Re: Teenage pregnancy?
- From: Yowie <Yowie9644.DIESPAMDIE@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:23:49 +1000
Bill Samuel wrote:
About half of all women who are pregnant but did not intend to become
pregnant were using contraception at the time they became pregnant.
That shows in the statistics my center compiles, and I have also seen
similar figures in much broader studies by groups with varying
positions on abortion and contraception.
The four women in my social circle who got unintentionally pregnant were all used contraception. In my sister's case, she thinks the pill failed because she threw up later that night. In one of my friends cases, in was condom failure. The other two I don't know.
My sister chose to keep her pregnancy. One friend had no idea she was pregnant (she was never regular) until it was too late to get a legal abortion. She kept the child and was a single parent at 18. The other two friends chose abortion. One was in a long term stable relationship (although isn't with the father now) and one wasn't. Their reasoning was the same: the contraception failed, this wasn't supposed to happen. A baby at this time in their lives would screw up everything.
Of the two who had abortions, one has gone on to be happily married, and has two planned and much loved children. The other is still single and has no children. Neither regret their decision, and whilst the single one occasionally mourns the idea that the lost pregnancy was probably the only pregnancy she'll ever have (she's now over 40, and unlikley to be fertile now) she still maintains that a pregnancy when she was single, a student, and deeply in debt due to student loans would have been a truly dumb idea, even though she would like to be a mother now.
A reason for the high abortion rate in the USA is the lack of social
supports common in most other industrialized countries. Catholics in
Alliance for the Common Good recently did a study on the connection
between social supports and abortion, which can be found at
http://www.catholicsinalliance.org/files/CACG_Final.pdf This is a
reason why many who are pro-life are reluctant to support Republicans,
because that party is not very sympathetic to providing the social
supports, although they did add a clause on that to their abortion
plank in their new platform.
I would like to think that those who talk a woman out of a abortion would then be responsible enough for that action that they continue to support that family. Unfortunatley it appears to this admittedly outsider that the most vocal abortion opponents don't really give a fig about the baby (or its mother) once its born, they only care that it comes to term and comes out alive.
It also seems to this admitted outsider that those who most stridently oppose abortion also seem to *also* seem to oppose contraception and sex education, as if sex really only does occur inside a marriage that believes that a) sex is only for procreation and b) any children born conceived in marriage are welcome. It seems a very naive view of the world, and one that I object to being forced onto anyone via laws and precedents in the courts. I personally think that sex education should be universal, as should contraception should be universal and *free* (ask no questions...). Those who wish to maintain a more Biblical attitude towards sex can be free to do so... but those who follow their natural biological urges are safe and cared for without people interferring with their just as valid beliefs.
Yowie
.
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