Theoretically, I’m the anti-choicers’ biggest target (besides those who have already drunk the kool-aid, of course.) I’m a white male Christian adoptee, after all, and as an adoptee I’m supposed to drop to my knees every day and thank God that my wayward biological mother didn’t get waylaid by a roving abortionist and drag me kicking and screaming from the womb.
Sadly for them, I’m just a bit too existentially secure to worry about that. If I was going to thank the Big Guy for something related to my birth it’d be that I won the implantation lottery. A lot more potential kids are “lost” to sloughing every year than are “lost” to abortion. Plus, as the husband of a woman who went through a traumatic pregnancy (the heartbeat incident wasn’t even the half of it), there was a comment on Jessica’s post on HuffPo that summed it up for me (no direct links to comments, that I can find):
To the people who say that adoption is just as easy as abortion:
I’m 39 weeks pregnant, eagerly awaiting the birth of my first child. And don’t misunderstand me, I fought to have this child. It took me two years to conceive the first time, I had a miscarriage, and this child is a desperately wanted blessing.That said, I was blown away by how hard and overwhelming pregnancy is, and it’s something I was incapable of understanding until I experienced it. It’s one thing to hear about morning sickness, it’s quite another to throw up 6 times a day for 5 months and lose 20 pounds in your first two trimesters. It’s one thing to hear about aches and pains and tiredness, and another to experience the drain and exhaustion and misery. I want this child, and he’s worth this to me, but I can’t imagine suffering through this otherwise.
I’m very lucky. My boss was wonderful, and let me work half-time for the worst months. But what about women who don’t have that option? What about women who aren’t married to men with great jobs who can afford the luxury of days spent in their own beds and bathrooms?
I know not every pregnancy is as hard as mine. But it’s not just me who finds it overwhelming. My mother dropped out of college with her first child. The woman in the cubicle next to mine stayed in college, but failed every class that semester. Another friend successfully defended her thesis while pregnant, but admits she spent the entire time she was editing with tears streaming down her face. All day. Every day.
I was always pro-choice. But now, having experienced this blessing, I’m passionate about it. Adoption itself might be easy, I don’t know. But letting your body divert huge amounts of resources to creating another person, letting it be flooded with strange hormones that completely change the way you think and feel, letting yourself become this vulnerable and helpless? That’s not easy. And I deserve a choice about it.
She certainly does.
I studied anthropology in college and read that something close to 1/3 of women died during pregnancy in the ‘good old days’ before modern medical science. I didn’t think much of that because I live in America and we have reasonably good medical science for those who can afford it. Then my sister-in-law almost died while pregnant with the totally awesomest boy in the world. That was pretty rough.
Comment by Chuckles — 01.24.2007 @ 7:32 am