Woman wonders if ok to keep abortion secret from baby’s dad
by Carder
I am in a committed two-year-plus relationship with a great guy whom I love. We are both in our late 30s. I am not interested in marriage or having children. I am in the relationship until one of us stops enjoying it. I have been open and honest since the beginning with my feelings and desires. He really wants children and I think hopes that I am going to come around; he brings it up constantly in a light-hearted way despite our many serious talks about it.
Despite being responsible, I got pregnant and chose to have an abortion and did not tell him. I really just didn’t want to hurt him, due to how much he wants a child with me, but is this something he deserves to know?
~ A “child-free woman” asking for advice from “Dear Prudence,” Slate, July 1
[Photo via Nerd Wallet]
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.
My daughter is 23 and doesnt act like this. Late 30s? She sounds like a teen gushing about her first love. I find it disgusting.
Im in a relationship with a man I love. So you killed his child? Why arent you married? Despite being responsible I got pregnant and had an abortion. So how were you responsible?
This “child-free woman” is an anonymous coward and complete poster-child for the hypocrisy that touts men should “trust women”.
If that’s what she thinks commitment looks like, then I feel sorry for the guy. She doesn’t have any clue about commitment, and is not anywhere close to real intimacy.
Given her idea of commitment, I’d venture to say she’s probably cheated on him several times.
He needs to wake up and run away from her – immediately.
Like button is off
“I am in the relationship until one of us stops enjoying it.” The sad thing is this person will never open herself up to real love, and will never take joy in one of the few moments in life where pure joy can be experienced. This is our modern culture, everything is to be utilized until something better comes along, people included.
“Like button is off”
I know, it’s weird. Must reset every morning or something.
The Slate response is as bad as one would expect. After encouraging the woman to re-examine the relationship goals, tells her that she can keep the aboortion a secret from her partner. Face palm.
When her boyfriend writes his side of the story: “False hopes, murder, lies, secrets, profound disappointment and grief.”
I think when your child gets snuffed behind your back, you’re not enjoying it. But she’s all about herself.
Someday when they are in the midst of a fight (or a breakup) she will tell him about the abortion…just to hurt him…and to let him know that she never really loved him more than herself.
It makes me sad for the guy. He had one child stolen and if he sticks with her he may never experience the joy of parenthood.
Yay, the like button is back!
“He needs to wake up and run away from her – immediately.”
I agree, With so many women around that want to get married and have children, why waste your time like this?
“Despite being responsible I got pregnant and had an abortion”
If someone is adamant about not having children, why not undergo permanent sterilization?
Why is the guy wasting his time. Wake up man! You want different things than she and value different things than she. You risked making children with a woman who has no qualms about quietly destroying that child. Your child paid the ultimate price for your foolish gamble. There are plenty of women who want to COMMIT and not play around until one of you no longer enjoys it (whatever THAT means). There are plenty of women who want children and would make excellent mothers. Why are you squandering your years with such a selfish person?
I wish men and women would be a lot more discerning with who they bed down with.
Yep it sure will come out in a fight like my old married neighbor Bobby ….apparently his wife had a secret abortion. They got into a huge fight so she got into her car and rolled the window down. She said “Oh and BTW Bob…I WAS pregnant but I went and had the little bastar* sucked out of me.” He backhanded her. She drove away crying but never pressed charges. He told me he felt just awful about hitting her but he said he never knew she was pregnant. He divorced her saying “Id never trust her again. How do I even know it was my kid”?
“I have been open and honest since the beginning with my feelings and desires.”
Maybe she needs to re-examine the term “open and honest.”
Love does strange things to you Sydney, I don’t know the guy’s situation but with me, I stayed in an abusive relationship for over five years because I loved her and thought I could “fix” it if I tried hard enough.
If one spouse/bf/gf wants a kid desperately and the other doesn’t, I think it’s exceedingly unfair for the childfree person to keep that person around. They need to set them free, however much they enjoy their company or love them, because some people will never be happy without having children. Humans are biologically wired to want children, in general, though there are those who are not. At the same time, the person who really wants kids needs to take responsibility and realize that no matter how much you care and love this woman/man, you cannot force someone to be maternal/paternal and for you and her/his sake, the relationship should end so you both can find marriages/relationships that meet your needs. Either way, someone will be miserable if a child enters that relationship or doesn’t.
And I really, really think it’s awful to abort someone’s baby when you’re in a committed relationship with them, no discussion, no talking about it. Hiding it? How is that a healthy honest relationship? Abortion is wrong enough in itself, you add the secret keeping and lying on top of it and that’s just a horrific thing.
