Pregnancy: The Genesis of Life

Very well written piece.

It’s a tough debate…and honestly, like you I am one of “those people” for whom becoming a mother defined my views on the debate today. Heck, becoming a Mom truly changed my world views in ways I never would have predicted.

I’m staunchly pro-choice. In fact, I’ve been one of “those women” who had consensual or-age sex (I was 18), resulting in pregnancy and decided to abort. I got pregnant the very first time I had intercourse because I hadn’t been well-educated about they way the fertility cycle works. In fact, I’d been fed completely WRONG information about when I would be and when I wouldn’t be fertile. Of course, I should have used protection. I know that. But I also know that there was no way I should have brought a child into the world because I was stupid enough not to know what the hell I was doing.

For me it’s not a matter of when “life” begins. I don’t question that an embryo is alive. For me it’s a question of “personhood.” And rights. Who has more rights? The fully developed human, or the completely un-self-aware living embryo? To me, it’s a no-brainer.

The problem I have with your statistics is that the reasons given for having an abortion are not necessarily fact. Rape is underreported- it’s very possible that many more abortions are actually the result of rape or incest, but the women in question were afraid to report them as such.

“I wish that all the energy that is spent promoting abortion rights could be re-directed to preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place.”

I wish that all the energy that is spent trying to outlaw abortion could be re-directed to preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place.

My views are almost exactly those of the author’s, but I still consider myself technically pro-choice because I just can’t support making abortion illegal.

In this day of morning after pill and so many many contraceptives, there is little need for abortion. You chose to have sex. You then need to deal with the consequences. DH and I were desperately seeking to adopt a baby before I became pregnant. We could not find an available infant–so many are aborted that could have loving homes. As for rape and incest, there is always the morning after pill.

As to jnettie’s comment that a woman will seek one if she “needs” one…define need. I don’t want to be pregnant does not equal need. I don’t want a baby ddoes not equal need. It’s not about “I” its about a helpless life that cannot advocate for itself.

“DH and I were desperately seeking to adopt a baby before I became pregnant. We could not find an available infant–so many are aborted that could have loving homes.”

Really? Try NYC. I do volunteer work with young children in foster care, and there are literally thousands of children in foster care who are available for adoption here. There are all sorts of economic incentives to adopt them, since many of them have physical and/or developmental disabilities, or have phsychological issues stemming from an abusive past requiring ongoing care. Most of them are toddlers and older. Most of them are children of color. All of them are wonderful, and give much more love than any of us can ever imagine.

I just want to state that we have no idea what Mommydearest went through in her adoption search or why she and her husband made the decision to look at an infant adoption. Of course there may be some selfishness in one’s adoption choices (and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing), but to even consider adopting a child is a selfless act.

“[T]o even consider adopting a child is a selfless act.”

While I believe this is true for many, many people, it is also clear that there are people who adopt for all the wrong reasons (Joan Crawford, Joel Steinberg). Thus, such blanket statements, while well-meaning, well . . . (And note that I don’t believe anyone here would ever seek to adopt for the reasons of a Joan Crawford or a Joel Steinberg; I am just pointing out that blanket statements (”we could not find an infant to abort [because] so many have been aborted,” “to even consider adopting a child is a selfless act,” are less than helpful.

Sadly, I read one ad too many when I was in college, from 30 and 40-something couples seeking to adopt the children of pregnant, white Harvard students, as long as they could guarantee that the only men who could be the biological father of the would-be child was also white, and a Harvard man. These would-be adoptive parents were willing to spend large sums of money for a healthy white newborn with the “right” genes. Meanwhile, thousands of older children of color and special needs children languish in foster care.

Ysolde - I’ve read those ads too. I’m in the midwest, and I’ve always thought those ads were strange - like people are looking for some corn-fed kids or something. Plus, due to my juvenile law practice I see many older kids needing good homes. It is an interesting problem. Moving on, I think if your a parent choosing to adopt, you can make some selfish choices because in the end you need to do what’s best for your family. Whether you and I may agree with those choices is another matter. Outside of the Joan Crawford adoption debaucles - those who choose to adopt, IMO, get to choose who they adopt. That type of selfishness, however, is different from the selfishness of abortion. The difference for me lies in the fact that that I see abortion as a matter of life or death. One choosing abortion chooses death. That sounds harsh I know, but that is how I understand abortion.

Ysolde - oh, I agree - there’s probably more to that story.

