parents need to be constantly having the conversation with their kids that there is NOTHING they can do that will make us stop loving them and nothing that can't be work through…NOTHING!
This, and the Crescat piece, are not being completely honest.
If you read the comboxes at The Crescat, you'll see that only too often parents, especially Catholic/Christian parents, abandon their daughters when they become pregnant out of wedlock.
In my case, my parents disowned me after I refused to give my oldest child up for adoption. They even went as far as conspiring with the local Catholic Charities to coerce me into adopting against my will — the Catholic Charities worker even brought the prospective parents to the hospital to "guilt" me into signing papers.
When I refused, I found myself alone and without resources with a newborn infant. Thanks to the social worker who came to see me in the hospital, I was able to find work, care for my child, and a place to stay until I could finish my degree.
I subsequently married a great guy who adopted my daughter, and we went on to have four more children, and are now blessed with grandchildren.
Please, however, stop telling girls that their parents will be just fine with this, or that adoption is an easy choice. Both are lies, meant to coerce vulnerable young women.
Statistics show that women who've given their children up for adoption suffer many of the negative side effects of women who've aborted and women who've lost a child due to miscarriage or illness. Losing a child is losing a child.
The goal — the first priority, the number one go-to solution — should ALWAYS be to see that these young women are supported and encouraged to be mothers — not to be poster children for the pro-life women, not to be suppliers for the adoption industry. Motherhood is a precious, precious thing and should be the preferred outcome in these situations.
If you visit some of the adoption boards, or google the after effects of adoption, you'll find thousands of broken women, just as broken as the women who've suffered from abortion, or suffered from the tragic loss of a child. Please be honest. Please stop pretending adoption is the Hallmark happy ending, or that Catholic mommies and daddies will just love your new baby and embrace you.
The reality is very different. And the reality about that and the adoption industry is often what drives young women to the abortion clinics.
At the end of the day, feeling shoved into a corner, being victimized, is the same regardless if it's parents doing the victimizing, adoption agencies, or abortion clinics. Pregnant women are mothers. Just because they're poor, scared, young, and unmarried doesn't justify the automatic adoption knee-jerk reaction.
It is wrong to make the parents the bad guys when a girl becomes pregnant. If she is raped, HE is the bad guy. If her sexual activity is consensual HE and SHE are the bad guys when they are engaging in selfish non marital consensual sex. The consequences are THEIR responsibility.
how true this is. Catholics/Christians are criminals, heartless ppl imposing moral values that are out of date on the rest of us. It is poor girls like me and the one who wrote the article, who always tell the truth. How dare they tell us that life is sacred, only to abando us after the birht? what is next? that twinkies are not good for our health?
Sadly, we live in an age when children, being children acting like adults behaving like children, are barely receptive to any kind of guidance. I see a lot of college kids on a daily basis and the ubiquitous sense of entitlement and obstinate misbehaviour flowing from that "me-first" attitude confirms that they, in most if not all cases, have been raised with no values whatsoever. The parents, and society, are reaping merely what they have failed to sow. Weeds have grown up in the hearts and minds of their children.
In those exceptional cases where children coming from solid families have ignored the good counsel of loving parents and have instead adopted the mores of the times, it is truly sad to see those children causing their parents so much suffering. Those children, who for whatever reason ignored their parents' guidance, should stop making excuses and stop following their own stupid inclinations which got them into trouble in the first place. A little honesty, indeed.
@Anonymous said…
"The consequences are THEIR responsibility."
January 10, 2012 12:28 PM The human being existing in the womb with God's name "I AM" is a child of God, a creature of the human species, a person of our constitutitonal posterity and a member of the family of man, a grandchild of both parents' parents and because of the child's existence is heir to human rights. If the child is conceived of lust or ignorance or crime, the innocent unborn infant is a victim. Doing injustice, victim bashing or aborting cannot bring peace. While adoption offers the victim a chance for life and destiny, the mother, both parents, may be consoled and look forward to knowing that their offspring exists and is alive.
What is most important is the fact that you have sinned before God and need to beg His forgiveness for having offended Him."
That is what I told my daughter when she became pregnant out of wed lock.
Only God can establish guilt and punish it.
We must not accept any sin, and rebuke it harshly; we must admonish the sinner and encourage them to repentance.
To claim Catholics are mean spirited criminals is not fair.
There have been many that did not handle these situations with Charity.
God blasted Sodom and Gomorrah to Hell not just because they were homosexual perverts, but mainly because they no longer resisted sin.
Pray for the repentance and conversion of sinners, and you will also be praying for yourself.
May God our Lord in His infinite and supreme goodness be pleased to give us His abundant grace, that we may know His most holy will, and entirely fulfill it.
At the opportune time, we will be asked, "how well have you loved?" and not, "how well did you protect your reputation?"
The sin will be forgiven.
The "problem" will be solved.
