Adoption, Abortion, and why even the pro-choice way doesn't mean mothers have it easy.
We all know that anti-choicers sole motivation (whether or not they'll admit it to themselves) is to punish horrible, slutty women in any way they possibly can.
As if an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy isn't a consequence. As if the choices are easy. As if abortion is like wart removal. As if adoption is just a happy ending that leads to nothing but good feelings and warm fuzzies for all involved for the rest of forever.
I hate everything about the anti-choice phiolosophy with all my guts. Do I hate anti-choicers? No. I feel damn sorry for them, but I don't hate them. I do hate their opinion though. Virulently.
What sparked this? A powerful post on Shakesville that everyone in the whole damn world should read. Find it here: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/03/breaking-silence-on-living-pro-lifers.html
Now, because I didn't want to take up too much space or upset anybody, I will offer my response to this, my personal reaction, here:
I've already decided that if I were to face an unwanted pregnancy (the thought makes me shudder), I would probably choose abortion. It would likely suck but I think it would suck least out of my abysmal and tiny set of options. My current plan is, if the fundies and crazies have their way and I am forced to carry to term, I will exclusively and only allow the baby to go to a same-sex couple who could not otherwise adopt because of their sexuality. If I can't find an agency that will arrange that for me, I will fucking find a couple, on fucking Craigslist if I have to, and fill out the damn papers with a lawyer somewhere.
If that's not possible, there's always suicide. I wish I was kidding.
I've spent way too much time thinking about this, for some reason. Well, likely part of that reason being a long, vivid, involved nightmare I had once. It was not recent, but powerful enough that it was not one of those dreams you just forget. In it, I'd been gang-raped, and got pregnant, and gave the baby to a couple along with a letter explaining that his conception was too traumatic for me to be reminded of and I wanted him to be happy with his new family and stay out of my life. Years later, he showed up at my door, a teen, saying he'd never given up on finding me, hoping that the passage of years would have softened my feelings towards him. Dream-me burst into tears and screamed that he was nothing but a reminder of why my life was ruined, and slammed the door in his face, and after that all I could hear over my own sobbing was his through a closed door. I woke up coated in sweat and shaking, and cried for an hour.
I will never know what the hell brought that dream on, but since then I've had nothing but a deep and aching empathy towards anyone who has been in a difficult situation, any situation, not just rape, and given up a child. The feeling was so intense... it was as if I'd never know happiness ever again. And for me, it lasted an hour, and then finally I was able to come back, remind myself it wasn't real, get back to living life. I cannot even begin to imagine how crippling it would be to feel that way for days, weeks, months, years, the rest of my natural life. I... I can't even think of what would be more horrible.
When I talk to my anti-choice friends about abortion, they always talk as if adoption is the obvious and painless solution and it makes me want to scream. I've never read a story about adoption that didn't involve a lot of pain, and several that have involved people procuring wanted babies with loving homes and basically selling them under the guise of adoption, because let's face it, there is a great deal of money that changes hands along with the children, and unscrupulous souls want a piece of that. I just don't see how our current system benefits adoptive parents, adopted children, and certainly never their seemingly optionless birth mothers.
I am never able to make them understand why it is such a sensitive subject, why it gets me SO ANGRY. I don't know how to describe the very real fear of knowing that one day, strange men with pens and laws, who know nothing of me or my life or my mind or my health or my needs, will force me to do something deeply personal, will use my body for their own ends, their own morals, and then will expect me to happily turn over the product of my pain to ones who would teach it to value the same system and the same "morals" that removed from me the one thing that might have made an already hideous situation slightly more bearable: the decision of what would be best for me, my life, my health, my mental state, my body, my family, my fetus/baby. Not theirs. Mine.
The thought terrifies me.
I feel a lot of pressure to have children. I'm 26 (I'll be 27 next month), and you'd think I was put on this earth to get married and have babies for heaven's sake. Every time I mention I don't think I want them, I hear "you'll change your mind." When I say I have a difficult time with babies they say "it's different when it's your own." When I mention I am not even in a financial position to get married let alone have the kids they say, "marry a rich man," as if what, I am going to examine a fellow's stock portfolio before I date him, or what? UGH.
I once told my mother about the "I'd give it to a homosexual couple" thing and she said, "don't you think you're old enough that you'd keep it? It's not like you're a teen." Um wow, it's also not like I have a friggin' JOB or HUSBAND or all those things that make childrearing remotely possible, either! Her answer to that was, "well, give it to me, then."
ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH.
I sometimes wish I'd just get some kind of disease of the uterus that would remove all need to worry about choosing whether or not to have children at all. Just get rid of the damn thing. I don't even want it. Spay me like a dog, under a poster that says "Prevent Over-pup-ulation!" I don't care. It's that gut-wrenchingly scary some days.
When I mention the possibility of becoming sterile, do you know what people say? "You know, if you do that you will probably not find anyone willing to marry you, since you can't give him kids."
Well, because, you know, why the hell would any man want a woman for anything other than being his own personal sperm bank amirite?! I definitely don't get this, because I don't imagine for a minute there is anywhere near the pressure to be a father on men as there is a pressure to be a mother on women. Then again, I guess the husband would just expect me to raise his kids, as his whole job was just to pass his manly sperms on to the next generation or whateverthefuck.
