I find myself to be in a bit of a dilemma when it comes to the Pro-Life/Pro-Choice topic. I myself differ from my hard-line Republican friends at times and this happens to be one of the topics where I do differ.

Many people hold fast in the belief that to be Pro-Life means that you have to fall in line with the hard-liners of the Pro-Life Movement and that abortion should not be available for any reason at any time. However I think of myself as being Pro-Life yet see things a little differently on this topic. I believe that abortion should NOT be used as a form of birth control, as it is today, but that special circumstances such as rape or incest should be an exception. I also find at times that a families monetary situation and family status prevents them from being adequate parents at times as well.

Before some folks get up in arms over my statements, let me explain why I feel the way I do!

In a perfect world I would be a Pro-life with no exceptions person, but we do not live in a perfect world. Take time to consider these things:

      1. Who is going to pay for/care for all the children born if no abortion is available?

2. Where will these children be placed after birth? Our system is full of children as we speak needing homes.

3. Who will give and pay for the mothers the adequate care that she will need after she is forced to have the child if she has been raped? That can be very costly and a life-long issue.

4. Is the system we have now adequate for taking on all these children?

5. Is the system good enough to raise a child in considering we are already fighting this Liberal Government in our schools and children’s lives?

6. Who has the authority to fix the Adoption Process and the Entity Gone Wild aka CPS? And will it be done before all the mothers are forced to have these children???

People often don’t think about these things when it comes to this topic. I myself break everything down in order to process the information and come up with an opinion. The topic of Rape really sticks out in my head due to being a Rape Survivor myself and becoming pregnant from the subsequent rape. A lot of people have NEVER been put in the position of being raped let alone pregnant from that rape. Let me tell you, it is the hardest position to ever be in especially if you have grown up in the Church.

I was 18 y/o and in the Navy at the time of my rape. I had left base and stopped to get gas when I was attacked by 5 men. First I had to get over the initial shock that it had actually happened to me, then I had to get up the courage to tell some one and that is not an easy task to do because you are so embarrassed that the incident had occurred in the first place. Next you have to get over blaming yourself for the occurrence, if you haven’t gone out of your mind at that point yet, then you fight the depression that sets in after you acknowledge that it has actually happened to you. Most fight the urge to commit suicide at this point, I know I did. After that you become angry and lash out at the world. You see it takes some time to get back to “normal” after something like this. The ones who don’t find themselves pregnant after this type of thing are actually the lucky ones! When you throw pregnancy in the mix, it’s a completely different ball game.

As everyone knows, you do not find out you’re pregnant until after some time has gone by. Some women know their bodies well and can tell sooner than others, but you lose that sense when you are battling the after effects of being raped. I myself found out I was pregnant 3 weeks into it. At first I was very strong about it and decided I could carry the child. I had been raised in the Church and abortion, let alone having sex when you are not married, was a big no-no, and I understood that well. I did ok for the next couple of days, but then the nightmares from the rape started up again. Things started to get really rough after that and I completely lost my mind. All I wanted after that was to get “it” (and yes, that is what I called the fetus at the time, “it”) out of my body. I felt so unclean and dirty and it was literally driving me insane. I started drinking and when I say drinking, I mean I guzzled more alcohol than a whole platoon in a day to try to cope with what life was hitting me with. I had to be hospitalized after that because I was going to hurt or kill myself if something wasn’t done, and done soon. At that point, my doctors (and I to a certain degree being crazed out of my mind) decided it would be better to terminate the pregnancy. I still have to live with my decision and I also have to deal with the effects of being raped to this day. Counselling and plenty of therapy does help one to live with one’s self after some time has passed.

Now, not everyone who is raped terminates a pregnancy. Some people are better at separating themselves more-so than others. I got to meet a few women who carried their children to term in counseling sessions and they called it being “numbed out”. They just didn’t think about being pregnant and carried on as if they weren’t. When their babies were taken away, they had no feelings of regret, hurt, sadness, or even the slightest bit of attachment to the child. One of those girls went on to kill herself a week later……. Some women carry their babies to term and keep the child, but at what expense to the child? Many abuse cases rise from mothers who go on to have a child born out of rape. The child often gets mentally or physically abused because the child is a reminder of the rape that they endured. Some women are stronger and raise the child with love too. I am not dumb enough to say that it doesn’t happen, because it does and those women have my utmost admiration for having done so.

According to RAINN (Rape Abuse and Incest National Network) a sexual assault occurs every 2 minutes. That’s 207,754 occurrences each year and many go unreported. RAINN states that 54% will go unreported, most victims are under the age of 30, and 97% of rapists never spend a day in jail.

Effects of Rape

Victims of sexual assault are:

3 times more likely to suffer from depression.

6 times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

13 times more likely to abuse alcohol.

26 times more likely to abuse drugs.

4 times more likely to contemplate suicide.

