In an exclusive essay for PEOPLE, the married Arizona lawmakers share how a gunman stole their dreams of having a child together — and why they fear politicians will do the same to other families.
By Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords
Our lives changed forever on January 8th, 2011, when a gunman opened fire at a “Congress on Your Corner” event in Tucson. Six lives were lost, many more were injured, and Gabby was shot in the head. Of everything that changed that day — both of us halting our careers, the beginning of a long, difficult road to recovery — we also lost something we wanted very much: the opportunity to have a child together.
The shooting happened on a Saturday morning. Two days later, we were supposed to have an appointment at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington, where Gabby had been receiving fertility treatments, to have our embryos implanted to try to begin a pregnancy. Like a lot of folks, we got married a little later in our lives. One of us had two beautiful daughters from a previous marriage; one of us had never had kids. We wanted to grow our family together and were fortunate enough to be able to pursue the only option for us: in vitro fertilization, or IVF. Gabby never made it to that appointment.