*cue broken sobbing*
I hope my IUD works like it's supposed to because if I ever got pregnant... yikes.
Just yikes.
As if an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy isn't a consequence. As if the choices are easy. As if abortion is like wart removal. As if adoption is just a happy ending that leads to nothing but good feelings and warm fuzzies for all involved for the rest of forever.
I hate everything about the anti-choice phiolosophy with all my guts. Do I hate anti-choicers? No. I feel damn sorry for them, but I don't hate them. I do hate their opinion though. Virulently.
What sparked this? A powerful post on Shakesville that everyone in the whole damn world should read. Find it here: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/03/breaking-silence-on-living-pro-lifers.html
Now, because I didn't want to take up too much space or upset anybody, I will offer my response to this, my personal reaction, here:
I've already decided that if I were to face an unwanted pregnancy (the thought makes me shudder), I would probably choose abortion. It would likely suck but I think it would suck least out of my abysmal and tiny set of options. My current plan is, if the fundies and crazies have their way and I am forced to carry to term, I will exclusively and only allow the baby to go to a same-sex couple who could not otherwise adopt because of their sexuality. If I can't find an agency that will arrange that for me, I will fucking find a couple, on fucking Craigslist if I have to, and fill out the damn papers with a lawyer somewhere.
If that's not possible, there's always suicide. I wish I was kidding.
I've spent way too much time thinking about this, for some reason. Well, likely part of that reason being a long, vivid, involved nightmare I had once. It was not recent, but powerful enough that it was not one of those dreams you just forget. In it, I'd been gang-raped, and got pregnant, and gave the baby to a couple along with a letter explaining that his conception was too traumatic for me to be reminded of and I wanted him to be happy with his new family and stay out of my life. Years later, he showed up at my door, a teen, saying he'd never given up on finding me, hoping that the passage of years would have softened my feelings towards him. Dream-me burst into tears and screamed that he was nothing but a reminder of why my life was ruined, and slammed the door in his face, and after that all I could hear over my own sobbing was his through a closed door. I woke up coated in sweat and shaking, and cried for an hour.
I will never know what the hell brought that dream on, but since then I've had nothing but a deep and aching empathy towards anyone who has been in a difficult situation, any situation, not just rape, and given up a child. The feeling was so intense... it was as if I'd never know happiness ever again. And for me, it lasted an hour, and then finally I was able to come back, remind myself it wasn't real, get back to living life. I cannot even begin to imagine how crippling it would be to feel that way for days, weeks, months, years, the rest of my natural life. I... I can't even think of what would be more horrible.
When I talk to my anti-choice friends about abortion, they always talk as if adoption is the obvious and painless solution and it makes me want to scream. I've never read a story about adoption that didn't involve a lot of pain, and several that have involved people procuring wanted babies with loving homes and basically selling them under the guise of adoption, because let's face it, there is a great deal of money that changes hands along with the children, and unscrupulous souls want a piece of that. I just don't see how our current system benefits adoptive parents, adopted children, and certainly never their seemingly optionless birth mothers.
I am never able to make them understand why it is such a sensitive subject, why it gets me SO ANGRY. I don't know how to describe the very real fear of knowing that one day, strange men with pens and laws, who know nothing of me or my life or my mind or my health or my needs, will force me to do something deeply personal, will use my body for their own ends, their own morals, and then will expect me to happily turn over the product of my pain to ones who would teach it to value the same system and the same "morals" that removed from me the one thing that might have made an already hideous situation slightly more bearable: the decision of what would be best for me, my life, my health, my mental state, my body, my family, my fetus/baby. Not theirs. Mine.
The thought terrifies me.
I feel a lot of pressure to have children. I'm 26 (I'll be 27 next month), and you'd think I was put on this earth to get married and have babies for heaven's sake. Every time I mention I don't think I want them, I hear "you'll change your mind." When I say I have a difficult time with babies they say "it's different when it's your own." When I mention I am not even in a financial position to get married let alone have the kids they say, "marry a rich man," as if what, I am going to examine a fellow's stock portfolio before I date him, or what? UGH.
I once told my mother about the "I'd give it to a homosexual couple" thing and she said, "don't you think you're old enough that you'd keep it? It's not like you're a teen." Um wow, it's also not like I have a friggin' JOB or HUSBAND or all those things that make childrearing remotely possible, either! Her answer to that was, "well, give it to me, then."
ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH.
I sometimes wish I'd just get some kind of disease of the uterus that would remove all need to worry about choosing whether or not to have children at all. Just get rid of the damn thing. I don't even want it. Spay me like a dog, under a poster that says "Prevent Over-pup-ulation!" I don't care. It's that gut-wrenchingly scary some days.
When I mention the possibility of becoming sterile, do you know what people say? "You know, if you do that you will probably not find anyone willing to marry you, since you can't give him kids."
Well, because, you know, why the hell would any man want a woman for anything other than being his own personal sperm bank amirite?! I definitely don't get this, because I don't imagine for a minute there is anywhere near the pressure to be a father on men as there is a pressure to be a mother on women. Then again, I guess the husband would just expect me to raise his kids, as his whole job was just to pass his manly sperms on to the next generation or whateverthefuck.
*cue broken sobbing*
I hope my IUD works like it's supposed to because if I ever got pregnant... yikes.
Just yikes.