Brought on by finding out the rules on who can and cannot adopt in the UK have become very lax. So people put up for adoption could end up in a home worse than the one giving them up.
When I was in my late teens the pro-life brigade seemed to be in full force, they may still be, but I don't see them as much now. As a rule I tended to leave them to their ranting and walk on by when they were preaching in the city centre near my home.
On one occasion however someone decided to confront me directly asking if I supported abortion, appalled at my answer of 'Yes.' Ordinarily I think this guy was used to people giving him a chance to start his prepared speeches on how evil this is etc. I think a bit faster and asked him 'If your predecessors had persuaded someone to have a child they didn't want. When child grew up, would they thank you?'
Such an obvious question received the very obvious answer or 'Yes.'
My response of 'Then why don't I?' Was as far from his expectation as it was possible to get.
Since this time I have stuck to simply telling people in this type of group to thank their parents for a very happy childhood and how strongly I mean that. The facts I have learned since starting to value my life a lot more are more than most of them could handle.
Most will have encountered speculation about the sensations of a fetus at age of abortion, firm scientific facts to back them up etc. but none the less without being a fetus that is being aborted none of us truly know. However we do know the level of pain many suicide attempts result in. Paracetamol overdose can leave someone suffering for up to 3.5 hours before they eventually die, by an hour in there is no going back in most cases. This type is a favourite because people assume overdose is easier, it isn't, I knew this and never tried it. Safe to say suicide attempts of fully developed humans are generally more traumatic than what happens to a fetus. So when you consider over 95% of 'saved' abortions attempt suicide more than once, it says a lot for how well saved they are. Singular serious attempts are considered normal experimentation, so people who have tried just once tend to be excluded form such figures, it's when there are multiple attempts meaning someone suffered once and still tried again that it raises flags. This fact alone shows that pro-life is not really saving a lot in many cases.
The reason most want to abort is they don't want the child and there is no better reason not to have a child than that. I am not advocating this as a replacement for contraception but when something goes wrong there is no reason the parent and child should have to suffer when there is no need. Many see this as people being irresponsible, from my viewpoint I consider not being willing to put a child through a life of knowing their parent didn't want them to be very responsible. Unfortunately many finding themselves in the situation of wanting an abortion are too easily persuaded it will all be OK after the birth, as if somehow having a totally demanding life demanding care and attention from them will fix it all.
My mother was a long term alcoholic, something many will judge as the cause for her predicament rather than a follow on. Like many people she wasn't shown a great deal of affection in her youth and as was verified by my gran in her declining years when the filter between her mind and her mouth faded, she was brought up to feel she was very much second rate and second class in virtually every way by her mother. Her mother, my gran, wasn't shown a great deal more affection and the chain continued to me, a chain I am proud to have broken, much to the disgust of many seeing how open I am with the pride and love I have for my son.
As many of her generation did and no doubt many still do now, she viewed marriage as her only escape so and when my father offered this, she took it with both hands. Love is where you value something more than yourself, something I don't think my mother has ever truly done due to a mix of fear and uncertainty of how. She convinced herself the marriage was love, but became aware a few years later it wasn't. By then she had already been convinced to have me, a child she knew she wasn't ready for and didn't want.
So before I was school age I was in the sole care of a woman who had correctly thought she wasn't ready to be a mother, had no experience of seeing herself as being loved and even less about what to do next. Like many in this situation she sought escape, for her this was alcohol, there are many alternatives.
It only really became clear to me how long she had been an alcoholic when she stopped drinking and I actually had to give thought to getting her a present instead of simply buying her a bottle. Which is as telling on how much of a disassociated mess I was at that time as it was on her. She learned as many do that running and hiding from problems in substances is only ever a short term fix. When you stop not only have you still got the problems but you have the effects of the substance use to deal with too.
Most would look at this situation and somehow see her as the bad guy in the picture. In truth there is no singular villain here, so many contributed to making her unable to get out of the bottle, including juvenile me, there are too many for any 1 person to point fingers at.
My mother is not unique by any means, especially in being smart enough to realise she would be out of her depth as a parent, unfortunately like many she was dissuaded from this.
Even though I am very happy with my life now, it was only a few years ago that I realised it was half my life where I had considered myself someone worthy of living and being happy to be alive. Even now I am not convinced I feel the cost of my younger life to be worth what I now have. the damage I have caused to people during my life is not my parents fault, I did the deeds so must take responsibility, but I wasn't equipped to deal with life in a responsible way and that is something we ideally need to be taught by our parents.
So in the world of pro-life, the woman gets pregnant, has a brief moment of doubt, gets talked round, has the baby, goes to live in a house with a little picket fence around it keeping all negativity away and everyone lives happily ever after.
In real life however the woman gets pregnant, thinks long and hard about how unprepared they are and the damage thy could cause a child, gets talked round, learns they were absolutely right. Now not only do they have all the issues they had before, they have no time at all to devote to sorting them out because they have a baby depending on them and demanding all their attention. If she is lucky the child will grow older and take the difficult road to sort themselves out, more often however they will either kill themselves deliberately or accidentally through alcohol or other substance abuse or simply spend the rest of their life feeling as undervalued as their parents.
Life's tough, most of us know this and all of us have our sob stories. The trick of being a parent isn't to avoid the child seeing how tough life is but being able to support them through this so they have the tools required when they are in situations like it outside of our care. When we are still too busy trying to tidy up our own mess and know we aren't ready to guide someone through our own this shouldn't be penalised, it should be supported. The same people who are a mess now and have serious issues to sort out could well make excellent parents in the future, but in the meantime they already know they aren't ready for dependents.
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