Forced Abortion?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

(Warning – long post ahead)

Zulu –

I don’t mean to belittle your experience as an adopted child, but the very circumstances of your birth and subsequent adoption take you out of this discussion, as far as personal experience is concerned. Your bio-mom was 19 years old, as you say – this means she was not a minor, and the decision was hers to make. She made what appears to have been the best choice for you and for her.

When dealing with minors, there are a lot of different issues. First, there’s a strong likelihood that a minor mother will not have very well-developed decision-making powers (i.e. she went and got her dumb jailbait ass knocked up, to put it bluntly) and may have a lot of illusions about bearing and raising children that simply aren’t true. This will probably leave a lot of emotional scars on ther mother, the child, and everybody nearby.

Second, there’s the health of both parties. The younger you are, the more likely you are to suffer death or permanent harm while trying to carry a child to term. the risks are just as bad for the baby, in terms of birth defects and survival rate.

Third, a minor is going to have a lot more obstacles to raising that child than will a young (but major) woman. Your mom probably finished high school, Zulu, and once upon a time a HS education was all you needed to get by. Can we say the same of a 14-year-old in today’s world?

Somebody else on this board has tried to turn the argument around by substituting blindness for pregnancy. Is it just me, or does this make no sense? The kid could either have sight restored or die. Either way (forgive my bluntness here) the problem is solved, and it only involves one life. Furthermore, blindness is probably easier to cope with in this case – you’ll have already been accustomed to caring for a sight-impaired person, and might be able to fix it. With pregnancy, you’re dealing with the baby’s life if not aborted, the mother’s life which will almost certainly be wrecked if she has the kid, the family which will have to take care of them both for years and years, and let’s not forget the father and his family – they will probably be responsible for child support payments for the next 18 years.

I am aware that some people have been able to make the teen pregnancy thing work out in the end. Those cases are exceptions. The typical 15 or 16 year old girl is going to wreak havoc in her little part of the world by having that baby, and we’ll all suffer for it.

The solution is not to put more children up for adoption – despite what you may hear, there are plenty of kids on the market. Most adopting parents are looking for healthy white infants. If you’re a minority, or you have a physical/emotional/developmental problem, or you’re older than age 3, there’s very little hope of you ever being adopted. Sad but true.

All that having been said, would I make my (non-existant) daughter have an abortion in this case? It all depends on her age, her health, her maturity level, the family’s finances, and so much more. I hope that I’d have raised her to see that abortion was an alternative that might be best here, so no force would be involved.

–Da Cap’n

22

Good Morning Capn:

How can you say that the fact that Zulu is adopted exempts any valid point he/she may make regarding this discussion? That is ridiculous! It doesn’t matter if Zulu’s birth mother was 40. The very INSTANT she decided to let someone else give Zulu what she couldn’t give, Zulu became the poster child for why the CHOICE should be adoption. (They did pick a rather unfortunate name for a little tyke, though :slight_smile: )

I cannot advocate taking away the right to choose, but as I said, I wish the CHOICE was adoption.

In these days we have school guidance counselors advising, arranging, and even driving girls to get abortions, WITHOUT the knowledge or consent of their parents. With no control or participation over such major events in these girls lives, how could we even FATHOM that parents COULD legally force them into abortion? Is it just that nobody wants anybody to face consequences anymore? I mean, parents can’t force a girl to keep a baby, but they can force her to abort it? The result is that nobody has to know that she had sex, got pregnant, pissed off her parents, had a baby, gave it up or kept it. Life can go on like nothing happened. Nobody’s the worse for it…right?

But what about Zulu? Thrown away is not what happened there. That’s what happened to that fetal tissue that got sucked out and flushed down the toilet somewhere else.

23

okaytm, if you think that the women who do have abortions do not have any consequences or get to avoid facing them, you are quite possibly certifiably insane. I’m not going to speak for any women, but of the women I do know who have had them, contrary to popular conception, they do not approach them with the cavalierness of getting a fucking manicure.

24

You’re assuming you have that option to begin with. I talked to my mom about it (she is an attorney specializing in representing children) and here is what she said:
“I don’t think the parents have a legal right to force an abortion, and the recent court cases giving minors constitutional rights to choose would support that”

I think that what happens, more than likely, is that parents bully the daughter into agreeing the proceedure; if she told the doctor no when she got there, he/she would probably not perform the abortion.

>^,^<
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25

Just out of curiosity, could a doctor get into trouble for performing an abortion on a minor, over said minor’s objections, even with the parents there, saying “do it”?

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PLDennison:
I’m glad you’re aware of the consequences of abortion and the problems & trama that women go through afterwards. I do not think that it is a trivial consequence.

Questions: If the consequences of abortion are so severe, then why do people encourage them so? What is better about having the abortion consequences than the adoption consequences?
Answer: “Nobody has to know & my life can go on like nothing ever happened.”

