I think you did a really good job of explaining your thinking and beliefs about abortion. I appreciate, and respect, writers who cite their sources. In your mind, life begins at conception and abortion is murder and you will never have an abortion for any reason whatsoever. Your understandings and beliefs offer you no choice – if your body cannot carry a fetus to term, you will die with your child. Not only must you accept your own death, so too would your children, husband, parents, siblings, and everyone else who loves and depends on you. I have no interest in changing your mind.
61% of women who do have abortions are already mothers, with children. After an abortion, these mothers go home and take care of their children. Other women go home and take care of a disabled husband, aging parents, or another needy family member. Some women go home to take care of a child with cerebral palsy, who needs round the clock care for the rest of their lives. Some girls go home to parents who will take care of them until they grow up. Other girls and women go home to violence, hunger and misery. Some girls and women go home to a mattress on the floor, in tiny apartments shared by 6 or more family members. Still other girls and women go home to tents or cardboard boxes on the streets.
Right now, there are more than 400,000 children in foster care. Adoption goes to healthy newborns and infants, leaving more than 75% of these children with no hope. Many of these children were born with physical, mental and/or emotional disabilities. None of these children will receive dental care and only the most basic or emergency medical care will be provided. On average, these children will be moved from home to home and school to school once a year, 12 to 30 times before they reach age 18. Many of these children, some say most, will be sexually, physically, emotionally, mentally and/or spiritually abused – repeatedly. Without exception, these children will experience social abuse. From now on, these children will increase in number, year after year after year.
I do not fault you for your beliefs. I fault you for your failure to adopt unwanted children and raise them yourself. Children are not raised by people sitting on some charity board, or volunteering to decorate for the holidays or taking a girl to some thrift shop for a prom dress, or donating their children’s used toys to unwanted children or marching in front of planned parenthood clinics.
Good, loving adoptive parents are incredibly rare, but in my heart and soul, they are the only people who have the moral right to oppose abortion.
