Stanek weekend question: Is it more a problem for pro-lifers or pro-choicers that the majority of aborting women already have children ?
Writing about the MTV abortion special, No Easy Decision, pro-abort Jessica Wakeman wrote at TheFrisky.com (emphasis hers):
According to a 2008 paper in The Journal of Family Issues, 61% of American women who have abortions are already mothers. That is a fact which is all too easily obscured by anti-abortion protestors: the majority of American women getting abortions aren’t irresponsible baby-killers, they’re already moms.
Wait a minute. Is this statement even true? Is it true that pro-lifers try to “obscure” the fact that most mothers getting abortions already have children?
In fact, for which side is this statistic more of a problem? For which side does it bode more poorly?
Jan.01, 2011 11:29 am |
Weekend question |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
You can be an irresponsible baby-killer AND a mom. And we know once a woman has reproduced, she is ALREADY a mother. So mothers who abort only SOME of their children are mothers of living AND dead children. Congratulations.
I really don’t get this. Does Ms Wakeman really think that most pro-lifers really view post-abortive moms, or moms considering abortion, as evil baby-killers and nothing else? When I think of women in these situations, I see a woman and child – really, a family – who needs help, info and support. And funny thing is, the hundred or so other pro-lifers I personally know do too.
Welcome to the real world, Ms. Wakeman. We are the rule, not the exception.
I’ve always wondered about the truth behind this. The women I know who aborted, aborted their first child. Once they gave birth to children, they couldn’t imagine having another abortion. However, these women aborted 15-20 years ago and I think proaborts have become much more pushy since then, especially the women who are still in denial about the negative consequences of their own abortions. Misery likes company.
I think the proaborts find any opening to prey on vulnerable women. If she already is a mom, they will use the love she has for her born child against her with rationale like “your child will suffer if you have another baby”, “you won’t be able to afford it”, etc. to make themselves feel better about their ‘choice.’
They don’t tell the vulnerable mom that she will more than likely want more children down the line anyway and that having another baby right away isn’t that much more difficult, if it is at all. How many proabort friends offer to help her if she has the baby?
I actually found it easier and not much more expensive with each child because the kids were each other’s playmates and I used the same baby and kid items over again. Children naturally want to be around other children. My sister and I are 1 1/2 years apart and even though we had our own bedrooms, we slept in each others’ rooms because we wanted to be with each other.
Most children are drowning in material stuff. They don’t need more stuff to be happy. They need family.
Perhaps there’s no greater example of “abortion as birth control” than a mother killing her child because she “can’t afford another one.”
Jill,
Earlier in 2010 we had the story of the woman killed at the A-1 abortion clinic in Queens, NY. She was a mother of four from New Jersey. Then we had Angie, mother of a son, who live-tweeted her abortion. Both wanted to provide best for the existing children.
As I see it, this is a problem for everyone, pro-life and pro-abort alike. It bespeaks a chilling philosophy that imperils us all.
The boomers begin their social security and medicare in earnest this year, amidst the massive Bush-Obama debts whose full effects will not kick in for another ten years. At the same time the elderly population will be swelling, sending federal expenditures out of control. The number of workers contributing to social security will have fallen to two workers per retiree, down from 15 workers per retiree in 1950. Couple this with birth rates that are falling, and projected to dip below replacement levels here in the next 15 years, and the writing is on the wall.
If a mother, one who has already experienced the development of life within her womb, one who has experienced the beauty of children, can turn on her child and kill it purely for “quality” of life and not survival—then none of is is safe. The same generation that shrugs at such atrocity will think even less of withholding medical care from the Boomers when their quality of life is impacted by higher payroll taxes and other taxes and surcharges.
How many pro-abort Boomers will accept removing their carbon footprints permanently in order to increase the “quality” of life for the younger generations? How many of them will accept with docility the imposition of cost-saving measures that mean a premature ending of their lives?
The Catholic Bishops have cautioned for over four decades that acceptance of abortion at the beginning of the life spectrum will result in euthanasia on the other end. And for four decades they were ridiculed without mercy. I know many Boomers who ridiculed them, who are now nervously reconsidering those admonitions and wondering if it’s too late to outrun the fire that’s gaining on them. A fire they helped to start.
I think its probably an even split. All the women I know who aborted were aborting their first (or first several ) pregnancies. None were moms of post-natal children yet. If the statistics are true its very saddening. It shows a hardening of women’s hearts. They have gone through pregnancy, felt a baby kick in their belly, experienced the miracle of birth, viewed ultrasounds and yet turn around and choose death for their other children’s siblings. That is a hard heart.
Many mothers are making a tragic decision under pressure and duress.
Prax and Gerard, i agree with both your comments.
We do not obscure that women are already mothers, but all pro-aborts rely on lies. Roe v Wade was based on lies and everything that came after it is more lies. Almost 40 years and still we hear this week a woman being told the old it’s-not-a-baby-it’s-a-clump-of-cells lie. I hold the abortionists more responsible than the women. Why? Because I know that most women will NOT hurt themselves if no abortion is being sold to them.
This is fascinating – the consequences as outlined by Gerry are indeed going to happen. Perhaps it is the SCALE of future-euthanasia that will undermine much.
And it doesn’t solve the problem. I have made numerous postings about the role of zinc-deficiency and consequent pregnancy-depression. The vast majority of all in North America are zinc-deficient. Pregnant women (often become pregnant a second time within 2 years) are mineral deficient and the mom (+ her child) will exhibit some symptoms …. ie. depression.
Are we all not walking time bombs … exploding on the euthanasia-front or the abortion-front?
First of all, 100% of American women who have abortions are already mothers. There are such pressures exerted on women because of the widespread acceptance of the old, tired blob-of-tissue and quality of life myths… and even amongst prolifers! I can’t tell you how many well-meaning Christian friends have remarked to my husband and I (parents of 8), “But how do you ever afford it?” and, “Well, you really should think of your other children, after all,” instead of any kind of welcoming attitude toward a new pregnancy. You begin to sense that you have exceeded an acceptable quota. For some women, I think that is enough to send them over. And please don’t forget the horrible, desperate pressure put on women receiving a poor prenatal diagnosis – the stories abound. I don’t think we would have a 90% decision for abortion rate with Downs syndrome and other prenatally detectable disorders were it not for the subtle negative attitudes common, even amongst our church-going, prolife friends. This really has to change.
This is where the saying came from “KEEP A FEW KILL A FEW”… I can agree that many women do not understand what an abortion is all about, but many women are not stupid, and they do know that they are killing a baby so they don’t have to care for it. My girlfriend was a nursing student and the other was already a nurse. One is stuck in morbid PAS and the other 1 is in denial ans killing herself slowly. They both know what they did!
I think it is really only a problem for the babies quite frankly.
For those trying to “win” an argument, that is a valid question.
For those hoping to see reduced abortion rates, it is an opportunity to study and learning something. If that is indeed correct, it probably says something about either the cost of children, or the amount of single parent households. I’m guessing it is a massive wake-up call to some people when they see how much work a baby is. With more and more children born to single mothers, I could see where women simply don’t think they can do it again.
