Is there a “My mother was pro-choice” / “My mother is pro-choice” bumpersticker? And if not, why not?
I vaguely wish there were a “Sorry your mother was pro-life. My mother chose me” bumpersticker, but it’s too long, and there’s no way to make sure the snark would just reach those who deserve it with their asinine assumptions that the only way a woman would have a baby is if she didn’t believe she had any other option.
ETA: Oo, or for mothers, “Pro-choice: my children are wanted.”
But you wouldn’t want to put that out there because it would be cruel to the still-children kids of pro-life mothers who are old enough to process the implication they aren’t wanted, but not old enough to understand that the political point is about challenging preconceptions about pro-choice mothers. “Pro-choice and a mom” is probably better, if less amusingly snark-ridden. That’s got to already exist somewhere, right?
At the March for Women’s Lives a few years back, I marched with a bunch of women carrying signs and wearing shirts that read, “Mama By Choice,” which I thought was really great. I’m a mama who is pro-choice and who has exercised almost every reproductive choice available to me in the years I’ve been, uh, reproductive (my resume includes about ten different types of birth control, abortion, child birth, parenting, and a tubal ligation). My daughter will know that all of those options are equally valid and respectable, and that I will help her exercise any of them she wants or needs to, when we reach that stage of her life. AND she will know that she was wanted and freely chosen.
My mom was (and is) pro-choice, and had a bumpersticker that said, “Every child a wanted child,” which is short and pithy enough, though it lacks the personal quality of the options you suggest.
When my mom was pregnant with the fetus that became me, she was offering pastoral counseling to help women who were pregnant and unhappy about it learn about all their options. And she chose her OBGYN because he was one of the doctors to whom she felt comfortable referring women seeking abortions: kind, skilled, more interested in helping people than in shaming them.
that’s all nice, but for those of us who were adopted, it’s kind of a kick in the teeth.
I’m not sure if the snark of those bumper stickers actually offers a counter to any genuine pro-life position. If you take at face-value the oft-repeated claim that abortion is “killing a child,” (and I am aware that belief in said claim is not always supported by the actions of the people saying it) then an “I chose not to abort my child” has the same rhetorical effect as “I chose not to kill my child.” If the issue were infanticide, you wouldn’t be reasonable to imply that the anti-infanticide mothers don’t really want their children.
But if you really want to be snarky and come up with a message that will stick in pro-lifer’s craws, what about a t-shirt for kids that says on the front, “I’m here because my mom chose me!”
And if you really want to be snarky, on the back it could say, “My sister wasn’t so lucky…”
Depends on your interpretation. You were wanted by someone.
And in any case, it should be no more a kick in the teeth for someone adopted than for someone whose mother was forced into giving birth and identifies as pro-life. Not that these are distinct groups.
look.
being adopted and attempting to be feminist-identified is difficult already. i was a closed adoption in a rural area in 1980 – i’m basically the poster child for a lack of actual reproductive options. it’s enough already to -know- you weren’t wanted and basically are a suboptimal outcome without bumper-stickers and t-shirts rubbing your nose in it.
FSM, I’ve been a feminist [ally] for a long time and never realized feminism was really anti-adoption and mean to people who are adopted.
Because it’s not like feminism is doing a lot of work to prevent unwanted children while also providing options to people who *do* want children but can’t reproduce themselves.
Steven, I’m not sure what your beef here is, honestly. Your biological parents were unable to care for you. Feminism works towards a world where women who are unable to care for a child — emotionally, financially, physically, whatever — do not have to create that child. We can’t magically go back 29 years and make your biological mother use a condom, or have an abortion, or never meet your biological father in the first place (whatever the circumstance of your conception was). All we can do is look towards the future, and make every child a wanted child going forward.
I’m sorry you were “unwanted” by your biological parents. You were adopted, though, so you did end up with parents who wanted you. I had a parent that didn’t want me — or only wanted me to use as a punching bag, whichever way you want to see it — and I got stuck with him. How I wish I had been offered up for adoption! Or aborted and not brought into an abusive, masochistic household in the first place!
…Which is why I’m a feminist.
Edited to clarify that obvs this isn’t the only reason I’m a feminist, or even the thing that led me to feminism, but it definitely helped shape my thoughts on reproductive rights. Which is, don’t make babies if you don’t want them, or if you are married to a violent dude and unable to leave, or…any number of other circumstances that would lead to a child not being cared for.
