Originally posted by racketboy@Jun 29, 2004 @ 09:37 PM
in many cases, I think adoption is a much better option than abortion. I have heard countless stories of women (some I know personally) from many circumstances say they regret they're abortion.
And there's many more where they're thankful that it was legal.
And then there's even more that during the late 70's performed back alley abortions and completely lost the ability to give birth to children, or worse, lose their life.
Adoption isn't a 'loving' choice, it's a choice. Reason being, adoption is this nebulous choice where every child gets adopted and they're happy. No. For the uninitiated, close to one million foster children last year were abused by their foster parents.
One such story was a family with five foster children. Starved, one died from lack of eating. Cigarette burns. Scars from beatings. How can they get all those foster children? Because the screening process is very limited. And you get cash per child you 'fosterize'.
Why? Because social services are cash strapped. Terribly. It's one of those things no one ever mentions - social security funding and military funding get mentioned before it. People want their tax breaks, and they want their social services, but you can't always have it both ways.
Even worse, social workers barely make any money. My aunt is a social worker, and I've done a LOT of volunteer work with foster children. She's barely making a pittance. And there are certainly not enough volunteers. And even if there were, there isn't enough trained workers to deal with these situations that run rampant.
Even better still, the Bush administration has promoted abstinence as birth control.
fine. However, they spent close to $1 billion in those adverts, and next to none of that money went to social services. It's a state problem or some such. And the states clamor for money. It's a federal problem. Very nebulous.
And now the bush administration coerced the FDA to not allow the morning after pill. So they want no abortion, don't want the morning after pill, and don't want to fund social services. Let's stick our heads in the sand with them and see if everything gets better?
Back in the 70s you could have a procedure done outside of the US if you had a significant medical emergency. That is, you had get a doctor's note to leave the country. One such doctor commented (name withheld, I will try to find the book) that he had expected younger women to come... but instead it was late 20 early 30s women who had married. In fact they came with their husbands. They just weren't ready to have a child. It's an odd demographic that at least I didn't expect would be the ones looking for this service.
In regards to Quad, I agree. It is only cells. I love how the conservatives like showing off signs of aborted fetuses - illegally obtained fetuses in the third tri-mester, when procedures are legally limited to the mother having a better than 50% chance of dying.
Before the third tri-mester, a fetus isn't viable. It isn't 'alive', that is, it's life cannot be sustained by its own faculties. At least to me, calling that gelatinous blob life and trying to give it legal standing is ludicrous. Then goes the slippery slope argument. What about cows?
I'm a male. And not having the faculties to give birth, I don't feel like I have any right to dictate what I woman can or can't do with her body. Trust me, if a bunch of conservative white old females made laws regarding men's penises, there would be an uproar.
Having an abortion isn't easy either. I volunteered at a clinic. I didn't do that long because it was heartbreaking. You have these females who are terrified, who are angry, ashamed and hurt, then you have these idiots protesting with their holier than thou arguments. Not an adopted child among them (and trust me, anti-choicers love ballyhooing their adopted trophies). Screaming epithets. For most of them, the choice was painfully hard. You can see some with the deer in headlights look too. Those I imagine are the ones that regret it.
I love the anti-choicers who say 'I had x number of abortions, but I regret all of them, and you should too!' My thing is, I don't like the procedure. I hate the idea of it. But if you don't like abortions, don't have one.
Talk to me when you petition your senator (as I have, numerous times) about increasing funding for social services.
