I finished reading Choice during halftime of the Steelers game last night. (Yep. Books and football. I was a happy lady last night with two of my favorite things!) The book was amazing. The book was eye-opening. The book was easy to read. The book was hard to read. And, no, those two don’t contradict each other. It was easy to read in the fact that any book broken into short stories is easy to read. You’re continuously interested and you have a desire to keep pushing through to see if the next story is more eye-opening or as well-written as the previous one. But, at the same time, it was a hard read.

I’ve never had an abortion. I don’t have plans in my future to have an abortion. I remain pro-choice because I don’t want to be told that even if my life is in danger that I can’t have an abortion. I need to be present for my living children. And so, in the stories that recounted the abortions that these writing women have gone through, I frequently found myself putting down the book and thinking. Really hard. Thinking about what I would have done in that situation. Thinking about how that would have made me feel. Thinking about how that particular story just pushed my own limits and made me realize that there is so little I really take time to consider outside of my own safe little world box.

I also had to put down the book at times because my heart broke for these women, not just in the abortion stories. In all of them, in different ways. And not in a patronizing, pity-laden way. Sometimes it was the broken heart of a birth mother, one I could relate to entirely. Sometimes it was the brokenness that follows a miscarriage, one I can also relate to. Sometimes it was a physical, angry heartbreak for those that were forced to do things that they didn’t want to or shouldn’t have had to do and so on. My poor Husband got an earful as I read this book.

And I learned so much. Oh! These women are all amazing and fabulous writers and just plain awesome. I’m pretty peeved with myself that I didn’t take the time to purchase and read this book until now. (Though the editor in me did find a total of four errors. My head exploded with each one.)

This book pushes the envelope. It forces you to think about the what ifs that no one else wants to talk about. It is less about politics (though, of course, politics are always in our life, no?) and more about what x-choice meant for y-person. The abortion stories are not all the same. The adoption stories are not all the same. The parenting stories are not all the same. Just like in real life.

I’m going to take some time this week and hit on some of my favorite quotes from the book. There are too many to throw into one post. Stay tuned!

Finished Reading Choice is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

I finally purchased Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, & Abortion for myself. I had a $20.00 Amazon Gift Card and thought I would spend some of it on myself instead of all on the boys. You know, like I usually do. It arrived. And I’m just overwhelmed with the awesomeness of it already. Even though I’ve found two typos and I’m only on page 29. (Oh, the editor in me.)

A quote from the introduction regarding the hard look the book takes at the different choices women have to make regarding unplanned pregnancy (and how those stories aren’t always happy-go-lucky):

When an issue is as polarized as abortion, people on both sides see the world in black and white. In order to preserve these extremes, stories that reveal gray areas are kept secret. The woman who regrets placing he child for adoption suffers in silence, lest someone think she would have been better off aborting. The woman who undergoes a painful abortion keeps quiet, lest the complexities of her situation be construed as an argument against reproductive freedom. But when these stories are suppressed, so is our empathy. Instead of listening to each other’s stories and drawing lessons from each other’s lives, we are turning a deaf ear to human experience.

Oof, that hit home. Especially lately.

I received a series of forwards from Dawn in which she had an exchange with two other women. About me. (Don’t I feel famous now?) One woman was peeved about my Redbook piece and how it was too negative. (Which, by the way, I also received word from an anti-adoption follower that it was too positive in the end. Guess I can’t please anyone.) This particular woman took it so far as to contact Redbook and let them know that publishing a story so negative about adoption was doing the world a great disservice. Nevermind the fact that the article was part of a larger piece about the hardships of motherhood. They weren’t looking for a happy piece to add to that story; they wanted other mothers who felt ostracized by the celebration of Mother’s Day to know that they aren’t alone. Nevermind the fact that my piece wasn’t overly negative. Nevermind the fact that I admitted in the piece that I must keep continuing to move forward and heal for the sake of my daughter. Nevermind any of that. She just wanted me to shut my yapper. Or, stop my fingers from moving so swiftly across the keyboard as it were.