[b]mommydearest[/b] said: “As to jnettie’s comment that a woman will seek one if she “needs” one…define need.”
I don’t. As pro-choice, it’s not my place to decide when any given woman feels she needs an abortion.

I’m an adoptive mom–and pro-choice. I would never presume that it’s some other woman’s job to carry a pregnancy to term just so I could be a parent. The choice to place a baby for an adoption is agonizingly painful, and I know more than one birth mom who has also had an abortion and who say that the adoption causes them more pain. This is not always the case, of course, but it does indeed happen.

“There aren’t enough babies to adopt because women are having abortions” is also a fallacy for a number of reasons. First, the abortion rate in the U.S. has actually gone *down* over the past several years. There are fewer babies being placed for adoption largely because many women who once placed are deciding instead to parent. If this is the right decision for them, I applaud them. And even if someone does choose to abort rather than place for adoption–that is their decision. It’s not about having more babies to supply some kind of market demand put out by adoptive parents.

And I would agree that adoption is not “selfless” in most cases. Most families choose to adopt because they want children. They want to be parents. If they (and I include myself in this equation) really wanted to do something primarily selfless, they would seek out children in real need: older kids in foster care, children with disabilities, and so on. There are thousands. But most of us want the experience of parenting a child from infancy or young toddlerhood. Like getting pregnant, we want a healthy baby. There’s nothing wrong with that–but it doesn’t make adoptive parents some kind of selfless heroes. It just makes us people who want a family. We didn’t adopt our daughter out of some noble reasoning–we just wanted a baby to love.

And now, amazingly, I also find myself pregnant. This is a much wanted pregnancy. It totally fills my life with joy, and it’s about all I can think about. But I can imagine if this were *not* a wanted pregnancy…it would also be all I could think about, and in a devastating way. Being pregnant does not make me less pro-choice. Being pregnant only makes me wish all the more for better birth control, better sex education, better parenting support, better health care, and all the other kinds of things we’d need to create a world in which every woman who gets pregnant wants to, and feels as joyous about it as I do.

If you don’t personally want to take away a woman’s right to choose, aren’t you just pro-choice?

Wow–I was gone all day and missed out on the discussion.

We were having difficulty getting pregnant, which started our adoption path. We looked to several adoption agencies in our city and there were extremely long waiting lists for infants surrendered at birth of any race. I teach in an inner city school and we had spoken to several pregnant teens who ultimately chose to parent. We contacted social services as well, however, DH was not willing to foster to adopt because he lived in a foster home as a teen and understands the court system and how often children are placed with parents even when it is obvious to the foster family it is not in the child’s best interest. He was not willing to put himself through the emotional roller coaster of foster parenting, and I had to respect his wishes, even if I didn’t agree with them.

Instead, we chose to adopt from Vietnam, and began the paper chase. Two months later, I found out I was pregnant, which put the adoption on hold for now. We will continue with it in 2 or 3 years when DD is older.

In re-reading my post, I do not mean that there are “no” children available for adoption BECAUSE of abortion. However, with better education of options, the dreams of couples could come true.

My biggest point was that life is full of choices and if you make them, you must be willing to take the consequences. They are not always easy or desirable, but anyone who has been through elementary sex ed knows where babies come from.

“that’s what pro-choice means. Whether you would exercise the option yourself is irrelevant.”

In a certain way, this is true. But there are many places on this spectrum.

I haven’t thought this through but I mention some of these gradations below. I call them ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ but I have a feeling people might define these terms differently. E.g., someone who morally objects to all abortion could say she is ‘pro-life’ and then turn around and say it has to be legal. The reason she might do this is because most public advocates of the pro-choice position never morally condemn abortion. So it seems that it is ‘pro-life’ to do so.

I’m not saying this is accurate. I do agree with you, lawyerlee that if you agree abortion should be legal you should regard yourself as pro-choice. I just think that there is a reason people aren’t so clear about that.

Strong pro-life: Abortion is morally equivalent to murder from the moment of conception. Thus, no intentional termination of pregnancy can be legally or morally permitted.

Moderate pro-life: Abortion is seriously wrong but may be less wrong than murder and so abortion in certain very exceptional cases (rape, incest, certain death) can be permitted. However, abortion should be illegal for all other cases.

Sort of in-between both views: Abortion is only permissible in the very, very early part of a pregnancy.

