Kakra
(?)Community Member
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- Posted: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 23:26:13 +0000
Also known as, "Mommy, Why am I a Punishment?"
I see this all the time in abortion debates, and frankly, I've had enough of it, so I shall rant about it on here, where someone will actually tell me why it's a GOOD thing to have a mother stay pregnant and give birth to a child as a punishment.
And it's always the same. "She deserved it." "Hey, she may learn from it!" "That'll teach her to keep her legs shut!" But my question is why say you are pro-life, and then devalue the life into something as minute as a "punishment", and have it be a title the life will have to live with for... well, the rest of their lives.
So, a child should be a punishment for getting pregnant? Fine, let's ruin the mother's life, making her give birth to a baby that she doesn't even love, and change birth from a wonderful miracle of life into a punishment, reducing the value of the child into nothing more than a mere punishment.
If child is adopted out, and if (s)he's white, (s)he'll be adopted in a snap, but that means that a child that doesn't have the advantage of being healthy or white will have to wait until another person decides to adopt, as people complain about there not being any children for them to adopt because none of the 500,000 plus orphans are white or heathy. And if (s)he's black... well, let's just say that (s)he's going to be in that orphanage for a very long time...
If the mother decides to KEEP the baby, or rather is pressured to, then she'll have to raise a child she doesn't even love that ruined her life, and the child will not know the love of a mother or father because (s)he wasn't wanted in the first place.
Ah, how the wonders of cruel, unusual, and degrading punishment and taking of the right to control one's body is. 3nodding
"But it's not a punishment! It's merely a life lesson! Boy parts+ Girl parts x semen = Baby Not a punishment, but simple life math."
What if you have your tubes tied? Or are unfertile?
Plus, it doesn't equal a baby. If the girl has an egg waiting in her uterus, and a sperm egg fertilizes it, you get a fertilized egg.
And it still doesn't justify ruining not one, but two lives. Please tell me how ruining a woman's life as well as a child's just so you can "teach the slut a lesson" is a good thing.
By the way, before posting, try looking at the other posts. Some questions you may have might be quickly answered.
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EDIT: For those who asked on proof for the racism thing: (I'm getting tired of looking for it, or asking other's to post it.)
http://www.alternet.org/rights/19821/
"So. It wasn't about babies after all, but about white babies. They didn't tell us that in religion class, nor did they mention it at the march. But wait! Open any newspaper and you can find couples advertising, selling themselves as loving parents who wish to complete their lives with your baby. Yes. Your white baby."
Don't believe the article? Check this out: http://www.lifetimeadoption.com/for_birtmothers/profiles.html
Choose any family, then click the "learn more about our family" link. It'll send you to a chart outlining the family and the criteria they seek in an infant. Here's the most common answer: http://www.lifetimeadoption.com/for_birtmothers/families/danny_michelle/our_family.html
Newborn. Caucasian. No special needs.
It's not that there aren't hundreds of thousands of unwanted and unloved children already existing in the world, desperately needing homes� It's that they don't fit the acceptable profile.
For every shiny new baby you add to the system, another existing child doesn't get adopted.
Meet Dominique and Ivy.
http://photolisting.adoption.com/children/3396.html
http://photolisting.adoption.com/children/3395.html
They need a family. If I give birth to a perfect, healthy, white newborn, and a loving family adopts it, that's one less family who will consider adopting Dominique and Ivy.
*****
Thanks to Nethilia for the following information
http://adoptionnetwork.com/
http://www.adopthelp.com/
http://www.courageouschoice.com/
http://www.americanadoptions.com/
All I did was plug adoption into Google. What do you see? That's right. White couples, white babies, white families. I saw one family that might have been Asian, and a few brown faces on http://www.adoptuskids.org, which is national. On every private site I saw more white than a blizzard in Denver.
http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/FactOverview/foster.html
http://www.transracialabductees.org/politics/budget.html
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EDIT^2!: "But, the baby deserves a chance to live, and have a good home, and what not! Why not give birth to the baby so that it has a chance!"
I'm actually, with the approval of the original poster, going to use another person's post to answer this. They phrase it PERFECTLY. Here it is:
I see this all the time in abortion debates, and frankly, I've had enough of it, so I shall rant about it on here, where someone will actually tell me why it's a GOOD thing to have a mother stay pregnant and give birth to a child as a punishment.
And it's always the same. "She deserved it." "Hey, she may learn from it!" "That'll teach her to keep her legs shut!" But my question is why say you are pro-life, and then devalue the life into something as minute as a "punishment", and have it be a title the life will have to live with for... well, the rest of their lives.
So, a child should be a punishment for getting pregnant? Fine, let's ruin the mother's life, making her give birth to a baby that she doesn't even love, and change birth from a wonderful miracle of life into a punishment, reducing the value of the child into nothing more than a mere punishment.
