That’s not scientific. For one if you are going to use the end of brain activity for when life ceases then it has to be involved in the beginning, and all the way through. It has to be a contributing factor to life, which it is in the utilization of life anyway. However, the brain is not present at fertilization, making this an idea that needs a bit more examination to say the least.

I don’t know if he told his parents anything. He understood enough to know it was my body. He said he would support me whatever I did. We broke up after, but we were young and immature, so that was essentially in the cards anyway. Besides, I found out later that he would have walked away no matter what.

It is your opinion that someone had to die. It is my opinion that my life was saved. It is my understanding from everything that I know that the potential human inside of me was not capable of achieving that potential without me. I am not obligated to keep anything inside of my body. If it could achieve that potential without me, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

I do not believe that we are limited to choosing amongst the choices you listed. The primary resource that is required for any of the options you listed is the mind that can accomplish the task. One of the key ingredients to the mind that is capable of accomplishing such tasks is freedom, freedom of thought. Where you have freedom of thought you have the possibility that someone is not going to like some of the results, or methods.

If we start trying to regulate which scientific efforts are good or bad we will require definitions for good and bad, which will not be universal. Therefore centralized controls are set up to appeal to the masses, or to the majority. As I stated elsewhere. We are a Constitutional Republic. It bothers me when I hear the word Democracy thrown around so freely without any thought as to what that means. It nearly kills me when we start electing these people. Forgive me, I’m a Political Science and Philosophy major who then intends to study Constitutional and First Amendment Law. I become a bit agatated about these things. Someone took a survey and found that an alarming number of people believe that the First Amendment guarantees us the right to own pets and drive a car. I nearly collapsed. I also believe fully in the Free Market Principle as I explore economic principles as a hobby. I’m odd, I know it.

I don’t mean to dismiss abortion as an easy choice. I said I don’t regret it. Often this is misconstrued to mean that I have no emotional reaction to it at all. Intellectually I do not regret it. Intellectually I understand very fully the consequences that would have accompanied any other choice that I made. I can’t say that I wonder perse about what results alternative options would have yeilded, yet there is a difficulty in finding that one does not know where others stand on an issue. This, as is made clear above, is an issue that you can easily relate to. Aristotle says, and I paraphrase, that it is the difficult times in our lives that reveal our true friends. I must admit that I was not brave enough to find out who my real friends were. I knew one, my oldest friend, who I am incomparably grateful for, was someone who I knew I could trust. However, others, who I hadn’t known forever I had less courage regarding. Or, realistically, there was no courage involved in telling my oldest friend.

Even if I had contacted a hundred friends, family, whoever, the fact would still be that I would have been the one who had to live with my choice. It is my position that the risks involved affected me, no matter what I chose. I do, one hundred percent, regard a fetus as a potential person, who will achieve the potential if the woman chooses to allow that potential to be fulfilled. I believe this as fully as you believe otherwise.

No, I don’t think that at all, particularly since this is a discussion on the subject and I put the story out there for the sake of discussion. You commenting here is different than, well one time, someone told me (unsolicited) “Oh No, adoption is just wrong! You don’t ever give your child up!”

I took into consideration the choice that I could live with. I am not now, nor have I ever asked anyone else to live with it.

But if or when you are struggling with decisions you may have made, it is ok to go to friends or family or someone to talk to for help. I no longer talk to the people I mentioned. They were all so insane, we moved 4 hours away. But my one friend was upset and she told me about her abortion. I was actually flattered that she thought I was someone who could help her through a tough time, just by being there. But yes, taking your issues out on people is wrong.

I think in many circumstances people think they can handle things on their own, yet their emotions become like water through cracks in a dyke, and manifest in ways they didn’t intend (and some people are just crazy-LOL). Anyway, I hope when you say it was your choice to live with, that doesn’t mean you do not have friends to help you if you need to talk, or you feel you shouldn’t. I know for me, I am a homeschooling housewife, and I get flack from my family that it is so weird, so I say very little about my daily struggles. It is not that I think I made the worng choice to be a homeschooling housewife, but I feel that telling someone in my family “I had a hard day” opens the door for criticism I don’t need.

I dunno, sometimes I think in an attempt to make abortion so accepted, the pro-choice side has made it sort of blase so it seems like it’s not that big a deal. I don’t make that point as a pro-choice/pro-life debating jab. But most girls I know, except the really nasty ones who I think very little in life phased them no matter what, were very sad after their abortions, or the very least were in a bit of shock as to how difficult it was.

Before I go on, I just wanted to apologise to my reply to your post on the other thread. I misunderstood. I thought in my pregnancy brain fog that you were saying that your parents kind of wanted to abort you. Anyway, out of context, my response may sound weird or mean.

