There is always the option to put the child up for adoption.
Which is a very easy thing to say, when you are not emotionally invested. But 9 months of carrying a child to term makes you emotionally invested, whether you want to be or not. Giving that baby up for adoption becomes much more difficult after carrying a child and giving birth.
Also, a pregnancy deeply impacts a woman’s ability to physically perform certain tasks. Working a certain number of hours is no longer possible. There’s doctor’s appointments, recovery time. The cost of having a baby isn’t precisely minor. Not to mention the weight loss, which can take a very long time, and take a toll on a woman’s self esteem. Plus, if there are other children, there is the problem of explaining to them why mom & dad aren’t keeping their brother/sister. Do you really expect a small child to understand the logic behind that?
Then shouldn’t the other side be called pro-abortion? :rolleyes:
Not really. If we take “choice” to refer to the choice of whether or not to have an abortion, then “pro-choice” and “anti-choice” are equally accurate. “Pro-abortion”, however, is not, because most pro-choice folks don’t believe there should be more abortions.
Walloon, two years ago today, I was laid off and looking desperately for work in a field in which there was none. Unemployment benefits last for 6 months and health insurance can easily run over $100 per month. If all goes well, I understand the sheer mechanics of giving birth means there’s going to be at least two or three weeks when the mother is unable to hold down a fulltime job. You can’t collect unemployment if you’re not looking for work and I doubt many employers would offer fulltime employment to a woman who’s pregnant until after she’s actually given birth. In short, if I had become pregnant then, I’d be looking at nearly a month when I had no income and major expenses. Yes, the United States has the Family and Medical Leave Act, but the leave employers are required to give is unpaid leave. The job I eventually took barely paid enough to cover expenses as it was.
Don’t get me wrong. I am strongly in favor of adoption and I’d love to see it, rather than abortion, become the first thing someone facing an unwanted pregnancy considers, but there are logistical concerns. I’m sorry if I sound cold or callous here. It’s just that I can picture myself getting the news and trying desperately to figure out how I can possibly make ends meet without going to my church or my family for help. I’m lucky. I’ve no doubt they’d come through for me. Other people aren’t as lucky. Good Lord! Even maternity clothes cost money! Mind you, there is always Goodwill, etc.
Adoption is an option, but it can be an expensive, impractical one, just as buying an MG Midget is an option on my salary. I’ll be the first to say that not getting pregnant in the first place is the best option in such circumstances, and that includes using birth control or being abstinent. Unfortunately, even abstinent women are raped and even the most reliable birth control fails. There are also people trying to get some of the more reliable forms of birth control off the market or refusing to dispense because, if all goes badly, it might prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus, thereby causing an abortion.
CJ
But after reading all the scary stories (many of them in the Pit) of horrible parents out there, foster family abuse and just the general shitiness of people, I don’t think I trust that system any more. My own step-brother was sexually and physically abused in foster care, and went on to abuse others, including me. How could I be assured that my baby would recieve any better care with some random family than with my own sorry self at 18? There are thousands of unwanted children floating through the adoption system without ever finding a loving and supportive family.
Until we have a system of open and honest adoption for every unwanted pregnancy, with some way to assure birth mothers that their children are being provided for in love and respect, then adoption will not be a replacement for abortion. It should be utilized, certainly, but it doesn’t meet identical needs.
Per the OP, I get passionate as a pro-choice person because I’m protecting hundreds of thousands of lives: the lives of women, the lives of their families, the lives of taxpayers forced to bear a crushing tax burden to pay for the foster care system and welfare payments which would be grossly inflated if abortion were not available. To me, the life of an unviable fetus (and I think it’s a pretty clear cut definition - if it has a reasonable chance of surviving outside the womb without major medical intervention, then it’s too late to abort) is not as critical as the lives of hundreds of thousands of already born, raised and contributing members of society.
True…but how far do you take this? Having a baby would be medically difficult, at best, for me. It could be worse than just difficult, but I don’t think there’s any way to know unless I tried. So I am paranoid about birth control, but I’m not about to stop having sex with my SO either. We’re far too involved for that. I want to get myself fixed, but until then (could be several years for all I know), the pill it is. If I get pregnant, I’m afraid an abortion would be my only good choice. I’d hate to do it, but I would.