The child belongs to the mother.
Time heals all and God's plans will not be thwarted.
anon@ 12:08pm. look for an After the Gift retreat for those you might know who struggle with this grief. You are correct in saying that a child lost is a child lost and the grief is the same.My Diocese (wichita, ks) sponsors this retreat and it has been very successful.
Thank you for sharing your story and God Bless.
I DID talk with my daughter about babies. Other women around her talked to her about babies. But my teenage daughter got pregnant anyways – 'it can't happen to me'. Yes, she thought 'my mom is going to kill me', but honestly, all I thought about was how scared I was.
When my daughter told me she was pregnant, my jaw dropped, my ears started to buzz, but I didn't hate my daughter, I kissed her and told her I loved her and we would handle this.
Yes, after the initial shock I went thru the anger and the embarrassment, but she was still my daughter and I still loved her.
I now have a wonderful grandson, and I still have my daughter. The childs father has been around since the very beginning. Maybe I could have run him off, but I think kids need their dad. My husbands father abandoned him at an early age and it haunted my husband his entire life.
I cannot understand disowning your child when she needs you the most.
Joseph did not abandon Mary.
Elizabeth did not disown her cousin Mary.
Mary did not shun Jesus when he was arrested.
I had a Mom who didn't know how to love her kids, period. No, I never got pregnant. But I knew I had a mom that wanted money more than me.
I figured this out when I was about 3 or 4 or so. I knew I was really on my own.
I knew I had pretend-a-parents who didn't care. I entered a convent at age 17, and stayed for 15 years. When I made my first Vows, my parents were on vacation and couldn't be bothered to be with me. (My grandparents did come.)
I think people have to know that there are parents out there who really didn't want their kids, period.
Oh–when my Mom died, she specifically disowned me in writing. gh
Dear Anonymous who is referencing the Crescat piece,
Since you did not have an adoption experience, perhaps you should refrain from telling everyone else what it is like to live with that decision. I am sorry that anyone tried to force you into a decision that you knew was not for you; this is never acceptable.
Your writing goes on and may convey to others that since adoptive mothers suffer as others mothers who have experienced "loss," the choices are one among many. I AM an birth mother. I can assure you it is no Hallmark ending, but at the end of the day, MY child is alive. In my darkest moments of living with my decision, it is hard but I still know it to be the right decision. The hardest part most days is NOT that I am away from my child (and he is not "lost"); it is that I live in a culture that says what I did was not important, it was just another "choice" among many. Feminists would have you believe that abortion and adoption are the same morally equivalent 'choice.' Lies! I'm not holding my breath waiting to be handed a medal for my decision, but my child was not KILLED.
I am the original Anonymous you are referring to. I help support young women who wish to keep their babies but are being pressured from all sides to do otherwise — by their parents, their boyfriends, by their churches, and by adoption agencies. I have spoken with young women who gave their babies up under duress and I have researched the existing data regarding women who've given up children for adoption. I'm not speaking from a place of ignorance. I know the kind of pressure many young women are under and how easy it is to succumb, and I want to make sure that as many young women as I can possibly help never feel cornered into making a choice they will regret.
The abortion industry and the adoption industry are both guilty of preying on vulnerable young women. The abortion industry wants their money and to further their agenda. The adoption industry wants their babies and to further theirs.
Yes, some women freely make the choice to give their babies up for adoption, but many more do so because they feel they have no choice.
Adoption is a big business. With more and more women waiting until they're past peak fertility to begin families, an American, white baby is a big commodity these days and adoption agencies can be just as coercive as abortion clinics when it comes to acting out of self-interest.
The pro-life community is often guilty of reducing a pregnant women to a zero in their efforts to prevent abortion. All a vulnerable young woman hears is "the baby, the baby, the baby, and we'll take it, you can give it to us…".
She disappears. She's clearly nothing to them. It's "the baby" they want, not her. The pro-lifers go on about the baby, the child, the dignity of the unborn, but where's their talk of motherhood, the mother and child bond, or of the mother herself?
You chose freely to give up your baby, but other women didn't. Until you've walked in their shoes, or spoken with them at length, you're not necessarily their voice, either.
Original "Anonymous" commenting on the Crescat piece: You compare the abortion industry to the adoption industry, a comparison I find truly revolting and disingenuous to begin with. But then you label the pro-life movement as only caring about the baby. Perhaps you're completely unfamiliar with the MANY pro-life, pro-WOMAN pregnancy centers across America. Perhaps you don't have one near you, which would be unfortunate. But the ones I work closely with (as are most) are NOT only pro-baby. They actually help the moms find jobs, housing, childcare, finish school, give free baby items, clothes, diapers, food, etc. You should do some research before you imply that the pro-life movement doesn't care about women. Nothing is further from the truth.