I have to go to the supermarket. I will bbl.

What happened with the father of that child? Was he still a part of your life when you discovered you were pregnant? Did he ever know about the child he never had? Did his parents ever know about that grandchild they never met?

Perhaps none of them ever knew, so in a way they did not have to live with it. But even if no one had to live with your decision but you, someone had to die for it.

Imagine that all of the money that had gone into researching more and better abortion techniques had instead gone into increasing prenatal care, decreasing the age at which preemies can survive, and learning about how pregnancy ought to proceed. Imagine how many children could have been saved. Perhaps it would now be a simple procedure to reimplant a child who implanted somewhere other than the uterus, so that a tubal pregnancy was no longer a death sentence for the mother or child. Perhaps doctors would now be able to predict accurately when miscarriage was a risk, and prescribe a medication or course of action which could help prevent it. Perhaps people would not be performing dangerous and invasive procedures to determine whether it was “worth” carrying a given child (amniocentesis increases the risk of miscarriage; do not get one if this matters to you). Perhaps if killing the baby were not considered a cure, children born with syndromes which kill them within a few days would now be able to look forward to long, productive lives. Perhaps if we valued the life of a child over its death, then we would be more interested in ensuring quality of life to all children.

I know that the common response around a place like this is to feel that I don’t have the right to comment on your decision because of a lack of approval of mine, I don’t know if you feel that way, but I just wanted to say that I think you sound admirable.

I’m sorry that your friends behaved that way. It sounds as though you could do better in the way of friends. Their choices belonged to them just as yours belonged to you. They should have considered their choices in terms of what they could live with just as you did. It sounds as thou they took the path you avoided and attempted to make the choice everyone else could live with. Frankly, that is always a mistake. I took into consideration the choice that I could live with. I am not now, nor have I ever asked anyone else to live with it. I don’t regret my choice, but there are some women who do. There is someone who regrets any decision made. I understand that we are not speaking of buyers remorse in this instance, but each of us is an individual who thinks a little bit differently than others around us. We have our similarities granted, but the differences also exist.

No matter what, there is no excuse for taking our regrets out on someone else. We can tell people about our experiences. Which, mention has been made on here repeatedly about women who have had abortions and regretted them, who then try to tell other women about their experience. If such things didn’t happen we’d be reinventing the wheel everyday. I’m telling you I don’t regret my decision for the same reason.

I’m glad that being Catholic comes in handy. I’m not of the opinion that you should have to use it to justify how many children you have, or birth control opinions, or anything else. I think that I want a really big family is a fair answer, assuming that the question is out of innocent curriousity and not judgemental.

Thank you for sharing your story with me. I admit, that while I can’t imagine being against abortion as an option. I still understand fully why it is chosen, and what it means not to have the option available, but personally I have imbedded difficulties with the idea of having children. For myself, not for others. Other people always seem more competent of it than I feel I would be. I generally assume that people who have a lot of children just wanted a lot of children. There are people who for their own personal reasons always dream of a house full of children. If they can pull it off and it makes them happy then I don’t really see myself in a position to question it. I don’t know what their capabilities are and I can’t chain them to the capablilities I percieve myself to have.

Your story, and others like yours do make the concept of having children look slightly less terrifying somehow.

My mother was married to my father who was having an affair with another woman. They had two children at the time. My father convinced his “mistress” to have an abortion, but my mother refused. She had me, and my parents divorced. My father ended up marrying the “other woman” and they were married till he died two years ago. \

My mother put me up for adoption. The people who raised me (I consider them my real parents) were like Ward and June Cleaver.
I have had an amazing life. I have a brother (also adopted), a sister (also adopted), have now been married for 25 years (after having gotten pregant when I wasn’t married) have six children and 1 grandchild. The grandchild was also concieved out of marriage. They too got married and are doing well. My sister got pregnant and gave her baby up for adoption.

Three years ago I began the search for my birth mother. I had only one reason; To tell her thank you. After two years of INTENSE searching, I found her (which is how I learned the stuff in the first paragraph). I have a birth sister (whom I love dearly) and a birth brother.

Imagine how grateful I was when I discovered that my fathers mistress aborted her child (my half sister or brother) but my birth mother gave me life. How close I came to also being aborted. very scary.

So you see, in my life, a number of children have been concieved in imperfect circumstances. (2 of my cousins, and my best friend in grade school also had babies and gave them up for adoption.) Each of us made the decision (some adoption, some marriage) to let the child have a shot at life. None of us chose abortion. I gotta say, I think every one of us is very content with the choices we made. And if the choice had not been ours to make, I honestly don’t think it would have mattered one way or the other.