What are you trying to achieve? All I hear is being smug and superior at the cost of telling kids who are products of unplanned pregnancy that they should be ashamed of existing. Not really worth it, in my mind.
my beef here is there’s no real point to this idea other than a little bit of jersey-popping. it’s all very nice for people who were more-or-less intentionally brought into the world to be all proud of that. but, you know, if you -weren’t-, and you’re still trying to be a good person, it’s a sore spot. you basically already know you’re saying “in a just world, i wouldn’t exist”. it doesn’t help when people who don’t have any such misgivings about how they were brought into this world obnoxiously pat themselves on the back about it.
I think those of us who grew up with our biological parents need to respect where steven c. is coming from.
steven c.,
I’m a college student who was not adopted but seems to have a different view of the feminist stance on adopted children.
In a Feminist Utopia, I still think kids would get given up for adoptions. There are women who are uncomfortable with the idea of having an abortion performed on them, and would prefer the option of adoption. There are people who believe they will be suitable parents and are proven wrong in that belief by the courts.
Short of mind-control, we can’t make every pregnant woman prefer abortion to adoption, and we can’t make every potential neglectful/abusive parent behave responsibly. That level of fantastic brainwashing/psychic power/Dollhouse technology comes with enough of its own ethical qualms I don’t think I could advocate for it.
Women who wish to give birth to a child they are incapable of caring for should be permitted to do so – the pro-choice crowd is generally about choice. Once children enter the foster care/adoption system, they should be adopted into families that are capable of caring for them, regardless of family structure. This is why feminism supports the choice of women who lack the ability to bear children by being single or infertile (and same-sex couples) to adopt.
Children shuffled from one foster placement to another or placed in large/institutional settings cannot permanently bond with their foster caretakers, and thus are not “wanted” in a sense. To me, the tragic cases are children who are not “wanted children” to those who raise/care for them, including abusive parents/relatives or disinterested foster caregivers.
Cedar:
Are you, like, unaware of the bumper stickers that say things like “Be glad your mother is pro-life?” Well, my mother isn’t pro-life, and I really resent those arguments. They suggest that people who are pro-choice are never mothers and that the only way women will give birth is if they are forced to do so by pro-life politics. These assumptions have real-world implications for how reproductive rights are framed and perceived — most women who have abortions either have, or want in the future, children. They’re not hostile to fetuses as a class.
Or, to get at it another way, the “What if your mother had been pro-choice?” line of forced birth bumper stickers imply that if your mother (and they are personalized) had not been forced to give birth, then you (personally) would be dead. This may be true for some women and some children, but it’s not true for everyone. They want to imply that it is, though. Because if you accept that it is true for everyone, then a universally accepted pro-choice stance would eventually lead to the end of children and the extinction of the human race. But that’s not something that would happen. And those of us with pro-choice mothers are living proof that it’s not something that would happen, because our mothers had options about whether or not to give birth, and they chose to anyway. Their pro-choice beliefs do not equal a death knell for individuals or society.
There are a host of assumptions (sometimes relayed by bumper stickers) about pro-choice women and their relationship with motherhood which can, actually, be argued with. It’s true that the snarky bumper stickers I proposed are snarky. That’s because they’re specific responses to specific bad arguments, and work only in that context. They don’t work as arguments on their own.
You’ll notice I also suggested that those not be produced. If you read the ones I actually suggested work as bumper stickers on their own — and not as counters to other people’s bad arguments — then you’ll note they are “Pro-choice mother” and “My mother is/was pro-choice.”
The other, should-not-be-produced bumper stickers, being snarky, imitate and satirize the snotty tone of the bumper stickers I object to. Those forced birth-supporting bumper stickers suggest that a pro-life mother is superior to a (presumably nonexistent) pro-choice one. By imitating that tone and wording, my snarky bumper stickers create a quick flip that suggests pro-choice mothers are superior to pro-life ones.
The problem is, of course, that a quick flip doesn’t reflect reality very well. I believe that it would be best if every mother had the ability to choose whether or not she wanted a child. However, that doesn’t mean that all mothers with pro-choice ideology are better than all mothers with pro-life ideology. The forced birther bumper stickers also try to shame people with pro-choice mothers, so my un-nuanced satire ends up seeming to shame people with pro-life mothers. That’s inappropriate, of course; having a pro-life mother is nothing to be ashamed of.
