Both Parties Reach for Center on Abortion Debate

I'm sure you've been following this issue throughout the primary season and beyond. I've said many times that in an ideal world, any woman with a desire to bear and raise a child who has the financial and emotional means to do so should be able to do so as Mother Nature intended. In the 21st century, unplanned/unwanted pregnancies should be as extinct as the dodo bird, making the issue of abotion moot.

But we don't live in an ideal world; sometimes abortion may be the best alternative for a woman facing a crisis pregnancy. And yet in the first decade of the 21st century, when single celebrity moms have made out of wedlock births fashionable, we're at risk of losing that choice. I'm particularly confused about this paragraph from the following AP article I found on Yahoo this morning:

Democrats, meanwhile, had it both ways in revising their party platform ahead of this month's nominating convention in Denver. Platform-writers said the party "unequivocally" supports legalized abortion, a stronger phrase than the 2004 platform contained. But they also bolstered the section on reducing the need for abortions. The version awaiting approval in Denver says the party "strongly supports access to comprehensive affordable family planning services and age-appropriate sex education." It says the party "strongly supports a woman's decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and postnatal health care, parenting skills, income support and caring adoption programs."

I'm in 95% agreement with this statement, but will someone please define "caring adoption programs"? Have any of us had the good fortune to experience a caring adoption program?! We've said throughout the ages that if men were the ones bearing children, the rules would be different. Would they ever.
--Linda

Whew Linda...Lorraine here...you got that right when you point out the careful phrasing "caring adoption program." Caring for whom? Let's see, I assume they want to imply for the birth mother, but gee..exactly what are they talking about? An open adoption that has no teeth of law behind it to force the openness?

When I relinquished I argued at length with my social worker once I found out the insane policy, ie, the real mother will now drop dead and never return...of course, open adoptions changed all that (up to a point, as we unhappily all know), but at the time, my "caring" adoption counselor told me that if I insisted that I someday be able to meet my daughter, or find out what happened, she could not help me...so she passed me the Kleenex and that was that.

Abortion itself is such a tricky issue for adoptees, because ... many of them are aware that they were almost or might have been aborted. My daughter was pro-choice but this was not an issue we discussed at great length. And of course having read Birthmark she was well aware that she might have been aborted. I'd love to hear how adoptees who read this post feel about abortion. It always has to be a "what if" issue...right?

--lorraine