Kudos to you and everyone else out there who chose life instead of death.

God bless you pansy,

MK

PS Betty Smith (A tree grows in Brookly) also wrote a book (I think it was called “Maggie Now”). In it Maggie has a family of female cousins.
The mother of the cousins named each little girl after a flower (I think there were five of them) and referred to them as her little bouquet. (Maggie tells of how one time when they were bad, the mother lined them all up and spanked them right down the line, then went back down the line and kissed them, so they would know that they had done wrong, but were still loved) I loved this book and it made me think of you because I see that your sister’s? name is Peony…
MK

OK, here is a bit of a story (long, apologising in advance). I am telling you this story not as “pro-life” propaganda, so to speak, because there will be sentiments that will sound familiar, but as a personal answer to a personal question.

I had always been pro-life. I was a pro-life child. Many of my cousins are Jewish, and I used to go to this Jewish camp in the summers, and I remember sitting in lawn chairs with my cousin and the Rabbi’s wife as they complained about thse Catholic hospitals that would try to save the babies over the mothers (which in retrospect, I am unsure where they got their information), which would turn into these abortion debates, and my 11-year old sensibilities didn’t know this wasn’t the time or place to keep quiet. It was just always wrong to me. I am not even sure why, because the issue was not as big then as it is now, we weren’t real religious Catholics then, and I am not even sure if my mother, who was not Catholic then was even pro-life on this issue.

As a teenager I was sexually active at way too young an age. I spend a lot of time wondering what was going on, and the fact of the matter is, all I can come up with is a huge desire to fit in and do what everyone else was doing. Of course my family did not approve, but I remember having teachers, and adult family members who I was close to who used to “cool” with me and tell me that my parents were old-fashioned about the abstaining thing and all that mattered was that I used protection. All I heard in my adolescent brain “they are cool with me having sex”. Then the boys. I remember I was conned very easily by kind words by boys who were popular and wanting to fit in. So at 13 I had this “boyfriend” who would be the source of too much drama for the next 7 years, I wish I could erase those years. He was popular, his father used to work with my father and my father actually helped him with his dissertation (in other words, they were friends). He had a nice car. Both his parents were professionals, and he came from a line of Q-dogs and Deltas (black fraternities and sororities-something a bit impressive if you are AA). Other girls wanted to date him. He was a “catch” in high school.

Anyway, no surprise, I found myself pregnant at 15 right before my junior year of school started. I told my boyfriend first and he instantly broke up with me and told me to get an abortion. I told my girlfriends, and they told me to get an abortion (I was the only anti-abortion person among my peers). I told one of my cool cousins and she came down (they lived in the City and I lived in central NJ) and had talks with me about the need to have an abortion because I was too young, and all the reasons you would in good logic tell a pregnant 15-year-old to abort if you believed that was an option. My parents knew something was up and I told them. They were of course upset. The next day my father said “these are our options-I can adopt the baby or take care of the baby here, or if you want an abortion, I can’t help you find out about it, but you are my daughter and I will support you but that is a decision you have to live with, or you can put the baby up for adoption…”
“But Dad, I can’t keep it!”
“Well, just remember, this is your decision, but it will be one you will have to stand by for the rest of your life…” And that was all he said.

He was not manipulating me, he was being very compassionate. Or maybe he was, but if so, his language was nicer, and heck, everyone was manipulating me. The fact is, I didn’t want to have abortion, and he was the first person to tell me I didn’t have to. I didn’t want to be pregnant either. I was up for cheerleading captain as a junior on the varsity team, I was starting performing arts high school in fall…I chose adoption as my option. For some reason I thought it would be easy.

My ex-boyfriend had a fit. At first he desperately wanted alone time with me to sweet talk me into aborting, but my parents practically dead bolted the door. Then they told his parents, and I remember my mother saying “well, we are Catholic and abortion is not an option.” Fact is, as I found out later, being Catholic, even when people do not agree has been a good opt out of these conversations: “well, I’m Catholic, end of subject” because while other parties may not agree and gossip behind our backs later on about how we are stupid following some religion, it gets you out of the conversation quickly. This has worked in my adult life with “why do you have so many kids?”
“Catholic”
“oh”

I started school. My ob/gyn didn’t want me cheerleading-well doing anything to physically strenuous, so I gave up my captainship to a senior friend. My coach was baffled at the time. I started performing arts school, and had teachers lecture me about abortion when my pregnancy became known.
“And you don’t believe in abortion?”
“Catholic”
“Oh great!”

