Life Issues: June 2006 Archives

In the comments box below, in my post Time To Tell A Story (I'm Still Judgemental), a woman named "Jane" tells a story that many years ago, she too was an unmarried pregnant 16-year old:

If you were a woman of my generation and became pregnant as a teen (I, too, was 16), your baby was taken away without you ever seeing or holding him or her. You had no "choice" to "give" your baby up for adoption. Your baby was taken, you were told to shut up and never say a word about it and act like it never happened, and you were treated like a pariah by your family forever. This was standard operating procedure for Catholic homes for "unwed mothers".

And that's why I'm pro-choice.

Because I know what it is not to have a choice.

A debate between she and I followed because of my lack of understanding what being pro-choice has to do with the circumstances of the adoption. During that debate, Jane states:

The reason you say what you say about knowing your child is still alive and with a family and how it's one big Hallmark Channel three-hanky Movie of the Week is because you had a choice. I wonder how you'd feel if you'd never been allowed to lay eyes on your child or hold your child? You would see that family as the enemy. As thieves who stole your child and destroyed you in order to snatch undeserved happiness for themselves.

Her words made me unearth some thoughts about my experience, and made me think my story was somewhat incomplete.
This is all very strange to me, because like I mentioned in one of the comments I haven't really talked about this in 15 years, and I don't know what is compelling me to talk about it now. Like I said, I have not kept it a deep dark secret or anything. But I certainly don't advertise it and I try hard not to think about it. Part of me thinks that I have tried to be this good, Catholic mother, and good, Catholic mothers do not have stories about getting pregnant out-of-wedlock at 15. The other part is much of these events are too painful to dwell on, and dwelling does nothing to help me get by day to day.
Lately, another part of is starting to understand that this series of events really affected why I feel and do so many of things I do today.

Fact is, in my retelling of the story, I did not mean to gloss over adopting out a child as easy because it was right and we all were so happy in the end. I was not happy in the end, but I think I made the best choice for my son, and that keeps me refelcting on it in a positive light rather than a negative one.

After I delivered my son, I got to spend three days with him at the hospital. Up until that point of my short life, they were some of the happiest I ever felt. Every friend I had came to visit me and see the baby. I had never been uncomfortable around babies because at the time my brothers were 5, 3 and 1. Baby care was second nature to me. I had a hard time listening to mothers education sessions between nurses and new Moms in other rooms as they taught the ladies how to change and burp babies. I remember wondering if the lady in the next room who was having a hard time of grasping the concept of changing a diaper without sticking the tapes to the baby knew what a blessing it was to go to a hospital, have a baby and bring that baby home. For her, the hospital stay was the start of her new life with her child and for me it was the end. I would have given anything to be in her position.

After I handed my baby over to his foster mother and went home, I never knew the an emptiness like I felt then. I was in a painful place that nothing, or anyone could make better. This was a true first for me. Things that were big deals to me before, like going out to breakfast were nothing.

I could have taken 6 weeks off of school, but I think I opted to go back 2 or 3 weeks later to keep busy. Life was spacey and weird. Everyone at school were still teenage high school students, and so was I, but I wasn't. People were mulling around about proms, games, and "OH-MY-GOSH did you hear about such and such?" I could no longer relate. I think this started a trend of cynacism that has stuck with me.

I tried to get back into the groove, and I did to some extent, but from then on, I felt like I was in a separate reality or something. I couldn't relate to anyone around me, and they could not relate to me.
I wanted to talk to people desperately about what happened, but no one wanted to talk to me about it. I remember I was working at the supermarket and a woman on my line, her husband recently died and she was telling me about her loss and her personal feelings, and I was a complete stranger. I thought she felt the same I did when I gave my son up, the need for someone to listen to you for whatever reason people need that. Well, that was how I felt at first, but no one wanted to talk about it. Everyone said "well that is done, just get on with your life" or "people don't talk about that kind of thing", so I swallowed it all real hard (and here we at least 15 years later).

HT: The World IMHO via The Curt Jester

As you can see from the article, the war on contraception is more a war for common sense:

The New York Times joined the fray with a May 7 article titled "The War on Contraception.” Feminists point to several elements of the so-called war:

# The Food and Drug Administration has refused to approve the open sale of the morning-after pill in pharmacies.

# The administration has promoted abstinence as the chief way of avoiding pregnancy.

# Health insurers are reportedly under mounting pressure not to cover the morning-after pill.

# Four states – Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Dakota – have approved laws allowing pharmacists to refuse to sell birth control pills.

Sometimes I wonder, what are they really fighting for?

Dawn Eden posts a somewhat confusing story about a teenager who becomes pregnant in high school, and cannot play basketball, but wants to return to basketball, and at first the school won't let her, but then they do...the story is a bit long.
I commented. My comments, along with a few others were picked up by Jill of Feministe as heartless condemnation against teen mothers or people who have sex something like that.

I commented because I had a lot of experience with knowing pregnant teens as a teen and young adult. My high school had one policy to not stigmatize, my husband's high school had a different policy. Frankly I am not sure what is better, and a study on the issue would be interesting. However, I feel kind of strongly that getting pregnant is a choice, and not a great choice as a teen. I have known girls who have had abortions, many who had their children. Of the ones who had their children, I have known two groups ones whose parents let them struggle a bit with the consequences, and ones whose parents pretty much became a parent to their grandchildren to allow their children to continue on the same path. Many are still in the same relationship ruts many years later. (By the way, I realize I am out of the realm of the story of the girl and basketball and her scholarship. Each scenario is different. These are some thoughts on the issue in general.)

I started to blog about an example someone in our family, but decided against it. I was not sure how to do so without sounding incredibly frustrated and well, "judgemental".

