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Xantippe
Guest
Anything that gets done through the political process is political.
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Anglewannabe
Guest
True, but it can stop an abortion.
A lot of the statistics you quoted concern older kids. I can’t help but think if these same kids were adopted as infants, they never would have ended up in foster care as an older kid.
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Xantippe
Guest
I have my doubts that the US can absorb a million adoptees a year, every year, if US families are only adopting a total of around 130,000 children a year right now.
There are only about 60 million married couple households in the US, and many of them are an inappropriate age or in poor health.
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pensmama87
Guest
Quite frequently, children do not become available for adoption until they are older. For good or ill, it takes a lot for a court to terminate parental rights.
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Bruised_Reed
Guest
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ThePCWife
Guest
Childbirth is expensive because paying nurses and LPNs to care for the patients in big comfortable one-person rooms (increasingly complete with full nursery setup for the baby to room-in with mom) and specialists to check hearing and medical assistants to give shots is expensive.
It’s also expensive because women delay childbirth and mostly have kids in their late 20s or early 30s if they’re married. And if they’re not they tend to have other physical health issues because America has a pretty unhealthy population, and that also increases costs to deliver.
Abortion is cheap because most of them are done before there’s a large baby in there. 67% are done before 8 weeks gestation, for many women you can’t even reliably detect the heartbeat that early.
The only way to reduce abortion en masse when most of them are done so very early on is the relational approach, building relationships with the subset of women most likely to abort. Insisting on sanitary standards being followed and using early ultrasounds do reduce abortions, but only at the margins.
It’s also expensive because women delay childbirth and mostly have kids in their late 20s or early 30s if they’re married. And if they’re not they tend to have other physical health issues because America has a pretty unhealthy population, and that also increases costs to deliver.
Abortion is cheap because most of them are done before there’s a large baby in there. 67% are done before 8 weeks gestation, for many women you can’t even reliably detect the heartbeat that early.
The only way to reduce abortion en masse when most of them are done so very early on is the relational approach, building relationships with the subset of women most likely to abort. Insisting on sanitary standards being followed and using early ultrasounds do reduce abortions, but only at the margins.
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Xantippe
Guest
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AClaire11
Guest
I do think there would be more couples willing to adopt if the process were somehow made cheaper. My husband and I had hoped to adopt at some point in the future, but seeing how much it costs, I don’t see how we could ever afford it, especially when you’re often expected to pay for prenatal costs while knowing that the biological mother could change her mind at any time, leaving you both heartbroken and out of a lot of money. It’s good that she can change her mind and choose to raise her child, obviously, but it definitely is not an incentive to enter into the process for prospective adoptive parents. Adopting through the foster system is much more affordable, but as people have mentioned, that comes with its own heavy considerations.
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gardenswithkids
Guest
Succinctly stated.
While there are many reason behind rising health care cost, one big reason is because we’re able to keep people alive longer. Relating to that and the larger pro-life topic is the growing threat of euthanasia.
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CradleJourney
Guest
I have had a great many discussions, heard many stories, and had my own experiences - and never once has the subject of childbirth costs come up as a reason not to have a baby.
I would presume to say that women who find themselves in a situation with an unexpected pregnancy rarely have the knowledge, foresight, or inclination to look at a one-time cost and use that as a deciding factor.
I do believe three issues brought up here do have merit -
One, the promotion of abstinence which makes the entire subject moot and eliminates concerns about how many adoptions can be supported/economic cost of children/children born into hazardous situations.
Two, a positive portrayal of moms who do choose to keep and raise their child(ren) - married or not.
Three, a positive portrayal of adoption for those who choose to do so - and an easier process for all involved.
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Burt_Macklin
Guest
To be fair I would NEVER, EVER marry a woman who had an abortion no matter how much she repented or how long ago it was. The only thing for a single woman considering an abortion to know is that she has zero chance of marrying man like me (tragic I know
), but that there are still many, many men who would happily accept her. There aren’t enough men like me to affect the dating pool. I had enough of a taste of what being a stepdad is like by watching my siblings and friends to know that it simply isn’t for me. In fact avoiding that whole messy situation is a big part of the reason I waited until marriage. I didn’t do anything to deserve that kind of punishment for the rest of my life. In much the same way the fact that I worked 4 jobs through college to graduate with zero debt means that I would not take on any woman’s massive student debt. She can find someone who spent their college having fun and racking up debt the same way she did.
