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So, why get offended when killing a life is a sin, no matter what method?
Someone is going to tell you over and over, that it is. To the point, it has to be a sin.
You being offended, is your conscience talking to ya, about the evil you support......
I thought the question I asked was pretty straight forward, yet you didn`t answer it.
I'll try again...
Would your homeless friend would be better off if he had been aborted?
Both my ex and my friend (who is no longer homeless, just both experienced homelessness like MORE THAN HALF of kids who age out of foster care) have argued that they should have been aborted. I do not agree. My ex's case is more pertinent - his mother went to have an abortion and was counseled out of it. He was born - she had a difficult emotional time with giving his older sibling up for adoption several years previously so adoption was not seen as an option for her. So instead, she continued to have children with her husband despite severe post-partum depression, lack of a maternal instinct, and dire financial staights who she physically abused until they were removed from the home. The youngest was a few months old.
I argue for abortion rights not because I think these kids *should* have been aborted, but because we cannot handle unwanted children who are alive right here, right now. How could we morally put more children in peril by taking away women's rights?
Honestly, on the adoption front, I don't think we've actually tried hard enough -- EVER. It takes significant effort to change our culture into one where a teenage girl giving up her baby for adoption is viewed as heroic. Presently, the choices seem to be only abortion and keeping the baby, neither of which is a particularly good option.
I have no illusions about what defunding PP would do. It'll result in a lot more kids and we as a nation will have to deal will have to deal with that fact. A fairly massive TV and online pro-adoption campaign should accompany it. No such campaign has ever happened insofar as I'm aware, so it should surprise nobody that most women with an unwanted pregnancy don't even think about it. There is in fact a certain amount of anti-adoption stigma out there. Cases where bad thing happened to kids that were adopted get a lot more attention than the vastly more common cases of biological parents do bad things. It leaves many young women thinking, "If I put the baby up for adoption, he/she might end up with complete monsters!" At minimum, it makes adoption a lot less appealing an option.
Like I said, we haven't done enough. Practically nothing really. The void left by silence is filled by society with a whole lot of nonsense. I'd like to see what our nation looks like after a real effort to promote adoption.
As I've said, I wish adoption was more common. There are many reasons why it is not. Most people have not lived the experience that I have. It took us nine years to adopt two children. I admit that our goal was to adopt newborn infants. The experience may have been the toughest thing we ever did. I look back on law school and my bar examination as relatively easy compared to our adoption experiences. We dealt with social workers at agencies who really didn't care whether couples got to adopt or not. They repeatedly said things that I felt either intentionally or unintentionally were humiliating at times. We were forced to pay for and go through counseling for our infertility that I felt we didn't need. Maybe some people need a long time to resolve infertility issues, DW and I did not. Your whole life is literally placed in front of a an adoption agency, so that they can do a home study. I don't dispute this is a necessary process. However, I felt by the time they were done that virtually every aspect of our lives was placed under a microscope. Our home study was particularly thorough, a majority of married couples would have failed the home study process we were subjected too. Its my experience that many of the people who work in adoption consider placing children for adoption as the very last resort.
Laws have progressively tightened over the years and have made adoption a gradually more difficult process. One big issue is the right of an unmarried father to intervene and stop an adoption. I take a dim of this. Unless dad is willing to seek out the mother of his child and take affirmative action to file paper work establishing his parental rights AND show at least some ability to support the child, I don't think he ought to get parental rights and be able to prevent an adoption. However, the states feel very differently about this. Its something of a legal minefield and agencies have to be very careful when it comes to this issue.
Foreign adoption has gotten much harder too. International treaties designed to prevent child trafficking have added layers of bureaucracy to the adoption process. Many agencies have gone out of business and the numbers of children being adopted from abroad are down significantly.
I have recounted other experiences on the adoption forum that relate how people really feel about adoption. Its not something that people talk much about. However, a very significant minority of people viscerally disagree with the whole idea. My wife has encountered them. I have encountered them. Sometimes, you really just have to shut up simply to keep the peace.
