When my Mom first conveyed to me the facts of life (my Dad’s version being somewhat vague), one thing was made abundantly clear; only women could conceive babies. Little did I realize then that, thirty years later, I would destroy that myth when I conceived and gave unbirth to the world’s first syndicated pro-life, pre-natal cartoon baby. What amazes me most about Umbert the Unborn is how fascinated people are with how I conceived Umbert in the first place. The two most frequently asked questions I get are “how did you come up with Umbert?” and “where did you get that name?” The idea for Umbert began in 1992 when I drew freelance political cartoons for a Scranton weekly newspaper. I had my own half page called “Off the Board” on which I was given free reign to tackle any topic I wished. Always passionate about my pro-life views, I dedicated one installment to the abortion issue. Included in the group of cartoons was a four panel strip about a baby in the womb, about to be aborted, overhearing the doctor dismissing him as an unfeeling, unviable mass of unwanted protoplasm, to which the baby replies, “SPEAK FOR YOURSELF!” Around that same time, Helen Gohsler, President of our local pro-life chapter, asked me to come up with a creative way to present pro-life issues to children. I told her I would think about it and, nine years later, I was still thinking about it. In the spring of 2001, I was feeling very depressed. My Mom had recently lost a six year battle to cancer and I was feeling my career as an artist going nowhere. I felt my mother’s spirit urging me to pray for God’s guidance and I did. Soon after, I was browsing through some old clippings of my work when I came upon that strip of the baby about to be aborted. As soon as I saw that defiant little tike raising his voice in self-affirmation, a cartoon light bulb went on over my head and I knew that God had answered my prayers. Why “Umbert?” I wanted a heroic sounding name for the title of my strip, evoking the image of a warrior-hero, fighting for a noble cause; something that sounded like “Richard the Lionhearted” or “Peter the Great.” “___________ the Unborn,” I thought, but I wanted a name that began with the letter “U” so that it would be alliterative. I spent hours on this but I couldn’t think of any. Then, I remembered a book I had read, “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Ecco, but “Umberto the Unborn” sounded too ethnic. I simply dropped the extra vowel and Umbert was Unborn. The reaction to Umbert has been, to say the least, overwhelming and extremely gratifying, especially to a small-town cartoonist whose work was rarely seen beyond the endless mountains of northeast PA. While a few eyebrows have been raised over the notion of using humor to fight the culture of death, I believe humor can be a very powerful weapon in the cause of Life. We pro-lifers can get pretty worked up over the intense and emotional issues we are fighting for and a good laugh can provide relief from the stress. I like to think of Umbert as a kind of pre-natal Bob Hope, entertaining the front-line troops of the pro-life cause and giving them a much needed morale boost. As for Helen’s request, I think Umbert is a great way to introduce children to the pro-life movement and educate them on the moral and ethical problems with which abortion confronts us. Whole generations of Americans are being raised on the notion that infanticide is nothing more than a safe, legal medical procedure and a Constitutional “right.” Millions of children have paid with their lives for this egregious and erroneous misinterpretation of our founding documents. Unlike any other form of entertainment, a cartoon character can form a unique bond with people of all ages. Umbert was created to give a face and a voice to the unborn child; to urge us to see the unborn child as a real person with yet unfulfilled dreams and expectations. Umbert is Everybaby is his own four-panel morality play. If Umbert can succeed in making his death at the hands of an abortionist unthinkable, then he will have accomplished his life’s work-before being born! On that note, a young boy from Kentucky asked me when Umbert would finally be born. I told him that the day when the natural right of all children to be born was guaranteed in law--that will be Umbert’s birthday. It’s a promise I hope and pray to be able to keep in my lifetime. Until that day, Umbert is scheduled for a very long stay in his mother’s womb, but that’s OK. Umbert gets plenty of “womb service,” loves to read his “Unborn Times,” and has lots of time to answer his “pre-mail” on the “interwomb.” As Umbert would say… imagination, God’s a genius! (Reprinted from Umbert the Unborn, A Womb With A View, by Circle Press, 2003)