by Christina Creal

Created on: December 17, 2007   Last Updated: November 27, 2010

If someone asks me if "I" believe in abortion I will tell you "under no circumstances, including saving my own life." But that is my right to choose. Do I like the idea that there are a few irresponsible heartless beings out there that choose to use abortion as a form of birth control? No I do not. What people fail to see is that these people's rights are not the ones the law intends to protect. They are intended to protect the innocent lives of raped young girls, the lives of women whose lives are put in danger by pregnancy and those who live lives not condusive to raising children and know that the child they carry holds little to no chance of ever being adopted. (The women I speak of are prostitutes and/or drug addicts.)

The choice to terminate pregnancy is one that very few people make lightly. Like those that put their children up for adoption, they feel that terminating the pregnancy is the best choice for the child as well as themselves. If a woman is raped, the psychological torture of the rape will carry on the entire time she was pregnant. The ones who choose to birth and raise these children suffer for a lifetime. I rally for those brave and strong enough to make this choice but I could never judge someone for choosing to terminate that pregnancy. No one deserves to be raped or to be punished for having been raped.

Then there are those women who live lives that don't ensure the safety of children. Prostitution and drug abuse are not life-styles that people are not advocates for. No one would purposely sentence a child to such a life and children born under those conditions have very little chance of getting adopted. Adoption is always brought up as a solution for abortion, but the reality is that the road to adoption is not all white picket fences and June Cleaver mothers. Adopting mothers are just like birth mothers and wish to have a healthy baby. Unless a child is white and perfectly healthy, that child is more likely to spend his/her life bouncing from foster home to foster home and never knowing the security of a stable home. Those of you whom have adopted these angels know this truth better than anyone.

The woman who carry children that don't fall in the "perfect" category most likely feel that if they bring that child into this world, they are sending them to a life of misery and no woman truly wants this for her child. From that perspective is this a choice of selfishness or love?

Pro-lifers in one circumstance should look at themselves as murderers. They would choose to let a woman die to give birth to a child that has very little chance of surviving the birth. While we are calling people who choose abortion murders, what do we call the doctor that lets his otherwise healthy and very alive patient die (against her wishes) for the sake of a life that may or may not make it? It seems rather hypocritical to allow murder in order to prevent murder.

Finally we move to the category no one wants to discuss: the innocent girls who not only have had their innocence stolen, but are now carrying the child of their perpetrator. To all of you people who believe that stopping abortion is going to save the lives of children, let me ask you one thing. How can you FORCE a rapped, twelve-year-old girl to carry that nightmare with her? How can you FORCE her to go to school pregnant with a child that she carries through no fault of her own? How can you force her to relive that torture over and over again and call yourself a child's advocate? I don't care what religion you are part of or what your point of view, the thought that a child should have to become a mother against her will is child abuse.

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