A poll: Please rate the following options for an unwanted pregnancy

In My Humble Opinion
21

Are we talking religious as in “nice Methodist or Jewish family who goes to church or temple each week” or religious as in “crazy-ass fundamentalist (of any religion) who won’t let their daughters go to college”? There’s a world of difference between the two, and it seems disingenuous to lump all religious families together. For the sake of this argument, I’m going to assume you don’t mean fucked-up wacko when you say* religious*.

I’m also assuming that the woman in this scenario is of age. In that case, there’s no forced marriage situation. She and the father might decide to get married for the sake of the baby, but no one can force her to marry.

My rankings would be:

  1. Adoption by a straight religious couple/adoption by a gay couple.
  2. Adoption by a single parent, gay or straight

Beyond that, it’s too hard to tell. Does the woman just not want a baby right now, or is she adamant that she *never *wants a baby? Would she be a good mother, even if she’s not thrilled about the pregnancy, or would she make her baby’s life a living hell? Do she and the father care for each other, or is he a one-night stand? I can’t make any judgments without more information.

22

All things are never equal.

I chose single parenthood. Adoption (by *any * loving parent/s) would have been my second choice.
I rate abortion higher than a shotgun wedding because I know women for whom abortion was their best choice - the men had already abdicated responsibility so there were no paternal rights issues.
Once the kid is born however, having parents who resent it as the reason they were forced to be together - isn’t healthy for anyone. Those of my friends who grew up in those households *all * said they’d have been beter off in solo parent homes.

I don’t know what decision I would have made at fifteen or twenty or twenty five etc. I don’t know what decision I’d make now, at 42 when the risks of harm to the child during pregnancy (or even conception) are higher.

23

I’m a guy, so FWIW. I’m pretty much in agreement with Stoid; I would rank 3 and 4 the same though – I don’t care what the single adoptive parent’s sexual preference is.

Also, if adoption by a straight (non-religious) couple were an option, I’d rank it the same as adoption by a gay couple.

24

In general, it really depends. If the mother is capable of caring for the child on her own, has support and resources, #1. Presumably, in lieu of option #6, the genetic father has to pay child support.

If resources are unavailable or mother is unable for other reasons to care for & support, items 2 - 5 are tied for second place, stated as they are. However, if it were up to me, second choice would be adoption by a couple (orientation irrelevant) then adoption by a single person (orientation irrelevant).

Choice 6 is only ranked at the bottom if it is truly a forced wedding, not just one whose timing is advanced. As in, oh, we were going to get married some day anyway, what the heck let’s do it now. If the couple really doesn’t want to commit to each other, just enforce the child support.

Which leaves #7 as the last one, unless the mother is not physically, emotionally and/or mentally fit and ready to carry a child to term. This could happen for any one of a gazillion reasons, including but not limited to mental health, physical health, advanced age, insufficient age, as well as other valid reasons. Or if the child is pretty sure to carry a disease or disorder that will make it less than fully viable. I’m not talking club foot, I’m talking Tay-Sachs, lack of brain or other vital organ, etc. In any of those cases, choice #7 jumps to first place. And of course, the evaluation of what “fit” means is not up to me. Or to you, either, unless of course you’re the pregnant person.

(And if it is I who is pregnant, none of the above applies. The correct response in that case is to contact the press and announce that in 9 months there will be a new star in the East, to be met by angels, wise men and shepherds. )

25

Hmmmmm.

Hard choices.

I’d go with [24][135]76. Bracketing around the ones I find to be equal in desirability, assuming all prospective parents to be equally loving, intelligent, sane, and financially sound. Raised by two parents of either orientation, then raised by a single parent of any orientation, then abortion, then the shotgun wedding (because who in hell wants to be married to someone they don’t love or at least choose to be with?)

26
  1. Forced, shotgun wedding
  2. Single parenthood
  3. Adoption by a straight religious couple
  4. Adoption by a single straight parent
  5. Adoption by a gay couple
  6. Adoption by a single gay parent
  7. Abortion

Although, frankly, the whole “forced, shotgun” part is a little ominous–there’s an awful lot of room between “We’ll just move up the wedding date” and being married to someone truly against your inclinations. And I think this listing makes it seem like Adoption in general is a worse idea than I really think it is. And I’m not really sure how much weight you should give to the adoption by differing types of people. And, while I’m generally of the “abortion is murder” camp, I’m not neccessarily sold on it being the worst of all possible options.

But if you want a generic list rating the options, that’s my choice.

27

I’m not even sure I could rank these with a hypothetical woman. For example, I really couldn’t care less if she’s 32, financially stable and in a great relationship. If she hates children and gets killer cramps, then yeah – abortion ™ ‘It’s not just for 16-year-old incest victims anymore.’

A discussion on choosing who gets a kid up for adoption might be interesting. I know New South Wales recently allowed sperm donors to veto certain recipients (e.g. lesbian couples, members of certain religions, etc.)

28

Taking into account the additional information provided (that the woman doesn’t want a child even though she’s capable of financially supporting it), I’d rank it this way:

  1. Adoption
  2. Abortion
  3. Single parenthood
  4. Forced, shotgun wedding

I’d rank all the adoption options equally. I’m assuming that adoption is a lengthy process, involves screening of the candidates, and the costs associated with the adoption process would probably weed out candidates who can’t afford to raise the child. Hopefully that will leave a pool of people suited to be good parents, no matter what their sexual or religious orientation, or their marital status.

