I thoroughly enjoyed being on Life Report last night, and it's given me a ton of stuff to reflect on and address. I'll be getting to these points over the next days and weeks.
"Unwantedness." Why do we let the abortion advocates equate picking up the phone to schedule an abortion with "This baby is unwanted"? But we do. We go barreling head-on into, "Well, somebody wants that baby. Why doesn't she make an adoption plan?"
Prochoicers themselves undermine their whole "unwanted baby" claim every time they attack adoption on the grounds of how hard it is to give up a child. Well, if an unwanted pregnancy really meant an unwanted baby, she'd hand the kid over with never a tear, only a huge sigh of relief. The fact that placing the baby for adoption is such an agonizing thing is predicated on the reality that by the time the baby arrives, it usually is wanted -- by the mother who considered aborting it in the first place!
Why do we let them get away with that?
There are also the normal psychological dynamics of pregnancy coming into play, all of which could warrant an entire post:
1. Acceptance of the pregnant state
2. Affiliation with the unborn baby
3. Preparatory behaviors
4. Developing a reality-based perception of the newborn
Start thinking about how the way we let prochoicers frame the abortion issue utterly fails to challenge them on these points.
Horrible abortion mills
Yes, they exist because abortion advocates in positions of influence or power consider the well-being of the victimized women to be of less concern than the overall legality and "access" picture. The average prochoicer on the street does not share that cavalier attitude. We do best, therefore, to not only point out how nasty these places are, but the total complicity of abortion supporters. But even more, we need to make it very plain that prochoice organizations from whom prochoice citizens get their information -- the organizations that they trust -- have been lying to them about how trustworthy abortionists are. Raise the question of how trustworthy they are about other things, if they're so cavalierly willing to lie through their teeth about the existence of Kermit Gosnell types.
Also, the flourishing of seedy abortion mills will totally work in abortion advocates' favor when Roe falls. They will just point to the very practitioners that they were ignoring when abortion was legal, and blame the situation on us, when it's a situation that they practically promoted and cultivated in the first place.
Well, time to leave for work. Chew on these things and let me know what you think.
"If an unwanted pregnancy really meant an unwanted baby, she'd hand the kid over with never a tear, only a huge sigh of relief. The fact that placing the baby for adoption is such an agonizing thing is predicated on the reality that by the time the baby arrives, it usually is wanted -- by the mother who considered aborting it in the first place!" -- Exactly right! This is such a wonderful way of looking at this problem. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteYou’re post hit close to home…this is something I’ve thought of often over the past decade. I’ve had 2 abortions and when asked if I ever thought of adoption I’ve always said the same thing, “after carrying ‘my’ babies around for 9 months I would never have been able to give them up.” It’s become so clear to me that my unplanned pregnancies were not unwanted. I wish I had been less selfish and more selfless!
ReplyDeleteHugs, Faith, but also a question: Were you really being selfish? Or just frightened and short-sighted?
ReplyDeleteChristina, enjoy your blog!
ReplyDeleteAs a post-abortive woman, while I was praying at an abortion mill, a young gentleman came up to several of us. During our discussions, I brought up the subject of adoption. His comment was "Oh, I couldn't let someone else raise my child." After he was not willing to hear about a beautiful adoption story and/or trying to save his wife and child from abortion (By the way, this was his second aborted child from another woman), I finally said to him in a loving but stern voice, "Let me get this straight through your logic. You wouldn't want to see your child get a chance in life with other loving parents that would truly want your baby to get a chance to succeed in life with all the opportunities that life has to offer, but you could easily live with the fact that your dead babiy will now be in a garbage dumpster with other wastes." I looked at the evil subject straight in the eye and I challenged it to this young man.
Christina, fear definitely played a role but sadly I will forever feel I was incredibly selfish. The thought of carrying around MY baby for 9 months, feeling it alive and moving inside me, only to give it away forever seemed too painful and I simply didn‘t want to subject myself to that kind of grief. At the time an abortion seemed like a quick fix, I’d have a procedure and simply move on with my life. And I think that’s what a lot of women today still believe because our pro choice society wants to believe it’s true. We’re not educating women on the truth - pregnancy is life-altering, regardless of the outcome. Abortion is not a quick resolution but a life-changing decision that can bring with it years of torment. In other words, I don’t see my decisions being short-sighted but simply uneducated. Hope that makes sense. J
ReplyDeleteCarol and Faith, thanks so much for sharing your stories here. The more people learn about real life, the better they can understand that it's not as simple as abortion advocates try to pretend it is.
ReplyDelete