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The data is shocking. There are approximately 400,000 children living today in the American foster care system, of which about 100,000 are in need of an adoptive family. The vast majority of foster children are in safe placements, but they are still desperately in need of the stability and security that only a loving "forever family" can provide. There is no substitute for permanency, whether with a biological family or an adoptive one.
On average, more than 250,000 children in the U.S. enter the foster care system every year. While more than half of these children will return to their parents, the remainder will stay in the system.
One out of four foster children is available for adoption, but sadly, each year more than 20,000 children age out of foster care (around the age of 18) without being adopted. The outlook for foster youth who age out of the system is dire. Studies show that one in four will be incarcerated within two years of leaving the system, and over one-fifth will become homeless at some time after age 18. In addition, only 58 percent obtain their high school diploma by age 19, compared to the national average of 87 percent for non-foster youth. Statistics suggest bleak futures for children who grow up in foster care | amarillo.com
But evidently you think that's fine. You want more children pumped into that system, apparently.
There is such a disconnect. Pro-abortion supporters want the pro-life community to take care of other people’s children, yet they proudly support of the right of a mother to kill her own child. But the pro-life community does care for children of all ages.
Bethany Christian Services assist in adoption and foster care. They provide counseling to families, assist in refugees and immigrants resettling in the U.S. and partner with several countries to help keep families together.
Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and author of, “Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches says, “Christians and other pro-lifers are at the forefront of caring for orphans. This means not only empowering adoption but also being active in the foster-care system, in providing homes and resources for pregnant women in crisis, and in working to confront global poverty and disease, the root causes of much of the orphan crisis.” *What he is saying is that Christians are called to care for orphans, and thousands sacrificially give in this area.
Back to this again. I commented on this before, but now I'll comment in more detail. From the link:
Below is the response of a pro-life advocate to the criticism that if abortion were illegal there'd be even more children in foster care:
I said, “What you are saying is because there are already a lot of people in the system, that’s a good justification for abortion? What’s the worst thing that could happen to those kids in the foster care system? They die. Your solution is to kill them before they get the chance. But once you choose abortion, you remove any change for change or hope. Where there’s life, there is always hope.”
There is a common theme in the pro-abortion community which accuses pro-life people of really only being “pro-birth.” They try to make the argument that once a person is born and out of size two diapers, pro-life advocates don’t help them anymore.
Last Sunday, I heard my pastor mention six families in our church alone who are either adopting or fostering a child. My family is one of the six and we are adopting for the second time. When I thought of how many churches and ministries there are in America who do not rely on government funding but find other ways to help the vulnerable and marginalized it made me wonder how this lie has become so widespread? The lie that says,
“You want to see this baby live, but you don’t want to care of for this person for the rest of their life.
That's an extremely dumb response. It makes me not know whether to break out chuckling or sobbing, so I'm going to chuckle. I'm going to grit my teeth and chuckle, because that hurts less.
The idiots don't seem to understand the concept of self-awareness, conciousnes, having feelings, and sentience being important to life, and not all life being self-aware. That's why 91% of abortions are gotten in the first trimester, because the people getting them suspect that the sooner they can get the abortions done, the less complex of a mind the organism will have.
Death doesn't matter. It's the mind that matters.
The fetus reacts to nociceptive stimulations through different motor, autonomic, vegetative, hormonal, and metabolic changes relatively early in the gestation period. With respect to the fact that the modulatory system does not yet exist, the first reactions are purely reflexive and without connection to the type of stimulus. While the fetal nervous system is able to react through protective reflexes to potentially harmful stimuli, there is no accurate evidence concerning pain sensations in this early period. Cortical processes occur only after thalamocortical connections and pathways have been completed at the 26th gestational week. Harmful (painful) stimuli, especially in fetuses have an adverse effect on the development of humans regardless of the processes in brain. Moreover, pain activates a number of subcortical mechanisms and a wide spectrum of stress responses influence the maturation of thalamocortical pathways and other cortical activation which are very important in pain processing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19112406
and here's another interesting source:
A simple definition of consciousness is sensory awareness of the body, the self, and the world. The fetus may be aware of the body, for example by perceiving pain. It reacts to touch, smell, and sound, and shows facial expressions responding to external stimuli. However, these reactions are probably preprogrammed and have a subcortical nonconscious origin. Furthermore, the fetus is almost continuously asleep and unconscious partially due to endogenous sedation. Conversely, the newborn infant can be awake, exhibit sensory awareness, and process memorized mental representations. It is also able to differentiate between self and nonself touch, express emotions, and show signs of shared feelings. Yet, it is unreflective, present oriented, and makes little reference to concept of him/herself. Newborn infants display features characteristic of what may be referred to as basic consciousness and they still have to undergo considerable maturation to reach the level of adult consciousness. The preterm infant, ex utero, may open its eyes and establish minimal eye contact with its mother. It also shows avoidance reactions to harmful stimuli. However, the thalamocortical connections are not yet fully established, which is why it can only reach a minimal level of consciousness. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19092726
and:
Without verbal reports and direct access to the mind of a fetus, inferences about what fetuses are able to experience depend on the interpretation of secondary evidence. As discussed, neuroanatomical pathways necessary for processing pain, similar to those observed in adults and older children, could be in place by 23 weeks' gestation. The stereotypical hormonal stress response of adults or older infants, of about 18 months onwards, reporting pain is observable in fetuses at 18 weeks' gestation.12 Behavioural reactions and brain haemodynamic responses to noxious stimuli, comparable to adults or older infants, occur by 26 weeks' gestation.11,13 These and other observations (figure) are taken to suggest that the fetal mind can support an experience of pain from at least 26 weeks' gestation.8,14
but
Inferences of fetal pain from such indirect evidence, however, present considerable difficulties. One is that many environmental factors inherent to the womb provide for a distinction between the environment of fetuses and that of neonates.15 The placenta provides a chemical environment to encourage sleep and to suppress higher cortical activation in the presence of intrusive external stimulation. The environment of the womb consists of warmth, buoyancy, and a cushion of fluid to prevent tactile stimulation. In contrast to this buffered environment, the intense tactile stimulation of birth and the subsequent separation of the neonate from the placenta, facilitate the rapid onset of behavioural activity and wakefulness in the newborn infant. Birth marks the transition from laying down brain tissue while in the womb to organising that tissue for the wider world outside the womb.
