television, they rarely talk publicly about their adopted son, Matthew.
When they adopted him, remembers Chung, "he was less than 24 hours old, and he was so beautiful. Maury let me hold him first … It was so unbelievable."
Among the issues they tackle with Walters is the prospect that their son may one day seek out his biological parents. Both Chung and Povich agree they would support such efforts, but Povich reveals it would bring him "mixed emotions."
"If he loves us as much as we love him," says Povich, "why would he want to do that?"
"He should, he should," interrupts Chung. "He deserves to do that if he wants do it."
'To Make a Difference'
Walters and Chung both chose to adopt because they were unable to bear children themselves. For others in the ABC special, the decision to adopt had more to do with saving a baby in need.
In the spring of 1990, 20/20 produced a series of horrifying stories on the thousands and thousands of babies neglected in orphanages in Romania. The producer, Janice Tomlin, was so moved by one of the baby girls she met while in Romania that she decided to adopt her. Six years later, she adopted another girl from a Romanian orphanage.
Though she is giving her daughters better lives than they could have hoped for in Romania, Tomlin thinks she is actually the one benefiting the most from the adoption. "They saved me," she tells Walters. "I'm the lucky one; I've got two of the best kids in the world."
Like Tomlin, Simpson was also moved to adopt while working on a story. She and her husband already had a 10-year-old biological daughter named Mallika, but she was moved to expand her family after reporting on unwanted black children in Chicago.
"There were 10 black babies available for every one white child available for adoption," Simpson says. So she and her husband decided to adopt 6-week-old Adam "to make a difference."
"When they put him in our arms … from that moment on, it was love at first sight, and I just adore him," Simpson says.
She adds, "We have people in the United States of America traveling to the far corners of the Earth, and there are black American babies in this country that need families."
Read more: abcnews