That’s why those bumper stickers should not be produced in any serious way. However, the part of me that’s really cheesed off by the superior, shaming tone of the forced birther bumper stickers does want to turn that back on them — even if the counterarguments that use their tone are only appropriate in a context where everyone understands the specifics underlying the spoof.
My seriously proposed bumper stickers, on the other hand — “Pro-choice mother” and “My mother is/was pro-choice” — are not shaming or superior. They are a direct, factual statement indicating that pro-choice motherhood exists — that a pro-choice stance is not incompatible with motherhood — despite the intimations of the forced birth movement.
quill:
a feminist utopia sounds great, and would that it were so.
but we don’t live in a feminist utopia, and so much surrounding adoption is pretty dubious.
maybe people aren’t quite getting what i’m driving at here. i’m not railing against feminism or anything like that. i’m merely saying that look, there are a lot of people who cannot be exactly sure that they were -wanted- children. if you were a closed adoption, frinstance, you have to wonder whether you were wanted at all – or if you actually were wanted by the woman who gave birth to you, but parental/societal pressures forced her into giving you up for adoption. likewise: if you are a birth mother who wanted your child but was basically forced into giving them up – a shirt with a pithy message about wanted children doesn’t have the same empowerful message it does for the wearer.
i know most people aren’t really forced to grapple with the circumstances of their birth. they don’t have to think “what if my birth mother really wanted me/what if she gave me up for adoption because she was raped/what if she was just too poor to drive to st louis to get an abortion”. they don’t have to contend with people subtly reminding them that they’re the lucky ones, because they could have wound up in The Home. these simply aren’t questions that people raised by their biological parents need consider (for the most part).
this is why the smug-ish sentiments of the original post are annoying: it’s basically saying “congratulations, i’m normal!” it reminds me of a word to describe a particular set of advantages that the majority of the population has and never need bother thinking about.
I find that a really curious thing to say. Does one have to believe that abortion is a good thing in order to be pro-choice? Or in order to be a feminist or ally?
Ask and ye shall be given:
http://www.cafepress.com/+prochoice_sticker,16742174
I am very strongly pro choice.
I am also probably only alive because my mother is morally opposed to abortion (she thinks it should be legal, but would never do it herself)
I found this post, and some of the comments, a little upsetting, and I can imagine someone from a closed adoption would find it more so since while I wasn’t wanted by my parents when I was *conceived* I have personally never experienced any sense of unwantedness from them since.
The “but we would never make these stickers” argument doesn’t take unto account us children of anti-abortion mothers (pro-choice or not) reading the post.
Maybe the fact I’m Australian and don’t tend to encounter quite as virulent a strain of forced-birth advocacy as you get in America has affected my reaction to this post, and I certainly don’t begrudge your anger. But please be careful of unintended subtext about those of us who “should” have been aborted.
ETA: this commenter has reconsidered posting this comment. This commenter believes she is too tired to communicate intelligently and respectfully on an issue of emotional significance to others.
Phil, your question seems to me totally out of the blue, and unrelated to what you quoted.
I think Mandolin’s statement means what it says: It’s impossible to make every single pregnant woman prefer abortion to adoption. It has nothing to do with believing that abortion is good, or bad; it has to do with the fact that pregnant women are individuals and so their opinions will naturally vary.
I’m not adopted, but my mother is, and I regularly find very anti-adoption sentiments expressed on feminist blogs. It seems there are a significant number of people who can’t push back against the pro-life argument that a woman with an unwanted pregnancy should or could “just give it up for adoption” without expressing some version of 1) adoption is always evil, 2) only women who are brain-washed to be pro-life would give their babies up for adoption, 3) women who give their babies up for adoption are always emotionally destroyed for the rest of their lives, 4) parents who adopt are evil baby-snatchers, and 5) children given up for adoption will always be totally fucked up by the experience of being raised by the evil baby-snatchers. We shouldn’t need adoption to be evil to say that women should not be forced into any one particular choice. It’s not about lesser evils. It’s about bodily autonomy. (And it’s funny because some of these same people will turn around and say that people who use infertility treatments are selfish and “should just adopt.”)
It bothers me that Steven is saying, basically, this is how this feels to me, and people are jumping on him like he’s attacking feminism.