If child is adopted out, and if (s)he's white, (s)he'll be adopted in a snap, but that means that a child that doesn't have the advantage of being healthy or white will have to wait until another person decides to adopt, as people complain about there not being any children for them to adopt because none of the 500,000 plus orphans are white or heathy. And if (s)he's black... well, let's just say that (s)he's going to be in that orphanage for a very long time...
If the mother decides to KEEP the baby, or rather is pressured to, then she'll have to raise a child she doesn't even love that ruined her life, and the child will not know the love of a mother or father because (s)he wasn't wanted in the first place.
Ah, how the wonders of cruel, unusual, and degrading punishment and taking of the right to control one's body is. 3nodding
"But it's not a punishment! It's merely a life lesson! Boy parts+ Girl parts x semen = Baby Not a punishment, but simple life math."
What if you have your tubes tied? Or are unfertile?
Plus, it doesn't equal a baby. If the girl has an egg waiting in her uterus, and a sperm egg fertilizes it, you get a fertilized egg.
And it still doesn't justify ruining not one, but two lives. Please tell me how ruining a woman's life as well as a child's just so you can "teach the slut a lesson" is a good thing.
By the way, before posting, try looking at the other posts. Some questions you may have might be quickly answered.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT: For those who asked on proof for the racism thing: (I'm getting tired of looking for it, or asking other's to post it.)
http://www.alternet.org/rights/19821/
"So. It wasn't about babies after all, but about white babies. They didn't tell us that in religion class, nor did they mention it at the march. But wait! Open any newspaper and you can find couples advertising, selling themselves as loving parents who wish to complete their lives with your baby. Yes. Your white baby."
Don't believe the article? Check this out: http://www.lifetimeadoption.com/for_birtmothers/profiles.html
Choose any family, then click the "learn more about our family" link. It'll send you to a chart outlining the family and the criteria they seek in an infant. Here's the most common answer: http://www.lifetimeadoption.com/for_birtmothers/families/danny_michelle/our_family.html
Newborn. Caucasian. No special needs.
It's not that there aren't hundreds of thousands of unwanted and unloved children already existing in the world, desperately needing homes� It's that they don't fit the acceptable profile.
For every shiny new baby you add to the system, another existing child doesn't get adopted.
Meet Dominique and Ivy.
http://photolisting.adoption.com/children/3396.html
http://photolisting.adoption.com/children/3395.html
They need a family. If I give birth to a perfect, healthy, white newborn, and a loving family adopts it, that's one less family who will consider adopting Dominique and Ivy.
*****
Thanks to Nethilia for the following information
http://adoptionnetwork.com/
http://www.adopthelp.com/
http://www.courageouschoice.com/
http://www.americanadoptions.com/
All I did was plug adoption into Google. What do you see? That's right. White couples, white babies, white families. I saw one family that might have been Asian, and a few brown faces on http://www.adoptuskids.org, which is national. On every private site I saw more white than a blizzard in Denver.
http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/FactOverview/foster.html
Quote:
[The writer of the article] recently requested an adoption application from this agency called "American Adoptions." (For research purposes only I assure you.) They give you a bunch of information along with the application form. Here's how they break things down in terms of race:
They divide their programs into "Traditional" and "Minority." "Traditional" includes all "healthy, non-African American" babies. They state that "Traditional" program races "include, but are not limited to, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, etc. or any non-African American combination of races."
What it boils down to is that "African-American or Bi/multi-racial (any race combined with African-American heritage) newborns/infants" in the "Minority" program cost way less than babies in the "Traditional" program, anywhere from $4,000 to $16,000 less, with no up-front fee required. The average wait for a "Traditional" program baby is months longer than the wait for a "Minority" program baby, which can be as short as 1 month, and the rules regarding age of parents and number of children who can already be living in the home are less strict for "Minority" program applicants. While reduced fees and fewer restrictions on parent eligibility (combined with other anti-racist, anti-classist strategies) can make adoption more accessible to people of color, "Minority" programs like this one are not focused on recruiting and approving people of color to adopt.
Agencies are able to subsidize "Minority" programs in part because they do not spend lots of money advertising to pregnant women to give up their "minority" babies for adoption; instead, they focus their attention on recruiting pregnant women who can help fill the demand for white babies. Also, many agencies use a "one drop" kind of rule to draw a strict line between African American and white, while quietly ignoring all other "minorities." The argument that "Minority" programs exist to make adoption more accessible to people of color is often an attempt to mask white-run agencies' complicity with white-dominated society's general devaluation of African American children. Most agencies don't care about recruiting parents of color or making their programs more accessible to people of color in general. The pictures of angelic, blonde-haired babies advertised by agencies like American Adoptions make it clear that they're primarily concerned with matching up white people with white babies, and when that isn't possible, convincing whites to settle for a "less desirable" child.