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UbiCaritas
Guest
Ummm…wow. Well, at least you’re up front about it, I guess.To be fair I would NEVER, EVER marry a woman who had an abortion no matter how much she repented or how long ago it was. The only thing for a single woman considering an abortion to know is that she has zero chance of marrying man like me (tragic I know
For the record, I graduated with about 25K in student debt. Did I “have fun” while accumulating it? Well, in the sense of there are opportunities in college you don’t really have elsewhere for free/reduced concert attendance (seriously–$5 to see Yo Yo Ma live!!!), yes, but I was also working 35-50 hours a week at 2-3 jobs the whole time, up to and including digging fence post holes and sinking posts in Texas in August because that’s what it took to put food on the table and pay rent while going to school. Welcome to the obscene cost of higher education today.
DH’s parents, on the other hand, gave him an excellent K-12 education (something I didn’t have) which set him up for some massive scholarships, and they paid for the rest as well as his master’s. He never had to work while in college, though he did hold down jobs over the summer which financed some European travel during breaks.
I’m glad, however, that he could overlook my gross laziness and irresponsibility and marry me anyway, and he doesn’t seem to have regrets, either.
It really is telling about the pro-life movement: no matter what, in some circles a woman never can escape her past. I remember a woman I knew when I was in high school who was essentially shunned by the entire (traditionalist) church she attended for having a child out of wedlock. I thought it demonstrated considerable strength of character that she not only had her rapist’s child, but raised him in the one, true church though its members treated her so badly. Of course, if she’d aborted him, she wouldn’t have had to deal with that, would she? (And no, most people there didn’t know that she was raped, but how exactly was she supposed to explain that? Stand up on a chair during post-Mass coffee and donuts, visibly pregnant, and announce “For anyone who’s wondering, I was raped, and here are the gory details?”)
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Xantippe
Guest
Yeah, the college debt thing is very individual based on circumstances. (Although every story that I’ve heard or seen involving more than $100k for undergraduate involves some pretty asinine choices. The current median debt for people with college debt is $35k–so you can wind up with around that level of debt without making unusually bad choices.)For the record, I graduated with about 25K in student debt. Did I “have fun” while accumulating it? Well, in the sense of there are opportunities in college you don’t really have elsewhere for free/reduced concert attendance (seriously–$5 to see Yo Yo Ma live!!!), yes, but I was also working 35-50 hours a week at 2-3 jobs the whole time, up to and including digging fence post holes and sinking posts in Texas in August because that’s what it took to put food on the table and pay rent while going to school. Welcome to the obscene cost of higher education today.
DH’s parents, on the other hand, gave him an excellent K-12 education (something I didn’t have) which set him up for some massive scholarships, and they paid for the rest as well as his master’s. He never had to work while in college, though he did hold down jobs over the summer which financed some European travel during breaks.
I’m glad, however, that he could overlook my gross laziness and irresponsibility and marry me anyway, and he doesn’t seem to have regrets, either.
I graduated 20 years ago with only $6k in student loans, thanks to scholarships, mom and dad, and working like a beaver in the family business. (Yay, me!) However, a person identical to me in every particular but doing it 20 years later would wind up with substantially higher loans.
Likewise, my husband had no student loans at all, but he grew up in a socialist paradise and lived at home for his entire undergraduate and half his graduate career. He didn’t work harder than me in undergraduate. Au contraire.
I have every intention of putting my kids through college with zero student loans, but if they do get through with no debt, it won’t be because they are particularly virtuous and industrious compared to the $35k debt kids.
One often hears of children from prosperous middle class families whose parents refuse to file the FAFSA. That’s basically kneecapping your kids in the current environment, and yet people do it all the time. If somebody like that graduated with average or well-above average debt, it wouldn’t necessarily be because they were a screw-up.
