Motherhood Lost
January 28, 2011
HOW IS IT possible that we live in a world where some women, infertile after years of career advancement, arrange to have surrogates provide babies for them while other women, even married women who already have homes and husbands, abort their children?
One reason we live in such a world is that women are not told the most basic facts of fertility. They are routinely lied to about the consequences of delaying childbirth. What college teaches women that with every passing year after their mid-twenties, their fertility declines significantly? What college really impresses this information on the minds of the young?
The information that many thousands of infertile couples are eager for unwanted children is also withheld. The hopes of the infertile should be widely recognized and they are not. Supporters of abortion never state the obvious: that nine months of pregnancy is not a great hardship. It is painful to give up a baby for adoption, but not life-ruining. As a reader wrote in this entry, these simple facts “cut through all the intellectual meanderings that we are subjected to when faced with abortion.”
Our world is infused with hostility toward motherhood and life. No amount of focused childrearing nor the very real love mothers have for their children can hide this fact.
Daniel Mitsui
— Comments —
Hurricane Betsy writes:
Adoption VS abortion? No, it is not that simple. I used to believe that, but it’s too simple minded a “solution”.
Adoption is most certainly not the benign thing that anti-abortionists and prolifers present it to be. Mother and child are a God-designed biological unit. If the mother of a small child dies, or if a pregnant woman is utterly determined not to function as a mother, then every imaginable effort should be made to have the child placed with blood relatives. Other, saner, more traditional societies, have always done this. Blood & kin are everything.
I know several adopted people. They are all badly messed up, every last one – no, that’s wrong: there is one who when her parents were killed in an accident was adopted out to her aunt and uncle. She is not disturbed the way the others are. You will just have to take my word that I’m not making this up to bolster my ideas. It is the truth.
Yes, abortion is bad for all parties involved. Adoption to total strangers is hardly better. A baby/small child is not some kind of a gift to be handed over to infertile people desperately wanting children. These infertile people are the biggest defenders of adoption out to strangers. We must do everything in our power to keep babies with their true mother or blood relative.
On a side note, where I live, the government banned interracial adoptions where aboriginals are concerned, because these children had a right to be with their own kind; yet people here are still spending countless thousands of dollars to go to China or Africa for their little doll to play with. It’s sick.
Laura writes:
Adoption is not an all-encompassing solution to abortion and, yes, it is much better that a child be kept in his own family and adopted by relatives when a young woman is unmarried. But, we don’t live in a perfect world. Adoption is painful, but abortion is worse. I know people who were adopted. They are not tragic cases. It is a gift to give an infertile couple – within one’s own country – a baby whom one is unprepared to care for.
Hurricane Betsy writes:
I want to thank you for printing my letter. It makes me feel good to know that my ideas will be exposed to other prolifers who maybe never considered adoption as anything other than a win-win situation.
You stated, ” It is a gift to give an infertile couple – within one’s own country – a baby whom one is unprepared to care for.” How is it a gift when you didn’t want that baby in the first place. It’s like the shame of regifting of Christmas presents. You wrap them up all nice and pretend you are doing a good deed. I knew a girl who worked for the Children’s Aid years ago. Her sole job was to deliver the baby to the adopting couple after the paperwork & other requirements were complete. She went to the nursery, put the baby in a basket, stuck that basket in the back of her car, delivered the parcel, got a signature and that was it. Even at my young age (21) I knew something here was not right. Perhaps open adoptions might be a slight improvement.
Using sperm from a sperm bank and all the other unnatural technologies with eggs and implants and surrogacy and whatnot (I can’t even keep up with it anymore) is just a wee skip and jump away from adoption. It’s all of a piece. If you can defend one, why not defend the other. If adoption by utter strangers is the only way to prevent an abortion, then let’s do it, but nevertheless it is so sad all around, so please let’s not pretend that it’s even remotely “good,” much less ideal. I know maybe half a dozen women (married) who’ve adopted babies and they thought they were so damn wonderful for “saving a life.”
Laura writes:
Adoption is never the ideal; it is always second best. But the casual attitude you describe is not necessary. Moses was adopted. All through history, there have been children sensitively loved and tenderly cared for by adoptive parents. Offering a child up for adoption is a painful, but honorable choice for a mother who is young and cannot marry.
Jill Farris writes:
Statistically it is not low income unwed mothers who are choosing abortion but the college educated woman with a career. These women are often well-informed that it is a baby they are aborting but are affronted that they may have to sacrifice a career and a lifestyle for a child.
I’ve counseled in a number of pregnancy centers and the younger women all kept their babies. Some of them were married but because they were young and could not provide all the necessities society seems to think are essential for children (ie. a nice house, new things and a paid for college education) these younger mothers were made to feel irresponsible yet they loved and bonded with their babies. And the babies didn’t care if they weren’t dressed in new clothes or being raised in a nice house.
We live in a world that is hostile to families, marriage and children. How can we change that? We women can stop complaining about how difficult our children are or how exhausted we are from being up with the baby. It is quite the accepted norm to complain about children.
When women look enviously at me and say that they wish their husband wanted more children like mine does I feel like telling them that if they would quit complaining about the children they have, choose to smile more and greet their hubby with a good dinner every night, maybe he’ll think that having babies is a wonderful thing.
Women need to quit blaming others for choosing to kill their own offspring and start rejoicing in the privilege of being a mother no matter how many sacrifices it entails. If more of us did this, no amount of Planned Parenthood propaganda would induce women to end their pregnancies.
A baby is a precious precious gift from God and shame on us for not wanting them just because they arrive earlier than we “planned”…surprise! As Laura Ingalls Wilder said, “He who dances must pay the piper.”