The worst though was my ex-boyfriend. He started bringing strings of girls around to flaunt in front of me. I remember our homecoming dance being such a nightmare. The insanity was unreal. The girls would whine and complain “I hate Pansy! How would you like it if you were trying to get with a guy and she were having his baby?”

He used to torment me with his “boys” in the lunch room They would stand and point and talk about how I better watch myself on the stair well, because if I’m not careful, I might have an accident. The teachers all loved-let’s call him “Amir” because his father was on the school board and he was witty, blah, blah, blah. He used to spend his time in the guidance counselor’s office whining about how hard this was on him, and what a golddigger I was etc. He missed 70 days out of that school year and should not have graduated. He cut class to have parties at the shore with his friends, and later told the school he was so screwed up because of my pregnancy and they agreed. He graduated. I didn’t miss 70 days, btw. I did start homestudy when I went into preterm labor. But I still studied.

The teachers, and administration gossiped about me. My neighbors found out about my confinement because of the gossip from school officials, not because me or my family told anyone.

On March 30, 1989 at age 16, I had an 8 lb 1 oz baby boy three weeks early which I named John Paul. I picked the family out prior at Catholic Charities. Much of what happened in this time period is an extremely, painful blur and I have a hard time speaking about it, let alone having a desire to go through the selfptorture of wnting to remember in detail. I actually have not even said this much in many years. I will say I loved my son madly and did not want to give him up, but I knew I could not provide for him the way the family I had chosen would have. Handing him over at the hospital left a hole in my heart the size of Antartica. But here is the thing, I have nightmares sometimes that I caved in to the harrasment and had an abortion. In these dreams I cry and I cannot look myself in the mirror and am left brokenhearted after having given in to everyone else’s wishes. I wake up with a huge sense of relief that my son is alive, and that I was able to help a family who wanted a child and could not have one on their own. That hole in my heart will never close but knowing that I kind of did the noble thing keeps me at peace. If I had aborted him, I think it would be a festering, gaping wound, and I don’t know how I would live with myself knowing how I feel about motherhood. I think I would be in big trouble without some type of major outside help or intervention. I am true to who I am, and that is important to me.

Oddly, after that, one by one, all my friends started turning up pregnant, and one by one they had abortions, many at the prompting of their boyfriends. One came to me crying that she didn’t want to tell me because she knew I was pro-life, but in the end felt she had nowhere else to turn or no one to talk to. I brought her to a priest and he told her he had to start by forgiving herself…

My other friends, our friendships got really ugly and bizarre. Knowing the challenges, I simply said “I don’t agree with abortion, but You’re my friend and if you need my help afterwards, let me know…” I remember one friend, she used to call her ex-boyfriend and say “well, I wanted to call you because one year ago today, our child would have been born…” Of course the guy couldn’t hang up quick enough.

My best friend who had multiple abortions, she was present at my son’s birth, she was my matron of honour at my wedding, she spent a lot of time talking to whoever would listen to people behind my back, including my husband that I was a liar and not as sweet as I seemed, and that I had “four abortions” but never told anyone-and that pro-life stuff was just an act. She told everyone this, even “Amir”. I don’t even know what conclusion to draw from that except that somehow abortion distorts people, granted I am sure she started out unhinged, but this was her fixation. Part of me is glad that didn’t let that happen to me.

I worded it not very clearly, I meant “to recycle” and “to not use birth control”(I don’t use birth control in my marriage for the reasons I mentioned). Recycling-all respect for life issues are the same issue to me, just have different degrees of importance. The earth is a gift from God and we don’t have the option to destroy, but take care of it. And we do not have the option to do things that would harm other people. Now recycling is not that big a deal on the scale, and we will by simply living make decisions out of our control that will of course step on other peoples toes or just be the less of two evils like sometimes I need to go to Wal-Mart to get socks for the kids because it is closer and cheaper), but when I make the choice to let’s say can my own gravy (northeast Italian dialect for tomato sauce) or buy jarred sauce, I think canning is healthier for my kids, it doesn’t waste another jar, it is better finacially…I make little decisions like that all day…

What is life.

Do you mean what is our opinion on this?

Life is a gift from God, it is not ours to control, because God created us to love us and to be happy with Him. Our lives ultimately belong to God.

That is a very short, top of my head answer. I could (and should) think about this for a long time, plus research what theologians and philosophers say on the subject. But I tried to describe in very few words the actual thoughts that go through my head each day when I come up with challenges to do things like use birth control, not to recycle, to buy from a small business as opposed to a large franchise, or even not to abort (yes, I’ve been faced with unplanned pregnancies).

What is life.