"Abortion is sometimes necessary, sometimes not, always sad. It is to the woman what war is to the man -- a living sacrifice in a cause justified or not justified, as an observer may decide. It is the making of hard decisions-- that this one must die that that one can live in honor and decency and comfort. Women have no leaders, of course; a woman's conscience must be her General. There are no stirring songs to make the task of killing easier, no victory arches and medals handed around afterwards, merely a sense of loss." - Faye Weldon, The Hearts and Lives of Men
That is amazingly beautiful and rings true to me.
Seriously, if 25% of the money and energy on both the pro-life and pro-choice sides were spent on providing options to prevent the unwanted pregnancies (other than abstanance, thubit to those think that is a useful thing to insist on to the exclusion of all others), I would be happier.
I am pro-choice. I think abortion is a horrible scary thing. I can't convince myself that at ANY point the baby is "unviable" -- it's a baby, if the pregnancy was carried to term it would be viable, quibling about at what point it could survive outside the mother's womb but in a hospital ward seems pointless.
So yeah, I see abortion as killing viable babies. Which means I hate it. But Goddess, the alternatives? Bringing children into the world who are not wanted and not loved? There are hundreds of couples who want to adopt, but few of them can do the time-honored "pay for the mother's health bills and give her $20,000 to go away" thing that you see on TV. A woman in a pregnancy she did not want with a child she does not want is not as likely to take good care of her health. How many people want to adopt children that might have birth defects -- not crack babies, but poor health from the mother being in poor health during her pregnancy?
I want some hard stats, you know. Break it down by socio-economic strata. Who is getting abortions, and who wants to adopt? The poverty-line African-American girl who got pregnant because her boyfriend refused to wear a condom is who I would think would need legal abortion the most.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-12-30 02:48 am (UTC)That is amazingly beautiful and rings true to me.
Seriously, if 25% of the money and energy on both the pro-life and pro-choice sides were spent on providing options to prevent the unwanted pregnancies (other than abstanance, thubit to those think that is a useful thing to insist on to the exclusion of all others), I would be happier.
I am pro-choice. I think abortion is a horrible scary thing. I can't convince myself that at ANY point the baby is "unviable" -- it's a baby, if the pregnancy was carried to term it would be viable, quibling about at what point it could survive outside the mother's womb but in a hospital ward seems pointless.
So yeah, I see abortion as killing viable babies. Which means I hate it. But Goddess, the alternatives? Bringing children into the world who are not wanted and not loved? There are hundreds of couples who want to adopt, but few of them can do the time-honored "pay for the mother's health bills and give her $20,000 to go away" thing that you see on TV. A woman in a pregnancy she did not want with a child she does not want is not as likely to take good care of her health. How many people want to adopt children that might have birth defects -- not crack babies, but poor health from the mother being in poor health during her pregnancy?
I want some hard stats, you know. Break it down by socio-economic strata. Who is getting abortions, and who wants to adopt? The poverty-line African-American girl who got pregnant because her boyfriend refused to wear a condom is who I would think would need legal abortion the most.
Gah. Making no more sense. *head in sand*