Steven, there’s obviously no way to know for sure what happened, but in 1980 abortion was legal, and it also was much more widely available than it is today. It is possible that your mother did have a choice. I don’t know if you are curious or inclined to do this, but my mother requested her file from the adoption agency that handled her closed adoption in the 1950s a few years back. We all were surprised how much biographical information and narrative there was in the file, including the interviews both parents did with the social worker about why they were giving her up for adoption. My mother is not someone who is deeply troubled by her adoption or feels compelled to find to her birth parents, but she was curious to know what she could. I think we all had assumed a teenage girl in one of those maternity homes. It was … not like that at all. It was a sad story, for sure, but just very different from what we had expected. Her choices certainly were very constrained by the times she lived in, but she had more choice in it than we expected.
When I saw my father for the first time in 10 years–and this was about 15 years ago–he told me something my mother never had, and something I doubt she will ever admit to: That they got married because she was pregnant with me. This was in 1961, so it was before Roe vs. Wade. My father says he approached her about having an abortion, which would have been probably the wisest choice at the time, since they were not in love, in no condition, really, to get married. My mother, however, would not go through with it–I don’t know why; she is adamantly pro-choice now. I don’t know what her feelings were then, and I don’t know if she is someone who believes in choice but would not herself choose abortion. So, my father “did the right thing,” and approached my mother’s parents and he married my mother. (I wonder what my grandparents would have done if he had not married her. Would they have found someone to perform an illegal abortion? Would they have sent her away to one of the homes for unwed mothers which were one of the solutions to teen pregnancy back then? I just don’t know.)
As you might imagine, the marriage was a disaster, for reasons some of which are predictable and some not, and my mother asked for a divorce when I was three, by which time she’d already given birth to my brother, who was–as they say–a surprise, and probably not a welcome one (at least to my mother), given what I know now about how my parents felt about each other back then. The divorce was final when I was five, and my mother pretty quickly married the man who was my stepfather for eight years and who is the father of my twin sisters in 1968 (half or step? I never remember), also before Roe vs. Wade. That marriage also ended badly, and my mother was left a single parent of four with no visible means of support by the time I was 12.
If you asked my mother now, I don’t think she would say that she regrets having her children, even if–I think–only my sisters were in any way planned. She is rightly proud of the job she did raising us, and I think she gets immense satisfaction from that. However, when I take myself out of the picture–which I was back in 1961 when she was pregnant with a child who did not yet have even the beginnings of its own, independent identity–it is hard not to see how seriously limiting having children was on my mother’s life, and it is hard in some ways not to wonder about–and even to mourn and grieve, as I imagine she has mourned and grieved over the years–the person she would have been had she been able to choose fully and freely when to give birth and how often.
It’s not that I think it would have been better for her had I and my siblings not been born. Better is such a relative and subjective term, but it would have been better for her had she been able to choose, because then, even if she had made the same choice that she made, and given birth to me–and from what I know of her, I suspect (or maybe I just want to think) that would have been her choice–it would have been fully her choice and not come with all the baggage that having no choice inevitably brings with it.
First the disclosure: I’m not adopted personally. Switched at birth possibly, but not adopted. I have several close friends and family members who are either adopted or are relinquishing mothers. So that’s how my views are colored.
I’m anti-adoption in the sense that I think it’s a sub-optimal way for most women to deal with unwanted pregnancy. Giving a child up for adoption usually causes long term, possibly life long, depression in the relinquishing mother. I’ll post links to some studies if anyone’s interested. Carrying a pregnancy to term and giving the child up is an extremely high risk thing to do. I favor disclosing this up front to any woman who is considering carrying a fetus (or particularly an embryo) to term and giving it up for adoption. If she wants to go through with it nonetheless, knowing the risks then I think she should be supported as far as possible and not coerced into signing the adoption agreement if she changes her mind at any point short of the adoption becoming final.
I’m in favor of the birth of all people who have been born. I’m in favor of steven c’s birth. But the hypothetical people who have not been born, have not taken their first breath or had their first thought, them I’m indifferent to and really care only about the wishes of their potential parents. As far as I know my parents conceived the embryo that would become me purposely. They regretted it when they found out having two children under the age of 2 was. If they had their lives to do over they’d probably have a different child about a year or so later. Should I take it personally when people decide that they would rather space their children further apart than 18 months? Take it as a sign that they think I shouldn’t exist? Or just as a sign that they’re making other choices, ones that are right for them?
