BACKlikeWEneverLEFT

So I was having a discussion with a friend of mine and she told me something very interesting. She informed me that she thinks she’s pregnant and doesn’t know how to proceed with the next step. On one hand she says she does not “believe in abortions”, but also that she is not ready for a child, so she is considering adoption as a solution. Now my question for her was, “Well if you do not want a child, how did you end up pregnant?” Of course she gave me a rundown of excuses, everything from “I was drunk, I didn’t know” to “well the condom broke during intercourse”. Whatever the way, it did not really matter, that was irrelevant. The second question I asked her was, “Well, if you do not want a child, why wouldn’t you just get an abortion instead of giving up the child for adoption?” Her reasoning was that she does not think she can go through the emotional trauma of having an abortion. My rebuttal for her was you don’t it will be more traumatic to give up your child that you gave birth to a complete stranger. This discussion led me to blogging about this topic. I did some research and I found these statistics interesting. The only study that tracks adoptions in the United States is the National Survey for Family Growth or the NSFG. “About 1.4 million children were born to unmarried women in 2003, comprising 34.6 percent of total births (Hamilton, Martin, & Sutton, 2004). If the relinquishment rate measured by NSFG in 1995 for never-married women were applied to all unmarried women who gave birth in 2003, this would mean that fewer than 14,000 children were voluntarily relinquished in 2003.” This shows that first it is rare to even want to voluntarily relinquish your child. Then it goes to say, “Most research focuses on unmarried teens who relinquish a child. In addition to being disproportionately White, those who relinquish tend to have higher education and income levels, higher future career and educational aspirations, and a strong preference for adoption expressed by the teen’s mother and/or the birth father (Miller & Coyl, 2000).” To me this study showed that, it is not necessarily the women who cannot take of the children giving them away. We hear it all the time from women, I do not “believe in abortions.” That is nice and dandy, but let’s keep it a hundred, of all the births in this world, how many are planned pregnacies? I have a 6 year old son that I love dearly, but lord knows he was not planned. But his mother did not “believe in abortions”, so here we are today. I just do not understand how any woman can go through 9-10 months of pregnancy and then decide that they want to give their child to another person. If DJS knew you did not want your child, ran up in your home and wanted to snatch your child from you, it would be a problem. But if you just willingly give up your child to a stranger, who you have no idea what they are planning to do to your child, then everything is good. I just think that is extremely selfish and that if you do not want this child, why not save everyone the trouble and just get an abortion? It seems like an easy choice for me, but hey to each their own. I keep quoting “believe in abortions” because when women say that, it makes abortions sound like aliens, something we think are out there but really have no proof to support it. Abortions are not aliens, (in my Kevin Hart voice) they are here and they are real! And they happen everyday around the world. We need a new way for women to state their abortion beliefs, how about “abortion free is the way for me”, I think I like that.