Tuesday, February 03, 2009

You may have the right to bear arms, but no one guaranteed you the RIGHT to bear children (pt 1)

As you can tell from yesterday's post, I have a lot of topics to cover. I fully intended to write about one of the many tangents I started yesterday, but two things happened. Rather, the same-ish thing happened, twice.

First, DailyCoyote Twittered a link to this post. (Beware of bile, and cuss words, spewing forth from the screen. But both are justified, so it's okay.)

Then, I read this post, which Marcy had shared yesterday (but my lunch twenty-seven-minutes was over so I didn't have time to read it then).

I don't know if I have it in me to write this post tonight. There's so much to say about this woman, and why she deserves to have her uterus ripped out through her nose. However, I think the two people above said it best. Please read the comments on A Little Pregnant's blog post -- I was a little lost on the jargon (I figured out IVF is in-vitro fertilization, but don't ask me what IUI or ART are... I assume HOM refers to using hormones, but don't ask me beyond that*), but you can follow along.

Children are not toys. They are not puppies. They are not conmemorative quarters you hoard in hopes of someday selling on Ebay for a $2 million profit.

I swear, sometimes I think we pro-choicers understand and value a child's life much more than some of these "pro-lifers" who babble on about "gifts from God" with complete disregard for the quality of life of that presumed "gift."

Children are not a right, and they are not a "gift." (Gifts are things, and they are often returned or regifted.) Children are a priviledge and a responsibility.

If you have 14 of them, and you are alone (and quite possibly mentally unstable), then you are not fulfilling the responsibility. I have a hard time not seeing having 14 children** as child abuse. How are these children NOT going to be neglected?

*Sorry, I'm too lazy to Google it. But you feel free to! :P

**And, before anyone gets upset: foster parents who have a large number of foster children in their home are a different situation altogether. First of all, it is highly unlikely that 8 of those foster children will be newborns at the same time, with the other 6 all being under the age of 7. And a foster parent is a different situation; the dynamics of those families are different. And, while I'm somewhat on the topic, foster parents are great people and I hope to be one myself, once I get my life together enough to be available to a foster child. And, have a bigger house.

6 comments:

  1. I only heard of that woman the other day, and my god I just do not understand her. I recently found out scary statistics about the risks involved with having twins and triplets, including premature birth (a 50% chance with twins, 90% with triplets). With prematurity comes low birth weight, and near-certain chances of developmental delays. The risks rise sharply along with the number of fetuses. I cannot even comprehend how a woman could carry 8 babies, and hate to think of how tiny they must have been at birth, how far behind they already are in life and all the difficulties ahead of them.

    I believe the UK passed a law not too long ago limiting the number of embryos that could be transferred into a woman's uterus to only 1 or maybe 2. I thought the US had similar laws, but I guess not. I understand that with the high cost of IVF couples will want to increase their chances of implantation, but dear God at what other costs?

    BTW the argument about foster parents is easy-- they didn't choose to bring those children into the world. They were already in existence, and abandoned, and the foster parents are angels who swoop in and try to make life better for them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous10:48 PM

    i'ill keep it short and sweet tonight; my spine is failing me, and I can't move much.

    my thinking is that today's radical chemically and surgically generated pregnancies are somewhere on an ironically similar ethical plane to abortions.

    both are mostly avoidable (abstinence, contraception, adoption) but our powerful natural urges (the bonding proffered by sex and giving birth) bring us to doctors to make things right. both are somewhat risky physically and emotionally. both are selfish. both are empathetically understandable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Marcy- re: foster parents: I knew my brain was fried last night. That's what I was trying to say about foster parents, but you said it better.

    Re: number of embryos transferred at a time: I don't want to go into this because I have so little information about it, but if you read all the comments on Julie's blog the women there explain A) why sometimes it's necessary to transfer more than 1-2 embryos (after 1-2 have been tried and been unsuccessful; if the woman is in her 40s, etc.) Also, they explain why in this case, anything more than one embryo was asking for trouble.

    @crisatunity: I'm not going to go too far into infertility treatments et al because I don't know much about it, and I'm not in that position. I understand a woman's desire to go through pregnancy and have a child of her own, so I can't fault infertile women for trying to make that happen.

    This woman, however, is a completely different case. She does not, in any way, shape, or form, represent infertile women who wish to bear a child.

    I will address adoption sometime this month. I think it's offered up as a catch-all solution to all this (abortion and infertility), when people don't truly understand what the issues are and the reasons for each choice. The pregnancy itself is a big part of it, in both cases, and adoption does not solve either problem. Plus, the fact that you must all but sell your soul to the devil to adopt a child but any 15-year-old can pop out her third child without anyone batting an eye (OR STUFFING AN IUD IN HER!!!) makes my head spin.

    ReplyDelete
  4. As an aside about adoption... I think Marcie and Jason are going on year FOUR of trying to adopt a baby?!? So, yeah, adoption is not the fairy-tale solution many make it out to be. It's an option, yes, and a great one. BUT still has down-sides.

    ReplyDelete
  5. @criss - would your sensibilities be equally/less/more affronted by a woman having eight abortions?

    @marcy - i won't even attempt to empathize with 4 years of trying and waiting - seems like a miserable eternity. perhaps they should try to adopt an older child not a baby. i would think that babies are the hardest to find.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @crisatunity: YES. Why hasn't someone stuck an IUD in this woman?

    Given the choices of 8 abortions or 8 abused children, I prefer the woman have 8 abortions, but you're making me choose between two very bad evils.

    Birth control should be made readily available to women, so we don't have to get to the point where she needs to consider having an abortion.

    ReplyDelete