{"id":2097,"date":"2011-01-26T14:04:27","date_gmt":"2011-01-26T20:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeanschara.com\/?p=62"},"modified":"2011-01-26T14:04:27","modified_gmt":"2011-01-26T20:04:27","slug":"an-approach-to-reduce-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/an-approach-to-reduce-abortion\/","title":{"rendered":"An Approach to Reduce Abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some reason, I heard a lot of chatter about abortion this week.\u00a0 Probably due to the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade<\/a>.\u00a0 One line of discussion I heard was the disproportionate number of African-Americans choosing abortion over other categories of women.\u00a0 There was also more discussion about “ownership” (I suppose along the lines that parents “own” their children, thus they can decide whether or not to have them — I’m not sure, I only caught bits and pieces of these discussions).\u00a0 I suppose that came into play based upon the historical aspect of\u00a0 slavery and how it impacts the African-American community.\u00a0 I’m not particularly interested in that line of reasoning.\u00a0 Here’s why.<\/p>\n

Every woman who decides to have an abortion does so for some reason.\u00a0 In many cases, if the abortion is not legal, the woman will find a way to get the procedure done.\u00a0 This isn’t speculation — it’s well-documented fact.\u00a0 Outlawing abortion isn’t the answer.<\/p>\n

Ensuring young girls and women find themselves in an environment where they make a choice other than abortion is the answer.\u00a0 In some cases, a better response would be to raise women who value themselves and their unborn children and know there’s a place for them in the world.\u00a0 If that place isn’t with the biological mom, then it needs to be with an adoptive family — or the biological dad.<\/p>\n

WHY are women getting abortions?\u00a0 Look deeper than a superficial answer.\u00a0 Find a preventative solution.\u00a0 Ideally, women who don’t want to get pregnant should be taking appropriate preventive precautions.\u00a0 That requires knowledge, availability, and social approval of preventive measures.\u00a0 Ideally, girls and women not involved in a relationship where children would be a welcome addition to the family unit wouldn’t be having sex — or would be engaging effective preventative measures.<\/p>\n

Like outlawing abortion, “just saying no” isn’t really feasible.\u00a0 Years of evidence indicates abstinence only goes so far — especially in the 12-30+ age range.\u00a0 It’s nice to say.\u00a0 It’s admirable to achieve, but it isn’t working for everyone, and social pressure to be abstinent can result in “taking chances” to appear be abstinent.<\/p>\n

I mentioned earlier the need for women to value themselves.\u00a0 Too often, girls and women will let their bodies be used by men who don’t value them either because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do, or they think that’s how they’ll achieve value in the world.\u00a0 Or, maybe they believe a baby will love them — and people will go to a lot of lengths to be loved.\u00a0 Of course, someone getting pregnant so a baby will love them is unlikely to abort that baby, so we’re veering a little off topic here.\u00a0 It’s a related issue, but not relevant to the discussion.<\/p>\n

I hypothesize that many women and girls getting abortions believe they’re doing the best thing for the child — and, perhaps for themselves.\u00a0 They know the world they’re living in doesn’t have a bright future.\u00a0 They may not have a bright future.\u00a0 They may not want to be burdened with the responsibility.\u00a0 There are a lot of variants on the theme, but it boils down to the girl or woman not valuing herself or her unborn child.<\/p>\n

If girls and women valued themselves and their unborn children, would they get an abortion?\u00a0 I suggest far fewer of them would.\u00a0 So, if we divert the money and effort being expended by all sides to either keep abortion legal or make it illegal toward efforts to create an environment where women and girls didn’t WANT abortion, wouldn’t everyone be better off?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For some reason, I heard a lot of chatter about abortion this week.\u00a0 Probably due to the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.\u00a0 One line of discussion I heard was the disproportionate number of African-Americans choosing abortion over other categories of women.\u00a0 There was also more discussion about “ownership” (I suppose …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-progress"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}