I really like Chingona’s response, and it’s basically what I was going to say re: Steve’s feelings. In fact, if abortion is available as a real choice to women, then every adopted child will know that he/she was a wanted and chosen child. I don’t think the OP advocates an end to adoption, or states that children who were adopted should have been aborted. And to assume that women who choose to go through with an unplanned pregnancy and choose adoption necessarily did so because they are “pro-life” is just as bad as assuming that women are only mothers because they have no other choice.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the post isn’t hurtful to people in Steve’s position, and I think that has more to do with its tone than its content. I don’t know how I feel about whether it is never allowable/appropriate to be flippant in a way that could be hurtful to readers with particular personal situations in order to make a political point. People do it a lot, from all different political camps. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s “right” or appropriate for this space.
I’m adopted; I’ve always known I was adopted, but it never made me feel unwanted. However, not very relevant.
The trouble with the snark sentiments is that the anti-abortion crowd are working from a position of hate for women, and something we don’t want to do is mirror that hate (because it’s unproductive, not because it isn’t sometimes richly deserved). So, maybe “Pro-Choice IS Pro-Life”, or “Mothers/Mamas/Fathers/Daddies for Choice”, “Every Birth a Chosen Birth”, and so on might get closer to what we want, which is a pithy counter-statement for a bumper sticker, right? :)
Other ideas:
“Pro-Life = Forced Birth”
“Pro-Choice Means Never Being Intimate With A Wire Hanger” (uh, maybe a bit too graphic)
“Pro-Choice is the ONLY Choice”
“Women Deserve A Choice”
“Choice: Women Are People, Too”
“My Body, My Choice” (I think this one has been done)
“Back Alley Abortions Stop Two Beating Hearts” (I hate the anti-abortion version of this!)
But the “wanted/chosen child” idea backfires, as seen in this thread, as it doesn’t take into account the myriad ways, positive and negative, that parenting happens. Personally, I prefer to focus on the anti-woman message of the “pro-life” (whose life? Certainly not ours) people.
thank you to chingona + others who understood what i was saying.
i worry that i may have derailed the thread a little bit (but maybe it needed derailing, i dunno.) the issues surrounding adoption are hellza complex and probably warrant one or two posts to themselves. but:
is basically the point. in feminist utopia, adopted children need not worry that either their birth or their giving up for adoption was coerced in any way (and they probably also know their birth mothers besides). but we don’t live there, see, and the history of adoption is rife with birth mothers basically being forced to give up their children (see a book titled The Girls Who Went Away, by Ann Fessler).
with all that in mind, it’s a thorny subject – and while i’m pro-choice, self-congratulatory slogans that amount to “look at me, i wasn’t a mistake” are kinda irksome.
but anyway, thank you to people who got it.
This year, at age 39, after being so done having children and with life-threatening complications from my previous pregnancy, I became unexpectedly pregnant (while on birth control.) I’m not married, it was not a good time, there were many physical, emotional and financial risks involved. I’m actually35 weeks now, pre-eclampsic and on bedrest. My son could be born any day now.
When I found out in the spring that I was pregnant, I went through a huge process of emotions and decision-making. I weighed all my options. Giving birth, abortion and adoption. I chose to continue to give birth. But I would certainly understand another woman in my situation choosing abortion or adoption. I’ve documented some of this on my blog and I’ve been asked if it concerns me that this child could possibly find out in the future that I seriously took steps to decide whether to abort him (including talking to a Planned Parenthood counselor and looking into adoption agencies and reading up on adoption options.) And no, I’m not concerned about this child finding out that I looked at all the options afforded to me and that I chose to raise him. Not only because he was “chosen” and this is not a “forced birth” but also so he knows that I, as a woman, am not just an incubator. I have control over my body and have a right to decide what personal sacrifices and risks I’m willing to make for my entire family. Not some government entity.
My point is, I get “congratulated” sometimes on my decision to carry this child as if I made the right moral choice and came to Jesus about the ethics of pro-life. That could not be further from the truth. I value so completely the process by which I was able to weigh all the options and make decisions for myself that nothing so much as this pregnancy (and my decision to continue it) has made me more pro-choice. Many, many mothers will tell you exactly the same thing.
