(no subject)

[ravencallscrows]

Today, i'm going to break new ground and talk about something here that i haven't talked about here before.
We (damashita and i) had our second appointment with the midwives tonight, and, for the first time, got to hear a heartbeat.
This takes something that was pretty theoretical and makes it very real. After twelve weeks in utero, enough of the magic of cell division and what not, the baby has an audible heartbeat. It's [She's] alive.

I am passionately pro-life on a personal level. Having interacted with the miracle that takes two half sets of chromosomes and results in a completely new being, i can't help but find something magical and sacred about the process.
I'm equally as fervent that making the decision to carry a child to term or not is an intensely personal decision that no governmental entity has the right to legislate, either in favour of or against.

Histrionics and the rhetoric of both sides of the issue do little to address the matter. If anything, both hurt their respective causes, although the anti-abortion crowd does more damage to itself. It is a question of life. Even more so, it's a question of choice. Being a parent is a long-term comittment. It's not something that one can opt out of when it's inconvenient. Maybe more of the teen-age mothers need to be educated- preferably before they get pregnant- to the degree of committment that is involved. Maybe more of the pro-life extremists need to stop trying to force their morality on other people, and start providing real, grass-roots support for the sometimes unwanted product of sexual union. If you want to preach, walk the talk, and get down from the heights of the ivory towers and provide something very real out of love. If you're not willing to make that sort of sacrifice for someone else, shut up until you are.

Comments

Amen

[staxxy.livejournal.com]

I am pretty passionate about the choice, and about THINKING before BREEDING. People need to take time to consider what they are commiting to before they have children. This world is already overpopulated.

So I nurture and care for the people that I know that need it, there is no lack of them.

I have made my decision to not have children PERMANENT. I have NO WOMB.

not everyone that wants children should have them. People should consider their Genes before creating new life with them. Children that are born with mutations and really any kind of hereditary problems feel this pain for THEIR WHOLE LIVES. People often do not stop to consider that if their lives have been kinda sucky from their genes, perhaps continuing to spread those genes is not a good idea. There are millions of children that need good homes. If you can provide a good home, adopt one of them if you have bad genes. Do not for a second believe that you "might get lucky". no one does.

and it is your children that will suffer the most.

Spoken as a child that should not have been born, whose partner is a child that should not have been born. We will not breed. Neither of us. ever. Our genes are bad.

[turtlegrrl13.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot to post that I got to hear my baby's heart beat last week at the doc's!!

Anyway, I really don't think that i am ready or will ever be, but damn it, I'm gonna give it my best!!

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

You never are.
No one ever is.
If we waited until we were ready, the species would go extinct within a generation.

Fortunately, the best you can do is usually good enough.

Some days...

[mistress-gaelan.livejournal.com]

...the extinction of the human species within a generation isn't soon enough for me....

Then again, I've actively chosen not to have children, so I have a different persepective. The downside to that choice is that too often any opinion I might have gets dismissed out of hand because "You're not a parent. You have no idea what you're talking about." 'tis amazing to me how many people don't think before having children. I think the worst words I've ever heard (and I've heard it from several people!) were "I didn't think it would change my life all that much. I thought I'd be able to live my life like before, with maybe more of a financial burden." WTF? In the words of the sage Cameron from Ferris Bueller's day off "Where's your brain?!"....

Re: Some days...

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

I think that your perspective is both incredibly valid and worth hearing. It's not an easy choice, but certainly a responsible one- and entirely too few people make those these days. Critical thinking has almost become a lost art.
I'd concur that too few people think about the repercussions of having children- or, for that matter, any other life changing decision. Maybe we deserve extinction within a generation. Then again, there are days when i'd line up with Margaret Sanger and advocate the sterilization of stupid people (ok, so Sanger's position was a little different....), and i'm still hoping to have the chance to lobby the Divine Ones to change the rules of fertility so that babies stop having babies. People should have to grow up and have at least some element of self-sufficiency or independence before the fertility switch gets activated. I'm all for letting the parts work before then, but with some sort of fail-proof Divine prophalaxis.
Teaching abstinence in schools is simply a laughable panacea, to say nothing of an external imposition of morality. How about teaching causality and responsibility instead?

Wonderful news!

[darkgoddess7.livejournal.com]

A Girl?

*sigh*

How absolutely wonderful~

~S~
Oh, yes. Well put!

Re: Wonderful news!

[inanna.livejournal.com]

Well, odds are (by date of ..um... intercourse :) and date of ovulation) it will be a girl... more likely than a boy... but we don't know for certain. :D

Although if it is a boy, we are in trouble as we don't have any boys names... we used up the only one we had agreed upon the last time :D