playing politics
anyone who knows me know i am vehemently pro-choice. i support choice, insurance equity (AKA why will you pay for viagra and not my bc pills?!), funding for family planning and AIDS education overseas, and i think abstinence education is the same as supporting ignorance, and even though i am catholic i think condoms and birth contol are gifts from god. :) a bill was recently passed by the senate that truly angers me because it hits close to home. this bill makes it a crime to transport a minor to another state to have an abortion. it sounds heinous, but think about the situation: you are a 15-17 year old girl, pregnant, many times the person you can turn to for advice is not your parent. your parent may be one of those worst-case scenarios. and when 98% of US counties don't have abortion providers, in many cases your closest clinic may be out of state.
i know many people may say, oh parents are understanding, blah blah blah, no one actually gets kicked out of their home for getting pregnant anymore. i wish that were true. my cousin told me she was pregnant two years ago. she hadn't told her mom yet, obviously. my aunt was an evangelical christian who upon finding out my cousin was having sex said "she doesn't need to go on birth control, that's not in god's plan. besides she won't be having sex anymore." that was three months prior. i asked her what she wanted to do, whether she wanted to keep the baby. she couldn't get an abortion in Indiana without consent from her mother, which was NEVER going to happen. i told her that we could go to Illinois if she wanted, there are no parental consent laws there. she thought it over and decided to keep the baby. happy ending right? well after she told her mother, her mother decided that she wasn't mature enough to care for the baby, and forced her to give the childup for adoption. told her point blank: "if you keep the baby, you cannot stay in this house." it's hard to raise a child that way, seventeen and homeless. so she gave the baby up, is still in denial and depression over it, and was kicked out anyway- for still dating her boyfriend.
don't mistake what i'm saying as abortion being a"problem solver". i am illustrating a point, not all teenagers can turn to their parents. and the testimony used to support the bill is flimsy, at best. a clinic will not preform any procedure on any unwilling patient. you have to receive pre-abortion counseling before a procedure. preforming an abortion on a reticent 14 year old would only leave them open to litigation. is this the whole story? or just what this woman has convinced herself to be the truth?
i know many people may say, oh parents are understanding, blah blah blah, no one actually gets kicked out of their home for getting pregnant anymore. i wish that were true. my cousin told me she was pregnant two years ago. she hadn't told her mom yet, obviously. my aunt was an evangelical christian who upon finding out my cousin was having sex said "she doesn't need to go on birth control, that's not in god's plan. besides she won't be having sex anymore." that was three months prior. i asked her what she wanted to do, whether she wanted to keep the baby. she couldn't get an abortion in Indiana without consent from her mother, which was NEVER going to happen. i told her that we could go to Illinois if she wanted, there are no parental consent laws there. she thought it over and decided to keep the baby. happy ending right? well after she told her mother, her mother decided that she wasn't mature enough to care for the baby, and forced her to give the childup for adoption. told her point blank: "if you keep the baby, you cannot stay in this house." it's hard to raise a child that way, seventeen and homeless. so she gave the baby up, is still in denial and depression over it, and was kicked out anyway- for still dating her boyfriend.
don't mistake what i'm saying as abortion being a"problem solver". i am illustrating a point, not all teenagers can turn to their parents. and the testimony used to support the bill is flimsy, at best. a clinic will not preform any procedure on any unwilling patient. you have to receive pre-abortion counseling before a procedure. preforming an abortion on a reticent 14 year old would only leave them open to litigation. is this the whole story? or just what this woman has convinced herself to be the truth?
posted by Natalie at 3:32 PM
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