I am fully for women being able to decide for themselves, whatever the situation. Mine is unusual. But I know there are pro-life people out there who say even I shouldn’t have access. That scares the crap outta me.
I write as someone who has been involved in adoption referrals for years, and has worked with an organization for women with unplanned pregnancies that offers free or reduced fee health care and midwife services, infant care supplies (cribs, bassinets, clothing, diapers, etc.), transportation, and around the clock counseling.
Given that foster parents and adoptive parents must undergo a series of examinations and background checks (and for foster parents, ongoing oversight), and more importantly that these are people who actively want to care for children, a child in a foster or adoptive home has several advantages. Yes, you can always find stories about bad foster parents, but you can always find stories about bad natural parents too. What’s the point? Because of the background checks, interviews, and oversight, child abusive cases are found in foster and adoptive homes at a much lower rate than in the homes of birth parents. If you want to look at the long-term studies, I’d be glad to refer you to them.
And frankly, I never understood that idea that if you can’t have a perfect childhood, you shouldn’t have any childhood at all.
Alright. And that’s your opinion, and more power to you. The work you do is important, and I wish there were more people like you. But that still doesn’t give you a right to impose your opinion and personal feelings on other people. It simply isn’t your choice to make for everyone else. Nor should it be.
Where in this thread did I state that? I didn’t. A little trigger happy, are we?
A bit, probably. But I thought this:
was a bit preachy and smug.
If we are, it may be because of people like the woman in this BBQ Pit thread. I can’t tell you how often letters to the editor appear in my newspaper accusing those of us who are pro-choice of being in favor of murdering children and having no regard for human life. Remember, in my state, we had people accusing Senator Rick Santorum of being too liberal because he supported the pro-choice incumbent over his pro-life challenger in the Republican primary. If enough bullets get sent your way, sooner or later, you get in the habit of ducking!
I, too, am glad you do what you do and I wish there were more people like you. I also, however, wish people would understand that giving a child up for adoption may not be the best alternative, although there are a lot of times when I wish people would have!
CJ
I don’t understand how you can’t be passionate about the argument, no matter what side you’re on. On the one hand, you think you’re preventing murder and protecting the right of a baby to live, while on the other hand, you may not only be preventing the senseless maiming of women by making abortion legal and safe, you’re also protecting women’s rights.
I’m very passionately pro-choice. Politics have no place in my bedroom or between me and my gynecologist. And how dare some third party override my doctor’s recommendations simply to impose their morals, which I don’t agree with, on me or anybody else? I can’t safely carry a baby to term probably for another year or two at least, and for the government to step in and tell me that I must choose between having sex with my husband, abstainance being the surest way to avoid pregnancy, and possibly dying from carrying a child is unthinkable. I also don’t believe that a baby is somehow made magically human at conception.
[brief hijack]This is probably a somewhat naive question, but I’ve never understood why so many pro-lifers adamantly claim that abortion is against God’s will, yet don’t seem to have raised any ruckus over the use of Viagra or things that enhance a man’s ability to perform or have sex. Wouldn’t that be against God’s will, too, if you’re looking at things that way, or is the idea simply to have as many children as humanly possible, so the man must at all costs be able to impregnate his wife?[/brief hijack]
“Same” doesn’t have a meaning identical to “equal” though. Still, I think you’re on the right track.
The pro-life leadership (if not necessarily all of the rank and file and anyone who personally doesn’t like the idea of abortion) has an evil, reprehensible agenda. They not only want to get rid of the availability of abortion, they also want to restrict access to birth control as well as birth control information. To cut to the chase, they want a return to the world where sex for women always came with a high risk of pregnancy, and the reason they want that is that they are trying to prop up the dying husks of patriarchy. They are trying to restore a lost world at the heavy expense of freedom and personal opportunities.
I’m passionate about it because our world is the good world and their world is the evil one. Our world is a world in which individuals get to become emotionally and romantically involved simply because they want to. Their world was and would be a world whereby individuals’ opportunities to get involved are far more controlled and circumscribed by the society and the community.