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UbiCaritas
Guest
And for lifestyle context: in college, I spent no more than $25/week on groceries (one semester, it was $10…my gosh, I was tired of beans and oatmeal at the end of that semester), I split the rent on a house in gang territory with roommates (cheaper than apartments), kept the heat to 50 in the winter, and was driving a 12-15-year-old car with 150K-180K thousand miles on it. In short, I was hardly living a ritzy lifestyle, unless by “ritzy” you mean “getting stopped by knife-wielding gang members after midnight on my way home from work.” 
This is not a post to say “oh, poor me.” I worked REALLY hard and it did pretty much stink for a while, but I had the opportunity to go to college and get a degree, which is something a lot of people don’t, and at the end of it, I could get a much better job. I honestly look back on it as one of the things that formed the better aspects of my character today. But to imply that in order to have college debt one is lazy or spending all one’s time partying is just incorrect. Higher education is obscene in cost, and minimum wage, which was most of what I could get with no degree, doesn’t go terribly far in paying for the bare essentials of living, much less higher ed.
This is not a post to say “oh, poor me.” I worked REALLY hard and it did pretty much stink for a while, but I had the opportunity to go to college and get a degree, which is something a lot of people don’t, and at the end of it, I could get a much better job. I honestly look back on it as one of the things that formed the better aspects of my character today. But to imply that in order to have college debt one is lazy or spending all one’s time partying is just incorrect. Higher education is obscene in cost, and minimum wage, which was most of what I could get with no degree, doesn’t go terribly far in paying for the bare essentials of living, much less higher ed.
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Xantippe
Guest
Yes. Normally, a non-degree type job will barely support just you–it won’t support you plus college tuition.And for lifestyle context: in college, I spent no more than $25/week on groceries (one semester, it was $10…my gosh, I was tired of beans and oatmeal at the end of that semester), I split the rent on a house in gang territory with roommates (cheaper than apartments), kept the heat to 50 in the winter, and was driving a 12-15-year-old car with 150K-180K thousand miles on it. In short, I was hardly living a ritzy lifestyle, unless by “ritzy” you mean “getting stopped by knife-wielding gang members after midnight on my way home from work.”
This is not a post to say “oh, poor me.” I worked REALLY hard and it did pretty much stink for a while, but I had the opportunity to go to college and get a degree, which is something a lot of people don’t, and at the end of it, I could get a much better job. I honestly look back on it as one of the things that formed the better aspects of my character today. But to imply that in order to have college debt one is lazy or spending all one’s time partying is just incorrect. Higher education is obscene in cost, and minimum-wage, which was most of what I could get with no degree, doesn’t go terribly far in paying for the bare essentials of living, much less higher ed.
This discussion, while a bit of a digression, is not unrelated to the abortion issue, as the bulk of young women who have abortions are in the college age group.
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Kelfa28
Guest
You’re certainly not going to do well in the dating pool if you have those ridiculous assumptions about women.
I racked up debt in college when I was a teenager.
I certainly didn’t have fun while doing it. I majored in ballet (yeah, I know…long story), took on student loans and literally had NO LIFE.
I spent the entire year I was there in ballet studios taking class or rehearsing for shows that would run late.
I would get home to my dorm and pass out. If anything, on the weekends I’d drive home because I needed a break and never got a chance to make friends because I was in class off campus.
All of that hard work disappeared when I got injured and had to quit. I took a huge gamble and lost spectacularly…with, literally nothing to show for it except a year’s worth of debt I took on for the privilege.
I’m in college now, finally finishing my degree, and I know plenty of good college girls who are taking on debt but they aren’t wasting their time.
They are nursing majors or bio majors and are all working very hard to get a degree that will be worth something in the end.
They don’t have time to goof off. I hope they meet someone worthy of their value. Because they are valuable…even if they’ve made mistakes in their past.
We all have. It’s nice to know which men to avoid whom take us for granted and can’t see our true value as people because of sweeping assumptions that certainly don’t apply to everyone.
For some majors, like the science and engineering ones, it’s not realistic to have an outside job…let alone more then one.
You’re class schedule is very intense to begin with and you need to pass everything with a C or above.
Then you have clinics, internships and rotations that take up over 40 hours a week…and a regular class schedule to boot.
Some people take out the loans because they cannot cope with that kind of an intense school schedule, hospital rotations or internships and work in order to pay for school at the same time.