Pure speculation of course…but again, I think it is not “good” news or “bad” news for either side – but should provide some clues that, through policy, could help decrease abortion rates.
I also knew of another woman who had 8 abortions. She was a bad alcoholic and her parents had to take custody of her 12 yr old daughter. She became very abusive to her daughter. She had to have a hysterectomy several years ago due to the abortions. She kept bleeding and bleeding. She had maintained sobriety for many years after almost killing herself by the bottle. She was hospitalized for several weeks. Docs. told her her constant bleeding was from the abortions./ She fell into deep despair after the hysterectomy claiming “I wanted more kids!!!!” She relapsed back to alcohol. Sad!
I know more than one woman who had an abortion after having already had a child. I think this situation points to the reality that it’s not merely scientific education that will stop abortion – that we need, as a society, to support mothers. We need accessible and reliable help for women who have children. I don’t just mean women who are pregnant. I mean women whose children are already born. Maternity leave, paternity leave, breastfeeding-friendly workplaces, greater knowledge about and respect for postpartum depression, etc.
For example, one woman I know had an unplanned pregnancy at age 21, but was very excited to be pregnant. She already lived with the father, and they got married once she aged off of her parents’ excellent insurance policy; she was very happy. She never once considered abortion, or at least never admitted to considering it. When discussing post-pregnancy birth control options she refused to consider things like oral contraceptives or IUD, because she didn’t want to risk harming her future fertility in any way – she desperately wanted more kids.
She had a very, very hard time post-pregnancy. Post-partum depression. She had no paid maternity leave and she ended up getting fired for missing too much work in the first few months after her son’s birth. Her insurance wasn’t so great once she was on her husband’s instead of her parents’. She was able to get WIC, which helped a lot, but in most other ways she felt completely unsupported and adrift. I don’t mean that she was looking for some welfare program – but there is an attitude in our society that, in terms of legislation and attitude, families are “your choice” and therefore simply not a public concern. Her husband, in grad school for engineering and holding down a job that was their sole source of income, felt overwhelmed and similarly unsupported.
She got pregnant again when her son was about a year old, and chose abortion without even questioning it. I asked her why she had chosen that when just a year and a half earlier she’d been so adamant about wanting more babies and a big family and generally being so excited to be pregnant even though the timing wasn’t ideal; she said that they were only just beginning to recover, financially and emotionally and mentally, from having the first child and that she honestly couldn’t imagine getting back on her feet again so soon. She has an IUD now and is waiting until her doctor will agree to give her a tubal ligation. She wants no more children. IMO it indicates a real social problem at the root level. One income often cannot support a family, but workplaces are unfriendly to new parents; insurance often treats pregnancy as a “personal problem” that women just need to figure out on their own; doctors are often slow to treat post-partum depression seriously, instead blaming it on situational causes like a lack of money. My friend wasn’t some scared college kid who simply didn’t believe that a pregnancy meant a real baby – she went from being a very pro-baby, abortion-is-not-for-me young woman to a woman who had an abortion without thinking twice, and it was the experience of having a baby and going through the first year that caused that transformation.
I really believe that many women and men ought to be able to get a tubal ligation or a vasectomy. I realize that many doctors know that they may change their minds, but if you are old enough to have sex, abortions, and sleep around with different partners, you ought to be able to sign the consent form for sterilization. This would stop the tax payers for having to pay for their dead babies!
I have met women of all ages who do not want kids!!!! They ought to be able to get a tubal ligation. That famous gal from LA Ink got fixed and she’s young. However, she did the responsible thing for a girl who didn’t want kids!!!!!
(Doctor Nadal): The boomers begin their social security and medicare in earnest this year, amidst the massive Bush-Obama debts whose full effects will not kick in for another ten years. At the same time the elderly population will be swelling, sending federal expenditures out of control. The number of workers contributing to social security will have fallen to two workers per retiree, down from 15 workers per retiree in 1950. Couple this with birth rates that are falling, and projected to dip below replacement levels here in the next 15 years, and the writing is on the wall.
Gerald, very nicely written post by you. I don’t agree on much of your religious take, but you’re certainly right that big trouble’s a-brewin’, and I appreciate you saying “Bush” as well as “Obama.” Obama has jacked up spending to historical heights, but so did the 3 preceeding Republican Presidents, and it’s been many decades since we’ve had a true surplus.
Sadly, the original intent and facilitation of Social Security has been left behind, trod under by political greed and malfeasance (and outright stupidity), leaving us viewing it as a Ponzi scheme. Even were birth rates increasing, rather than decreasing, it would eventually collapse under its own weight, as they all do.
If we’re wanting more contributors, by far the best thing would be to admit more foreign workers, those more educated and motivated, and certainly to be expected to contribute far in excess of what the people resulting from abortion being illegal would.
On “carbon footprints,” I don’t think many of us are willing to reduce it to zero, and given world demographics and the population explosion, which IMO guarantee increasing energy costs for a good while, I doubt the movement will carry much momentum in the US, while most other countries make no similar effort. Who wants to see their electric bill double, triple, quadruple?
How fickle is the human heart and easy to deceive!
When I was a child, I used to use the same ploy to try and get my parent’s consent to see a movie that was not age appropriate. I used to say, “But Jimmy’s Mom is letting him go.” To which my mother would reply something like, “If Jimmy’s parents allowed him to jump off the Ambassador Bridge, would you jump too?”
While we may be reluctant to admit it, this statistic is a bigger problem for Pro-Lifers as it implies the acceptability of a wicked vile act: the killing of one’s child by a mother with older children. It is but one of the many lies in satan’s arsenal he’s used so effectively to slaughter a very large percentage of the human family before they ever get to see the light of day (I must have misfiled the calculations I made some months ago but I believe the percentage was around 25% of the children conceived worldwide that satan kills through abortion. And that number did not include all the children killed by abortifacient birth control medications and IUD’s.)
So on one hand, this statistic may make it more difficult for us to convict others of the inherent evil of abortion. On the other hand, it does help us make the case for the depravity of man, his capacity for evil and our need for a Savior.
Saving Private Ryan was on tonight (again). I caught the one scene where the officer reads the Bixby letter regarding the siblings that were killed in battle and describes “the great sacrifice their family had laid upon the alter of freedom”. The whole movie is about saving the one son whose 3 brothers were KIA for his parent’s sake.
It’s amazing how we can put such enormous value and worth on sibling Private Ryan’s life, to the point that a half dozen soldiers gave their lives in order to save his. The story touches our hearts. We give it multiple Academy Awards.
And yet in America, thousands of deceived mothers deliberately kill their children’s siblings every day because having another child would be inconvenient or stressful or hard.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.” Jer 17.9 NKJV
Doug,
There has been no population explosion. Fertility rates have been falling for decades, and that’s a fact. It isn’t that people are reproducing like mosquitos. It’s that we’ve stopped dying like flies, thanks to antibiotics and vaccinations. That has produced the spike in the population. However, that spike is only temporary, given worldwide falling fertility rates.
The truth is that the aggregate age on the planet is increasing, and importing foreign workers is a stop-gap measure that will be impossible in three decades, as the population will implode as the older generation dies out and the younger generations don’t even replace themselves.
