Hi all,
Just mulling over some information here and wondering if the state government of Alabama really cares about the life of the child in its goal of criminalizing abortions.
I found, from a report on a study by the Guttmacher Institute, and I freely accept that some will write this report off as just more pro-abortion propaganda, that in 2014 three fourths of abortion patients were considered low income based on the federal poverty level guidelines.
Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients in 2014 and Changes Since 2008
Then I found this report in Newsweek that claimed that Alabama was refusing to fund mother and child healthcare.
Alabama legislators refuse to fund mother and child health care as they ban nearly all abortions
For me, this brings up the question of what all these poverty level and below mothers are supposed to do if they decide not to come up with the $500-800 for an abortion procedure, but choose, or are forced, to accept the thousands of dollars it's going to take to raise a
healthy and well cared for child.
I mean yes, ultimately we would desire that young people (60% of abortion patients are in their 20's. The report doesn't provide numbers for adolescents) don't have sexual relations outside of marriage or that at the very least they use control methods. However, with our culture selling sex in so much of its television and movie programming, that's not likely to ever happen. A young couple gets sexually excited and in the heat of the moment nobody even thinks about using protection. Then you have young men who eschew the use of condoms and expect the female partner to take care of the issue since they're the ones who are going to wind up pregnant. I just imagine that in our culture it's going to be a really hard sell to reduce the unwanted pregnancy rate among young people and surely impossible to get it to zero.
So, what are our choices if we can't stop two people from having unprotected sexual relations who wouldn't want a child if that eventuality comes about from their relationship?
1. Adoption. Surely there is a need for adoptable babies right now. However, do we have the capacity to absorb 700,000 babies every year? If adoption were to become the norm, I would think it likely that the number may even be greater. My thinking is that a lot of women don't get abortions because of the stigma attached to the process, but adoption might mean that more women decide to put their child up for adoption that wouldn't have had an abortion. Nevertheless, can our adoption needs absorb 700,000 babies each year?
2. The pregnant mother keeping the child. This, as we have found, especially with the low income recipients, means another child who grows up in need and with often poor parental supervision and often no father figure. A study conducted by Missouri State regarding gang association finds that gang members often come from single parent homes:
Into the Abyss: Parents of Gang Members
With some 700,000 unwanted babies now being born each year that may not be adopted, what are the chances that we're going to grow more gangs? Even if some of these now born children don't join gangs, they may well adopt criminal behaviors as they grow up from lack of parental care and supervision.
Bottom line, it's not an easy answer and the only way to find out is to bring about that condition. Let's put 700,000 more babies out there that are unwanted by the parent to either be forced on the parents or offered to adoptive parents and see what happens.
Please don't label me pro-life or pro-choice. I'm just thinking pragmatically here. As I've said in an earlier post, I don't think that trying to get the world to live as God has asked His children to live, has ever been a workable solution. Israel wasn't able to keep up with God's commandments and by the time Jesus arrived he was railing against their leadership for setting aside the commandments of God for the ways of man. So, I'm not expecting any nation or group of people who are not all sold in for God, to establish the laws of God as a workable set of laws in the world today.
I agree that as a believer if we are asked, or if the choice should come up in our life, that we would choose against aborting a child. However, that's only because of the qualifier that one is a believer. Believers are asked to live differently than the world and this is one of those life situations where we are going to make different choices than the unbeliever because we hold to a different set of values. A believer shouldn't even find himself/herself in such a situation in the first place if they also believe that God asks them to be sexually pure.
What I also know is that abortion is not the 'unforgivable sin'. If a young woman has an abortion or a young man encourages a woman to have an abortion, and she does, Jesus' sacrifice for sin is also sufficient for that sin. So for me, whether or not one would personally choose to have an abortion depends on their relationship with God. That single act is not enough to save them if they don't have it done, nor remove them from God's offer of forgiveness if they do.
However, as I started this thread, I believe that the State of Alabama, if they are going to take away the choice of so many low income women from aborting their children, they should be prepared to offer greater financial assistance to those women to try and give the child a fighting chance in this lost and dying world.
God bless,
In Christ, ted