Making adoption more common in this climate is going to require a major cultural shift. I think its quite unlikely to happen.
Adoption is not increasing in the USA, its declining. Its a grim reality for those who oppose abortion (and on a personal level I generally oppose it). Find a way to put the genie back in the bottle and you'll have my support. I just don't think it can be done at this point.
Last edited by markg91359; 02-25-2016 at 07:56 AM..
As I've said, I wish adoption was more common. There are many reasons why it is not. Most people have not lived the experience that I have. It took us nine years to adopt two children. I admit that our goal was to adopt newborn infants. The experience may have been the toughest thing we ever did. I look back on law school and my bar examination as relatively easy compared to our adoption experiences. We dealt with social workers at agencies who really didn't care whether couples got to adopt or not. They repeatedly said things that I felt either intentionally or unintentionally were humiliating at times. We were forced to pay for and go through counseling for our infertility that I felt we didn't need. Maybe some people need a long time to resolve infertility issues, DW and I did not. Your whole life is literally placed in front of a an adoption agency, so that they can do a home study. I don't dispute this is a necessary process. However, I felt by the time they were done that virtually every aspect of our lives was placed under a microscope. Our home study was particularly thorough, a majority of married couples would have failed the home study process we were subjected too. Its my experience that many of the people who work in adoption consider placing children for adoption as the very last resort.
Laws have progressively tightened over the years and have made adoption a gradually more difficult process. One big issue is the right of an unmarried father to intervene and stop an adoption. I take a dim of this. Unless dad is willing to seek out the mother of his child and take affirmative action to file paper work establishing his parental rights AND show at least some ability to support the child, I don't think he ought to get parental rights and be able to prevent an adoption. However, the states feel very differently about this. Its something of a legal minefield and agencies have to be very careful when it comes to this issue.
Foreign adoption has gotten much harder too. International treaties designed to prevent child trafficking have added layers of bureaucracy to the adoption process. Many agencies have gone out of business and the numbers of children being adopted from abroad are down significantly.
I have recounted other experiences on the adoption forum that relate how people really feel about adoption. Its not something that people talk much about. However, a very significant minority of people viscerally disagree with the whole idea. My wife has encountered them. I have encountered them. Sometimes, you really just have to shut up simply to keep the peace.
Making adoption more common in this climate is going to require a major cultural shift. I think its quite unlikely to happen.
Adoption is not increasing in the USA, its declining. Its a grim reality for those who oppose abortion (and I generally oppose it). Find a way to put the genie back in the bottle and you'll have my support. I just don't think it can be done at this point.
It's a big problem for sure and one that my wife and I thought we'd have to navigate in order to have children. Frankly, we were pretty scared of the adoption process. We'd heard the horror stories and weren't looking forward to it. Luckily, in vitro worked and we have two children. If the process is stacked against adoption then clearly we need a massive overhaul of the process. It is extremely unfortunate that adoption is too expensive for most middle class couples and so difficult that even couples who can afford it tend to give up. As an adoptive parent, you are providing an alternative to the biological mother that doesn't involve killing her unborn baby and doesn't involve subjecting herself to a life of poverty -- so it should be a lot simpler. Pro-choice groups do not seem to fully realize the incredible trauma that abortion inflicts on many of the expectant mothers. Every woman I've known well who had an abortion was haunted by it for decades to come. Some joined anti-abortion advocacy groups as a result. Fine if some women aren't bothered by it one bit, but I've never met one that wasn't. Adoption seems like a heckuva lot better alternative, so why did we make adoption so incredibly difficult??
