I'm not political. But the whole Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke kerfuffle and Obama's excoriation by the religious right has me steaming. I'm a social liberal who supports Planned Parenthood and Naral. Here's why...
My daughter Clare almost died in utero. My placenta started to fail at 34 weeks gestation, two weeks later I had an emergency c-section because she wasn't moving and her amniotic fluid had dropped to fetal death levels.
When they took her from my womb she was white, limp and not breathing. After they suctioned the fluid from her lungs she let out a pitiful goat bleat. When I heard that bleat and was greeted by a burrito-wrapped gnome with crossed eyes, the heavy weight of responsibility and love I felt for this 5 lb. baby obliterated any identity I had pre-childbirth and any ambition I had other than keeping her alive in every way possible: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Having babies can understandably bring into question a "woman's right to choose" for the fiercest pro-choice advocates. Oddly having my children had the opposite affect on me. As my husband and I worked to get Clare stronger and I saw how utterly helpless she was, and reliant on our care, I realized I'd rather Clare never be born than be born into a home where she might be neglected, abused, unwanted or unloved.
I've seen firsthand what can happen to unwanted children.
Two weeks prior to giving birth I'd tried to find my stepbrother Joey through People Search.com. Joey and I were siblings for the six years our parents were married. The last time I saw Joey he was riding his bicycle in the street, receding in the distance out the back window of my mom's Volkswagen van in 1974 the year our parents divorced.
I was 9 and he was 12.
Joey was an oops baby. My first stepdad's youngest son. He wasn't tough like his LAPD dad or his brothers. He was soft, awkward and goofy. He was the butt of macho jokes. He was criticized, ridiculed, called "Joey the Fairy" and beaten ferociously with a belt by my stepdad.
He was also just my brother. We built forts together in the lemon grove next to our house. We played war with fake rifles. We sold lemonade on the street corner on hot summer days. We sat on the bottom of the jacuuzi underwater, staring at each other waiting to see who could hold their breath the longest. He's the reason my front teeth are veneers. He was chasing me in a parking lot and I was looking over my shoulder laughing until I turned around and ran face-first into my mom's van, my right front tooth turning to fine powder on my tongue.
I thought about Joey a lot over the years. I'd heard through the grapevine he'd joined the National Guard. I couldn't imagine him in a uniform handling real guns. The first thing that came up online when I typed in his name was his rap sheet.
15 years of crystal methamphetamine possession and sales. Domestic abuse along with the crystal meth. I wanted to find Joey and tell him that I knew what had happened to him. I wanted to bear witness to the child that was murdered one day at a time by a father that didn't love him, that in fact, hated him. But my husband said we couldn't have a crystal meth addict in our lives.
Joey's rap sheet ended abruptly in 2000. I said to my friend Ellen, who is a DA, "Maybe he got clean." She said, "Oh Shannon, he's probably dead."
Every child deserves to be wanted, safe and loved. I don't deny there are damaged women out there who use abortion as a means of birth control. A former friend had five abortions. Those pregnancies were her cry for help. But I can't help thinking those babies were better off not being in her care.
There are also situations, in my opinion, where abortion is the only humane path to take for both mother and child. I remain firmly in the pro-choice camp not just because a woman should have the "right to choose" (although that is a powerful platform for me), but because every child deserves quality of life and when a child is unwanted there's a much higher risk he'll perpetuate the problem, having unwanted children of his own, if he even survives childhood.
Follow Shannon Bradley-Colleary on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@shannoncollear
Julie Bentley: The Wrong Question
If you love women like your friend, how could U offer them the pill instead of abstinence, (which would improve any woman's self-esteem)?
The Pill kills: unborn babies, women, the environment, and marriages. Check out http://www.thepillkills.com/
of a potentially fertilized egg. I didn't have children until I could afford them.
Learn more!
Peace and Love
They want to keep women from birth control if they are in a situation where a child would be unwanted.