The answer is to bring the fertility rates up, not down. Get the film, Demographic Winter, from Human Life International. The data are all there, presented by an all-star cast of Ph.D.’s in their fields. The surest way to reverse the certain trend coming is to start making a lot of babies, and fast.
Gerard, you think that might get my husband on board? I am going to get him to watch that film and then MAYBE I’ll finally be allowed to have another baby! 2011 is the year… I feel it!
Gerald, I first would ask, “Who is going to have all these increased number of babies?” And even if we did somehow have a bunch of extra babies born, how are they going to compete with foreign countries and workers making 50 cents or a buck an hour?
I certainly see a population explosion – in my lifetime alone, the population has gone from 3 billion to well over 6, and the US Census Bureau says 9 billion in another 34 years or so.
Yes, birth rates are slowing down, but they are still positive, and that, with the increased longevity that you note, means the tripling of the population in a good bit less than a century. If that’s not a population explosion, what is?
I have big problems with viewing Social Security, for example, as a Ponzi scheme, always requiring increased numbers of people at the bottom of the pyramid – these are doomed to failure, anyway. Also, most of what I read here assumes a largely “steady state” economy where other factors are ignored, and that’s not the real world.
Yeah, we’re living longer, and we’re working longer, too. We indeed are facing changing economic times, but that was coming regardless of birth rates. We’ve got like half the world’s population in China and India (we can throw in Brasil and parts of the former USSR too) just now developing a middle class, starting to get cars, washing machines, computers, etc. IMO this means high and increasing costs for American consumers going forward in time, regardless of our birth rates.
The prices for energy, alone, mean that we now are in a period of declining standard of living for most Americans, a different deal than most of the past 50 years, IMO. I don’t know everything that’s going to happen, but sure as heck this is not a “steady state” world where we can just plug in higher numbers of people in this country and expect a commensurate change.
If anything, I’d say that increasing energy, food, raw materials prices, etc., will mean a lessening desire to have kids on the part of the populace. And this is not necessarily a negative for the economy. Many countries are undergoing or have undergone the demographic shift where birth rates decline, but in no way does that mean that their economies do worse than countries where the birth rate did not decline.
Is it more a problem for pro-lifers or pro-choicers that the majority of aborting women already have children ?
It’s part of the statistical background that many of us have been aware of for a long time. How can it be said to really be a problem for one side or the other? The arguments from both sides are the same for them as they are for women who have not yet had kids.
If anything, I think the fact that roughly 90% of Down’s Syndrome pregnancies are willingly ended would be a problem, for pro-lifers, as it shows that when one is actually in the situation, it often makes a difference.
Doug,
The name is GeraRd, not Gerald.
As for the population growth, the estimates have never, ever proven true, the same for the diminishment of the food supply that was predicted in the 60’s and 70’s. Mark my words, euthanasia will make the abortion stats pale in comparison.
The countries with 50 cent/hr labor are also experiencing a demographic downturn. Get the film and then read the data for yourself. If you keep listening to the culture of death echo chamber, you’ll never escape the death spiral we are in.
Gerard, my apologies – I think I read your name wrong way back when and that erroneous first impression stuck with me. Sorry about that.
If there is a “culture of death,” I think it comes from population pressure itself. The countries with cheap labor may indeed have a slowing birth rate, but by and large they are still massively positive there, and really – I don’t see that as mattering too much when in comparison with US wages. My point is that even with a “magical” rise in the US population, how does this necessarily translate into a meaningful increase in our wealth or ability to support people? The extra ones would have to have jobs, and where do they come from, when most of the rest of the world can take stuff out of the ground and produce things much more cheaply than we can?
Were we to have such an economic collapse that our wages were once again competitive, then I think the argument could at least be made that “we need more workers,” but that would be a much more wrenching shock to most people than the country struggling as a higher percentage of federal revenue goes for entitlement programs. I see no way that the politicians, regardless of political party, will accept that.
Population estimates may not work out exactly, but again – in my lifetime alone, it’s gone from 3 billion to well over 6 billion. And I think it’s ludicrous to suggest that it won’t soon be over 7 billion…. And from there to 8, then higher yet.
As for food shortages, there is always stuff available, though it comes at higher and higher prices. We’ve certainly been through that the past few years, and we have billions of people rapidly increasing their consumption now, to say nothing of the population expansion that continues.
Having more mouths to feed is no magic bullet here. The US has lived way beyond its means during the past decades, through times of relatively high US population growth and through lesser rates as well. Now, we have a huge debt – one that while not all that terrifying by percentage or historical standards, not yet anyway, will nevertheless not be paid off. Thus we have declining purchasing power and a currency that is falling in value. This is not an easy trend to reverse, and not one that simply having more mouths to feed can cure or even help with, necessarily.
Alexandra,
I’m so sorry to hear of this woman’s struggles. I could not agree with your post more. We have much work to do, and I know that I myself don’t often think about postpartum depression. I do think a lot about pregnancy in other areas of the globe now- how can we get necessary medical care around the world to help pregnant women and young children, and how can we do this without an ethnocentric approach? It is a fact that abortion leads to death and/or severe injurious for women and children around the globe, and we must now all think about why this is and what we can do.
The first problem that I notice is that it makes people uncomfortable. Do you notice this? I care a lot about maternal health from birth control to infant mortality- women and children die because they can’t get access to doctors or healers, or are killed or gravely injured in an abortion. But say the word “abortion” and instantly you’ve got some shifty looks in your direction. The conversation takes on a weird slant where people start to fidget, clearly not wanting to discuss it.
So my questions are these: What’s your take on international healthcare for women and children? And do you know any good resources for learning more about postpartum depression? I’m not sure that I really understand it, but want to.
Ah, Dr. Nadal! Didn’t I read a post recently that made the brilliant point that “abortion clinics” were undeserving of the name “clinic”? :)
Doug,
you may be very bright, but right here you’ve made a huge miscalculation. While population expansion is a fact, it is also a fact that such expansion/explosion has little to do with birth expansion.
The people dying at birth or before the age of 10 used to be almost the same as any other decade. But thanks to modern medical practices, it is rare that anyone under 20 actually does die from anything but an accident. This skews figures around aging so that now the average person will live to be 71-73. [I know of a small African nation where the median is 29 years old. Yeppers, 29! It is likely the median for all ‘poor’ people.]
Think now, all those folks who do not die (very often), mixed-in the death-rate. The rate-number increases … but the number of people can change little (even be less), this is what Gerard is talking about.
There are 7 sibs in my family. Together all my nephews and nieces total 7. Sounds like an ideal replacement, eh? We forgot my in-laws in this calculation: 4 missing. And our family is NOT unusual. We’re all going to pay big-time!!
John,
I expect more and more morgues to have an issue with unclaimed bodies. Most of this is currently blamed on the economy. Further down in the following article though it states, “There are many people with sad lives. But it is even sadder when even after you are dead, there is no one to pick you up.”
http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/01/news/economy/_morgue/index.htm
I don’t believe that education is the answer to the problem of mothers having abortions. It seems to me that abortion in these instances is back-up birth control (as opposed to contraception).