It's a big problem for sure and one that my wife and I thought we'd have to navigate in order to have children. Frankly, we were pretty scared of the adoption process. We'd heard the horror stories and weren't looking forward to it. Luckily, in vitro worked and we have two children. If the process is stacked against adoption then clearly we need a massive overhaul of the process. It is extremely unfortunate that adoption is too expensive for most middle class couples and so difficult that even couples who can afford it tend to give up. As an adoptive parent, you are providing an alternative to the biological mother that doesn't involve killing her unborn baby and doesn't involve subjecting herself to a life of poverty -- so it should be a lot simpler. Pro-choice groups do not seem to fully realize the incredible trauma that abortion inflicts on many of the expectant mothers. Every woman I've known well who had an abortion was haunted by it for decades to come. Some joined anti-abortion advocacy groups as a result. Fine if some women aren't bothered by it one bit, but I've never met one that wasn't. Adoption seems like a heckuva lot better alternative, so why did we make adoption so incredibly difficult??
Just wanted to say on the bold that if women know you are anti-abortion and that they had an abortion and are okay with it, they will be less likely to let you know about their choice and subsequent "okay-ness" because they may feel negatively judged by you.
Studies show that a majority of women do not feel bothered by their abortions.
I know a lot of women and knew friends in college who got abortions and they felt relief, not bothered or regret.
I personally had a mis-carriage and also felt relief about it as I didn't want another child. I was happy I miscarried. And FWIW, I had an IUD in place and got pregnant (with my husband) while it was properly inserted. We had an 8 month old baby at the time and I am not one of those people who wants to have babies close together. I like to give babies a lot of attention until they are 4, which is why I waited to have that 8 month old for 5 years in between our first.
It is VERY rare for women to admit that they felt relief or were in some ways happy about a miscarriage, let alone an abortion. I always make sure when people ask me about if I have ever had a miscarriage and I tell them I did, and they proceed to offer condolences, that condolences are not needed since I am relieved and content with not carrying that pregnancy to term and that it was the best thing for our family at the time.
Most women who get abortions, like me during that miscarriage, are in their 20s and have other children and financially don't have the means or want to care for another child.
Even though I think nothing negative in particular about adoption, I don't want women forced to give birth just so people who are infertile can adopt their children. Women and their families are the only people should be able to make these decisions. They are not political decisions, they are personal and should be respected as such.
In regards to adoption always being offered to women as an alternative to abortion, I would say to those parents who want to adopt, why don't you foster children and adopt from foster care. There are hundreds of thousands of children up for adoption who need good homes. Many of them have their parents' rights stripped and you can get all kinds of tax breaks for adopting foster kids as an incentive.
Also, I have a few white friends who have said they would not want to adopt black babies or black/white mixed babies or babies mixed with black or anything else due to them not feeling they can provide a good environment for those children, which I find very odd. A child is a child. A baby is a baby no matter the color, there will always be things to work out in regards to environment or other people's prejudices.
I also have good friends who are white who have adopted black or bi-racial children and they adopted those children relatively quickly with no issues at all. So adoption experiences vary and different states do have different laws. Three of the families I know who adopted all went to other states (most notably Florida) to adopt versus where they lived due to there not being as many rules/regulations regarding father rights especially or shorter notices/wait periods for finalization of adoptions.
Maybe Christians should conduct their lives in accordance to their faith and stay out of the business of people who don't believe as they do.
Thats what Hitlers people told the Germans. Don't worry about the Jews, worry about yourself. No, wrong is wrong! Our faith says that we are to spread the good news, and tell the truth to all people.
Thats what Hitlers people told the Germans. Don't worry about the Jews, worry about yourself. No, wrong is wrong! Our faith says that we are to spread the good news, and tell the truth to all people.
This, right here, is why the "would they have been better being aborted?" argument falls flat every. single. time.
Why don't we kill 1 year old babies who have no chance at a good life? Whats the difference? A fetus will be a baby in 9 short months. The (pregnant) woman will have plenty of time to live her lie after she gives birth.
I know you're argument
1. Pregnancy is hard
2. Her whole life will change
3. I can't afford a baby
So, we are saying that it's too much of a burden to ask a woman to give birth? Isn't that a natural part of being a woman? Are these women somehow inferior to actual Mothers?
For questions 2. & 3. Adoption would help.
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