The other woman who wasn’t Dawn involved in the series of emails reminded the one who wanted me to shut up that we all have varying experiences. Apparently this woman who doesn’t like me or my story or my writings is a woman who wants to help those touched by adoption. So, the second woman reminded her that if someone like me came to this other woman with such a story, what good would turning someone like me away do? Just because my story isn’t butterflies and rainbows, I should be turned away from any help? Isn’t that kind of, or, rather, totally backward from what people should want to be doing? Shouldn’t we be reaching out to those who have stories with shadows and rainclouds? Shouldn’t we be listening to their stories and learning what we could do differently? Shouldn’t we be fighting against unethical agencies, greedy attorneys and ignorance in general? Or should we just put on our rose-tinted glasses, sip some lemonade and smile at one another without ever hearing, learning or truly feeling the depth of emotion involved in this topic?

You know my answer.

I wish I could speed read through this book. All the same, it will take me awhile. Our lives have gotten so busy with living life that reading (and writing, at this point) have taken a side seat. Not a backseat because I still value the presence of books and words in my daily life. But, oh, I’m just up to the tip of my nose in life right now. And it’s fall! Must go outside.

But I’ll take the book with me.

Reading Choice is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

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.)

Hypotheticals I’d Rather Avoid is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

Found 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.

What Would the Numbers Say? is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

I have this comment sitting in moderation. I haven’t deleted it. I haven’t spammed it. I haven’t approved it. It’s just sitting there. Every time I login, I’m warned that it is just sitting there, begging to be dealt with. But every time I click over to look at it, I want to vomit. Or scream. Possibly cuss. And I most definitely want to write about it.

But I’m stumped.

It’s a pro-life vs. pro-choice comment. And I can’t figure out how to reply to it without making myself sound like a total meanie-face. But it spouts, ever so politely, some really aggravating things. And I just don’t know what to do with it right now. So it sits. Taunting me.

I wanted to deal with it by Blog for Choice day. But, well, with the boys and the laundry and the work and the other stuff on my plate, I just didn’t get to it. And I still haven’t. I’m wondering when I will. If I will. It’s not that I doubt my position. I just don’t like when either side comes off as a complete buttface. And lately, I’ve seen buttfaces on both sides. And that’s not cool, man.

In other news, I plan on watching Juno tonight. If time permits. Look for that reaction on Monday for sure. (For sure, of course, based on whether it actually gets watched or not…)

I Don’t Want to Sound Mean… BUT… is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

I saw a bumper sticker sometime in the past few months. It’s been on my mind. It makes me giggle sometimes. But mostly it smacks of stupidity.

Your Mom was Pro-Life!

Really? She was? All Moms, everywhere, are automatically pro-life because they have children? I think not, buddy in the pick-up. I think not.

I can’t count, on fingers and toes, the number of pro-choice Mamas I know that purposefully conceived their children. Pro-choice both before and after that conception, pregnancy and delivery, nothing about their views changed. They still believe, without a doubt, that removing the choice will only create further problems.

I can’t count, on fingers and toes, the number of pro-choice Mamas I know that experienced unplanned pregnancies. In this grouping, those that chose to parent their children sometimes tossed the idea of abortion back and forth. They asked questions of themselves and those around them offering support what would be best in this scenario. Choosing to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term doesn’t automatically throw you in the pro-life category. It means you made a… choice. (That said, some are pro-life. I’m just showing the difference.)

Of those that chose to place their babies for adoption, it is often assumed that this grouping of Mothers features a majority of pro-lifers. I am here to debunk that myth (while acknowledging that some, are, indeed pro-life). Again, I cannot count, on fingers and toes, the number of Mamas who placed their babies for adoption that identify themselves as pro-choice. Like their parenting counterparts, they were faced with choices. They first had to decide whether or not to abort. Some had the decision made for them either by family or by a pregnancy discovered too late in the game. Others weighed the pros and cons and found themselves choosing to carry the pregnancy to term for a myriad of reasons. Regarding the Munchkin’s pregnancy, I chose to carry to term because I was under the impression that I was going to parent. Things changed mid-pregnancy (obviously) and that’s not what happened. Then these Mothers, like myself, are faced with the next decision of parenting or placing their child for adoption. For whatever reason, they place. That doesn’t mean that they’re all pro-life. It means that they were faced with decisions and made choices. (Of note: not all mothers who relinquish children are afforded 100% choice, especially those from the closed adoption era. Unfortunately, there are still unethical practices and not-so-supportive family members forcing their decisions on mothers in today’s adoptions.)

