pjgeer's Journal: Planned Parenthood/Abortion

First let me address the pro-life readers. Consider who gets a late-term, partial birth abortion. You have the people who couldn't come up with the money right away because of genuine financial hardship (i.e., homeless people). You have the people who could have done it sooner but refused to get their priorities straight until they became inconvenienced by the pregnancy (i.e., crack whores). You have the people who didn't realize they were pregnant for 6 months (i.e., mentally challenged). Note that these are the people the state declares unfit parents-- it routinely removes children from such parents to protect them. These three types certainly aren't going to use contraceptives. If they don't have an abortion, they will become parents. Do we really want that to happen? Ah, you say, that's the beauty of adoption. Well I doubt the typical pro-lifer has given much thought to where an unwanted child goes.

There are more than 150,000 children in the US foster care system waiting for permanent homes (1). Foster care can never be a permanent solution, because without inheritance and the permanancy of true adoption a child knows that every time he oversteps his bounds he might lose his family (2). Neither are orphanages a permanent solution-- imagine being 25th in line for a hug from your father-figure. These children need parents to adopt them. If the (more than 150,000) moral majority (3) lived what they say, this would be a non-issue. They would be holding crack babies in hospital delivery rooms and making cooing noises. They would be waiting at our borders for refugee minors and welcoming them into their homes permanently. Well I have some news for you. First of all, I have it on good authority that people are not, I repeat, not rushing to the adoption center and saying "One homeless retarded crack baby, please." Secondly, the fees are so prohibitive (4) it's cheaper to have your own, even with costly fertility drugs (5). Thirdly, have you seen the adoption paperwork (6)? It's impenetrable! You need a whole team of contract lawyers to figure it out. Good parents don't usually have the kind of money to handle that, but some career criminals do-- perhaps some who specialize in child slave labor exports (7).

Having popped that beautiful dream bubble, I'll address the pro-choice readers. I assume there are some homeless retarded crack whores among your number who protest, aid petition drives, and so on, for whom this cause is near and dear to their hearts. Oh, there aren't? Then they asked you to stand up for them, right? No? So you are all planning to have late-term partial birth abortions and this legislation will ruin your plans, yes? No? Oh, yeah, I remember that speech about "They came and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a crack whore". Yes, I agree that someone should speak up for the rights of crack whores. Taxpayers clearly owe crack whores (the backbone of our civilized society) a debt of gratitude, and I for one think we should pay that debt in the right to an abortion they won't get, along with medical treatment for heroin abscesses and petty theft court costs. Hell, they already cost us millions (8).

See, one thing is clear from this current legal battle. For both sides, it's not about lives or the quality of life anymore. It's just about getting My Own Way, even if it screws over someone else. Such hypocrites can never be part of any solution. If you're pro-life, what have you done to show love to the children you had a hand in bringing to life, despite the fact that they never asked to be born? Yelling doesn't count. Nor does paying someone else to make the problem go away. If you're pro-choice, what have you done to show love to the woman in crisis? If she had the rest of her ducks in a row, she'd be celebrating her pregnancy instead of calling it a crisis. Even Planned Parenthood knows abortion is at best a bandage over a bad situation. Yet 24% of women having an abortion are on their second trip, 7% on their third, 3% on their fourth (9). The underlying problems have been ignored. And as every engineer knows, if you try to create a solution without understanding the underlying problem, you're just asking for trouble.

Until we reach the point where technology allows individuals to control their reproductive capabilities with a toggle switch, how anyone on either side of the issue can think they are making a difference in solving social problems is beyond me.