There are a ton of women in uncommitted relationships who get pregnant and then discover the father isn’t interested in a baby. The baby is destroyed in the hope of retaining the relationship. Generally not a successful strategy.
@Doug: the fact remains that virtually no western country has a replacement birthrate, without which a culture cannot survive. Secondly children grow up to be people that need education, make and consume products and make discoveries and innovations. We will never compete with 50cent wages BUT that situation will change too. Eventually these workers will gain more political and social clout, they will become educated and demand more. Soon those days will be gone.
It’s time to take our production back home and make goods that are high quality and that people are willing to pay for. Where I live, there was a flourishing textile industry until the early 1990s. Now everything comes from Vietnam, China, and Pakistan. I would gladly pay more for better quality clothes and have fewer of them. Our working model of capitalism is based on ever-increasing consumption – something that likely is not sustainable over the long run.
I think it’s a sign of many things, in particularly a marketing coup for abortionists. Any time you find a new customer niche, you’re sitting pretty.
“I really believe that many women and men ought to be able to get a tubal ligation or a vasectomy. I realize that many doctors know that they may change their minds, but if you are old enough to have sex, abortions, and sleep around with different partners, you ought to be able to sign the consent form for sterilization. This would stop the tax payers for having to pay for their dead babies.”
The Catholic Church considers sterilization to be a mortal sin. As such, devout Catholic women and men would not avail themselves to this procedure and could easily end up in a dire economic situation if they have another child. Contrary to the many happy ending stories that are told by pro-lifers who feel that any and all children are a “blessing,” the reality is that the economy has hit working families very hard. Homeless shelters are seeing an increase in family usage of the services. And if a person, desiring a sterilization, is connected to a Catholic hospital, they won’t be able to get the procedure done there. For those who live in rural areas with only one, Catholic hospital, this could be a problem.
And taxpayer funded “dead babies” – what’s better from a fiduciary perspective - the “dead babies” or supporting the child/mother with taxpayer welfare?
And for those of you who feel that there is a demographic problem with American women having fewer children, here’s a question. How would you feel about mandating that every woman of childbearing age, regardless of marital/economic status, have one child every five years? Obviously I’m engaging in some Swiftian satire but I am curious. And BTW, when abortion and contraception were unavailable, not every bundle of joy got placed with loving adoptive parents. Many of them went to orphanages were they were abused by those whose faith still condemns abortion and contraception.
Because I know that most women will NOT hurt themselves if no abortion is being sold to them
You do know that when abortion was illegal, women still “hurt themselves.”
As such, devout Catholic women and men would not avail themselves to this procedure and could easily end up in a dire economic situation if they have another child.
Then all they need to do is to talk with other devout members of their Catholic parish and help will be found for them. How many devout Catholic families do you know who have been turned away for help from other devout Catholics when they find themselves in a dire economic situation, DD?
How would you feel about mandating that every woman of childbearing age, regardless of marital/economic status, have one child every five years?
I would feel similar to how I feel about our country legalizing the slaughter of humans.
You do know that when abortion was illegal, women still “hurt themselves.”
Yes I realize this DD and a few women will still choose to hurt themselves after abortion becomes illegal again. After abortion becomes illegal, I’m hoping a law will never again be passed that will give these poor women “safe and sanitary” places to hurt themselves but will instead give them places to go where they will receive the help they need and that are truly life-affirming.
(JohnM): While population expansion is a fact, it is also a fact that such expansion/explosion has little to do with birth expansion.
Hi John. Well, the birth rate has to be higher than the death rate, that’s the bottom line.
The people dying at birth or before the age of 10 used to be almost the same as any other decade. But thanks to modern medical practices, it is rare that anyone under 20 actually does die from anything but an accident. This skews figures around aging so that now the average person will live to be 71-73. [I know of a small African nation where the median is 29 years old. Yeppers, 29! It is likely the median for all ‘poor’ people.]
Think now, all those folks who do not die (very often), mixed-in the death-rate. The rate-number increases … but the number of people can change little (even be less), this is what Gerard is talking about.
I certainly get that people are living longer, on average, and that it figures into the population, as Gerard noted. The fact remains that 6000+ deaths occur each hour, while 15,000+ births do.
Not saying that population growth, per se, is a bad thing. My point is that you can’t just plug in higher population numbers and expect things to be better – economies don’t work that way. Really, it’s the economy that drives population, rather than the reverse.
There was a meaningful blip downward in at least one year in the US, during the Depression of the 1930’s, the likes of which we have not seen since. However, I do think the current economic “bad times” are affecting birth rates.
http://www.wwlp.com/dpp/health/economy-cited-for-low-teen-birth-rate
Then all they need to do is to talk with other devout members of their Catholic parish and help will be found for them
Parishes are closing and those that remain have limited resources. That’s when these families turn to government resources. And that’s fine. But the reality is that churches and other devout Catholics can only do so much. What if the other devout Catholics are equally poor?
After abortion becomes illegal
LOL! You also don’t know that in certain areas of the country, abortion will never be illegal – and that includes states, like Massachusetts, that have a large Catholic population.
I’m hoping a law will never again be passed that will give these poor women “safe and sanitary” places to hurt themselves
Oh Yay. Let’s go back to the “good old days” when those women were either maimed for life or died. BTW, you do know that women “of means” could get D&C’s while their poor sisters opted for chemical douches and lots of other fun stuff. But right, it’s so much better for women to have only the option of dangerous and dirty places to hurt themselves.
Then all they need to do is to talk with other devout members of their Catholic parish and help will be found for them.
I think this ties in with the bit about workplaces not being supportive of new mothers at the beginning of this thread. Women just don’t have a lot of support–it is difficult to take time off work, and their husbands generally have even less support to do so if they’re even so inclined. Plus, with our society being so mobile, it can be hard to maintain many relationships with people who are close enough to help out. Social networking makes it easier to stay in contact, and that’s great, but it won’t babysit the kids so Mom can take a nap.
Greetings, Angel.
the fact remains that virtually no western country has a replacement birthrate, without which a culture cannot survive. Secondly children grow up to be people that need education, make and consume products and make discoveries and innovations. We will never compete with 50cent wages BUT that situation will change too.
Things are always changing. Think of the Indians/Native Americans and then the settling of North America by Europeans. Think of the massive immigration into the US during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
In general, people do not have kids because they want a given birth rate to increase, nor do they elect not to because they want the rate to decline. It’s because – and this certainly seems better to me – they either want to have a kid or more kids, or because they don’t want to.
Eventually these workers will gain more political and social clout, they will become educated and demand more. Soon those days will be gone.
It’s time to take our production back home and make goods that are high quality and that people are willing to pay for. Where I live, there was a flourishing textile industry until the early 1990s. Now everything comes from Vietnam, China, and Pakistan. I would gladly pay more for better quality clothes and have fewer of them. Our working model of capitalism is based on ever-increasing consumption – something that likely is not sustainable over the long run.
Well, you are right – things will change and that “working model” is not sustainable, and that is where the “steady state” theory of the economy fails. Older people work longer, in general, and their consumption patterns change, as does the consumption of most people, when economic times dictate it.