Just because I chose to carry my child to term does not, by default, put me in the pro-life camp in any way, shape or form. And I resent that mothers in my situation are sometimes exploited in this way by the anti-abortion crowd. So I see that the intention of this post is a very important one, although I don’t know if I have the perfect solution for a pithy bumper sticker that portrays this in a clear and non-offensive way. In any case, people like me, pro-choice mothers who chose to give birth, should be represented in some way and not co-opted by the anti-abortion folks.
@Lexie: I just wanted to add that I know, and have known for a long time, that I was not the result of a planned pregnancy (my parents’ birth control method failed). I know my mother could have had an abortion had she wanted to, and I know that she and my father were newly married and not at all in a financial position to have children and were not sure that they wanted children at all. My parents raised me to know that I’m here because after they considered their options, they decided they did want a kid and they were going to do the best they could to raise her even if the timing wasn’t perfect.
That said, I hear where steven c. is coming from, and I know that with different parents, the fact that I was born would not necessarily make me feel wanted, and it’s important to acknowledge that. I just want to reinforce Lexie’s point that the mere fact that a mother considers all her options and consciously decides to carry her child to term does not mean that the child will necessarily think she wasn’t really wanted, either.
My mother chose abortion once (at age 16) and adoption once (at age 19, a closed adoption) before becoming pregnant with me, and she kept me (she was 21). She kept me because it was the right time for her to perform mothering; she believed she finally had the resources available to make a good job of it.
When I became pregnant at 16 she supported any choice I would make, asked me what I wanted and genuinely let me choose. And I chose abortion.
I have acquaintances who wouldn’t be alive without abortion, because they were conceived after an abortion during the period when their mother would still have been carrying the first pregnancy.
Catchy slogans are self-serving: they discharge your tension and self-righteous outrage, and provide a little comic relief. They do nothing to move the argument, so they’re more tribal identification than anything else.
I don’t doubt that this is true, and I’ve seen write-ups of some of those studies. But I also think it’s important to remember that weighing statistical odds is only one thing – often not even close to the most significant thing – that women weigh when they’re making these decisions. And I think we need to be really careful about assuming we know better than an individual woman what she needs to do. A lot of people thought my mother shouldn’t have had me. She was 17, a freshman in college, dating a guy who was a high school dropout. I’m sure a lot of people thought Lexie shouldn’t have her baby. There are women who spend their whole lives regretting they gave a child up for adoption. There are women who move on and don’t think about it that much. There are women who are really troubled by their abortions, and women who don’t think much of them at all. I find it a bit condescending to think you can hold up a study and say you know which choice is the best choice for someone.
Ampersand- the statement seems to carry an implicit value structure, in which abortion is preferable to adoption, else why would anyone be interested in “making” women do one over the other?
Consider another area in which women ought to have choice: whether to work or stay home when they have kids (or ever). If someone said, “It’s impossible to make every single woman stay home to raise her kids”–wouldn’t you interpret that as a curious statement to make?
Mandolin: I understand the point you are making, and I agree that the pro-life bumper stickers are frustrating. I used to have a “pro-child/pro-choice” sticker and I know there was a “pro-family/pro-choice” which would get closer to what you mean (but still I think you are right that it’s important to be specific about pro-choice parenting).
And I agree that there would be something satisfying about returning snark for snark. Those pro-life stickers are damaging and hateful and smug: basically, all about privilege.
That said, the snarky “wanted child” stickers would also be really hurtful to a dear friend of mine whose baby was stillborn. I doubt she’d be the only one.
chingona: I agree that the woman who is pregnant should be the one who decides what to do about the pregnancy. However, I consider it malpractice for any practitioner (doctor, nurse, counselor of any sort) not to inform a patient seeking care and advice of her options and of the risks and benefits each option carries. “Pregnancy crisis centers” rarely inform the women they counsel about the risks of childbirth and almost never about the risks of placing a child for adoption.
Of course a woman’s choice needs to be respected and supported, but refusing to tell her the truth about her risks because it’s “just a study” is beyond condescending. If someone comes to you with a problem which can be solved one of two ways and option A is 1/10th as risky as option B, which would you recommend? There may be situations in which option B is the better choice, but I don’t see how a reasonable person can be faulted for suggesting that option A is more likely the better choice.
Completing a pregnancy is over 10X as likely to result in the death of the pregnant woman than abortion. That’s not even considering the psychological damage that can be done by giving a child up for adoption. Given that, I think that abortion is the best default option for dealing with unwanted pregnancy. Some women will chose to carry the pregnancy to term. Some of those will chose to give the child up for adoption. That’s their decision. But encouraging them to do that and pretending that it is risk free is monsterous.
