It's a complicated question.
I could say I'm both, the thing just is, I don't measure "life" in numbers. Neither as in "how many living things are there", nor in "how many hours of life".
Life, as I see it, isn't measurable in such a way.
Life isn't drawing breath or surviving, it's "living". It's dancing, it's kissing, it's doing things you love and grumbling through things you don't want to do.
It is Not, forcing a human being, against her will, to carry to term a child that she does not want, just to put that child into the adoption system and scar that "mother" for life, because not doing it is somehow religiously reprehensible.
I love my daughter, but if I could do it again, I wouldn't have kept her.
Pregnancy was torture for me, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. It caused me extreme levels of physical discomfort, culminating in extreme levels of physical pain, and it ripped right through me on a psychological level as well. It was a horrible experience for me.
And at that time I didn't know just how "iffy" my body is.
It aggravated my loose joints and made my hips, knees, and lower-back far worse for wear.
I don't hold her accountable for MY choice to keep her and the effects there of, but that's just me. There are a Lot of people who can't seem to do that.
My partner for one has a father who projects all his frustrations on his family, and one of his biggest frustrations is the resentment towards the family for tying him down from a not so terribly young age.
I know Several people with similar/same problems between them and their parents.
The main reason why I'm the one who takes care of my daughter is knowing that if I didn't, then she would be in the hands of my ex's mother. He's got his issues, but she's a terrifying woman. I wouldn't trust her to take care of a plant, let alone a small human being. She's raised three highly dysfunctional people. An obese pathological liar. A codependent boy who can't keep a job, let alone take responsibility for when he looses it. And my ex, who has such a hard time accepting that he's got some control over his own life that he joined the AA, even if he doesn't drink!
To put an aspbergers child in her care would be cruel.
So I'm the best choice in the situation...
(winded reply is becoming winded and partially off topic)
The point I'm trying to make here is;
- Not all parents are capable of doing a decent job. Heck, many parents do a really poor one and inflict upon their children serious problems and scars for life.
- Not all birth-parents are able to give up their children into better homes. In many places the grandparents are able to legally interfere the adoption process (though the easiest way is just to pressure the birth-parents to comply) and thus, if the grandparents aren't "decent" people it means that in some situations, a good home isn't an available option.
- Pregnancy is a dangerous, highly physically stressful and draining process. For nine months, the child is like a parasite that feeds off the mother. And even if everything goes well, it causes permanent changes to the body and not just aesthetic ones. By examining just the pelvic bone, and nothing else, there are telltale signs that make it possible to see whether the owner of said bone has given birth. And I'm not even thinking of serious complications at all. It's serious and should Not, under Any circumstances, be Forced on Any human being!
- Birth is a violent, extremely painful, dangerous, physically stressful and draining process. Even if the pregnancy goes "perfect" it's not over until the post-birth-bleeding stops. Children have died giving birth, because they aren't allowed an abortion.
I am pro Life.
I believe that every living human being should have full rights to live as long as it doesn't interfere with the rights of other people to do so.
But this means I am pro Choice as well.
Because forcing a woman to carry to term and give birth to a child she doesn't want is imposing on her right to live, her right to dominion over her own body, and so on. It's cruel to the point of torturous to do that to a human being and no amount of "think of the baby" can justify that in my mind.
The growing child is in fact imposing on her right by it's mere presence, and thus her rights trump it's. It's self defense to end a pregnancy that causes the mother nothing but suffering, and it's compassionate to end a pregnancy that would otherwise place a child in a terrible situation.