Only a hideous person with hideous scruples could hide something like that from the father.
Im sure it happens more often then we think.
Dear Child-Free Woman,
Your man loves you dearly and wants you to be the mother of his children.
You, on the other hand, are a freak of nature who kills her own child without remorse.
This is not going to end well for either of you.
Signed,
Prudie
Del, I don’t think it’s helpful to call her a freak of nature, she’s a human being and a child of God too. And honestly we don’t know the relationship. For all we know (though from her own words I doubt it) he could be controlling, abusive or otherwise made the relationship unsafe for her. Like I said I sincerely doubt it, but you never know. It’s a terrible situation and I feel horrible for that baby and the father who has no idea that the baby he wanted is now dead and he doesn’t even know it so he can grieve and hopefully go find a partner who shares his family goals, but I don’t think insulting her will assist in that.
It’s okay to not want kids, it’s not okay to kill them. It’s okay to love someone, but it’s not okay to stay in a relationship, lie to someone about something as deal-breaking as abortion can be, and deliberately stay knowing that if you’re keeping him around, you’re taking away one of his dreams. She doesn’t have to have a baby (though she has no right to kill babies that are conceived), but I think it’s exceedingly unethical and immoral for her to string him along. It’s also really wrong for him to stay just hoping that she’ll magically change her mind.
“Im sure it happens more often then we think.”
Probably. But we also know that a lot of one night stands or men running off and don’t even know or care if their child was conceived or not, aborted or not, adopted or not. I slept around a lot as a teenager with women I didn’t even get names from and I am still haunted and probably will be forever about the possibility that I helped create a child who was either aborted, adopted out, or raised by the mother without any help from me as the father. There’s no possible way for me to know either way. That’s my cross to bear for my choices. We can’t forget it’s not just women who do stupid, unethical, immoral and selfish things when it comes to children. All of us play a part in this.
Since women want a legal system that does not recognize a father’s rights to his children in the womb then any father should be able to legally opt out of any responsibility for his children as long as he does so prior to birth.
Truthseeker, screwing over children MORE is not the solution to the issue of father’s rights.
Slate, Kos, and HuffPo never met an abortion they didn’t like.
Secret abortions happen all the time. One of my many relatives who had an abortion never told the guy.
Maybe she needs to re-examine the term “open and honest.”
She needs to reexamine the term “love”. She does not love anyone. Not this poor man. Not her poor child. My heart breaks for them both (the man and the child).
Deluded i think Del was quoting Prudi the woman she wrote the letter to.
If a man wants a baby aborted and the mom refuses can he opt out of paying child support? Im sure Bro Choice will soon be fighting for this right.
When one person in a relationship wants marriage and children and the other does not, I see no way to compromise. You risk at least one of you having lifelong disappointment, resentment, regret, or go your separate ways.
Deluded, she isn’t a child of God. God says those who reject His Son and His truth are of their father the devil. God is her CREATOR but she has not been adopted into God’s family. Not because God wouldn’t take her but because she chooses to love her sin more than her own soul.
I just cringe every time I hear someone say “we’re all God’s children”. I wish were were…but we’re not. But we all COULD be. Some people are insistent on seeking their own destruction.
Fine let us call her names then. We should only not name call professing, perfect Christians.
You actually don’t know the state of her soul though. I think we are all children of God I guess, just some of us are prodigal.
Whoa. Deluded, where on earth did I say lets call her names? Good grief. What you think is irrelevant. What I think is irrelevant. What GOD SAYS it what is relevant. You are deceived if you think all of us are “children of God” but prodigal. That is NOT what God says in His Word. The gospel offends unfortunately because people don’t want to think of themselves as sinners who have offended a Holy God. (I Corinthians 1:23).
Pretending that we’re all God’s children and its all okay cause God is so loving He won’t punish His own children is a lie of Satan.
We can ALL BE God’s children through spiritual adoption into his family (being born again) (Romans 8:15, John 3:7) but the Bible tells us that people love their own sins (Jeremiah 14:10, John 3:19), wish to go their own way (Isaiah 53:6) . More people stumble to hell than find their way to God because of their stubbornness (Matthew 7:13, 14).
I don’t want to believe in a God who would make it easier to go to hell than be with him.
How hard is it to be with Him? Good grief. He clearly shows us in His Word–John 14:6 JESUS is the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father but by Him. Repent and believe–God’s Word says. How hard is that?