I don’t believe there is a “best default” for this kind of decision, and I think creating any kind of hierarchy of preferability for our choices works against the “choice” part, because it implies at least a degree of rightness or wrongness in the decision-making process, beyond rightness and wrongness for the individual zirself (because men can have uteruses too) in zir own situation. I do agree that it is irresponsible and harmful to ignore or play down the realities of adoption (and I second the recommendation for The Girls Who Went Away). I think we can make access to information and all of the procedures open and and equal without setting one choice above another.
Jadey: I see your point, but I’m not sure I agree. At least not without qualification. If a woman (or man-apologies for the cis-assumptions) comes to a doctor or other practioner pregnant and asks, “What should I do?” I think the practioner would be remiss not to say that abortion is his/her safest option emotionally and physically. Certainly s/he should explain all the options-and really almost no one who is pregnant doesn’t have ANY opinion about what to do about it-but why pretend that all options are equally safe when they’re not?
To put it in a different context, suppose the patient has a cancer instead. This cancer can be treated with surgery (most people’s default assumption of the best option: who wouldn’t want to get rid of a cancer) but has a 50% chance of coming back if it is. Alternately, it can be treated with chemotherapy and radiation and have a 70% chance of being gone for good after treatment. Should the doctor simply say, “you could have surgery or radiation and chemotherapy” without any explanation of the odds of recurrence with each one? Shouldn’t s/he recommend chemo/radiation, because it has a 20% better chance of having the patient alive in 20 years? Likewise, why should people be encouraged to take the risks of pregnancy if they don’t want the outcome (aka baby)?
Dianne,
Here’s the thing. I am not – and I am pretty sure no one else on this thread is – advocating a CPC-style approach, lying to women, promoting adoption as if it had no risks or withholding information. My argument is not “some people lie outside statistical norms, so you just shouldn’t even mention statistical norms.” My point is that we don’t live our lives in a strict cost-benefit analysis, especially with something as personal as this. Abortion is always safer than giving birth, but many women will still choose to give birth, even if the pregnancy was unplanned or unwanted. Adoption carries additional emotional risks. Some women go that route anyway. So you think that women should be supported no matter what their choice, even if it’s the “wrong” choice. Great. I still think that’s condescending because you think you know what the “right” and the “wrong” choice is for someone who isn’t you.
There is a stark difference between informing a person of risks and outcomes of all options and telling them one is better than the others.
As a rape crisis counselor I was to do the former and help the counselee make her or his own decision, no matter my opinion on what the “best” route of action was. Why? Because if I opined on what was better or nudged in any way, I would have been taking agency away from my counselee. Which is exactly what one does if one says abortion or adoption or keeping and raising a baby is a better choice. By doing that one is making a judgement and a decision and that is against the tenet of pro-choice. Pro-choice means giving all information, truthfully and honestly, and letting a woman make a choice without telling her what you think is better – in general, in theory, or for her specifically.
I think we’re also having different conversations. This post was originally referencing choices made by pregnant individuals about their own bodies, not those made by doctors and other health practitioners about how to inform people who are in the position to make that choice.
Here’s what I think is the issue with the original post. I get that the intent is to provide a response to the idea that mothers cannot be pro-choice, by acknowledging that some mothers, indeed, are pro-choice.
But the “My children are wanted” or “My mother chose me” sentiments are just wrong, no matter who the audience is.
There’s a longstanding cultural meme that a mother’s choices impact the worth of her children, and it’s wrong. It’s not sometimes wrong, it’s not usually wrong, it’s always wrong. There are no classifications of children who are, in any way, superior to, more worthy than, or otherwise better or more valued than any other classification of children.
My mother felt ashamed her whole life, because she knew that her mom had gotten pregnant after having an affair with a married man. To her generation, “bastard” can be an almost clinical term. But nothing that a mother (or a father) can do can actually impact the worth of her child. _Nothing_ that a parent does has any impact on the worth of their child. Whether the child is carefully planned, an accidental pregnancy, or even the result of rape– the person that child becomes is equal to every other person.
