by Karon Brandt

Created on: August 17, 2007

Abortion vs. Forced Pregnancy. This is the real issue.

This argument hasn't changed in 40 years. Women may have more options than ever before, but unexpected and unwanted pregnancies have occurred since the beginning of time.

Is there a 100% foolproof method of birth control? I don't think so. And even if there is one for the educated, the ones able to pay for it, and the ones who have the self control to use it properly and consistently, there are still going to be a few thousand "accidents" and downright "not wanted" pregnancies every year.

I have done case work with abused and neglected children. Some were from the third generation of families going through the social services programs. Extrapolating from hundreds of unwanted, neglected, and abused children in our county alone (we had 1500 active cases at any one time in the welfare and juvenile court systems), I have to assume we have hundreds of thousands of similar cases across this country today.

We had girls as young as 9 years old who were pregnant, usually not by choice. In fact, it was usually because they had been taken advantage of by a family member. Now, some teenagers thought getting pregnant was "cool" and they loved the attention they got from the agency, their families, their peers, the medical staffs, etc. Even negative attention was "good" for many of them.

Would anyone want a girl of 10 or 12 to experience an unwanted pregnancy, or even a wanted one? Could anyone encourage that girl to simply pass off that baby to a "loving couple" and have another one later, when it would be "more convenient"? With half of the marriages today ending in divorce, what are the realistic chances of that child growing up "in a loving home" with two parents?

While I was doing casework, a pastor told us some things we could expect because of peoples' ignorance about sex. He told us about some couples who consulted him for marital advice. One couple did not have any spermicidal jelly on hand so the woman used peanut butter. A husband ran out of condoms so he used Baggies. These were not teen-agers. These were married people in their 20's and 30's. The pastor tried to educate these people, who obviously had not been told "the facts" of life that we all may think are obvious.

"Mistakes" happen. Hundreds of thousands of unwanted children are alive in this country. A large number live in foster homes, in group homes, in overcrowded relatives' homes, and a few thousand more find refuge in jails, prisons, mental health centers, and rehab facilities.

If abortions become illegal, the females who have them will, by definition, become "criminals." How should they be "punished"? Send the juveniles off to detention facilities and send the older women, mothers with other children at home, off to jail, too? Aren't our jails overcrowded enough?

According to a Newsweek article dated July 2, 2007, one woman is dying every minute of every day during childbirth.

I think our values should be to protect women who want or need this medical procedure. We cannot resort to back street abortions ever again, like the days before Roe v Wade. As a Christian nation, we must have compassion and not judge another whose decision should be made between herself and her God, and perhaps, an understanding, competent doctor.

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