By Dave Andrusko
NRLC President Carol Tobias
National Right to Life President and Pro-Life Perspective Host Carol Tobias finishes this week’s PLP which are reflections on a study of the reasons women cited for wanting their abortions. She begins by paying a tribute to NRLC Director of Education Randall K. O’Bannon whose analysis of a 2004 study produced by the Guttmacher Institute is a model of clarity and insight. (See Dr. O’Bannon’s “New Study Examines Reasons Women Have Abortions”
It’s far more important that you listen to Mrs. Tobias at www.prolifeperspective.com and read Dr. O’Bannon overview, so I will try to brief.
As Mrs. Tobias explained yesterday, the women in the Guttmacher study were, shall we say, under-impressed by the level of commitment and involvement of the fathers of their babies. This is pivotal when in the context of other factors that were mentioned, many of which revolved around economics and a sense that they had already “completed my childbearing.”
Today she addresses the issue of women who are already paents who abort, a growing percentage. There are many reasons these women cite including a sense that they have an existing obligation to their children and their families that another child might strain. They see abortion“as something that in the best interest of their existing family circumstances,” Mrs. Tobias says.
The bitter irony is that some of these same women can talk about the one they are about to abort as their “child.” Equally sad they see adoption, Mrs. Tobias explains, as a morally unacceptable option. ‘
Why?
“Because they believed (as the study summarized it) that ‘giving one’s child away is wrong’ (though apparently killing that child isn’t wrong for these women or is at least thought a lesser evil than adoption.) Women’s knowledge and understanding of adoption in the abortion era is evidently deficient and this is obviously an area where there is work to be done.”
At the same time the authors of the study also admit that what they heard from women in the interviews suggested that “abortion was not something they desired.” They saw not having a child as their best–and sometimes only– option.
As Mrs. Tobias aptly puts it, “So much for ‘choice.’”
Please be sure to listen at www.prolifeperspective.com and pass the link along through your social networks.
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