And so, I’m just baffled by that guy’s bumper sticker. My children? Have a pro-choice Mother. One was an unexpected blessing into our lives and her parents’ lives. One is an angel watching over us all. And two (though one still in utero) were meticulously planned… and have shaken our world in so many unexpected and wonderful ways.

Of Moms that fall under the pro-choice camp, I’m betting you’ll find a slew of different stories and reasons as to why they identify themselves in that way. I’m guessing that no two Mothers are going to have the exact same reasoning as personal experience and opinion are sure to color their mindset. However, I’m sure they would all be equally amused by the bumper sticker. I’m curious as to what their rebuttal bumper sticker might be.

My Kid’s Mom is Pro-Choice? Having Babies Doesn’t Make You Pro-Life? I Chose To Have My Children? Or, maybe, if we were feeling uber-snarky, perhaps: I Wish Your Mom was Pro-Choice. Okay, okay, perhaps a line was crossed with the latter. All the same, it goes to prove that bumper sticker politics and beliefs can’t possibly begin to cover the wide range of opinions that exist for a whole group.

One group you should never try to speak for is a group of Moms. I mean, we never agree on anything! Ha!

Your Mom Was Pro-Life! (Or… not.) is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

Perhaps it’s because the Munchkin was conceived in the great state of New Jersey, but this little blog (from Celebrity Baby Blog, which totally outs me as a celebrity baby/pregnancy gossip monger) made me get all misty eyed. I applaud this new mom for speaking her truth, for speaking up when others might want to shame her into silence.

The truth is that it would have been easier for this mother to quietly end the pregnancy. With the shame that could have accompanied stepping down from a title such as the one she held, she might have felt resentful towards the child. Others might could have pushed for placement. (Though it sounds as though her parents were supportive which makes me say, BRAVO, PARENTS!) The truth remains: a mother who experienced an unplanned pregnancy is offering moral support to others who may be in a similar situation. If she can do it, so can you.

All that said, I’ve often wondered about pageants and pregnancy. Here’s why. Though I can’t find the current wording on the site (which means it may have changed, no?), the rules in 1999 were worded as: I am not pregnant and I am not the natural or adoptive parent of any child. Anyone else raising some eyebrows.

Adoptions were once secret. Wholly and completely secret. In fact, the way that our system currently works, the birth really never took place. It is wiped from the world’s collective memory when the old birth certificate is sealed and the new one is created. So, even though I’m now too old (and, uhm, married and, uhm, pregnant), let’s pretend I’m running for Miss America. (Meaning, forget for a second that TheHusbandMan, BigBrother and LittleBrother exist. Just a second.)

Legally, I am no child’s parent. I have no rights to the Munchkin. If you research birth records, you wouldn’t find me. So, does that count? Do I still get to run? I mean, no one wants to see my post-Munchkin stretchmarked belly anyway and I’d surely lose the bathing suit competition but STILL. Shouldn’t I get a CHANCE? How would they handle such a thing? Because in 1999, women who had previously had abortions were allowed, by the change in wording listed above, to run for the crown. (Of note: I am pro-choice, I’m just making the necessary comparison. Keep reading.) If one of my not-so-nice contestants decided to out me as a birth mother, would I be allowed to continue to run? Or would I be ousted? Even though the birth had legally been wiped off of the slate of the world?

It’s curious. It’s a double-standard that we see frequently in discussions that surround these issues. The prejudice and stigma that follows mothers who have placed children for adoption. While I don’t plan on running for any kind of pageant, I’m honestly curious as to how the above situation, with another beautiful mother, would be handled. If she was ousted, wouldn’t that be a lovely case to take to civil court. I’d wait in line to sit on that jury, for sure.

(TheHusbandMan, BigBrother and LittleBrother are returned to full existence.)

Okay, so, I had a small sidebar but really all I wanted to say was congratulations to a new mama who, no doubt, had her own fair share of battles to fight regarding unplanned pregnancy. While it sounds as though she didn’t consider placement, I applaud her for continuing to tell her story and promoting the fact that unplanned motherhood doesn’t have to be devastating; it can be beautiful and rewarding!

Mother Talks About Unplanned Pregnancy is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

I just wrote a two post series on adoption and abortion in Japan. On a Saturday. My brain feels full! I learned a lot today. Just thought you might be interested.

Part One.
Part Two.

I am always interested to learn how other countries deal with these issues.

That said, I need to install a plugin for asides on this blog. Off I go.

Adoption and Abortion in Japan is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.