He doesn’t even command you to live a perfect life in order to achieve eternal life because you can’t! No one can. God hasn’t made it hard. We’ve made it hard. God gives us FREE WILL. He didn’t create us as robots. He lets us choose life or death. He lets us choose good or bad. WE CHOOSE death. WE CHOOSE bad. And you would dare blame God because people CHOOSE not to repent and believe?
You can’t make God into who YOU want Him to be. You need to take Him at His Word. God is GOOD. And He is HOLY. God doesn’t prevent anyone from coming to Him. He says if you seek Him you will find Him. (Jeremiah 29:13–and also a dozen other verses say this). Unfortunately people don’t want to seek Him. That isn’t God’s fault.
So the fact that 6 billion people at least who are alive today, and not to mention the billions dead in the past, are going to hell under your interpretation of the Bible, that’s fine with you? I really don’t think God is like that. I don’t think he’d create billions of souls and merrily watch them into eternal torment. Just don’t. We can disagree on the interpretation of the verses you’re talking about.
Deluded Lib Pro-Lifer says:
July 2, 2014 at 5:28 pm
Del, I don’t think it’s helpful to call her a freak of nature, she’s a human being and a child of God too.
I was being tongue-in-cheek, responding in the tone of SLATE — as if Prudence were speaking honest truth.
SLATE does not believe in God or human dignity, so nothing like that would be mentioned.
But SLATE does believe in natural evolution — where only a “freakish” sort of animal would kill its own offspring. Natural creatures do not kill their offspring.
This is why discussions here often touch upon the topic of sociopathy. Killing children is not natural human behavior, either.
Del, i accept evolution as the current scientific concensus and I dont believe doing so means that I cannot believe in God or human dignity as well.
Tongue in cheek is okay I guess, but I dont think this woman will ever realize her mistake if ahe just gets railed on by pro-lifers. Yes I know she is probably not reading this. But other women in a similar situation might be and might be reluctant to come to prolifers for help if needed.
I wouldnt stay with a woman who aborted my baby. But at the same time i wouldnt date someone if at all possible who saw that as an option. I dont think I would call her names though.
I know a girl…I will call her Dee. She was a local magazine model and quite stunning. She is also a good friend of mine. Dee became pregnant at 17 from a guy she was dating. She insisted on an abortion and had one. A year later they married. I believe she became pregnant at 20. She had a girl. Her husband and her would fight at times and he would scream at her “You killed my baby”!!! About 2 years later her husband wanted to try for another baby and she kept refusing. He makes a good living. She finally said she would have one more baby but then she was going to get sterilized. She had another child and had essure inserted in her mid 20s. She has told me she regrets her abortion and her husband still brings it up in fights. I have told this story before and women would say she needed to leave her husband for being emotionally cruel. They have now been married for 10 years and she doesnt want to leave him. The husband must still have problems with the abortion or he wouldnt bring it up. Hes said worse to her. The aborted baby never goes away.
I dont condone the name calling but the baby was a part of him. Despite him saying they could afford the baby she wanted the abortion. He refused to take her. Her mom did. Dee is a good mom and Im glad she has repented of her abortion. On the other hand abortion is the ultimate act of hate so I believe it caused her husband to wonder about her love for him.
The bottom line is that abortion has confused ppl. Children are used as pawns and weapons. Abortion can be used as a way of seeking revenge. The woman has complete control like it or not. We leave dads out. Adoption aside for a moment. Why not give the child to a loving dad and sign away your parental rights. If death is the best we can do then we really are a fractured society. Secret abortion or not people still kill children and use it against each other. Children are property to them. And a woman can end up hating a man for pushing her into abortion just as a man can end up hating a woman for aborting against his wishes. How sad it all is.
Women are bringing about their own demise when they refuse to acknowledge father’s rights. Over time men will ‘opt’ out too.
Ya, “child free woman”, ——- the guy deserves to know, so he can quite wasting his time with you.
great site
swapnil,
Do you believe fathers should have any rights to defend their children prior to birth?
Even many born children are murdered by a parent for punishment for a divorce. Custody disputes. An ” I will show him/her.”
“swapnil, Do you believe fathers should have any rights to defend their children prior to birth?”
Truthseeker, the generic comment + link to website combination usually indicates that it is a spam bot.
In her book Blood Money: Getting Rich Off a Woman’s Right to Choose, Carol Everett (who owned a chain of abortionaries in Texas at one time) says that when she got an abortion, her and her husband’s marriage was never the same again.
This will happen to this woman too. Even if she were committed to the relationship, it would die because people can’t keep secrets from each other and have a healthy relationship.
OT, but she doesn’t sound like a mature woman. She sounds like a Peter Pan-ette who has never grown up.
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