jdiebremse wrote:
Harder than the decision to carry the child to birth? Harder than
the decision to give up the child for adoption? Harder than the
decision to raise the child?
I don't like the way "Brother John" attempts to villify those who
choose abortion. I think those that choose abortion are far, far,
far more often victims than villains. At the same time, however, I
am not comfortable with the characterization of choosing to have an
abortion as being "the hardest decision." The other possible
decisions are almost certainly equally hard, if not harder.
I'm sorry I come across as "vilifying" those who choose abortion. I
would much rather come across as someone who finds it lamentable that so
many pregnancies are unwanted. We move heaven and earth to preserve and
protect endangered species. Look how highly we value such great art
works as the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the treasure in the Louvre
and other museums around the world. Would all these abortions take
place if we valued children as highly? I don't think so, and that says
something about us as a people. Why do we value children so little?
There was a time, earlier in our history as a nation, when a pregnancy
was a cause for great rejoicing, not only for the mother and
father-to-be, but for all of the neighbors, and for the community.
There was a great stigma to having children out of wedlock, and married
women who were unable to conceive and have children were objects of
pity. Children were considered great treasures. Women died in
childbirth, and families had many children because there was no
assurance that more than half of them would live to adulthood. Today we
treat pregnancies as a great inconvenience in many cases, and an utter
disaster in others. Of all the children that are actually born, how
many are thought of as the great treasures that they are? I don't mean
to vilify those who get abortions. I feel sorry for them because they
didn't want the child. I don't think that "murder" is taking place, but
I consider it one of life's greatest tragedies that so many children are
unwanted even to the point of putting an end to the pregnancies that do
occur. A pregnancy should almost always be a cause for great rejoicing
by the mother, the father, the grandparents, and the whole community.
And it is a fact that there are many women who are emotionally unable to
abort their children. The maternal love they feel for the unborn child
is so great that they simply cannot do it. It is too bad that all women
are not like that. If they were, there would not be nearly as many
women who value their "right to choose" above the life of an unborn
child in any stage of its development. Even if abortion is not murder,
and I do not think it is, it is a terrible comment on the kind of people
we are and the kind of nation we have become.
Finally, the enormous problem of illegal immigration that we are having
here in the USA is caused in part by the huge birthrate among the
Hispanic people who live in Mexico and other nations of Latin America.
We aren't having children, and they are. Even here in the USA the
birthrate among the Hispanic people is much higher than among the
Anglo-Americans who have been here much longer. We ourselves used to be
an enormously fertile and prolific people. Our ascendancy over the
Native Americans who were here before us is as much a factor of the
difference in our relative birthrates as anything else. We were growing
like crazy. We had huge families and we did a good job of taking care
of them in comparison with the Native Americans of the same period. We
literally populated a whole continent from "sea to shining sea." Today
we are just barely replacing ourselves and in some places there would be
no grown in our population whatever if it were not for Hispanic
immigrants and the large families they have before and after coming here.
Well, if we don't reproduce, we will just be replaced. That is just a
biological fact. We can agonize and discuss endlessly the moral and
religious aspects, but simple biology dictates that there is a
relationship between nativity and mortality. And that if a species or a
subgroup of a species does not reproduce, it dies out. Biologically the
definition of a healthy and vigorous population is tied to the food
supply and the effect that has on reproduction. Populations grow or
they die out. If our culture has become as sterile and barren as it
seems to have, then the future is not good for us regardless of the
minor nits we like to endless discuss when the topic of abortion comes up.
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