More and more, the American opinion about sex is becoming that sex is simply fun like playing Monopoly. Those of us who equate sex with things like reproduction, love and bonding,respect for ourselves or others, or sexually transmitted diseases are out of it, judgemental, cold, or a number of other things that means out-of-touch with reality. I find this so baffling because regardless of your morals, nature is still nature. If you are holding a ball and let go, it will fall to the floor. If you have sex, you have a chance of getting pregnant, that is not old fashioned stigma. If you have a child, that child will change things in your life. That child will need care, food, clothing, love and nurturing. That is what is, not outdated opinion. That is just why people have parents. It seems like there is a notion that if you keep yelling enough times that these facts are not true, and you insult the people enough who believe in these facts, you can alter reality. I suppose it works a bit. It seemed to me there was a time when mothers would rather die than see harm come to her child, now 1,300,000 mothers a year pay to have their children killed. Still trying to change terms of nature is an injustice.

It is not a favor to teenage girls to keep saying "sex is ok as long as you have a condom" over and over again (although it might be to some teenage boys who want sex without commitment). It is not about hating girls, being unrealistic, or having some desire to point fingers and throw stones. It is about working for a fulfilling, happy life,loving relationships, and giving your offspring as stable environments as possible. Being used by a boy is not fun, and I repeatedly get frustrated for all the sex ed that is out there, no one talks about the emotional side, and the reason for the emotional side is to keep married couples together and bonded. Having children too young regardless if you decide to keep the child, abort, or put that child up for adoption is hard. And STDs can make people very sick, with perhaps permanent side effects and even kill.

Since we have dissassociated sex with reproduction, it is then that girls who turn up pregnant are kind of like "I didn't see that coming", not girls who are used to seeing traditional marriage=families, marriage=families over and over again. (Of course again, the myth is that traditional family roles means that we never teach our children anything about sex and tell them babies come from storks. Whatever.)Why has this become such a common place taboo? Morals aside, I am baffled by the logic (or lack thereof) of it. I am so tired of seeing girls in dreadful, depressing dramas with their "baby daddies". I am tired of seeing children without fathers. I am so sad that this has become the norm, and this is just what people do. I know I am preaching to the choir, but I am so tired and frustrated. I know so many people I would like to see better for.

I wanted to look up something on Black Genocide.org, but I didn't know the web address off the top of my head. I Googled "Maragret Sanger's Negro Project", and the first result was a page in the Planned Parenthood site called "The Truth About Margaret Sanger". I of course saw the irony because the "truth" will of course be followed by a number of lies.

To my surprise, the first quotes they had of Margaret Sanger to convince us that she was not a racist (who did not believe birth control should be used to lessen the black population remember) in my opinion revealed the opposite sentiment:

In a letter to philanthropist Albert Lasker, from whom she hoped to raise funds for the project, Sanger wrote that she wanted to help

a group notoriously underprivileged and handicapped to a
large measure by a 'caste' system that operates as an
added weight upon their efforts to get a fair share
of the better things in life. To give them the means of helping
themselves is perhaps the richest gift of all. We believe
birth control knowledge brought to this group, is the most
direct, constructive aid that can be given them to improve
their immediate situation (Sanger, 1939, July).

So, what are the "better things in life?" Men being able to sleep around without commitment? Being married and not having children with the person you love? If she was so worried about black people having "the better things in life", why didn't she hand out free gift certificates to Macy's, fine restaurants, scholarships, or Cadillacs? OK, maybe some of my choices are over the top, but I am not sure what she is talking about. Does she mean "better things" like necessities, or luxuries? If it's necessities, maybe providing those instead of birth control would be of better help.

My mother was born in 1950, and grew up in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem (her clinic was in Harlem), and moved to St. Albens, Queens (home to Run DMC, Al Roker, James Brown, and if anyone read the book The Color of Water) as a teenager. The Harlem of her childhood, before the ravages of birth control (now the black community has an 80% out of wedlock birth rate) and drugs was a working class neighborhood where even though her mother worked, the neighbors kept tabs on the kids, because if they did anything amiss, their parents would be notified. Hers was a neighborhood with intact families, where girls attended finishing school and grew up to be debutantes, where my mother attended the first black private school (The Modern School), and her sister went on to be the first black woman to go to Bronx Science.A neighborhood regardless of your faith, when the Church bells rang at noon for the Angelus, everyone at least stopped if you were not Catholic. Sugar Hill is no longer like that, and I wonder what factors transpired to change it...

Anyway, my mother's family was working class, but like many of us, we don't realize there are much better things than having the bills paid, hugs from our family, and a fresh baked apple pie, until someone points out we are falling short materially. I hear no stories from her about what she didn't have, but lots of stories of her following her big brother around, buying a pickled pigs ear from the corner store for a nickel on the way to school (yuck), or Saturday night TV shows and her father fixing special Saturday night treats.

In 1942, she wrote again to Lasker, saying

I think it is magnificent that we are in on the ground floor,
helping Negroes to control their birth rate, to reduce their
high infant and maternal death rate, to maintain better
standards of health and living for those already born, and
to create better opportunities for those who will be born (Sanger, 1942).

This would almost sound OK except if she weren't racially motivated, why is her ambition not to help "people" (as opposed to "Negros") with their maternal and infant death rates period. End of story. If that is her goal, then that should be her goal. But those words are thrown in for good measure, in my opinion. Her main goal, because we are talking about "Planned Parenthood's" main goal in helping Negros control their birth rate.

When I hear people talk like this, I grab my kids and run.

Update:I found this from Annie Banno on the subect from like a month ago.