I'm surprised that I hadn't seen a blog like this before but one anonymous woman has started a blog titled What to Expect When You're Aborting. Its pretty much her first-person experience. Some people are a tad skeptical it's real, but I've communicated with the author and, more than that, I find her writing to be incredibly riveting and personal. It just feels like a real person.
In the meantime Joan Lamunyon Sanford has an column on why just because Bristol Palin has a loving family that will support her choice doesn't mean that every pregnant 17-year-old can expect the same. Which is why teenagers, like adult women, need to have choices because not everyone's life is full of peaches'n'cream families with the financial means or desire to help.
Cross-posted at NewsCat
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6 comments:
Excellent post. I can't wait to check out the first blog you linked to.
And your last point is definitely important. I personally know 4 girls who got pregnant around the age of 17 and had very little support from their family. If they had been better educated about protection and their choices, I think their lives would have been different now.
When I taught at a high school in rural Virginia, several of my students became pregnant during the two years I was there. The determining factor in whether or not the girls stayed in school post-giving birth was if the family could provide support. One student told me that her family had disowned her, and that staying in school was simply not financially viable since she would need to work full-time once she gave birth. I only know of one student who got an abortion, she was in her freshman year at the time and had her mother's support.
All the girls made their own decisions, but their experiences and the factors influencing their choices had little to do with those of an upper class girl with a supportive family. We shouldn't be basing our policies on best case scenarios - where the family and father are behaving as they should. And we need to make sure that the right to choose isn't reserved only for those who already have the most options, the outcome if we make this a states issue since those with money will be able to travel to providers, while those without the means to travel will be forced into just one choice.
Thank you for posting this! I had seen it on a couple of blogs and have been meaning to check it out, but kept forgetting to.
It is great to see somebody taking the politics out of this issue and making it personal again. These voices always get lost in the shuffle and blame.
You know the one thing I also realized from reading Abortion Clinic Days is that sometimes the opposite situation occurs where the teenager would like to keep *and raise* her child but the parents want her to have an abortion or give it up for adoption.
The blog also noted that even though children are chattle in every other sense and parents can prevent their kids from getting an abortion they can't force their children to have one.
There is a lot of good stuff over at progressivealaska on Sarah Palin.
Apparently the police chief that Palin appointed when she was mayor required victims of rape to pay for their own rape investigation kits.
http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-do-rape-gurney-joe-and-alaska-hb.html
As the blogger points out, "you can't make this stuff up".
A feminist requiring a victim of rape to pay for her own investigation?
Thanks for linking to this blog. What a compelling, personal response about such a hyper-politicized and polarizing topic.
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