There is no putting the genie back in the bottle as far as foreign production of goods is concerned, though you can indeed get clothes made in the US. It’s just going to cost more, and I doubt the domestic nature, and the convenience and hassle factors, if any, can make up for the increased cost in the minds of most Americans.
http://www.allamericanclothing.com/?gclid=COK7nuuNnKYCFSVa7AodtjOcmw
http://www.americansworking.com/clothing.html
http://www.madeinusa.org/nav.cgi?data/clot
Alexandra wrote about a woman who had, before her abortion, wanted a big family: “She has an IUD now and is waiting until her doctor will agree to give her a tubal ligation. She wants no more children. IMO it indicates a real social problem at the root level.”
In my opinion this indicates a problem that many post-abortive women are all too familiar with: fear of pregnancy. It is not the fear of economic problems that she is experiencing, it is the terror of another abortion. The real social problem is that her friends, her doctors, her neighbors, all support the abortion decision. When a mother murders her child, especially when she already knows it’s a living a human being, what kind of emotional fallout can we reasonably expect, especially with the post-abortive hormone fluctuations that wreak havoc on your mood. An IUD is just a barbaric personal abortion device. If women think it’s so great, why not get in your time machine and go back to the middle ages before penicillin and electricity too.
Did one of you think women can’t get a tubal ligation. What?! That’s pretty easy to obtain. Many state and county governments subsidize them, so they’re really cheap. What’s not so easy? Getting one reversed. $5000 is the least you need to get started. And the same health insurance companies that kill babies without question REFUSE to reverse a tubal ligation. This forces women to pay completely out of pocket at another facility.
Let’s see, I count about 3 direct defenses of abortion. That’s a total so far of $8 worth of diapers for the CPC’s. Some of the comments skirt really close! I like the old throw-in-a-dig at the Catholics. That’s where all the abortionists go when they run out of the rest of their decrepit rhetoric.
ninek, the issue with getting ones tubes tied isn’t cost–it’s finding a doctor willing to do one. I’ve read numerous stories from women who are childfree or done having kids who want tubal ligation but can’t get it. These doctors are usually unwilling to provide them to younger women, or women without children. The old ‘you might change your mind’ reasoning. There are similar stories from women trying to obtain hystorectomies because of PCOS.
Jayn, the old you might change your mind? Uh, plenty of women DO change their minds.
Do you still want the same things at 20 that you wanted at 16? Do you still date the same person at 25 that you dated at 20? People really do change as they age.
The problem with irreversible life decisions is that we often don’t realize how deep our regret will be later. A 20 year old cannot comprehend a 40 year old’s regrets.
The real social problem is that so many people have bought into the lie that pregnancy is a bad thing. This is 2011 for crying out loud, why does a woman feel she has to kill her baby to hide her pregnancy? Why doesn’t a mother of 2 feel it’s ok to carry her baby and make adoption arrangements? There’s a silent stigma against it. But why? Can’t we rise above it? Aren’t we liberated now? Why does a feminazi think that the only way to liberate a woman is to kill her children?
Hey, you asked what’s so hard about getting a tubal ligation–I gave an answer. And while some women might change their minds, many don’t. In both cases, the doctor is essentially saying “I know better than you what’s best for you,” which is a dangerous mindset.
And since I can’t seem to resist–“Do you still date the same person at 25 that you dated at 20?” I met my husband at 20 (also about the age my parents got maried). So yeah, I do.
(ninek): The real social problem is that so many people have bought into the lie that pregnancy is a bad thing.
Where, really, are you seeing this, Ninek? I don’t say it’s necessarily bad – I’m pro-choice and for leaving it up to the woman or couple involved.
This is 2011 for crying out loud, why does a woman feel she has to kill her baby to hide her pregnancy?
Such sentiment has decreased massively over the past decades. Having a baby “out of wedlock” doesn’t carry the same “awfulness” quotient as in the past, and you don’t hear “illegitimate children” nearly as much. Now, as then, not all women want to be pregnant or remain pregnant, but in many situations where the woman chooses to continue the pregnancy and becomes, for example, an “unwed mother,” the rate of social dispproval is less than what it was in the past.
Why doesn’t a mother of 2 feel it’s ok to carry her baby and make adoption arrangements? There’s a silent stigma against it.
Again, I really don’t see this. The declining stigma of unwed motherhood has meant a big drop in the percentage of those women who place their kids for adoption, in the US, anyway. Overall, I think there are less adoptable babies now than in the past, and there are lots of cases of couples wanting to adopt, and what social stigma against the woman who allows her baby to be adopted really is there?
Ninek,
DD/Artemiserable seems to think that pounding on the Catholic Church will make her back down, and that if enough Catholics are disobedient enough, then the hierarchy will change.
Well, DD/Artemiserable, you are wrong again. As I said to you on another thread, surrounding yourself with similarly situated women–53 million wrongs—will never make what you did to your baby right. Morality by consensus never works.
Also, there is a slow corrective unfolding here. The people having the most babies are the orthodox members of their faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. It is the seculars and the pro-aborts who are contraceiving and aborting themselves into oblivion.
The Catholic Church will be here and going strong long after these wicked generations have rid the earth of their shadows.
Ninek, read again – my friend did not stop wanting children because of her abortion. She wanted children until she GAVE BIRTH and found herself largely unsupported in a society not geared towards nourishing healthy families, despite being married. It was being a mother, not abortion, that made her scared of pregnancy.
Her doctor will not give her a tubal location because she is young. 23 now, I think. It’s not an uncommon stance for a doctor to adopt.
Hysterectomies because of PCOS? I have PCOS and no where in books and literature have I read about hysterectomies as a treatment for PCOS, which is an ovarian and endocrine disorder, you must be confusing this condition for another. What is your source for this presumption? Also, you are confusing elective hysteretomies for sterilization and hysterectomies necessary to treat a health condition, such as endometriosis and uterine fibroids, when other treatments have failed.
Alexandra, which is why we need to create a society which is more supportive of single and married mothers, both in education, career, and childcare. By making abortion more widely available, we are creating a cop-out for men, employers, and educators to say, “I don’t need to support her, she had the right to choose abortion and end the pregnancy.” and are in fact setting lower standards for them. Does that make sense?
I agree 100%, raechel. I am on my phone and can never access the full site, or type easily, that way, but I didn’t want my initial point to be lost due to other people misreading it. And that point was that our society is so unsupportive of families that it can take women who previously refused birth control likely to harm fertility, so great was their desire for children, and render them terrified of having more children. That’s a problem and it has nothing to do with knowledge of fetal development or other issues that pro-lifers so often focus on. People here wonder how women who have had children can then get abortions – and I think it’s important to really answer WHY, not just tsk at their selfishness or shake our heads at the paradox. What experiences are these women having with motherhood that would drive them to choose differently the second time around?