Their side doesn’t merely care about prohibiting abortion as their only concern, nor are they a bunch of bleeding-heart civil-libertarians concerned about the rights of the unprotected fetus. In addition to birth control and sex education (they oppose both, at least for unmarried & childless people), I strongly suspect that they want to get rid of laws protecting women against domestic violence, laws protecting children from child abuse or in any fashion restricting parental control of children; that they want to get rid of workplace protection of women against sex discrimination and would actively support measures that affirmatively favor male employment; and that they would favor laws that would allow parents a certain measure of legal authority over their unmarried children (at least their female children) even after legal adulthood.
I say “strongly suspect” because I’m not sure for which of these I could supply solid citations and references. It’s more than casual guesswork on my part. It is what they are up to. Where they haven’t make specific statements I can lay my hands on pertaining to actual legislation in each of these areas, they have described the general vision clearly enough.
Damn right I’m passionate.
I agree, natural parents can suck just as much, if not more. But you’re missing my point. My point is that, someone who chooses to abort because she feels herself to be unable to support and raise a child cannot be assured that the child would recieve better care from foster or adoptive parents. She can gamble, she can trust. She can fervently hope that everyone within the system is as concientious, as hard-working and as wonderful a person as you are, but all she has to do is pick up a paper to discover that that simply isn’t true. People suck. Parents suck - natural and adoptive and case-workers. Children fall through the cracks and are found brutalized or dead every week. Whether or not this is done by natural parents as well as adoptive parents is irrelevant. If the young mother has just cause to believe it could happen to her child if she kept it (ie. the natural parents raised it) then she shouldn’t keep it. If she has reason to believe it could happen with adoptive parents, then what is she to do?
And if she’s a young black mother who gives birth to a young black boy, what are the chances he’ll find a good home? Chances are he’ll be bounced from one foster family to another until he’s old enough for jail.
There’s a big difference between an imperfect childhood and being locked in a closet, beaten and starved or burned in a pot of boiling water. Maybe I hear more of these stories than the average bear, since I’m in Chicago, where we have a notoriously awful DCFS.
I feel like I’m coming off here an adoption opponent, and that’s not at all true. I’m simply saying that it’s not a perfect solution as it exists today, nor does it meet the needs of every woman who chooses to have an abortion.
I think the OP has been answered already - the pro-life movement is seen as a smokescreen for a return to the old school “women should be barefoot and pregnant” philosophy.
But, to be fair, the pro-choice movement is seen as a smokescreen to a “party hard, screw the consequences” philosophy, which is why many people are opposed to it.
Walloon, I can only answer for myself. When I had my big pregnancy scare, I was a graduate student who was scheduled to go overseas for a really exciting internship. A pregnancy would have ruined all my plans. Also, I was worried that the man involved would make an adoption difficult for me. We’d recently broken up and he wasn’t exactly accepting of it (not stalkerish or anything, just constantly trying to get me back). Plus, he’d talked repeatedly about how much he wanted children.
I can see how someone who thinks a fetus is a human life would find an abortion in my situation to be incredibly selfish. But I don’t consider it a human life, and I wouldn’t have had a problem putting my needs first. I’d veen vigilant about birth control, so I really wouldn’t have felt too much guilt about choosing abortion (I’m sure there would be some, but I don’t think I’d have been overwhelmed with it).
As luck would have it, I wasn’t pregnant. However, that experience really opened my eyes to how important our reproductive rights are.
I think maybe you’re generalizing it a bit much. There may be a few people who see it that way, but I doubt it’s really the majority of either side. I understand right-to-life supporters believe they are actually saving lives and think that any abortion is murder. And I’m sure there most people here understand that as well. I’m equally sure the people on the other side of the fence understand we don’t see it that way, and aren’t all going through or lives on our backs, legs open. It’s far too complex an issue to try to boil it down to one point.
Aren’t they labeled “baby killers” every once in a while ?
No, though I’ve seen that term used by rabid anti-abortionists, whose agenda is to stop people from getting abortions. A PRO-abortionist would be someone who would force those who didn’t want an abortion to get one, and the only group I can think of that that term would apply to is the Chinese government.
You can be pro-choice (what other people do is their choice and their business) and anti-abortion (I would never get an abortion, but I would give other people the right to choose to do it).