I may be certifiably insane, but at least I would never try to deny or hide my mistakes by making worse mistakes. I wouldn’t encourage people to do that either.

27

PLDennison:

I had a summertime nanny (18 years old from my CHURCH) who had her 3rd abortion while she was living with me. I asked her if she needed anyone to go with her, but she took her best friend & boyfriend. She went for the abortion in the morning, and they all went camping THAT evening. (Of course, she didn’t tell me it was her 3rd…Her best friend let it slip a few weeks later.) No, she didn’t get a manicure in between.

Would your friends who have been so traumatized by their abortions ever do it again? Just curious.

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If I had a daughter, she would get norplant, or those depro-provera shots every 3 months, or I would watch her take her pill every morning.

Adoption leaves you wondering where the kid is, if it is ok, etc
Abortion leaves the guilt of a life lost…
there is no happy resolution to an unwanted pregnancy.

Prevention, prevention, prevention!

Any woman on her third abortion should be sterilized.

29

My answer to the question is an unqualified NO. Of course parents shouldn’t be able to force their daughters to abort a pregnancy. My question is why fathers don’t have a say in whether a child is aborted. I realize that in many instances, they probably don’t deserve a say, but the same argument can be made about visitation rights.
I disagree that all women take having an abortion see it as the very drastic action that it is. I am a dispatcher for a security company, but we also handle some answering service accounts for doctors’ offices, two of which are abortion clinics owned by the same doctor. I can honestly say that NEVER have I talked to a patient who seemed to grasp the severity of their own situation. They call for a price - “Do you accept (giggle giggle) Visa?” They call they day after - “I’m bleeding really heavily. And the three times I did this before, I didn’t cramp this bad.” I actually had a 15 year old girl call in and say she had had an abortion a few days previous, but she got drunk and forgot to use anything when she slept with her boyfriend. She wanted to know if she could get pregnant while she was still bleeding, and if so, would they please call in a morning-after pill? Geez! I just don’t get it.

30

I have 2 boys, the oldest is 8, and showing signs of nearing puberty by 10 or so…and I plan to provide him with condoms, and an explanation of how to use them, along with the assertion that he is WAY to young to be having sex, and I will warn him that even if he uses them, it doesnt guarantee protection…

and I will tell him I will cut his dick off with the rusty scizzors if he gets a girl pregnant.

Just didnt want y’all to think I was putting all the onus on the girls.

31

Before we go any further, let me point out that I never said Zulu’s opinions would not be valid – I said that the circumstances of that adoption were different enough from the topic at hand that it was not germane to the discussion. Every opinion is valid, even the stupid ones – or I’d never be able to post here. :wink:

I will not debate abortion vs. adoption with you here, or anyplace else. I only state what my thoughts on the subject are, not what the choice “should” be.

Regarding what Zulu’s mom couldn’t give, that’s as may be. What an underage mother couldn’t give is a reasonable hope of the child’s future physical and mental health, whether the child was kept or put up for adoption.

I’m glad Zulu was placed into a good and loving home. It doesn’t happen often enough. In all likelihood, a child given over as a ward of the state will remain so until it’s 18 years old, unless it’s adopted within a year or two of birth. The odds are worse for minority children and children with disabilities.

More to follow once I get caught up on this subject.

–Da Cap’n

32

Real answer: Because everybody is not you, and some people are going to make decisions you don’t like. (And, FTR, most pro-choice people I know, as much of a cliche as it might be becoming, prefer abortions to be legal but rare. Eliminate the circumstances that make abortion a sometimes necessary procedure, and you eliminate abortions. Voila.)

In any case, some people don’t want to carry a baby to term. Some people don’t want their parents to know. Some people could be in physical danger if their parents knew they were pregnant. Some people can’t afford or avail themselves of prenatal care. I’m not a woman, but I’m sure there are a thousand and one reasons why a woman might choose an abortion.

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This topic is headed right for Great Debates - right? What say ye, Eutychus?

34

I will also add my answer to the above. I have been a partner in a choice to abort a child. I was involved with a woman while I was in the Military stationed overseas. The woman I was with didn’t want to get married…we both agree that we were not at a point in our lives that we could handle a child well. Because we were stationed in another country, adoption really wasn’t a possibility (yes, we checked) and on a small military base, single-unwed pregnate women tended to be looked down upon.

I went with her to the procedure. She was (mercifully) about knocked out with the drugs they gave her, however, I was with her the entire time (she had a deathly fear of needles)and I live with that memory every day of my life…it’s been over 3 years now, and I still think of it often.

I regret every day that I didn’t use better protection, that I couldn’t have cared for a child at that time, that we couldn’t have found a loving home for it, and that I will never get to know that little one.

