I'm sure there will be some squealing piggies by the time some people have finished reading my thoughts on this particular topic. I've considered writing about it for some time now, but didn't really have a good way to begin that didn't sound preachy, and I am truly trying to avoid that. Today, I read the following article:
I sat on my couch, mouth agape, stricken. That figure is astounding to me. I wondered, how do we, as women respond to this? Women, who have fought for their "right to choose" are now ending the lives of future women, and thereby denying any choice they could have made for themselves. What happens to a woman's right to choose when there's no women left? While I understand the culture differences between women in America and the women in India, the numbers are still astonishing. 12 MILLION over 3 decades. 400,000 girls a year. In 1 country. While I haven't been able to locate the same statistic for aborted girls in China, I did find the following information:
In a 2002 survey conducted in a central China village, more than 300 of the 820 women had abortions and more than a third of them admitted they were trying to select their baby's sex.
"According to a report by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the vast majority of aborted fetuses, more than 70 percent, were female, citing the abortion of up to 750,000 female fetuses in China in 1999."
"A report by Zhang Qing, population researcher of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the gender imbalance is "statistically related to the high death rate of female babies, with female death rate at age zero in the city or rural areas consistently higher than male baby death rate." Only seven of China's 29 provinces are within the world's average sex ratio. Zhang Qing's report cited eight "disaster provinces" from North to South China, where there were 26 to 38 percent more boys than girls."
"In the last census in 2000, there were nearly 19 million boys more than girls in the 0-15 age group."
I pulled these quotes from an 2004 article on MSNBC.com. Considering that China has a legal restriction on the number of allowable children per family, whereas India does not, I would estimate that those numbers have increased over the last 7 years.
In the case of India, the method to determine the gender is the ultrasound. In order to determine gender via ultrasound, the woman is typically between 18-20 weeks pregnant. We're not talking early term abortion here. At 12 weeks gestation, the baby's brain is fully formed and they can feel pain. They may suck their thumb. By 16 weeks, they have eyelashes. At 18 weeks, they blink, grasp with their hands, and move their mouths. By the time 20 weeks rolls around, they have fingerprints.
If you are of the mindset that they are not alive until birth, then think about the risks to the mother. There are a multitude of physical and psychological side effects that a woman who chooses to terminate a pregnancy can endure, up to, and although rare in this country, including death.
Don't be too quick to say, "Well, that's India and China... not here. It's totally not the same thing." We may not have statistics on gender selection in relation to abortions in this country, but it would be naive to think it doesn't happen here. In 2008, there were 1.2 million abortions in the United States. In a nation where tests to determine genetic abnormalities is strongly recommended (to the point of being pushy... and I've lived that, so yes, it does happen), abortions are already occurring when parents think that their child may be less than perfect. How many pregnancies have been terminated because of the potential of genetic difficulties? Although not common, and certainly not easy, some couples are using sex selection during IVF today. If science allows us the option, how long will it be before we are playing God? More than we already are, anyway.
Okay, clearly I'm Pro-Life. My personal opinion is that life begins at conception. I am part of the first generation of American children who could have legally been aborted after Roe vs. Wade. Yes, I know that means I have always lived in a country that offered women the "freedom" of choice. I know that I didn't live in a country where back-alley abortions were prevalent. That doesn't change my opinion. While I do want women to have access to good health care, and to be safe from harm, our right to choose begins long before we're trying to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. We can choose to abstain from sex. We can choose to use methods of birth control if abstinence isn't the choice we made. Before I get jumped on about cases of rape and incest... where the woman had her choice taken from her... please realize that abortions done in this country due to rape and/or incest amount to less than 1/2 of 1%. We can choose to rely on God's promise to us that His plan is greater than our own. We were, after all, "knit together in our mother's womb" according to Scripture, and he knew us before then.
My grandmother and her mother before her struggled with society's expectations about pregnancy. My grandmother used to tell me that if my grandfather laid his pants across the bedpost, she got pregnant. She came from a very poor family with 11 brothers and sisters. She didn't want a large family. She had horrible pregnancies, and with each birth, she had greater complications. By the time my youngest uncle was born, it nearly killed her. Birth control was available by then, but my grandfather was unwilling to "allow" her to be on it. When she was still living at home, she recalled walking in on her mother bleeding to death after she performed a coat-hanger abortion so that she wouldn't have number thirteen. That was a horrible time. It was no doubt a terrifying position to be in. This is not that time. Birth control is available, and affordable...especially in comparison to the cost of raising a child to 18. There are hundreds upon thousands of families just aching to have a baby that aren't able to have their own. Those willing to adopt will cover medical expenses, and all costs associated with that pregnancy. You can't assume that not having medical abortions at your disposal automatically pushes us back to the 1950s. It just ain't so.
One last thing... before you lump me in with the Pro-Lifers that bomb abortion clinics, or kill abortion doctors, please don't. The fanatics in any organization will always make the entire group look like a bunch of nuts. I don't believe that holding up an aborted fetus during a protest shows any respect for life. While I detested the acts that Dr. Tiller performed at his clinic in Wichita, I don't believe that he should have been gunned down in his church on a Sunday morning, or anywhere else for that matter. I do believe the man responsible for his murder should be punished to the full extent of the law. I also believe that women who do choose abortion deserve compassion, and to be treated with dignity not condemnation. I don't think spewing hatred and hurling insults helps anyone on either side of the debate. Most importantly, I believe in the love and forgiveness of an all-seeing, all-knowing God. A God who doesn't make "mistakes". A God who sent His son, His only, beloved son and sacrificed Him on a cross for every last one of us. That means He sent his son for me, for George Tiller, for the man who murdered him, for the lost little girls of India, for the women trying to make that decision today. Every. Last. One. Of. Us.
Just in case anyone reading this is currently dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, I've added some resources below.
Unplanned Pregnancy
913-962-0200 (answered 24 hours a day) (If you're in the Kansas City metro area)
aapc website: www.EducatedDecision.org
National Website: www.OptionLine.org
Abortion Recovery
National Hotline: 1.800.4MyRecovery
www.AbortionRecovery.org
