When you banned E, I deleted a post in which I wrote a description of my past employment in institutions that dealt with pregnancy in different ways - first as a scrub tech in labor and delivery, then as phone counsellor and receptionist at an abortion clinic, and finally as lay counsellor and general dogs-body at a Catholic maternity home. When I worked at the abortion clinic, one of my duties was to tally up the answers to a questionnaire where the women said what birth control they had been using, if any.
My experiences there and at the maternity home lead me to believe that most women with problem pregnancies were not using any reliable form of birth control. It's not lack of good birth control that's the problem. It's ambivalence.
The drive to reproduce is very strong. As Mq puts it, we come from an unbroken line of beings which reproduced successfully, otherwise we would not exist.
But in the grey light of morning, the reality is that you've taken on another life and the sacrifices a mother must make are overwhelming even when the pregnancy is desired whole-heartedly and there is a good support system, a good husband with a good job, a good family, good friends.
It's always been that way, and it always will be that way, and there will always be women who decide that it's ok to get rid of the baby for this or that reason. Sometimes because the sex was not consensual, sometimes because the baby is deformed, it's not all just fecklessness.
So, while it would be nice if all women decided to use good birth control and there were no problem pregnancies, it's not going to happen.
This issue is not ever going to go away. At most, we can defederalize it and leave it to the states. |