As a parent, would I force my little girl to have an abortion?..I don’t know…and while I hear many high and lofty moral decisions spouted here, but unless someone posted here that they have been in this situation, I don’t think anyone can say what they would do for sure. Do parents Legaly have the right to make these decisions for their children?..Not right now, but I can put my child in Military School, or have his tonsils pulled…should abortion be in there also?..(sigh) I think it should…there is no child that has enough life expiriance to make a decision like that. My parents made decisions that I thought were wrong all the time, but that was their job as my parents, to draw upon their greater knowledge to raise me. And I find that as I get older, the more correct those decisions seem.

<i>I haven’t lost my mind, I have a tape backup around somewhere.</i>

35

Sorry this is long, but I’m addressing a few issues.

FYI, my birth mother had not yet finished high school. She was still a minor (18) when I was conceived, and she made the decision then to relinquish me, and started on the paperwork. She did not have a job and was still dependant on her parents. I didn’t exactly end up in the best home, my family turned out to be royally screwed up, but they did the best they could and I’m still convinced that it was the best thing for me.

The point of my previous post was only to point out that ‘thrown away’ is a hurtful and untrue term. I recently read a book on adoption reunions, and I don’t have the exact stats for Canada, but the percentage of children who were put up for adoption because they simply weren’t wanted was astoundingly small. Almost all of the mothers wanted to keep the baby, and it nearly killed them to give their baby to strangers.

It’s true that a problem with adoption is the mother not knowing how her child is, if s/he’s happy and well cared for. But same is true for the child. The reason for this is not adoption, but how adoptions are handled.

Closed adoptions end up being most traumatic for mother and child. Closed adoptions are why adoption is a bad thing. Neither party can find out any information about the well being of the other without going through years of paperwork and lots of money. I’m very fortunate to live in the most open province in Canada for adoption. When I turn 19 next month, all I have to do is send a letter to the adoption agency, and I get all the information they have that I want, and I can then choose if I want to contact my birth mother. And contrary to popular belief, adoption reunions are often a good thing for everyone involved.

I know a woman who is an adoptee. She is now married. Her adoptive mother forced her to have an abortion when she was 14, and the woman is unable to have children now because something went wrong with the abortion. Most young girls won’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the doctor. She was young, scared, and under a lot of pressure from her mother, so she caved. She would have chosen adoption, but she didn’t even know that she was adopted. She didn’t know it was an option.

I’m assuming that the girl wasn’t raped and willingly had sex. I believe that if a girl is a minor, lives at home, and has no means of supporting a child by herself, her only choices should be adoption or abortion. But it should still be her choice. She made the decision to take on the responsibility of having sex, but having to raise the baby is not the best situation for the baby. So what if she’s a minor? She went out and got herself knocked up. If she decides to keep the baby, get a job, and move out, what kind of life is the child going to have? If the kid can get a job at all, she’ll be making minimum wage. Maybe if she’s lucky, the boyfriend will help out. Keeping the baby should not be an option, because the odds are against the child having a good life in that atmosphere.

Prevention of pregnancy in the firstplace is clearly the most important thing, but kids are going to have sex. A 16 year old kid is not thrilled about going to the drugstore to buy condoms, so they decide to just take their chances. Parents need to openly address the issue of safer sex with their kids directly, tell them what the risks are, and provide them with contraceptives. Perhaps if more parents would do that, there would be fewer teen pregnancies.

It’s easy to put the blame on the teenagers for being irresponsible, but the parents are also to blame if they didn’t do everything they could to teach them responsibility.

Zulu

36

More adpoted kids speak out.

My mother made an error. She was 16. She thought out her choices, and when I was born, I was handed right over to the adoption agency.

My grandparents, on the other hand, wanted me. They fought her and the agency.

I was adopted anyway.

This was well before all of the “children’s rights” issues really came to a head. My mother won.

I respect the decision completely. I don’t find any room for blame for an intelligent decision that she made, knowing fully she had made a mistake. It’s a choice that, keeping her decisions in mind, I made as well at one point when my live-in significant other changed his mind in the last trimester and walked out on us. There is now a little boy, 11 years old, with a happy family that would never have been able to have a child.

“Forced” abortion, as a concept, really bothers me, just as much as the thought of a forced birth. You just can’t win on health issues once the mistake is made, be it condom breakage, a missed pill, sheer lack of efficiency on the part of birth control or even being foolish enough to not use any at all. Once a pregnancy is confirmed, the risk is already there. Abortions can go wrong, the child could be miscarried, both mother and child could be lost in childbirth (my experiences with bleeding to death, for the record).

Once the situation has occurred, the best thing that can be done is to offer all the intelligent, correct information possible and give support to those involved. A forced decision would be an even greater mistake than the one that started the situation in the first place.

37

Zulu: 18 years old is no longer a minor in the United States.

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I’m not in the United States. I’m in British Columbia, Canada, where 19 is legal age.

39

Appreciate the clarification, Zulu. Tnanks.

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You’re welcome.