by Deva Temple

Created on: January 28, 2007   Last Updated: April 09, 2009

Abortion is a tragic reality of not only the modern world, but of the ages. Women have made decisions about bringing life into the world since life itself began. When resources are scarce women have had to control their fertility through various means available to them. In some tribes children are not even named until they are old enough to care for themselves (about 3-4 years old) and have proved that they can survive. The tribe simply cannot jeopardize the wellbeing of the whole for any one individual.

Life is fragile.

In the modern world women face pregnancy, birth, and parenthood with a different set of demands. The nuclear family is the social unit rather than the tribe. This means that women are largely dependent on the father for support during, at the very least, the hardest parts of pregnancy and early parenthood. There are some organizations that seek to provide this support to pregnant women whose partners are unwilling or unable to fulfill this role.

In any case, resource shortage is not an issue when you look at the modern world as a whole. We live in a world filled with "stuff" much of which we don't need. Food and shelter is abundant... if you can afford it personally. So the issue of survival is not on a collective level, but rather, a personal one.

Women are the only people who can carry and give birth to new life. That's a fact. Women are also the people required to make the biggest personal sacrifices to bring a life into the world. Women must be willing to endure the difficult, and at times life threatening, aspects of pregnancy. Women continue to bear the brunt of sexual shame in our culture (women are whores, men are studs), which makes pregnancy a source of great shame, especially for unmarried or very young women. Women continue to make less money, on average, than men for equal work. This phenomenon is largely explained by the fact that salaries are often determined by seniority and women often loose seniority when they take time off to do the valuable, unpaid, work of parenting.

Because of the disproportionate burden that women bear to bring life into the world, women must have the ability to decide if the costs are within their ability to pay. This ability varies from individual to individual. Some women are not ready in their 30's or 40's because of career's, lack of a reliable partner, health issues, family struggles, or a multitude of other factors. Some women are ready for pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting in their early 20's. It

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