Right to Life
The Right Choice
No words. These are the stories we need to tell.
(Source: youtube.com)
6 notes (via restlesshippo)
Making abortions illegal will never eliminate abortion. In fact by making them illegal you are, in reality, just sweeping the issue under the rug.
I don’t agree with the “sweeping the issue under the rug” comment, but I definitely understand that making abortions illegal won’t eliminate abortion. That’s why my main efforts are less concerned with the law and more concerned about helping the women (and men!) who are at risk for abortion.
:)
How I am Pro-Woman
I find it sad that my grandmother was condemned to be a maid when she became pregnant with my mother at the age of 16. I find it sad that in turn my mother was also condemned because she was a “maid’s daughter” who was too “dumb” to be anything better (even though she was the first in her family to be accepted into medical school, which happened to be her second choice.)
It is even more heartbreaking that my boyfriend’s sister, who had her son at 16, is struggling to support both herself and Haddin, and finding it impossible to find a well-paying job to achieve this.
Pro-choice people argue that a woman should be allowed to have an abortion because we don’t know her situation. She may be in an abusive relationship, financially unstable, etc. and who are we to judge the reasons she “needs” an abortion?
But what about the women who freely chose to keep their baby? Why didn’t my grandma or Ashley choose to have an abortion if it was readily available to them? Did they not know that life would get harder with an extra person to take care of? Of course they did, they are not stupid. Yet, especially with Ashley, people say she was irresponsible for having a child at such a young age, and that her life would have been easier if she had had an abortion.
Is this true? Probably. But why? It seems that the availability of abortions had given us as a society a reason to not provide help for the women who do keep their babies. It seems that if they are going through hard times as a young, single mother, then it is their fault for not choosing abortion.
We as pro-lifers are accused of slut-shaming to the women who have abortions, but what about the rest of society slut-shaming the women who opted out an abortion, the few women who actually felt they had a “choice?”
Why do young women get abortions? Because they are too young, too poor to be a mother, They want to be able to finish their education, because their current job is not flexible for young mothers. Society punishes those who become mothers, by not giving affordable day care, not creating jobs that are more flexible to a new mother’s schedule, not making education more easy to receive for the women who have a baby at home, by not supporting women who made one mistake and decided to keep her child. Society makes young women think that motherhood is an obstacle that will make it near impossible for her to succeed.
And you know what? It shouldn’t be an obstacle. On the other hand, I have a friend, Heather, who had her son at 19. She stopped drinking, doing drugs, partying, and grew up. She is now a year away from graduating to be a nurse. She went against what society told her and has succeeded. My parents had me and then decided to go to college. When my dad was in college, my mother worked full time, and vice versa for when my mom went to college. We are in a better place financially now then my parents were before they wanted a child. It is possible to be a young mother and succeed.
But as long as abortion is as readily available as it is now, society will never feel the need to provide additional services to the women who need assistance, women like Ashley. It is giving us a reason to slack off, and not give women real choices if they choose motherhood. Sometimes what we need is a push to show everyone how important these services would be, even more important than abortion, because it lets women feel that, yes, they do have a choice, because they don’t have to worry about not being able to succeed because there will be help.
Yes, I’m Pro-Life, because there are real choices out there, as long as we allow them to be available.
131 notes (via badwolfcomplex & catholic-truth)
Majority of Americans ‘Pro-Life,’ Poll Says - msnbc.com
….the poll findings demonstrate that the anti-abortion cause “is a vibrant, growing, youthful movement.”
Heaven yeah!!
106 notes (via restlesshippo)
fuck!
The ironic part is I only posted because you sent me that message. So good job, Einstein.
“In the spring of 1998, I saw a PBS “Frontline” documentary about women who had abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade. The stories of these women argued eloquently and in no uncertain terms that their abortions were godsends. Why? Because they were young and feared retaliation from their family or small communities; because they did not want to be thrown out of school; because they could not bear the pain of giving another child up for adoption; because they wanted to conceal the fact that they had been sexually abused or raped; because they would have lost their jobs; because they were poor.
Who can deny the reality of their desperation? The women were willing to risk future infertility, death, pain, and criminal prosecution in order to terminate their pregnancies. This is not to say that abortion held no terror for them. It is just that the terror inspired by their other options was greater. I can say that this is true of every woman I have known who chose abortion for herself. One should wonder, then, not about how to talk women out of having abortions, but how to participate in society in such a way that no one would feel that abortion is the least of several evils.
With our society the way it is, with its worship of materialism and its cult of dehumanization and violence, how can anyone deny the need for the abortion clinic? It is there for a reason and will remain there, legal or not, so long as we create or tolerate those conditions which send women running to them as if they were shelters. I say that to work for the illegalization of abortion is to waste energy that should be spent correcting the situations that give rise to the need for abortions. I also say that to defend abortion is to defend those who oppress women: the rapist, the abuser, the corporations, and the welfare plan that “discourages” births. I think that the best way to reduce the call for abortion is to concentrate on its causes.
The way that politicians pronounce their positions on abortion typifies how alien this approach is to the mainstream of our society. Politicians will voice whether they are for or against abortion as a principle, but they are unwilling to address the much more complicated and sensitive subject of how to remove the need for abortions in the first place.”
— Kathryn Reed; pro-life, atheist, feminist.
103 notes (via badwolfcomplex & emilye)
I'm very confused about your comment on Susan J. Komen. Isn't it more important to prevent cancer and protect those already living than cave to political pressure? Komen's money was going to breast exams, which are vital to finding and preventing cancer. PP is the ONLY place where women who are poor, uninsured, or underinsured can go to receive these screenings and get mammogram referrals. Isn't it more pro-life to support PP in saving women's lives and fighting abortion in other ways?
Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms. They refer people to other places that do mammograms. Komen was essentially taking out PP as the “middle man.” There’s absolutely no reason to give PP money for breast cancer screenings. Zero.
