lobsterchick's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Short Explanation of My Views I'm pro-choice. I would never say that I would never have an abortion, because I just don't know. I have never had unprotected sex, and never will. Ever ever. Until, at least, I'm married or in a situation where I know my partner's complete history, both of us have been tested, and having a child is a desirable option to me. No, I don't believe abortion is murder. At the time of conception, all that exsists is a mass of cells, no bigger than the head of a pin, if that big. To me, a mass of cells is not a child. I also think that rather than being a black-and-white issue, there are so many shades of gray to this as to be innumerable. Fourteen-year-old girls get raped. Crack addicts become prostitutes and get pregnant. Married women of 42 get pregnant long after they ever dreamed of having children. Who's to say what the right circumstances for termination are? Not me, that's for sure. I think it's a lot easier to judge someone than to try to understand the situation. I'd like to think that if any of my nieces came to me and told me they'd had an abortion, I would be understanding and comforting, and not make their already tough road even tougher. For the people who stridently speak out against abortion, and point to the people who are dying for children, I ask them, how much do you know about the foster and adoption systems in this country? How often do you think crack babies are placed? Would you be willing to adopt a child who was born with an addiction to drugs? What about AIDS? How willing would you be to welcome a child into your home who had a fatal disease, whose care your insurance provider does not cover? Even in the cases of children who are born without any health problems, consider this: Psychologists consider bonding within the first few weeks of life to be essential to emotional development. When a child is swept away from its birth mother, never to see her again, and placed in a situation where he or she is bounced around from facility to facility, or family to family, what sort of emotional problems do you think arise? Also, once a child reaches a certain age, he or she is considered undesirable for adoption. Parents want babies. They want healthy babies. That leaves a whole lot of kids out there without homes. That's not to say that every child who is given up for adoption is doomed to a life of emotional disconnection and drug addiction, but when there is a relatively safe alternative for the mother, why place more strain than necessary on an already overloaded system? Abortion has been around since the dawn of time; society after society has used it as a solution to unwanted pregnancy (yes, even in Christian cultures--look it up). I think we should just be thankful that we live in a time and place where they're relatively safe and easy to procure. 1:03 PM - 24 January 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||