According to The American Congress of Obstetrician and Gynaecologists,  10,000–15,000 abortions occur among women whose pregnancies are a result of reported rape or incest in the US each year. According to a study done by PubMed.gov, an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. Numbers for rapes, incest, and pregnancies that stem from these things are often lower than reported as well, because the National Crime Victimization Survey(NCVS) run by the Bureau of Justice does not measure the victimization of Americans age 12 or younger.

Most people who are for no exceptions often say “The child can be put up for adoption, there are plenty of families out there who want a child that can’t have them.”. Well according to Adoptive Families , there are approximately 425,000 children in Foster Care here in the United States as we speak. Around 115,000 of those children are waiting for permanent homes.The others may have the potential of being returned to their parents. Each year, about 26,000 children age out of foster care. So, it seems to me that there aren’t as many eager people out there willing to adopt.

You also have to take into account the adoption process and qualifications as well. It is not easy to adopt a child here in the US. Many people are adopting children from overseas because the requirements are less strict. Adoption.com explains these things very well! Just because you think you are good enough to adopt a child, does not mean your State does. Some say you have to be married for a certain number of years, not be a divorcée, be over 23 and under 45 years of age, not have any medical issues (and those issues can be from having been treated for depression in the past on up). sometimes the state will decline you because even though you think you live comfortably, they can and will say you do not meet their monetary criteria. You often will be required to take parenting classes and have to complete and pass a Home Study as well.

Child Protective Services (CPS) pulls children from homes everyday. Many because they are being abused and many because the parents simply can not afford to take care of them properly and someone reported them. Some people lose their children to CPS simply because they pissed their neighbor or friend off and out of retaliation they get reported on. I myself had to deal with CPS when trying to keep my 2 nieces out of the system, and let me tell you, their program is designed to keep children in the system! I had meetings all of the time, home visits out of the blue, counselling appointments, court hearings, and I was even required to drug test at random. All of this and more was added to my plate and I still had to maintain income for my household as well, because if you don’t jump through their hoops and you lose your income you lose your child to the system. I myself lost in my battle to CPS and had to wait until my nieces were returned to parent (Which never should have happened, but as I said, the system is designed to make you fail and keep the children in the system) in order to get custody of my nieces directly from my sister by having her sign over guardianship while she could do so without CPS interference.

Many of these children enter the Foster Care System because their parents fail to fulfil their obligations to the program that is court ordered once CPS takes your kids away. In my opinion CPS does more harm than good. They have become more about the money they can receive from the government with every child pulled, than about helping families. If you think CPS is a great organization and they should have their claws on children, you may want to go look at some of the Memorial Pages online of Children who have died while in CPS care. Suncanaa.com is a great site as they update their website all the time with the deaths of the children that have occurred on CPS’s watch. They have a Memorial wall with pictures of  the fallen children, a guest book, and they also provide a lot of useful information about CPS as well.

Susanne Babbel, Ph.D., M.F.T. wrote a great series of articles on the topic of CPS, Foster Care, and Group Homes in 2011. It is a 4 part series called “The Foster Care System and Its Victims” found on Psychology Today. In her articles she talks about how we have a System that has been compromised and the abuse and neglect that children receive while in the system. Dr. Babbel gained her masters degree in psychology from John F. Kennedy University and later studied mind-body therapy and psychology at the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. She currently writes regular articles about trauma and depression for Psychology Today Blog.

In closing, I ask you to be sure to read the links provided and then ask yourselves the 6 questions I asked in the beginning. Think long and hard on them. Like I said in the beginning, if we lived in a perfect world, I would be a Pro-Life without exceptions person but we do not live in a perfect world….

***Addition***

People always have opinions on this topic yet I have yet to see people give a solution other than to trust in God and it will all work out. It hasn’t worked out for the children who have died in the system or the ones who live in it till they are put out on the streets on their own!!! “When I say come up with solutions, I have one myself! My suggestion is to fix the system! CPS is an entity that regulates itself! They do what they want when they want! Make the Adoption Process better to where good families can adopt children! Good people who want children get denied every day because of one reason or another! People need to start putting their money where their mouth is and stop letting these kids be raised by the System!!! If we do that, less kids turn out to be addicts, murderers, thieves, and thugs!! Morals can be instilled and the healing can begin! If you can’t put your money where your mouth is, you are part of the problem! You are saying to force the women to have a child who is essentially being thrown away anyway! FIX THE DAMN SYSTEM AND PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS!!! It takes money to raise a child everyone knows this!!! Children would not be in the system if people force the Government to fix the system, open their homes, and put their money where their mouths are! Not just for the children either! For the mothers that will be forced to have these children too! Counselling and Therapy is NOT CHEAP!!! It’s easy to sit back and dictate what others can and can not do! It is also easy to sit back and watch others pay for stuff too! But who will pay for these kids and these mothers?????”