I remember watching an episode of one of those police procedurals a couple years ago. The plot basically involved a diplomat whose son had committed a horrible crime, and the diplomat was protecting him. The deux ex machina basically involved the cops proving that the son wasn’t genetically related to the diplomat, at which point, he was like, “Then do what you want with him.” I remember being pissed off by the episode, because the subtext was that it was okay for the cops to exploit the idea that a son is less worthy if he isn’t your own flesh and blood–and whether it was true to the characters or not, it was an icky subtext.
I realize that it was not your intent to suggest that some children actually are more worthy than others, but I think that even messages which sort-of-imply that are not worth constructing, no matter who you’re debating.
Same goes for disabled people who have lived life struggling with almost unbearble guilt for “burdening” our mothers by being born.
Realistically, the hypothetical woman who presents to a practitioner with no opinion whatsoever about whether she wants to continue her pregnancy or not is about as likely as the one who shows up asking for an abortion when the contractions are five minutes appart. People just don’t work that way.
In general, I agree that there is no absolute “right” or “wrong” answer as to what to do about an unwanted pregnancy or even a wanted pregnancy*. But it seems to me that right now the default option is completing the pregnancy: that’s the assumption and counseling is generally oertly or covertly designed to talk women into doing that. In some places, there is an overt mandate for the counselor to try to convince the woman that she should keep the pregnancy (i.e. in Germany abortion is only allowed-and paid for by the public health insurance-after counseling designed to convince the patient not to have an abortion. In Denmark, it is legally required that women be told that the government will help pay for the child’s upbrining-nice to know, but hardly complete information and clearly meant to deter abortion.)
I can’t think of any other situation in medicine in which practioners encourage patients to take the course MORE likely to result in their death or disability**. If the patient wants the baby on any level, from deciding that she really wants to raise a child now to she wants to bring joy to childless person to she wants to be able to donate the ancephalic fetus’ organs. However it be, then the right choice for her is to continue the pregnancy in a manner which is as safe as possible for her and the fetus. But if she does not want the pregnancy or the baby, why encourage the dangerous route?
*There are exceptions: some people need to be told outright that the pregnancy will kill them before they’ll admit it to themselves. You do them no favors by pretending to be neutral about whether they have an abortion or not.
**Well, arguably plastic and reconstructive surgery. But any ethical plastic surgeon would make sure to explain to his/her patients all the reasons why s/he shouldn’t have surgery before proceeding.
Mandolin, my mother had an illegal abortion back in the day, and I would like to commemorate that event in some way, too. But you’re right, all the slogans I might come up with, can be read as an insult to someone as not “wanted.” (And as a woman born with a congenital disability, my mother would not have wanted me to imply “unwantedness” about anyone, in any way, shape or form… she was extremely sensitive to that argument.)
Although she gave to NARAL religiously right up until she died. I wish we had some kind of bumper sticker too.
(My own bumper sticker: Post-menopausal women nostalgic for choice.)
Diane, I am adopted a biological parent.
It literally brings tears to my eyes that you are speaking out so eloquently about the coercion that has happened to so many of us. I never thought there would be a day when people would hear us. When feminists would consider how much pain this social experiment called infant adoption has caused.
Thank you.
I meant adopted and a biological parent
Dianne, please post links to studies about depression in women that choose to have a child adopted out. I never have a figure to quote at people that think adoption should be the only option if you do not have the resources to raise a child at that point of your life.
Did anyone mention that Pro-child / Pro-choice is a slogan and a bumper sticker? It is nonjudgmental too, IMO.
I am not sure if it came up because I had to start skimming. I know this is a “hot button topic” people, but why do these conversations always derail?
Half of all unplanned pregnancies in this country end in abortion. Less than 5% end in adoption. They are NOT a dichotomy. Adoption is not the answer to the abortion rate. Adoption is its own frought topic. However, the best way to reduce the abortion rate is effective, affordable, promoted and accessible contraception. If anyone wants to research this, start at Guttmacher.
Dianne, there is a whole section on mental health and the abortion / adoption / unplanned pregnancy issue at Guttmacher. The American Psychological Association also came out with a recent study debunking the post abortion syndrome BS.
Katherine: Sorry about taking so long to respond: I hadn’t been reading this thread. Anyway, the links:
A review of the issue.
Another link, noting that the grief and depression often fail to resolve after many years.
A recent paper discussing the role of being disenfranchised on the grief surrounding relinquishing an infant.
My personal feeling is that I can’t see how anyone could ever possibly recover from having a baby taken from them. Even if they agreed to it. Even if it was their idea. It’s just a horrible event to try to survive.