They divide their programs into "Traditional" and "Minority." "Traditional" includes all "healthy, non-African American" babies. They state that "Traditional" program races "include, but are not limited to, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, etc. or any non-African American combination of races."
What it boils down to is that "African-American or Bi/multi-racial (any race combined with African-American heritage) newborns/infants" in the "Minority" program cost way less than babies in the "Traditional" program, anywhere from $4,000 to $16,000 less, with no up-front fee required. The average wait for a "Traditional" program baby is months longer than the wait for a "Minority" program baby, which can be as short as 1 month, and the rules regarding age of parents and number of children who can already be living in the home are less strict for "Minority" program applicants. While reduced fees and fewer restrictions on parent eligibility (combined with other anti-racist, anti-classist strategies) can make adoption more accessible to people of color, "Minority" programs like this one are not focused on recruiting and approving people of color to adopt.
Agencies are able to subsidize "Minority" programs in part because they do not spend lots of money advertising to pregnant women to give up their "minority" babies for adoption; instead, they focus their attention on recruiting pregnant women who can help fill the demand for white babies. Also, many agencies use a "one drop" kind of rule to draw a strict line between African American and white, while quietly ignoring all other "minorities." The argument that "Minority" programs exist to make adoption more accessible to people of color is often an attempt to mask white-run agencies' complicity with white-dominated society's general devaluation of African American children. Most agencies don't care about recruiting parents of color or making their programs more accessible to people of color in general. The pictures of angelic, blonde-haired babies advertised by agencies like American Adoptions make it clear that they're primarily concerned with matching up white people with white babies, and when that isn't possible, convincing whites to settle for a "less desirable" child.
http://www.transracialabductees.org/politics/budget.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT^2!: "But, the baby deserves a chance to live, and have a good home, and what not! Why not give birth to the baby so that it has a chance!"
I'm actually, with the approval of the original poster, going to use another person's post to answer this. They phrase it PERFECTLY. Here it is:
Calixti
My brother and I were both unplanned, and I think, unwanted. Our mother is "personally pro-life" and believes abortion is never appropriate unless the mother's life is in danger or she was raped. She calls herself pro-choice.
Mum loves us, though. I know life was hard with my brother, especially after his father left, and things were hard just after she married my father (because she was pregnant with me). His family dislikes my mother, much of his family refuses to acknowledge my brother because he is not a blood relative, and I'm disliked because I was the first Capps granddaughter and I'm the first of my generation going to college.
But none of that matters, because as much as I know my dad wanted his own son, he loves my brother as his own, and he loves me. My mother loves us both. We were both unplanned and unwanted, but we're loved anyway.
So I have a question, Lifers. What if Mum didn't love us? What if she resented my brother for interfering with her career? What if she resented me for forcing her into a marriage with a man she barely knew? What if my father hated me for not being a boy? What if my father refused to accept another man's child as his son? Do you really think we would both be happy and healthy and emotionally stable?
My mum and daddy made my brother and me--and our younger sister, who WAS planned--into blessings. We became blessings because in the end, we were wanted. Our parents grew to love us. But not all parents do so. There are mothers and fathers that curse the children they never wanted, that abuse them physically and emotionally, that hurt their children and themselves.
Turning a pregnancy into a punishment doesn't just harm the woman, it harms the child as well. Turning a pregnancy into a punishment ruins more than one life. Is it worth it just to see a slut punished, Lifers? Is it worth the risk of ruining more than one life in hopes that the mother and father will get married like my parents, and that they'll grow to love their unwanted children? I don't think so.
Mum loves us, though. I know life was hard with my brother, especially after his father left, and things were hard just after she married my father (because she was pregnant with me). His family dislikes my mother, much of his family refuses to acknowledge my brother because he is not a blood relative, and I'm disliked because I was the first Capps granddaughter and I'm the first of my generation going to college.
But none of that matters, because as much as I know my dad wanted his own son, he loves my brother as his own, and he loves me. My mother loves us both. We were both unplanned and unwanted, but we're loved anyway.
So I have a question, Lifers. What if Mum didn't love us? What if she resented my brother for interfering with her career? What if she resented me for forcing her into a marriage with a man she barely knew? What if my father hated me for not being a boy? What if my father refused to accept another man's child as his son? Do you really think we would both be happy and healthy and emotionally stable?
My mum and daddy made my brother and me--and our younger sister, who WAS planned--into blessings. We became blessings because in the end, we were wanted. Our parents grew to love us. But not all parents do so. There are mothers and fathers that curse the children they never wanted, that abuse them physically and emotionally, that hurt their children and themselves.
Turning a pregnancy into a punishment doesn't just harm the woman, it harms the child as well. Turning a pregnancy into a punishment ruins more than one life. Is it worth it just to see a slut punished, Lifers? Is it worth the risk of ruining more than one life in hopes that the mother and father will get married like my parents, and that they'll grow to love their unwanted children? I don't think so.