I’m in a hard science major and it’s difficult enough for me to keep up. I have the girls to worry about and that’s a full time job by itself…but my husband works and pays for expenses plus… my school is completely paid for.
It’s hard enough to keep my grades up with a lot off my plate to begin with. I can’t imagine someone doing it and trying to pay for classes with work at the same time.
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Xantippe
Guest
I believe Burt Macklin has been off the market for a while.
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Kelfa28
Guest
Coming from the standpoint of a college student having a baby.
It’s HARD!
Really hard to do. I’m married and I have a husband who has a good job (finally!) and a stable roof over my head.
I had my third over the summer between school years and I had to take a big break from school…but keep enough classes to stay relevant and on track to graduate.
It’s not a walk in the park. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for a college student to be put in this situation and try to make a decision on what to do. Especially if the father isn’t in the picture.
God bless these women who keep the babies and sacrifice everything for a past mistake they’ve made.
They shouldn’t be punished for it.
We need to support them with everything we have in order to take abortion off the table. It’s so daunting to be faced with that kind of a decision.
I was a mess when I found out we were having a third baby…and that was without being faced with single motherhood.
It’s HARD!
Really hard to do. I’m married and I have a husband who has a good job (finally!) and a stable roof over my head.
I had my third over the summer between school years and I had to take a big break from school…but keep enough classes to stay relevant and on track to graduate.
It’s not a walk in the park. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for a college student to be put in this situation and try to make a decision on what to do. Especially if the father isn’t in the picture.
God bless these women who keep the babies and sacrifice everything for a past mistake they’ve made.
They shouldn’t be punished for it.
We need to support them with everything we have in order to take abortion off the table. It’s so daunting to be faced with that kind of a decision.
I was a mess when I found out we were having a third baby…and that was without being faced with single motherhood.
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Burt_Macklin
Guest
If your college debt is the size of an expensive car note you didn’t spend your college years having fun. It’s when the debt is the size of a mortgage that it would be a deal breaker for me. It was never anything personal. I’m sure that the women with massive amounts of debt are fine girls and will make good wives. But my life, my lover, my lady is going to be debt free.Ummm…wow. Well, at least you’re up front about it, I guess.
For the record, I graduated with about 25K in student debt. Did I “have fun” while accumulating it? Well, in the sense of there are opportunities in college you don’t really have elsewhere for free/reduced concert attendance (seriously–$5 to see Yo Yo Ma live!!!), yes, but I was also working 35-50 hours a week at 2-3 jobs the whole time, up to and including digging fence post holes and sinking posts in Texas in August because that’s what it took to put food on the table and pay rent while going to school. Welcome to the obscene cost of higher education today.
DH’s parents, on the other hand, gave him an excellent K-12 education (something I didn’t have) which set him up for some massive scholarships, and they paid for the rest as well as his master’s. He never had to work while in college, though he did hold down jobs over the summer which financed some European travel during breaks.
I’m glad, however, that he could overlook my gross laziness and irresponsibility and marry me anyway, and he doesn’t seem to have regrets, either.
It really is telling about the pro-life movement: no matter what, in some circles a woman never can escape her past. I remember a woman I knew when I was in high school who was essentially shunned by the entire (traditionalist) church she attended for having a child out of wedlock. I thought it demonstrated considerable strength of character that she not only had her rapist’s child, but raised him in the one, true church though its members treated her so badly. Of course, if she’d aborted him, she wouldn’t have had to deal with that, would she? (And no, most people there didn’t know that she was raped, but how exactly was she supposed to explain that? Stand up on a chair during post-Mass coffee and donuts, visibly pregnant, and announce “For anyone who’s wondering, I was raped, and here are the gory details?”)
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pensmama87
Guest
I think too, that while a significant number of women who have abortions are poor, that once you get into middle and higher income people there’s a crazy lack of knowledge about community resources. People who grow up lower income would be more likely to know about things like sliding scales and the free health clinic down the road. They know people who can help them or they know people who know people who can help them.
If you’ve had the advantage of money your entire life, it can be hard to figure out how to get by when it’s limited, or to learn that alternative arrangements exist.
(Of course, there’s also the values-associated shame with accessing those resources.)
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