Hypotheticals I’d Rather Avoid

A hypothetical question was posed in a community I frequent:

If, hypothetically, Roe v Wade was overturned. You find yourself pregnant, with no desire to keep it.

What would you do?

Oh, the hypothetical! Don’t birth parents live in the “What If” enough without questions like these? Despite wanting to launch into a lengthy debate with people who have little to no knowledge about adoption, I didn’t respond. Instead, I mulled it over for awhile before realizing, “Oooh! Blog fodder!”

And so, what would I do?

First of all, this is hard for me to now imagine. Having been through the placement of a child, knowing that relinquishment is almost always less about a desire to “keep” a child and more about circumstance, I really doubt I would find myself lacking a complete desire to keep my child. I also would move hell and high water to parent my child if I was ever again in a position in which finances or parenting situations were not optimal. So, I’m having trouble jumping into this hypothetical.

All the same, what would I do?

I would not place another child for adoption. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t be able to be the parent I need to be for the two boys living under my roof should I have to relinquish another child. And so, imagining that something has gone entirely wrong in my marriage and with my finances and has left me thinking and acting in crisis mode while pregnant?

I’d parent.

I know everyone was expecting me, Mrs. ProChoice Activist, to say that I’d cross the line into Canada and have an abortion. Or that I’d risk it and have some illegal abortion in the United States. But while I will fiercely protect a woman’s right to choose what she does in this kind of scenario, I don’t think I have it in me to have an abortion. I’m weird like that, perhaps. But unless it was a life or death decision on the table between myself and the child, I don’t think I could have an abortion. (Reason for the previous statement is because I need to be alive for my living children. Of course!)

And so, the naysayers are about to say, “OMG! YOU’D RESENT YOUR CHILD! HE’D RUIN YOUR LIFE! IT WOULD BE HELL! GIVE IT TO SOMEONE WHO WANTS IT!!!111??~~!” Well, all I’ve got to say is: I’ve been a mother. I am a mother. I know that there are good days. There are bad days. There are days when parents who desperately did everything in their power to bring a child into their family find themselves thinking, “OMG! WHAT DID WE DOOOOOOOO?!” And I know that guilt that crosses over you for thinking such a thing that very next time your son walks up to you and says, “Mommy, I love you,” after he’s been a complete heel all day long.

And so, I’d parent. I’d do it umpteen times over. In a crisis pregnancy situation that even had me contemplating such questions and actions, I’d high-tail it to therapy to help me sort through the issues before the child was born. But I’d parent. Hands down. No other option for me.

(And then I commented anyway! Headdesk for me.)