I was in a mental institution for high school students. 90% of those children were unplanned pregancies with moms who were low income and either teen moms. addicts, etc. Most of the kids there had neglectful or resentful parents, although only one had an abusive parent- the product of a mother who couldn't afford a child who married a man who was wealthy enough to provide for a stepdaughter until she got old enough to molest.
This is why I am adamantly pro birth control, pro education about how it is incredibly expensive and difficult to raise a child, and pro choice. Because whatever you think of the parents, the children should not be forced to suffer for their parent's mistakes.
Any time you take away WIC or food stamps from a low income woman with children, you take a chance for a healthy, vitamin rich diet and a lack of fear of starvation away from those children.
So yeah, it is "the right's fault."
If every woman could choose when she had a child with effective, affordable BC, education, and low cost adoption options with families who were carefully screened, THAT would prevent abortions from being a regular occurrence, not taking away all options and hoping women don't have sex.
And it's not fair to the alleged child to assume he or she would have children irresponsibly, and it definitely begs the question: why would you deny them life just because you think they *might* make poor decisions?
Fetuses and embryos are no more "kids" than they are teenagers, adults, or senior citizens. They are nonviable products of conception.
This author is not saying "abortions are ok because fetuses aren't humans" or "abortions aren't any different than the morning after pill." So given the author's intent, my point stands.
The whole term of unwanted babies is just a term liberals use to justify abortion.
As hard as I try, I can't understand the pro-abortion position. Hopefully someday our society will turn a corner, morally speaking, and we'll see that the years we aborting millions of babies was not any different than other dark periods of humanities existance.
Do you know the rates of molestation, abuse, and neglect for children in foster care VS children born to loving parents who planned for them?
Do you not realize the planet contains 4 times the amount of people we can sustain at us middle/working class levels? Do you not realize that we in the USA have more people than we can employ?
The pro-lifers in the San Fernando Valley have operated a home for unwed mothers for decades (as has the Catholic Church) and as have other pro-life churches and institutions across the country. The Churches have run adoption/foster care agencies for centuries. The Church has operated charities for nearly two thousand years. The first hospital was made by St. Basil the Great in the 4th century A.D. (It was totally free.) Before that, sick people would spend the night in the temple of the pagan god, hoping for a cure.
It's obvious you are speaking from your hatred of the truth. The left's lying policies are destroying our civilization.
Catholic Charities
Birthright of Montgomery County
Centro Tepayac
Sanctuaries for Life
St. Anne's Infant Home
Bethany House ( adoption )
If a pregnant women wants to put her future baby up for adoption, their are families competing for that baby. She can choose the parents and that family will pay for her pregancy, all of it, even cloths for her to grow into.
If pro-choicers were truly compassionate, they would be more supportive of adoptions.
Know who's good with glue? little cross-eye girls...all the rest is just post-cheerleading angst--just let it go--just hold-out your palms and let it evaporate like sweat in a cool breeze.
Not to mention the fact that it's often best for the woman. If she has kids already and can barely feed them, how will she do it with another mouth to feed? If the pregnancy is risking her life and she has children, how is it fair to the already born children that they could likely not have a mother in several months, along with another possible dependent to fully support? As for putting it up for adoption, well if you're already a mother, how do you explain your growing belly to your kid and that their sibling is going up for adoption?
Now, you don't have to agree, but I think productive dialogue can only occur when the communicative process is one of mutual respect.
Lots and lots of scientists should apparently be in prison.
But you say you love your children, and as we know, you are an honorable woman.
Oh no. Carroll27 understands the article just fine. It is an attempt to JUSTIFY killing of innocent humans based on some type of potential unfortunate future. That justification doesn't even pass a logical 'smell test.'
Human life has value, or it does not. It is an all or nothing proposition. Which is it?
Yeah....but there are HUMANS in the womb. That is were the problem is... More powerful humans destroying the innocent, voiceless and powerless.
that they have tax free alternatives to abortion?
Meaning the thesis of this article is proven wrong