(no subject)
I am suddenly enraged/sickened.
I've been reading the free books from the Harlequin website, here. I was surprised and amused to discover a sub-category called "Love Inspired" which are Christian romances. Three of the sixteen are such, and I've read two and am three-quarters through the third, "A Very Special Delivery" by Linda Goodnight.
Molly is snowed in outside town, and has to take in Ethan and his young baby, Laney. Molly is scared to be around babies because, we slowly discover, her nephew died of SIDS while under her care and her sister still blames her. The book actually deals with this issue quite well, in my opinion.
Ethan is a single father. The mother, Twila, did not want children. The mother is now dead (as explained below). That's not why I'm upset.
I'm upset because of these passages (all spoken by Ethan unless otherwise noted):
"She was furious when she found out she was pregnant. She screamed and cried, said she wasn't going to be saddled with a kid."
"...if I hadn't threatened her with every lawsuit known to man - some that don't even exist - Laney would never have been born."
"Getting into that predicament, having to fight for nine long, frightening months to save my child, made me examine my own life."
"The day after Laney was born she signed over all parental rights, told me I was the world's biggest loser, and went back to her life without me or my baby.... She died in a car wreck five weeks later. Under the influence."
[Ethan has a facial scar.] "This was her reaction when I went to her apartment with a court order.... Never make a woman mad when she's slicing tomatoes."
Molly: "...what else could you have done? You couldn't let her abort Laney."
"...by the time I had started to turn my life around [turning to Christ], she was six months along with Laney and would no longer speak to me except to cuss and scream that I was ruining her life."
Text, Molly-POV: He'd been scared too. Scared during those long months when Twila wanted to abort his child.
Text, Molly-POV: ...she wanted desperatedly to make him happy, to make up for the wrong Twila had done to him and Laney.
Throughout the book, Ethan is a sensitive, caring, wonderful guy. He helps out his elderly neighbours, he used to be a paramedic but the hours were too uncertain for his new family life, etc, etc. He also used to be the wild, partying type, which was how he met and slept with Twila.
Twila "wasn't a terrible person. She was just terribly... lost." She "had a lot of problems." I can't quite tell if that's suggesting she was mentally unstable at the time she attacked Ethan, or if it's a sop to avoid completely demonizing her.
I'm an atheist. I understand that most people have some sort of faith, and some are devout, and I don't mind when that shows up in books. In fact, the first of the "Love Inspired" books I read, I didn't realise the religious aspect was purposeful until I saw the page at the end advertising the series. (That was partly because it was a Historical, btw.) This one is a little heavier on it than the others, but that's OK.
Like I said, the SIDS and the family rift have been handled well (though I'm expecting a tearful reunion near the end (ETA: extremely tearful, because of another child nearly dying)).
How the book deals with abortion has me furious.
It's the idea that a man has the right to coerce and threaten a woman into carrying a child. That it was the right thing for him to do. It's placing the life of the child above the mental health of the mother (and possibly above her very life; I may be oversensitive but it seems there's a bit of 'got what she deserved' there). It's the emphasis on it being 'his' child as opposed to 'her' or 'their' child.
Allow me to repeat. "...if I hadn't threatened her with every lawsuit known to man - some that don't even exist - Laney would never have been born."
It's the thought of being a woman forced into a pregnancy I didn't want, never wanted, forced to endure months of illness and pain and changes to my body (some of which might last the rest of my life), forced to deal with the contempt of the man who's put me in that position.
And it's possible, of course, depending where she lived, that Twila might not have been able to find someone to provide an abortion anyway.
I feel sad. And slightly nauseous.
I'm going to finish reading the book, because I'm obsessive like that, but I certainly won't be buying any.
I've been reading the free books from the Harlequin website, here. I was surprised and amused to discover a sub-category called "Love Inspired" which are Christian romances. Three of the sixteen are such, and I've read two and am three-quarters through the third, "A Very Special Delivery" by Linda Goodnight.
Molly is snowed in outside town, and has to take in Ethan and his young baby, Laney. Molly is scared to be around babies because, we slowly discover, her nephew died of SIDS while under her care and her sister still blames her. The book actually deals with this issue quite well, in my opinion.
Ethan is a single father. The mother, Twila, did not want children. The mother is now dead (as explained below). That's not why I'm upset.
I'm upset because of these passages (all spoken by Ethan unless otherwise noted):
"She was furious when she found out she was pregnant. She screamed and cried, said she wasn't going to be saddled with a kid."
"...if I hadn't threatened her with every lawsuit known to man - some that don't even exist - Laney would never have been born."
"Getting into that predicament, having to fight for nine long, frightening months to save my child, made me examine my own life."
"The day after Laney was born she signed over all parental rights, told me I was the world's biggest loser, and went back to her life without me or my baby.... She died in a car wreck five weeks later. Under the influence."
[Ethan has a facial scar.] "This was her reaction when I went to her apartment with a court order.... Never make a woman mad when she's slicing tomatoes."
Molly: "...what else could you have done? You couldn't let her abort Laney."
"...by the time I had started to turn my life around [turning to Christ], she was six months along with Laney and would no longer speak to me except to cuss and scream that I was ruining her life."
Text, Molly-POV: He'd been scared too. Scared during those long months when Twila wanted to abort his child.
Text, Molly-POV: ...she wanted desperatedly to make him happy, to make up for the wrong Twila had done to him and Laney.
Throughout the book, Ethan is a sensitive, caring, wonderful guy. He helps out his elderly neighbours, he used to be a paramedic but the hours were too uncertain for his new family life, etc, etc. He also used to be the wild, partying type, which was how he met and slept with Twila.
Twila "wasn't a terrible person. She was just terribly... lost." She "had a lot of problems." I can't quite tell if that's suggesting she was mentally unstable at the time she attacked Ethan, or if it's a sop to avoid completely demonizing her.
I'm an atheist. I understand that most people have some sort of faith, and some are devout, and I don't mind when that shows up in books. In fact, the first of the "Love Inspired" books I read, I didn't realise the religious aspect was purposeful until I saw the page at the end advertising the series. (That was partly because it was a Historical, btw.) This one is a little heavier on it than the others, but that's OK.
Like I said, the SIDS and the family rift have been handled well (though I'm expecting a tearful reunion near the end (ETA: extremely tearful, because of another child nearly dying)).
How the book deals with abortion has me furious.
It's the idea that a man has the right to coerce and threaten a woman into carrying a child. That it was the right thing for him to do. It's placing the life of the child above the mental health of the mother (and possibly above her very life; I may be oversensitive but it seems there's a bit of 'got what she deserved' there). It's the emphasis on it being 'his' child as opposed to 'her' or 'their' child.
Allow me to repeat. "...if I hadn't threatened her with every lawsuit known to man - some that don't even exist - Laney would never have been born."
It's the thought of being a woman forced into a pregnancy I didn't want, never wanted, forced to endure months of illness and pain and changes to my body (some of which might last the rest of my life), forced to deal with the contempt of the man who's put me in that position.
And it's possible, of course, depending where she lived, that Twila might not have been able to find someone to provide an abortion anyway.
I feel sad. And slightly nauseous.
I'm going to finish reading the book, because I'm obsessive like that, but I certainly won't be buying any.