You’re right Rachael. I think I did confuse it for something else–possibly endometriosis, maybe something else. But I’m not confusing the purpose of the surgery. Some of these women are finding their condition can’t be managed very well through other treatments, but because of their age their doctor refuses to sterlise them for the same reasons they won’t do tubals on young women. Frankly, I find this stance revolting regardless of if it’s for elective or health reasons, but especially so in the latter case. It’s just one more way women are denied control over their own bodies.
Alexandra,
I’m also typing on my phone and am also limited :P I definitely think we should look beyond the rhetoric to why women have abortions, but I do think prenatal development, the risks of abortion, and other forms of education (except graphic photos) have their place.
Jayn,
“Some of these women are finding their condition can’t be managed very well through other treatments, but because of their age their doctor refuses to sterlise them for the same reasons they won’t do tubals on young women.”
I don’t deny that it happens, but do you have a source to back up your statement and opinion?
Ninek,
So how much have the pro-choicers helped raise for supplies for pregnancy resource centers, now?
“The real social problem is that so many people have bought into the lie that pregnancy is a bad thing. This is 2011 for crying out loud, why does a woman feel she has to kill her baby to hide her pregnancy? Why doesn’t a mother of 2 feel it’s ok to carry her baby and make adoption arrangements? There’s a silent stigma against it. But why? Can’t we rise above it? Aren’t we liberated now? Why does a feminazi think that the only way to liberate a woman is to kill her children”
Ninek,
What I am seeing a lot of is young women who feel not that pregnancy is wrong or shameful but that having children is difficult. I’m seeing an increased pressure to receive higher education and to make a lot of money so that you are able to not just provide for your children, but to provide for them in style. I’m seeing people use phrases like, “middle class” in a derogatory sense. I’m seeing young men and women feel like, due to circumstances, they will never own a house, and consequently will never be able to provide for their children. We have not bought into the lie that pregnancy is to be avoided so much as we have bought into the lie that motherhood itself is to be avoided. That being a mother is somehow a lesser choice. That as a woman, it is your duty to womanhood to leave the home and earn an income. Unfortunately, this pressure combines (in my experience) with the pressure from the right to be a perfect parent-to keep a spotless house, cook every meal, and never allow your children to step into a daycare. The two separately difficult to achieve pressures combine and suddenly, parenthood is essentially a death sentence on ever feeling like a whole person again.
Furthermore, I’m finding that a lot of people my age don’t realize how simple and good it is to have young children close in age. They believe that they will simply be crushed by bills (expecting the bills to go up proportionate to how they did when baby #1 arrived) and they believe that they will have NO time and NO energy and NO ability to care for yet another child. To their minds, one was such a huge shift that two is virtually impossible and three is just begging for poverty and misery. The reality, I’ve found, is quite different.
Alexandra,
Maybe the husband should drop out of grad school and get a full time job, move to cheaper housing, etc. You liberals just want to throw money at problems. We tried that in the seventies and eighties and got a bunch of welfare queens with several fathers and living off the government.
“Maybe the husband should drop out of grad school and get a full time job, move to cheaper housing, etc.”
With the unemployment rate still hovering around 10%, it wouldn’t be easy for the husband to pick up a new job as there are many people competing for scarce jobs. His graduate degree could be the ticket to quicker and more lucrative employment. And cheaper housing? Where is that? Even in the inner city, “the rent is too damned high.” I guess what you’re saying is that families should lower their standard of living in order to have another child who could end up living in a poverty situation. It all sounds counter intuitive.
And you refer to “welfare queens.” There are still women and families on welfare because they have no support system for the children that they currently have. Many families in stressed economic conditions become abusive and kids are farmed out into state foster systems which are now experiencing cutbacks as well as lack of foster parents. And in many states, Medicaid does not pay for abortions and birth control. So if women, in this situation, don’t opt for an abortion, you really shouldn’t complain about paying far more for the welfare payment that an additional child will generate. You can’t have it both ways.
Bottom line is that if women don’t want children, they shouldn’t have them. And re adoption – women should not be forced to be incubators.
DD– Star Parker’s books address racist liberals like you. You want to keep poor black women enslaved to government. You don’t think they are strong enough to stand on their own two feet. Sure, we all need a support system from time to time. Government is not an effective one.
Rachel @ 7;58 summed it up quite well. I think I’ll round off the support at $12 but like I say, some comments are really close but not quite, others repeat the same points as before.
When did pregnancy become vilified? For one, when Margaret Sanger made it her mission to do so. And back in the 60’s is when the ‘teen pregnancy is evil’ train really started chugging along with all that momentum.
“Maybe the husband should drop out of grad school and get a full time job, move to cheaper housing, etc. You liberals just want to throw money at problems.”
Hey jasper, as I said, the husband already had a full-time job. Grad school was not a whim for him; his engineering degree was something his employer supported. As for housing, they lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a fairly cheap neighborhood in their city (still do).
Where did I say to throw money at the problem? Most of the things I mentioned were legislative, pertaining to maternity/paternity leave and support for breastfeeding mothers.
Perhaps a valuable question for you is: do you think that forcing people to choose between their education and their children is likely to increase or decrease the abortion rate? If the answer to having children and struggling in our current social structure is simply “Drop out of school,” will that increase or decrease the abortion rate? I’m not asking if it’s right or wrong to have an abortion for the sake of one’s education; just whether making parenthood and education mutually exclusive will likely increase or decrease the abortion rate.
Raechel – I definitely agree that information about fetal development is vital! I just think that too often, when the topic of women having abortions after already having given birth comes up, people here seem to stop at the ‘how could she when she already knows these things’ question. And clearly there are more questions that come after that one. We should be asking those questions! What is it about a woman’s experience as a mother in our society that would cause her to choose abortion, even knowing everything she knows? That question doesn’t get asked often round these parts.
Who said anything about “black” women? I cited those living in poverty and we all know that poverty is equal opportunity. Black women are strong which is why the argument, that black women are all “lured” into Planned Parenthood is so specious and so offensive to many black women.
“And back in the 60?s is when the ‘teen pregnancy is evil’ train really started chugging along with all that momentum”
The “pregancy is evil” thing ended with the 60’s. Prior to that, if a teen got pregnant, it was a hugh embarassment to the family – especially ones with money. Girls were pulled out of school (the excuse was “mono”) never to be seen again. Back in the 20’s, there were Catholic churches who wouldn’t baptize children out of wedlock. My mother was baptized in a French church because the local Irish church wouldn’t perform the ceremony for a “sinful” woman’s baby. The acceptance of teen (and out of wedlock) pregnancy is a product of liberal views which produced great teen pregnancy resources so that girls can continue to go to school while keeping their baby. I will admit that the “pro-life” movement did a lot to squelch the religious antipathy towards unwed motherhood which was the norm “back in my day.”
CC, I think that we have a greater acceptance of teen/unmarried pregnancy on a societal level, but on an individual level it’s often still pretty bad. I would say that more than anything, the reasons for pregnancy being considered shameful have changed. Back in the day pregnancy was an indicator of sex, and was shunned for that reason, but today it’s seen as an indicator of carelessness or stupidity. The reasons for the “shame” are different, but on an individual level, it can be very mortifying to be unmarried and pregnant today. When I found myself unexpectedly pregnant in college, I wasn’t worried about anyone knowing I’d been sexually active – everybody knew that already, my parents included – I was worried about everyone knowing I was “stupid.” Getting pregnant when you’re young allegedly means wasting your potential, giving up on your education, being too dumb to figure out how to use a condom, etc. There is no shame in sex anymore, so that has changed; but there is definitely shame in being “ignorant” or “throwing your life away.”
