Sometimes, being prowoman and prolife can be very frustrating. Sometimes, you just want to scream. This is one of those mornings…
Women abort potential babies because they would prefer not to be a mother at all, rather than be an inadequate parent. It’s not that they don’t care about the unborn child, it’s because they care so much.
It is right for us to be sympathetic to these fears of inadequacy, and it is our duty to soothe these fears, educate and create systems of support that eradicate the perceived need to abort. I’ve heard this argument before, that it’s better to not be a parent at all than to have been a bad parent. On behalf of all of those with difficult childhoods in less than perfect homes, I protest.
As a parent myself, I know that there is no such thing as a perfect parent. Women are told this bumper sticker style slogan to convince them they’re making the right decision for not only themselves, but for their baby. I’ve heard this repeated in 12th and Delaware by the abortion clinic operator, Candace, who tells a woman she’d be a bad person if she had the child and then mistreated it. But abortion or being a failure as a parent are not the only options, and we need to stop telling women they are and instead do something to support their efforts.
So rather than pull my hair out, I’m going to celebrate those women who have made the choice to have their children (like my own mother, and I’m sure many of yours) and not let the Candaces of the world tell them it’s too much of a risk because the odds aren’t in their favour.
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Andrea adds: The article ends by asking: “Isn’t it better to end the pregnancy than be a parent when you know you are not ready for it?” And the short answer is no, it’s not. You’ll never know how and whether you could have risen to the occasion and become a better person by having the baby. Secondly, no one is telling women they have to parent. There’s another “A word” and it’s called adoption. My BS o’meter went through the roof on this. Or, as Brigitte would say, colour me unsympathetic. We are prowoman and prolife, not gullible and timid, and that means sometimes you have to call your fellow women to account. So to this writer, I would say, don’t pretend abortion is a courageous act. You know somewhere deep down that it’s not.
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The argument presents a false dichotomy. There’s a whole lot of other choices in between kill your child or be a crappy parent, as Andrea points out.
I’m in agreement with all of the above.
But there is another aspect to this. We have an infertility epidemic on our hands and the main driver of that is women delaying having children until their thirties – or later. This notion that there is a perfect time to have children and until you achieved all the criteria you should not even contemplate it is one of the cultural forces that causes women to delay having children. Or finding they have left it too late.