and
Another obstacle to equating fetal pain experience with that of adults or older children is the developmental process that begins after birth. Theories of development assume that the early human mind begins with minimal content and gradually evolves into the rich experience of older children and adults.16,17 Although the view of a neonate as a blank slate, or tabula rasa, is generally rejected, it is broadly accepted that psychological processes have content concerning people, objects, and symbols, which lay in the first instance outside the brain.16,17 w7-w9 If pain also depends on content derived from outside the brain, then fetal pain cannot be possible, regardless of neural development. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1440624/
and:
Without consciousness there can be nociception but there cannot be pain. Thus to understand how pain experience becomes possible it is necessary to understand the origin and developmental course of conscious experience. It is reasonable to assume that conscious function can only emerge if the necessary neural circuitry to carry out that function is fully developed and functional.18,19 w5
It is also necessary to assume that conscious function can only emerge if the proper psychological content and environment has been provided.16,17 Before infants can think about objects or events, or experience sensations and emotion, the contents of thought must have an independent existence in their mind. This is something that is achieved through continued brain development in conjunction with discoveries made in action and in patterns of mutual adjustment and interactions with a caregiver. The development of representational memory, which allows infants to respond and to learn from stored information rather than respond to material directly available, may be considered a building block of conscious development. Representational memory begins to emerge as the frontal cortex develops between two and four months of age, supported by developments in the hippocampus that facilitate the formation, storage, and retrieval of memories.w5 From this point tagging in memory is possible, or labelling as “something,” all the objects, emotions, and sensations that appear or are felt. When a primary caregiver points to a spot on the body and asks “does that hurt?” he or she is providing content and enabling an internal discrimination and with it experience. This type of interaction provides content and symbols that allow infants to locate and anchor emotions and sensations. It is in this way that infants can arrive at a particular state of being within their own mind. Although pain experience is individual, it is created by a process that extends beyond the individual.16,17 w9
This is likely to strike anyone as strange because it is simply not how we intuitively believe pain to be. Because pain is so automatic and personal we perceive it to be natural and private. But because we are able to experience pain as such a personal event does not mean that we individually acquired the ability to experience pain in the first place. Nor does it mean that the psychological mechanisms by which we experience pain arose within our own brains by some individualistic process such as neuronal maturation.16 w9
This is not to deny that neonates and fetuses have the neural apparatus to discriminate information; clearly, fetuses and neonates do not respond to tactile stimuli in the same way as they do to auditory stimuli, for example. Indeed, this discriminatory processing is the raw material for a primary caregiver's assessments of his or her infant's need and for the interactions and behavioural adjustments that occur in the forthcoming months. Innate neural and behavioural discrimination are part of the material for developing experiential discrimination, but experiential discrimination is yet to develop and relies critically on interactions with a primary caregiver. For fetuses and newborn infants, these interactions have yet to occur.
By this line of reasoning fetuses cannot be held to experience pain. Not only has the biological development not yet occurred to support pain experience, but the environment after birth, so necessary to the development of pain experience, is also yet to occur. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1440624/
This topic is extremely frustrating because it's like a group of people having a problem that requires an extensive knowledge of calculus, and most of them are still bickering over whether 1+1 is 2 or 11.
I've had three miscarriages. One of them was a set of twins. I am still very pro-choice. I also say that losing those fetuses were much less painful had I lost one of my living children.
A baby born significantly premature is basically a fetus - just living and developing artificially outside of the womb.
If you had a miscarriage after a certain point, you lost a child. Not this dehumanized thing called a "fetus," but a child. There IS a point where we can say, "ok, yeah, this is basically just cells".... but.... beyond that, fetus just means "developing baby inside womb."
Your feeling less sad about your miscarriages than if you lost a child that had been taken out of the womb doesn't change what happened. Only your reaction and coping mechanism changes. (Again, unless it was an early miscarriage).
Had i lost my daughter to miscarriage at the same gestational age instead of after a week after being taken out of the womb, I too would have been able to cope better I am sure, since I never would have met her.
But she still died, and she wasn't "less" a person at 29 weeks inside the womb vs. 30 weeks outside the womb.
Pro-Abortion Fallacy of the Day: “Why Don’t You Pro-Lifers Adopt These Unwanted Children?”
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