Barbara talks derisively about "pro-life" people who say, "Yeah, every baby should be born."
She was a cop for 30 years, she is currently a court-appointed advocate for children so she works with orphans, abandoned children, appointed guardians, and abusive birth parents.
L.A. currently has about 600 children that are waiting to be adopted, there must be thousands in foster situations and group homes. One group home recently had to shut down and find housing for 600 difficult children. 200 of those children are currently unaccounted for--they ran away from their foster homes. Barbara says that those are the kids that wind up on Hollywood Blvd, in jail, or dead in ditches and the desert. [She noted that President Bush does the same for our children when he sends them to war.] Most of the children for whom she advocates have severe learning disabilities and poor relationship skills. She's seen pregnant mothers loaded on crack and other drugs, the saddest thing she's ever seen, and she says their children usually wind up going to jail.
I think you get the gist. Our society doesn't care about children after they are born [in my mind, we don't care about them enough even right when they are born].
I've long judged "pro-lifers" for abstracting fetuses from the mother's womb when they argue their position--as if the child can breath without her. In their paradigm of "life" the mothers, or pregnant women, become as abstract as the baby who seems to be irrationally seen by "pro-lifers" as an independent entity.
Whenever you encounter arguments from the pro-life position, liberal or conservative, the argument rarely, if ever, addresses the issue that a fetus and growing baby is completely dependent on the mother for life. Their concern is limited to the erroneous interpretation of an independent life--the growing baby--and the inherent violence of terminating that life. The woman's life and health is of no concern to them.
But what happens when we prevent a woman from terminating an unwanted pregnancy? She is forced, by law, to give birth to an unwanted child. "Lifers" generally don't address the physical and legal aspects of this issue.
Sadly, although abortion is legal, we still have a lot of unwanted and unplanned children in this world. I was unplanned and my mother didn't want me. She had the freedom to abort me, but she was poor and a Catholic home offered her care and a safe birthing process. I was one of the lucky one's who was put up for adoption as a baby and I had a relatively (compared to Barbara's world) safe upbringing. But the older I get the more I realize that even I entered the world in a rough way. Like many adoptees, I never bonded with my mother in the first year, and that simple vacancy pulls at the core of my being and my relationships with others every day. Many unwanted or unplanned children experience far worse and damaging situations than I did. They are neglected, abused, and shifted from one home situation to another. They are continually disappointed and let down by adults, and they struggle their whole lives within our meritocracy. Anti-social and criminal tendencies easily emerge from violent and emotionally poisonous upbringings. Our society ignores this fact.
Who cares for the unwanted and unplanned children that every "pro-lifer" wants born? Many birth parents raise these children in abusive situations. We have blind governmental organizations that place many of these children in foster homes with a monthly allowance. It is a good allowance, but often it is not spent on the foster child's well-being, instead it goes to the house decor or car payments. Often, abusive birth parents are allowed by the state to intrude on that child's complicated life in fits and starts.
How can we help prevent unplanned children?
Birth control stops unplanned and unwanted children from coming into being--many "pro-lifers" oppose birth control.
Abortion gives pregnant women control to prevent unwanted and unplanned children from being born--"pro-lifers" oppose giving women full control over their health and reproductive abilities.
Public and private support of pre-natal care and adoption centers is desperately needed--especially in state's where access to abortion is severely restricted. "Pro-lifers" often oppose governmental funding for adoption services and foster care.
In summary, "pro-lifers" are often extremely limited in their promotion of decent lives for unwanted and unplanned children.
No, it's not P.C. to imply that unwanted and unplanned children are better off not being born--I'm not implying that this is the case for anyone who has been born. NO ONE is hopeless, but the future of our society is better when most children are both planned and wanted. We must stop living in a blind, abstact, or fantasy-driven vision of life and death in our culture--there will never be a perfect world where every child will be planned or wanted.
But if we really care about the quality of life that people live, as well as stopping abuse, curbing drug addictions, and ending poverty and homelessness among children and adults, then birth control (including abortion) is necessary. Let abortions be legal and rare.
The better a society takes care of itself, its economy, AND WOMEN, the fewer abortions it needs. We create greater responsibility in ourselves and others by giving attention to and showing respect to ourselves and each other--this works as individuals, in families, in companies, and in societies.
It seems to me that Democrats are engaged, at least philosophically, in helping and creating communities that help families whereas Republicans are philosophically uninterested in helping communities. To a Republican, the market provides everything--money is separate from morality--so their moral issues are essentially cost-free. They get upset about individual behaviors (abortion, gay lifestyles, sex) rather than expensive social issues (poverty, homelessness, healthcare). Essentially, they believe that Democracy means Captalism. How do you live with a political philosophy based in win/lose economics? Some people win, some people lose, no biggie. In Democracies, all the people should win. Basically, Republicans today think competatively, "I've got mine, or we've got ours, get yours," whereas Democrats think cooperatively, "Let's work together and we'll both win."
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