I went to college with a girl who was going to be a grandmother a few months shy of 30 years old. She had her daughter at 14, and the daughter had a baby at 15 1/2. That was 17 or 18 years ago, so she might be a great-granny by now, who knows.
The sad thing was, she was REALLY trying hard to overcome the disadvantages of having a baby (and being a single mom) so young. She finished high school via correspondence classes, worked two jobs to support her daughter and put herself through college.
The daughter was a bright girl, and a credit to the offspring of single teenage moms, really… but she just got left on her own too much with her mom working so much and going to school. (Thus the early pregnancy, I guess.) My friend was only a few credits shy of a bachelor’s degree when I knew her.
It really sucked to see someone who was working so hard to break the cycle just get completely sandbagged like that.
Because sometimes, we just decide we are going to have our babies. And sometimes they grow up to be really, really wonderful people. Please don’t assume you have any insight into people’s motivations, especially ones that are not your business.
I seem to remember the 15 year old refused an abortion on the grounds that her Mom did just fine raising a child by herself, and SHE was even younger. (It was even hinted that the daughter had gotten pregnant intentionally, though I don’t know if that was really the case or not.) They were not particularly religious, at least not that I remember. I would describe both mother and daughter as having above-average IQs. (Though I can see how the casual observer might find that hard to believe.)
If someone makes a fabulous 15 year old mother, she’ll make an even more fabulous 25 year old mother. And she’ll spend less of government programs and be less of a burden to her own mother, in the process. You don’t think that a 15 year old can manage to have a baby and graduate high school without burdening her mom for child-watching? Daycare is SO expensive, and mom is giving up her life to care for that child. What if mom has a day-job? Say goodbye to that.
Do you really think that a woman who had a kid in her teens wants to raise the kid her daughter had in her teens, as well? Shit, she is still in the process of raising her own kid and now she has twice that burden. What a terrible thing to put your mother through.
This whole “sacred sperm” business is just insane. For all but a tiny sliver of women who easily get pregnant at age 15, they are going to stay just-as-strongly fertile for the next 20+ years of their lives.