Pro life vs. pro Quality of life

I am 100% pro life. Wait. Hear me out because it isn’t what you think. I’m going to start with story time today.

I had a girl enroll at the middle school. She was 14 and in 8th grade but was behind her peers and had a social worker with her foster parent when they enrolled her. Kids in foster care are not news, but the story behind this girl’s foster placement is chilling. Her mother, who gave birth shortly after her 15th birthday (based on the dates on the birth certificate) left her just after her 6th birthday with her dad and paternal grandparents when the pressures of motherhood and the youth she gave up got to her. Her father was significantly older than her mother. The little girl became pregnant shortly before her 12th birthday. She was afraid to tell her grandmother who the father was. The grandmother continued to beat the girl daily until she confessed: her father fathered her baby. When this came to light the grandmother kicked the girl out of the house for being a liar. She went to the foster mother’s house and when the child was born – via emergency C section- a DNA test was performed and the father took off across the border. DNA confirmed that the little girl wasn’t lying when she said that her father had been raping her regularly since she was nine.

Meanwhile the foster mother decides to continue to foster the girl who at 12 had given birth while working toward adopting the baby. She will foster the girl and adopt the baby… let the emotional havoc of that one set in for a minute. For 16 months the girl lives in the home with her daughter/sister and becomes increasingly angry, defiant, reckless….heartbreaking story.

I met a little man when he was 2 years and 10 months old through child find. He came in with his grandmother who had custody of the boy while her 15 year old daughter was receiving psychiatric in patient treatment. The little guy had beautiful sparkling brown eyes, but they were offset horizontally on his face by about 2 inches. He was missing part of his ear and he had a cranial malformation. These were the disabilities we could see.

His grandmother gave me some paperwork from the doctor that described the diagnosis in medical terms. I remember that evening asking my mom, a nurse who in her time working border hospitals had seen it all, responded ‘oh shit’ to my question. Long story short, both the mother and baby were lucky to be alive and as functional as they were after an attempted abortion gone bad. Most likely, a back door procedure done by someone not liscenced to perform such a procedure. His teenaged mother was unable to care for him as she was barely able to care for herself after the emotional trauma. Hid level of disability would require high levels of care and he would never live independently. The grandmother now had to care for both.

I have seen kids being molested by step parents under the eyes of their parents and then called liars. I have seen kids who have never set foot into a school house arrive at my door at 10 years old after the mother is found dead in her home after a heroin OD. I have seen children hide food from the cafeteria on their backpacks because there may not be a meal at home (and we send these kids with extra food when they are identified). I had a child that I reported to protective services 9 times in one year for neglect and abuse that was only removed after his nearly three year old brother was almost burned to death. Children are born into awful circumstances every day.

Someone please explain to me why these children and countless others have to grow up in misery. Please tell me how these children will grow up to live happy, successful lives and overcome these traumas- as opposed to perpetuating them in the next generation because they don’t know better. Some one, particularly someone who is adamantly pro- life explain how limiting a damaged woman’s right to choice, her right not to bring a life into the world that she can’t possibly care for is the right thing to do for society.

You see, I am 100% pro quality of life. I 100% believe that if you as a person are not prepared to provide a quality existence for a child, than it shouldn’t be born. It shouldn’t have to be subjected to the abuse, poverty, and misery that likely await it. If quality of life cannot be reasonably achieved by a pregnant woman on behalf of her embryo or early fetus then she should have the choice to save that life from the potential of trauma, abuse, neglect, and poverty, and maybe in doing so, as was the case of the 8th grade girl and possibly the mother of the disabled two year old, possibly have better chances at quality of life for themselves. Both of those young women are irreparably traumatized from their childbearing experiences.

So, to the pro- lifers that are praying to end abortion- I hope you are also voting to support quality public education, social emotional supports including therapy, substance abuse treatment, parenting classes, early child hood education, and opening your own homes through the foster care system to help any number of the children and teens out there waiting for forever homes. What’s that you say! Not your problem? What’s that you say….if you can’t afford a child you shouldn’t have had it?

If you are going to be pro life, be pro quality of life first. If you can’t do that…. You have NO business regulating the lives of others. People, this has nothing to do with religion, faith, or me being a child murderer. So please. Don’t. Go.There.

Oh, and for those of you in Texas, how about this…. While you are out there making it illegal to help someone terminate an unwanted pregnancy why don’t we throw some regulations to protect this future baby out there for you? Makes sense that if we care so much about this unborn child that we want to ensure it has every opportunity to live a happy successful life. So let’s start with the DNA data bank. Just like selective service, boys leave a cheek swab with their social security number attached to it when they turn 16. Then all babies born are swabbed and matched. Baby born to committed couple? No problem… that baby is good to go. Single mama and no mate… well, no problem, find the DNA match in the data base, send daddy-O a bill for half the prenatal care, delivery and post natal care, food, housing, medical care, educational costs, childcare costs and start a college account. This eliminates the reliance on welfare. If mom is unfit, or dies or something else…. Now there is another adult that can take care of this child so it eases the burden on the foster system. Wait…. He can’t afford that? The timing isn’t good? He is a dis-regulated emotional train wreck who shouldn’t have kids? Well…. He should have thought of that before he had his fun.