We will stand in solidarity with parents like these, who recognize that even a dying child has worth and dignity:
We will never treat them like abortion supporters do -- as if they need to apologize for their children's very existence.
We will stand in solidarity with women like Ashli, who deserve real medical care, not abandonment to the anguish of a dead child:
We will never concede that what these women and families endured is an acceptable price to pay for "choice". We will never join the abortion movement in abandoning demoralized women to the mercies of abortionists who stand to profit from their fear and despair.
We will continue to be there, to fight for women like this young mother:
We will never join the abortion movement in accepting the abandonment of fragile infants to a lonely death. We will never waver in our determinate to provide them with the care they deserve.
We will never buy into the lie that legal abortion supposedly saves women's lives. We will not give in to those who hold women hostage to rhetoric, to those who insist that we must allow them to kill babies with medical instruments, lest they kill mothers with coathangers. Those who threaten to kill women if abortion is criminalized are killing them anyway, even as they've been given free rein to kill the children.
We will never embrace buying anything at the cost of mothers' tears and children's lives.
We're not going away. We won't capitulate to the idea that we have a right to reject people, sight unseen, based on the circumstances of their conception, around their health, around problems their mothers face. And we won't stop until every child is welcomed, and ever mother given the support and love she deserves.
"And we won't stop until every child is welcomed, and every mother given the support and love she deserves."
ReplyDeleteAnd I won't stop until you keep your "love" off my body, thanks. The only "support" I need is my Plan B. ;)
Actually, I came to your blog to catch up and say happy new year, but forgot -- I got distracted by a wave of overwhelming gratitude for my contraception!
ReplyDeleteAll the best to you.
L.,
ReplyDeleteYou may not feel that way, but there are thousands of pregnant women out there who lack the support or resources to be pregnant or carrying to term, despite a desire to otherwise, if not for a lack of resources or support. What's wrong with advocating for better resources (affordable prenatal care, day care, educational services, job placement services, housing, etc) for theses women? Do you feel your abortion rights are so threatened that you're willing to place protecting abortion rights over offering other options and real help to other women which ensures that they have a "choice" besides abortion?
Happy New Year to you too, L! Welcome back!
ReplyDeleteI still wonder why the prochoice lobby, that is so adamant in fighting roadblocks to abortion, allows so many roadblocks to tubal ligation. I get many complaints from prochoice women who have multiple abortions because of paternalistic doctors who refuse them tubal ligations because they're too young, they haven't had enough children yet, they might regret it later, yada yada yada.
It seems to me that this would be pretty non-controversial. A tubal ligation is, after all, something that really does involve only the woman making a choice about her own body, and not also about the body of a new human organism. It gives the woman control of her reproductive life.
The lobbying efforts are all toward less reliable "prevention" and toward abortion. The resulting dynamic is of women who know they don't want children suffering one contraceptive failure after the other, enduring one abortion after the other, when it could all be prevented if women had as much of a right to control their reproductive destinies via tubal ligation as they do via abortion.
It's a puzzler.
Rachel -- nothing wrong with advocating for better resources for those who seek them. But I used the first-person singular pronoun above for a reason! :)
ReplyDeleteChristina -- you and I have agreed on tubal ligations before. While we might disagree on what is right and wrong once a certain sperm meets a certain egg, we both think it's desirable in some situations that they never meet in the first place.
Rachael -- sorry for spelling your name wrong above -- typo! Accidents happen.
ReplyDelete:)
ReplyDeleteL. "The only "support" I need is my Plan B.'
ReplyDeleteAlthough you may still need Plan C after Plan B has failed.