I do think we’ve come a long way, though, as far as not actively and systemically ostracizing pregnant young women. I’d love to see us go further, but it’s a start!
BTW I am glad to see you back! :) I don’t think you’re “miserable” at all.
Black women are strong which is why the argument, that black women are all “lured” into Planned Parenthood is so specious and so offensive to many black women.
I absolutely hate when people say this. I know you probably didn’t mean it that way, but when white people say this, it’s as if we are some sort of mules devoid of feeling any human emotions. It hearkens back to the days of “Mammy” figures when black women were expected to nurture everyone but themselves.
Black women are not “stronger” than anyone else. We’ve just learned to HIDE our pain through the centuries. We get depressed, anxious, sad, and yes, some of us even cry! In fact, there are many black women (and men) who live with untreated mental illnesses because they feel that they are “strong” and that depression, etc., are “white folk’s problems.” I guess it’s supposed to be some sort of compliment, but the “strong black woman” myth has really hurt more than helped.
I agree that a pregnancy ought not to ‘ruin’ a young woman’s reputation, but too many women are getting abortions because they think it’s the ‘smart’ thing to do. Just listen to the testimonials at Silentnomoreawareness. I recall one gal in video actually used the phrase “I did what smart girls were supposed to do and got an abortion.”
We haven’t come such a long way, baby, if we can’t proudly show our baby up front. I am inspired to do a little research about those anti-teen pregnancy advertising campaigns that flourished in the 60’s and 70’s. I remember them, but sometimes I think younger people born in the 80’s just plain don’t have that information.
One of you made the comment ”And re adoption – women should not be forced to be incubators.”** A new human being is a naturally occuring phenomenon. Just because he’s small enough for you to kill without his being able to fight back does not equate not killing him with forcing his mother to carry him. That is just sick thinking. We are mammals; we gestate our young. That’s a biological fact. Any animal that considers it’s own young to be a disease or parasite is suffering from an illness, an illness that is deadly to the young human in the womb. Every pregnant woman gets a little freaked out. Planned Parenthood capitalizes on that anxiety and makes a lot of money profiting from fear. **+ 1 = $13
Alexandra–the story of your friend who killed her second child is one of the most shocking, horrifying stories I have ever heard. I am glad I am not hearing it in person, because I have the urge to hurt her. What kind of awful human being does that to her own child? How do you suppose her son will think when he learns what mommy did to his little sister or brother?
I have just gotten through a very hard year with my son. His sister was 19 months old when he was born; it took him almost 2 months to catch on to breastfeeding; I had horrible cramping in early pregnancy, followed by gestational diabetes, and painful gallstones, and then 3 weeks of labor. He has been a baby that almost never sleeps–the night before last he slept through the night for the fourth time. He did it once at a few days old when it was a scary thing, and a couple times around 4 months, and then once on New Year’s Day. He only recently started getting down to waking up once a night–and a short night at that. He rarely naps. He seems to create a whirlwind of destruction in our house and enjoys sharp objects.
Peter is not an easy baby, and I did not have an easy pregnancy. Not once have I wished him dead! The idea terrifies me; I love him more than I ever knew I could. And this whole year I have wished for another little one. I cannot wait to hold another precious baby in my womb and in my arms.
Your friend is a horrible, sick person and there is something grievously wrong with her. I know I should have compassion but what an awful excuse for a human being.
” I am glad I am not hearing it in person, because I have the urge to hurt her. What kind of awful human being does that to her own child?”
“Your friend is a horrible, sick person and there is something grievously wrong with her.”
Ah, the empathy and compassion of “pro-life” “Christians.” And they wonder why they’re considered women haters!
And while I don’t particularly like those who protest at Planned Parenthood, I wouldn’t accuse them of being “horrible” and “sick.”
What about loving the sinner and hating the sin!
CC, get over it. She is a young mom who is expressing her horror and outrage over the fact that another mother killed her child. Completely understandable.
When I heard of The Casey Peterson case where she duct taped and killed her own toddler daughter I think the words out of my mouth were “I want to find her and beat her face!” I guess I am a “woman hater” huh? No. I am a mom who can’t understand how others have no tears, no outrage, no emotion at all that children are being hurt and killed… in the womb and out of the womb.
Sydney, thanks for understanding. I kind of knew someone like CC would respond like she did. Luckily, her opinion matters to me very little.
Oddly, when she shared her story about killing her own baby with a turkey baster, God did give me compassion for her.
Jesus knows what it’s like to be angry. Remember what He did to those who were selling goods in the Court of the Gentiles? Remember what He told His good friend Peter when Peter tried to tell Him that He shouldn’t talk about needing to die on the cross for our sins? Remember what He did to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah who wanted to abuse His angels?
God is no stranger to anger. God is no stranger to compassion. He will have compassion on whom He will have compassion–and whom He will destroy, He will destroy. I do not know which side Alexandra’s friend and CC will end up on, but I know that He is just.
And while what Alexandra’s friend did is still horribly wrong–the punishment for that sin has been given. What was inflicted on the body of that tiny boy or girl was meted out on another; and justice is served…
but it was not the murderer who paid the price. It was an innocent Jewish man of 33.
and when I think of that, the wrath melts away. Because the punishment for the sin does not fall on the sinner–a young Jewish carpenter took it all. How could I want to hurt a woman who deserves pain–when she is made in His image, and He takes the punishment that ought to be hers?
Jesus Lord, forgive me for my anger. I do not want to add to the pain of the beatings and the teasing and the crucifixion you experienced. I do not want to be the one who shouted, “Crucify Him!” Please give me mercy and compassion instead of wrath for this woman whom you love so deeply that you have died for her, that you interpose yourself and say “Whatever she deserves, do to me.” God, you died for me and forgave me. I therefore forgive.
CC, thank you for bringing me closer to God. He is still seeking you as well.
CC, fortunately I am personally immune to the “you must accept everything everyone does or else you are a bad Christian!”
Jesus died on the cross, was buried, and rose from the dead. THAT is Christianity. You might have us confused with another religious group. I suppose we should open all the jails and let everyone go free no matter how violent the offense because everything short of complete tolerance is just bad. Right? Wrong. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Jesus didn’t turn over the money changer’s tables because he was having a lapse in tolerance. Young Christian, you wanna be good cop while I play bad cop? Lol!! I admire anyone who can curb their anger so well. May I recieve a good dose of patience for myself, too.
And since I can’t seem to resist–”Do you still date the same person at 25 that you dated at 20?” I met my husband at 20 (also about the age my parents got maried). So yeah, I do.
*raises hand* I have yet to reach 25, but my boyfriend, age 26, has been dating me since he was 17 and I was 16. While lots of people don’t stay with the person they’re with when they’re college-age, it’s not uncommon by any stretch. I have aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who are still with the person they were with when they were twenty even though five to thirty-plus years have passed since then.
