What Would the Numbers Say?
Posted: February 21, 2008 at 10:39 amFound a site that kind of makes me ill. But this isn’t a scathing review of the site. (Not necessary. It’s ick enough on its own!) My question is about this statement:
83% of women who struggle after an abortion say they would have changed their decision if they’d had support from a partner, family member or special person during pregnancy.
Maybe it is true. (Though you can skew statistics to say whatever you want!) I don’t doubt that some mothers who abort have regrets. But that’s not my experience so I’m not going to hit on it anymore out of respect for the issues that come with that life decision. But I do wonder what the numbers would say about adoption.
How many mothers would have parented if they would have had support from a partner, family member or special person? How many mothers would have been able to calm down if someone had taken their hand and said, “It’s okay.” How many mothers would have benefited from someone showing them some info about assistance made available to them and their child?
It kind of breaks my heart a little. I find sadness in the fact that the decision to place is most made completely alone or with very little positive support for any other option other than placement. Choice is a relative term when everyone that “matters” in your life is telling you that you must do something or the consequences will be heavily paid. For those mothers that had absolutely no one, either by the choice of not divulging the pregnancy or because they were shunned after the pregnancy became known, I’m wondering if they ever felt that there was another option. At all.
I wish there was a resource without a presumptive name (like that site which gives expectant mothers a title that they don’t need until the Termination of Parental Rights is signed) that would just “be there” for mothers (and fathers!). I wish I could “do” more than sit here and write. But it’s all I’ve got right now.
So write I must.
The Discussion
see what everyone is saying
I’m too much of a coward to put this on my site, and you don’t have to publish it if you don’t want it on yours. I know the sort of comments it is likely to generate.
My sister was coerced into an abortion when she was 17. My mother had, literally, been a caretaker for someone or other since she was 14. She took care of siblings and a father, a husband, then children, working or going to school full-time all the way through. When my sister got pregnant my mother was one year away from freedom. She wasn’t going to give that up.
I’ve always been torn about what my mother did. On one hand I know that she had the right to be finished. Yet when her step-mother died and her father once again needed a care-taker she sold her house and moved across the country to care for him until he died. My mother took care of everyone, but refused to give my sister support when she wanted it. (And I am aware that though my sister was angry at my mother, it did not even occur to her to approach my father. There would be no help there.)
And if my sister had told her about it later in the pregnancy, my mother would have coerced her inot relinquishment.
I’m pro-choice. I believe that women should be able to choose, and I have always been uncomfortable that my sister did not get to choose. It makes me sad and I know my sister regrets it and has only recently forgiven my mother (25 years later).
But see, I also think that what happened to her was less bad than what would have happened to her had she got pregnant in an earlier decade or told my mother later in the pregnancy. It made my sister angry that she was coerced into an abortion she did not want. She was mad at my mother for years, but I cannot begin to imagine how she would have responded had she been coerced into relinquishment. She would not have been angry at my mother; she would have been devastated.
And so would have the rest of us.
Yondall’s last blog post..What does anxiety mean?
Help to place a baby for adoption – help to convince a woman not to have an abortion – just wish there was more help available for moms to parent. Our priorities in this regard are messed up big time!
Yondall – I know several women who have had at least 2 unplanned pregnancies. Once they chose adoption – once abortion. By far, they all agree that the adoption option was a million times harder. Yet, I know that some women are affected deeply by abortion as well.
Yeah, I know some folks want to say, “But what about the baby?” Not interested in the abortion v. adoption debate. I think the majority of women I know choose between adoption and parenting.