Skip to main content

We are urgently seeking 500 new Life Defenders (monthly supporters) before the end of October to help save babies from abortion 365 days a year. Your first gift as a Life Defender today will be DOUBLED. Click here to make your monthly commitment.

Live Action LogoLive Action
Elizabeth Muto miss nevada

WATCH: First Black Miss Nevada Elizabeth Muto was abandoned at an airport as a newborn

Live Action News - Human Interest IconHuman Interest·By Nancy Flanders

WATCH: First Black Miss Nevada Elizabeth Muto was abandoned at an airport as a newborn

For 41 years, Elizabeth Muto had wondered where she came from and why she was abandoned at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Nevada when she was a newborn. Now, she finally has answers.

Muto said it is believed that she was three to 30 days old when she was found. She was adopted by Tom and Katherine Muto who were always upfront with her that she was adopted.

“This is where my life begins,” she told Inside Edition while standing at the Delta Airlines gate where she was found as a baby. “Most people’s life began the day they were born. Mine began the day I was found.”

She grew up to graduate from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and in 2004, she became the first Black Miss Nevada. Now married with three children, she travels frequently for her job as a beauty pageant consultant, but she has had more downtime on her hands due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She used that time to research her biological family with 23&Me.

 

Thumbnail for Beauty Queen Left at Airport as a Baby Reconnects With Birth Mom

 

“My parents taught me everything I know,” she said. “I may not know what I am, what day I was born, what race I am, what city I was born in, but I know who I am and my parents are responsible for that.”

Dear Reader,

Every day in America, more than 2,800 preborn babies lose their lives to abortion.

That number should break our hearts and move us to action.

Ending this tragedy requires daily commitment from people like you who refuse to stay silent.

Millions read Live Action News each month — imagine the impact if each of us took a stand for life 365 days a year.

Right now, we’re urgently seeking 500 new Life Defenders (monthly donors) to join us before the end of October. And thanks to a generous $250,000 matching grant, your first monthly gift will be DOUBLED to help save lives and build a culture that protects the preborn.

Will you become one of the 500 today? Click here now to become a Live Action Life Defender and have your first gift doubled.

Together, we can end abortion and create a future where every child is cherished and every mother is supported.

Through 23&Me, she was able to track her family back to her great-great-great-grandmother and was able to connect with a second cousin who helped direct her to five potential birth mothers. Muto wrote to each of them asking if they could be her biological mother or aunt.

One emailed response came in from her birth mother. “It was overwhelming to me,” she said. “She was kind. She was accepting. She answered all my questions. … She said she wasn’t able to give me the life I deserved.”

She learned that her biological mother is Japanese and lives in San Francisco, and her biological father was Black. He died in 2004. She was also surprised to learn that it wasn’t her biological mother or father who abandoned her at the airport. It was her birth mother’s roommate, who was tasked with taking her to an adoption agency.

“You don’t wonder the how or the why or the what,” Muto said about being abandoned. “[You wonder] what could I have done so wrong?”

Now, after going through the “highest highs, the lowest lows” and sending up “[a] lot of prayer,” Muto is thrilled to have met her birth mother and she says she is counting her blessing every single day.

“Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!

Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.

Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.

Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!

Read Next

Read NextLONDON, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 16: (EDITOR'S NOTE: Image depicts graphic content) Protestors attempt to cover images of an aborted foetus as young school children pass by, during an anti-abortion protest outside the Houses of Parliament on October 16, 2025 in London, England. The protest, organised by the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform UK, was meant to coincide with a second reading in the House of Lords of the Crime and Policing Bill, which contains a provision that would end the threat of criminal prosecution for women who terminate their pregnancies at any point during gestation.
Guest Column

UK House of Lords debates extreme expansion of abortion up to birth

Right to Life UK

·

Spotlight Articles