In fact, there are many black women (and men) who live with untreated mental illnesses because they feel that they are “strong” and that depression, etc., are “white folk’s problems.”
Wow – that’s depressing in and of itself.
Marauder, for some reason I thought you were older than that, I guess you just sound more mature.
Yes, there is a big problem with untreated/undiagosed mental illness in the AA community. This is also true among Asian Americans, where it is sometimes considered “shameful” to admit having psychiatric issues.
Marauder, you’re in good company–DH and I started dating (to the extent we dated, it was kind of an organic friendship-growing-into-more thing) at 17. We were married at 20 and are still married at 27 and 28.
Phillymiss, I remember reading a poignant essay by Angela Nissen years ago; I wish I could find it. She was suffering from depression and, I believe, called a hotline and said that she just wanted to die, and they sent a paramedic team over to take her to the hospital. Through all of this she was flashing back to conversations with a friend, where he told her that depression was a white person’s luxury of a problem, and that their ancestors didn’t have that privilege, that they had to be strong enough to work in the fields and keep their mouths shut and do it all again the next day, with no end in sight. That black women are strong.
She balked at going with the paramedics, being physically healthy and embarrassed, especially when they needed her to get on the stretcher. They told her to cough as they took her out of the building, if she wanted, so that everyone would think it was a physical problem instead. I read that years ago but it was so moving that it stuck with me ever since. I had read a book by her some years before that, and she was quite funny and didn’t seem depressed at all – obviously you never know even the people you KNOW in real life, and she was just some author I’d never met, but seeing such wrenching confessions from this author I felt I ‘knew’ on some level really just broke my heart. I wish I could find the essay; when I have more time, tomorrow, I may give a more thorough look for it.
Ninek, you probably realize this, but nothing I said takes away from the magnitude of the sin of killing one’s child. My assertion that the punishment has been meted out to Christ acknowledges that there was/is a punishment, a horrible cost–but that He paid it in full. How can I raise my hand to strike–even one who deserves it, and I believe someone who knowingly kills her child does–when I know my Savior and King, Lord of the Universe, will interpose His Own Body, wounded and resurrected? It’s not about what that woman did, but what He did; not about her sin, but my own. Vengeance is His.
YCW, I absolutely agree with you. But I’m still kicking over those tables till Jesus comes back (which means I’m still going to speak out, vote my concience, and help women whenever I can).
Ycw, Marauder, & Jayn,
Just joining the chorus here. I met my DH at 14, started dating him at 17, and married him at 19. We have 2 beautiful boys, ages 2 & *almost* 1, and am still very happily married at age 24. I’ve not truly stood the test of time, I admit, but DH regularly reminds me that I am a stubborn woman ;) He is 25, btw.
That point made, I think the original concept that was meant was that we don’t all want at 25 what we wanted at 20. I have to say, I was a fortunate young woman in that I made a big decision at a young age and it worked out for me. My personality at 20 was incredibly different from my personality today. I believe the original point was about sterilization, and I must agree that it is incredibly risky to choose sterilization at any age, but particularly at such an emotional, shifting, tenuous age!
YCW, Ninek,
I think that it is easier for some women to abort after they have one child because they believe that they are doing it for their ‘existing’ baby. I use quotations of course because both babies are already existing. As the old saying goes, if it isn’t a baby, you aren’t pregnant! That said, not all women experience pregnancy as a joy. YCW, you clearly show that with your post. Sometimes it’s difficult, and that can affect how some women connect with the baby. If you have been lead to believe, through experience, family, friends, media, etc, that baby #2 is going to break you (financially, emotionally, etc), it can be understood that a woman might turn to abortion if she accepts the lie that abortion is an acceptable option.
I keep thinking about the moment in that MTV special No Easy Decision where Markai is holding her little girl and telling her how much she loves her, how she will do anything and everything for her, etc. When you look at your babies, the little people you helped to create and are helping to grow into adults, what do you feel you wouldn’t do for them? If you are able, even if it’s only on a superficial level, to separate the baby in your womb from his or her humanity in your mind (in other words, consider the baby a growing organism without accepting his or her personhood), it can be understood how, in desperation, you might turn to abortion. Particularly if those around you accept your decision without arguing for another option.
That said, it doesn’t make abortion acceptable. It just sheds light on the mental process of a parent who turns to Planned Parenthood.
Well put, MaryRose.
I will have to look up that essay, Alexandria, thank you.
Many people do not realize that in the 19th century, new surgical techniques were often “tried out” on African Americans (male and female) and sometimes Native Americans with little or no anesthesia because it was believed at this time that “they” could not feel pain like white people could. Several gynecological procedures were developed as a result of this inhuman “experimentation.” I can’t imagine the agony these poor women went through. I don’t want to dwell on the past, but the point I’m making is that we are all members of the same race — the human race — and we all are capable of feeling the same emotions!
Jan.02, 2011 10:19 am | Cartoons Comments (114) | Print
Stanek weekend question: Is it more a problem for pro-lifers or pro-choicers that the majority of aborting women already have children ?
I would say it is more of a problem for the pre-natal children of the aborting mothers.
OK, Phillymiss! It appears that the essay is now in a book of essays she later published (or maybe published at the time I read the excerpted story in a magazine) – you can only read parts of it here: http://books.google.com/books?id=bgpSK4Xl26UC&pg=PA136&lpg=PA136#v=onepage&q&f=false
The first book of hers I read was The Broke Diaries, which I read in my freshman year of college and just absolutely adored. I didn’t realize she had a second out, or that she’s been so successful! I’m very happy for her and I’m glad we had this conversation, so that I had some motivation to look her up again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Nissel I haven’t read the second book, save for that one essay, and I don’t remember much of the first, but I remember liking her narrative voice and her sense of humor.
I know what you mean. I am white – a little part Cherokee, but basically your average progressive NY WASP in terms of culture – so I don’t know firsthand what you mean in this regard, but I am just horrified by some things, and I too get prickly at allegedly complimentary statements pertaining to uncontrollable attributes that would historically be grounds for discrimination. (ie, gender) I don’t think you’re out of line to bristle at things like people saying black women are strong. Some men and some women of all races are strong! Some of us aren’t. Most of us are stronger than we think, but many of us have never had our innate human ability to withstand brutal circumstances used to justify treating us as though brutality doesn’t affect us. Compliments, when applied narrowly, can and have been easily used to simply wave away human decency, and it can be hard to explain that because on the surface they are simply compliments, but I don’t think it’s an overreaction or an over-reaching of logic and emotion. I don’t want to dwell on the past, either, but I also don’t want to forget it! And I appreciate that you have the same attitude.
Most of us are stronger than we think, but many of us have never had our innate human ability to withstand brutal circumstances used to justify treating us as though brutality doesn’t affect us.
Alexandra, that is a beautiful sentence. I agree with you and Phillymiss, and it’s not exactly a “happy” topic. Still, there are a few times a year when I will read or hear something, and I gulp, and smile, and perhaps shudder a little with just the “YEAH” of it, and with gladness for the mind on the other end.