Moderate pro-choice: Abortion is morally wrong in many cases and should be discouraged in every way possible. However, it would be a grave imposition on women’s ability to determine questions of moral right or wrong to prohibit abortion in the first trimester.

Strong pro-choice: Abortion is never morally wrong. Abortion should be permitted beyond the first (or second) trimester.

Strongest pro-choice: Abortion is never wrong up until the child leaves the womb (or even after in some cases). Abortion in the third trimester is totally fine morally and should also be legal.

You may say no one has the strongest pro-choice view but I can show you a variety of places this has been argued for. I definitely hear people say “Pro-choice = X” (e.g., that all pro-choice advocates forbid termination after the first trimester) but then many pro-choice advocates do argue otherwise. But of course, Roe v. Wade allows abortion on demand only in the first trimester and thereafter the issue is fuzzier.

I predict that if the strongest pro-life position were the only option, many more people would regard themselves as pro-choice. I think people say they are pro-life but when push comes to shove they will not vote for that as their only option.

Then again, I have a feeling most people are not very strong pro-choice because they regard abortion as usually morally wrong. This is not to say that what people believe is a sign of what is true but more that the politics will shift drastically when different options are on the table.

“My biggest point was that life is full of choices and if you make them, you must be willing to take the consequences. They are not always easy or desirable, but anyone who has been through elementary sex ed knows where babies come from.”

I think this is really simplistic. Just “knowing where babies come from” doesn’t mean you have the first idea about how to *keep* from having a baby. It’s been pretty well proven that abstinence-only sex ed courses are a dismal failure at this, and yet they’re the ones being pushed by our government. I heard a scary NPR piece a year or so ago, in which kids who’d been through some abstinence-only sex ed course were talking with great certainty about the “fact” that condoms don’t work at all to prevent sexually transmitted disease or pregnancy. It wasn’t that these kids weren’t probably going to have sex anyway–they just weren’t going to use condoms because they’d been taught they were useless!

Sex education in this country is woefully inadequate and a lot of young people have similarly incredible misconceptions. And lack of accurate sex ed information is just one of many factors that puts women in the position of having an unplanned pregnancy. So simply to blithely state that “you know where babies come from” ignores these realities.

I also believe that no matter what the decision about an unplanned pregnancy, the woman is indeed “living with the consequences.” No matter whether she chooses parenting, adoption, or abortion, she has made a decision that she will have to live with. She needs support and good counsel and information in making that decision, but ultimately that decision is hers–no one else can make it for her.

Finally, I’m not sure about this statement: “With better education of options, the dreams of couples could come true.” Honestly, young women who are pregnant unexpectedly, especially if they’re single, teenagers, poor, etc., *frequently* are “educated” about their option to choose adoption. (They sometimes have it pushed on them to an insane degree–I’ve talked with young women who’ve gone through this.) And I would again say that it is not the job of any pregnant woman to make my dreams, or the dreams of anyone who wants a child, come true. It is her job to make the best decision for herself at this time, and the “education” on options she should get should be unbiased, not designed to persuade her to choose either adoption, abortion, or parenting. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of counseling alternatives available like that. But a woman who has an unplanned pregnancy deserves counseling from an advocate with no agenda other than helping to determine what’s best for that woman.

Let me start by saying I am very pro-choice. When I was 14 I got involved way over my head with a boy and he pressured me to have sex with him. It resulted in a very unplanned pregnancy.

I came from a good family and this was not something my parents ever expected to happen to me. I was still a child myself and there was no way I could have a child. My parents chose for me to terminate the pregnancy. It took a long, long time for me to come to terms with it. I knew in my head it was the right thing for my situation and it wasn’t until I had my son last year that I was really at peace with it all. It was the right decision. There is no part of me that regrets it. I only regret that the situation ever happened to begin with and I didn’t tell him no.

One of my first thoughts when I had my son was that I was so glad he was going born from love from me and my husband. I can’t even imagine the poor quality of life me and the baby would have had if I had been a 15 year old mother. I would have most likely never met my husband and therefore wouldn’t have my son now.

I wish more people were educated on birth control methods including natural family planning. I think this is key to making abortions very rare.

This event in my life changed who I am forever. Before I thought abortion was awful and could never understand how someone would do that. I will never judge a woman whether she’s 14 or 40 who seeks an abortion. It is a very personal decision that is not taken lightly. I guess you can never truly know what it’s like until you walk in someone else’s shoes.

Thank you for sharing, ajb–my situation was quite similar to yours, although my parents weren’t involved.