I ranked abortion over single parenthood because the woman expressly does not want the child.

I ranked single parenthood above a forced wedding because I think this child’s life is going to be complicated enough without being in the centre of a relationship that’s based on obligation rather than love. This has the potential to be a Very Bad Relationship.

These are not the options that I would choose for myself. I believe I would be emotionally unable to carry a fetus to term and then give it up for adoption, even if I knew it offered the change of a better life for us both than I could hope to offer as a single parent. My personal rankings would be more like 1. Single parenthood 2. Abortion 3. Adoption 4. Forced shotgun wedding. The difference between me and the woman in the hypothetical situation? My pregnancy was unexpected but that didn’t make the baby unwanted.

29

The question is bizarre.

30

The key word in pro-choice is “choice”. It’s what we fight for - that right to choose.

So I’ll happily rate them as they would apply to me at this particular time in my life. Given that I’m in a happy relationship and in a stable position and consider myself married in all but the official designation, we’d probably decide to keep the baby because it would be unexpected but not necessarily unwanted. If you’d spoken to me five years ago when I was in a disfunctional relationship with an emotionally unstable boy and barely treading water financially, I’d have been dialling the clinic as soon as the second blue line made its appearance (actually, for the record, I did). Same person, same beliefs, different times and places.

Which is why I can’t chime in with my own universal one-size-fits-all list. What works for me won’t work for other people. For each of the options provided, I know a woman who made that choice, and each one had her own reasons for choosing as she did - I don’t hold any one of them up to the others as a paragon of perfection for her decisions, though. That’s the kind of thing that belongs in ethics textbooks, not reality.

31
  1. Abortion
  2. Single parenthood
  3. Adoption by a gay couple
  4. Adoption by a straight religious couple
    Tie - 5. Adoption by a single straight parent OR Adoption by a single gay parent (Doesn’t matter what their sexuality is)

Question - “Forced, shotgun wedding”… forced by whom? If the couple doesn’t want to be married, they’ll probably just end up divorced, which I would rank the lowest (i.e. shotgun wedding followed by divorce a few years later…) But I don’t think “forced” marriages take place today in the U.S. (unless you’re in some weird religious cult).

NOW, if it were a situation where you were in a loving relationship with your partner and were probably going to get married eventually anyway, then “shotgun wedding” would be my #2.

32

You’re thinking of a medical abortion, which is “a type of non-surgical abortion in which a drug is used to induce the abortion.” So yes, it’s still an abortion nonetheless.

33

While I did marry truly against my “inclinations”, I still think my child had a right to have a mother and a father present when she was born, to be born within wedlock and to have her parents try to make the best of a bad situation for the child’s sake. The marriage has been rocky at best but we show a united front of love and respect which we believe is important to her security.

34
  1. Abortion
    2-5 {tie}. Adoption by whoever
  2. Involuntary single parenthood
  3. Involuntary single parenthood + involuntary marriage.
35

From best to worst:
Abortion
adoption (doesn’t matter to who, really)
forced, shotgun wedding
single parenthood.

36

Assuming the mother doesn’t want the child:

“Shotgun wedding”? I don’t think those exist anymore. If the parents want to marry and raise the child together, that’s what’s best.
Single parenthood if either the mother or father want the baby
Adoption by loving whoever.
Abortion - To my mind, the worse option.

StG

37

Well, we left out some of the other popular options:

  1. Give birth to baby then kill it.

  2. Give birth to baby then neglect & mistreat it for years THEN kill it

  3. Give birth to baby then neglect & mistreat it for years and let your boyfriend sexually molest it.

  4. Give birth to baby and just neglect and mistreat it for years.

38

Tch. Jeez, yer cynical when you haven’t had your coffee…

39

Good lord, what a bizarre thread. Under the protestations of “it’s her choice, not mine!”:

When I actually made this choice, I chose to have the baby with the father, 'though I sort of suspected he wouldn’t be around forever (and he wasn’t.) I guess that was somewhere between “shotgun wedding” (we played house and the families pretended for awhile that we were going to get married ASAP, but we never did) and “single motherhood”. I’ve counseled women that single parenthood really isn’t all that bad (and even has some benefits over dual-parenting which no one admits to), but really I only tell that to women who WANT a baby but feel their biological clock ticking faster than their relationship luck.

For a person who doesn’t want to be a parent, I’d recommend abortion, then adoption (to whomever), and running away to join the circus or suicide rather than a shotgun wedding or raising an unwanted child alone.

40

Really, the more I think about it, and the more I read other people’s posts, the more I feel like the disclaimer I would attach to my ordering is more “This is the order in which I feel like the options should be considered, not neccessarily the order of which option is best for the child (or even best for the pregnant woman)”.

Because while there are situations in which it makes sense to have an abortion without consulting the sperm donor, I would hope that those situations are greatly outnumbered by situations in which the sperm donor should be consulted and offered an opportunity to be involved in the life of the baby (assuming there is one).

If sperm donor declines the offer of a role as father, the woman should consider single parenthood. If this is unappealing, she should consider offering her child up for adoption. If this is unappealing, she should consider abortion.

If this is unappealing, she should reconsider her rejection of the earlier options.