There it is, folks
Via Facebook, credited to Elizabeth Haney:
Pro Lifer: Well the mother should just give the baby up for adoption if she doesn’t want the baby.
Me: So who will adopt the baby?
PL: I don’t know there’s lots of couples who want to adopt.
Me: Do you know any couple who is waiting to adopt?
PL: Um well not personally but like I know there’s lots of people waiting to adopt.
Me: Do you know what a domestic adoption costs?
PL: I don’t know. $15,000 maybe?
Me: The average cost of domestic adoption in the United States is $70,000 if you go through a private agency.
PL: Oh I didn’t realize it was that much.
Me: Yep it’s really expensive. It can be more if you want a newborn straight from the hospital. Up to $120,000.
PL: Well, all life is precious.
Me: It really is. I’ve adopted through foster care and am currently a licensed foster parent. Would you be interested in becoming a foster parent yourself?
PL: Oh no, I couldn’t do it.
Me: Why not?
PL: It would just be too much for me right now.
Me: Why is that?
PL: It would be too hard to handle all the issues that came with it. I’ve heard horror stories.
Me: Yep it can be extremely difficult. But what if I told you that you were required by law to become a foster parent?
PL: what?
Me: what if you had to become a foster parent by law?
PL: they would never do that. That would never happen.
Me; Well, if a woman is forced to bear a child she doesn’t want, and she goes ahead and has that child, someone has to care for the child either through adoption or foster care. You have to do one of those two things.
PL: But I don’t want any more kids.
Me: So you don’t want someone forcing you to have a child in your home that you don’t want or aren’t able to care for?
PL: no, that’s not my job to raise someone else’s child.
There it is, folks. Have the baby, but we don’t want anything to do with it afterwards.I personally cannot reiterate how many times I have had this EXACT conversation with “pro life” ppl.
Not just that, but listen to this bit:
Why is YOUR “it’s too overwhelming and expensive, too much responsibility, it’s too much for me to handle, and it’s disruptive of my life,” valid, but THE MOTHER’S inability to cope, inexperience, derailment of her life, and difficulty raising a child of no value, consideration, or importance? The reasons you give for not fostering or adopting a child are the very same reasons the girl or woman doesn’t want to be pregnant in the first place. Why is it ok for YOU not to want a child, but not ok for HER?
I realize that was a rhetorical question, maddog, but I’ll answer it anyway: “Because *I’m* not a filthy slut.”
This New York Times article, about young women, some of them nonreligious, politically liberal, and self-declared feminist, oppose abortion rights, is interesting at least on a “know your enemy” sort of way. They talk about how a fetus is a “person” well before viability, and that there are many options and resources available for women to bear and raise children.
The sticky point to me, though, is that they can’t quite grasp that legislation means people who disagree have to go along with their views. It’s one thing to oppose people having abortions, and another thing to declare that those who decide to have abortions should be treated as criminals. Don’t they have any empathy for other women who might feel differently? Disagree with their choices, but don’t applaud their loss of the ability to make that choice.
Mind you, I think there’s an answer to that “why you but not her” question, which is that it’s her pregnancy, not my pregnancy. The hypothetical is more about empathy than obligation.
The problem is the fanatical insistence that pregnancy is not a process but a person: that there’s an actual person in there from the instant of conception. The fact that the fetus has no awareness or consciousness is considered irrelevant.
It is sad that people who would recognize “I oppose the right to gay marriage because I don’t want to get married to another man/woman” as something out of The Onion, but “I oppose the right to abortion because I would never get an abortion myself” as a sensible position.
I would change one thing in this dialogue – call them anti-choice, or anti-abortion… Pro-choice isn’t anti-life
I would too if it were my dialogue. The “pro-life” label is ridiculous.