My maternal grandmother was precisely in the situation of the young lady in the picture. Pregnant with my Mom, and abandoned by the father, she turned to her mother. While her mother raised my Mom, my grandmother went out each day to work to support all three of them. Nanny Barry, as my Mom called her, was a saint according to my Mom, and my grandmother was one of the strongest women I have ever met. All three of them are long dead now, however, as a result of the courage of my grandmother and the love of my great-grandmother, six people are alive today. Not a bad legacy.
1984 – my sister gave up her only daughter. My sister was abandoned by her mother at 16 years of age, by her father at birth. In 2006 – that daughter publicly thanked my sister for saving her life… twice. For you see, she was born with genetic defects my sister never would have been able to care for or heal. We are sinful creatures… my sister forgave her parents and was blessed with love, joy & life and a daughter who loves her.
Whether we are "abandoned" or must give another our child for care we must ask for mercy and forgiveness – but ultimately we must never destroy life.
January 10, 2012 at 3:53 pm
parents need to be constantly having the conversation with their kids that there is NOTHING they can do that will make us stop loving them and nothing that can't be work through…NOTHING!
January 10, 2012 at 5:08 pm
This, and the Crescat piece, are not being completely honest.
If you read the comboxes at The Crescat, you'll see that only too often parents, especially Catholic/Christian parents, abandon their daughters when they become pregnant out of wedlock.
In my case, my parents disowned me after I refused to give my oldest child up for adoption. They even went as far as conspiring with the local Catholic Charities to coerce me into adopting against my will — the Catholic Charities worker even brought the prospective parents to the hospital to "guilt" me into signing papers.
When I refused, I found myself alone and without resources with a newborn infant. Thanks to the social worker who came to see me in the hospital, I was able to find work, care for my child, and a place to stay until I could finish my degree.
I subsequently married a great guy who adopted my daughter, and we went on to have four more children, and are now blessed with grandchildren.
Please, however, stop telling girls that their parents will be just fine with this, or that adoption is an easy choice. Both are lies, meant to coerce vulnerable young women.
Statistics show that women who've given their children up for adoption suffer many of the negative side effects of women who've aborted and women who've lost a child due to miscarriage or illness. Losing a child is losing a child.
The goal — the first priority, the number one go-to solution — should ALWAYS be to see that these young women are supported and encouraged to be mothers — not to be poster children for the pro-life women, not to be suppliers for the adoption industry. Motherhood is a precious, precious thing and should be the preferred outcome in these situations.
If you visit some of the adoption boards, or google the after effects of adoption, you'll find thousands of broken women, just as broken as the women who've suffered from abortion, or suffered from the tragic loss of a child. Please be honest. Please stop pretending adoption is the Hallmark happy ending, or that Catholic mommies and daddies will just love your new baby and embrace you.
The reality is very different. And the reality about that and the adoption industry is often what drives young women to the abortion clinics.
At the end of the day, feeling shoved into a corner, being victimized, is the same regardless if it's parents doing the victimizing, adoption agencies, or abortion clinics. Pregnant women are mothers. Just because they're poor, scared, young, and unmarried doesn't justify the automatic adoption knee-jerk reaction.
January 10, 2012 at 5:12 pm
The poster above also shows that the mother and child are already coexisting. See here to see what I mean.
January 10, 2012 at 5:28 pm
It is wrong to make the parents the bad guys when a girl becomes pregnant. If she is raped, HE is the bad guy. If her sexual activity is consensual HE and SHE are the bad guys when they are engaging in selfish non marital consensual sex. The consequences are THEIR responsibility.
January 10, 2012 at 5:36 pm
how true this is. Catholics/Christians are criminals, heartless ppl imposing moral values that are out of date on the rest of us. It is poor girls like me and the one who wrote the article, who always tell the truth. How dare they tell us that life is sacred, only to abando us after the birht? what is next? that twinkies are not good for our health?
January 10, 2012 at 5:43 pm
Sadly, we live in an age when children, being children acting like adults behaving like children, are barely receptive to any kind of guidance. I see a lot of college kids on a daily basis and the ubiquitous sense of entitlement and obstinate misbehaviour flowing from that "me-first" attitude confirms that they, in most if not all cases, have been raised with no values whatsoever. The parents, and society, are reaping merely what they have failed to sow. Weeds have grown up in the hearts and minds of their children.
In those exceptional cases where children coming from solid families have ignored the good counsel of loving parents and have instead adopted the mores of the times, it is truly sad to see those children causing their parents so much suffering. Those children, who for whatever reason ignored their parents' guidance, should stop making excuses and stop following their own stupid inclinations which got them into trouble in the first place. A little honesty, indeed.
January 10, 2012 at 6:00 pm
@Anonymous said…
"The consequences are THEIR responsibility."
January 10, 2012 12:28 PM The human being existing in the womb with God's name "I AM" is a child of God, a creature of the human species, a person of our constitutitonal posterity and a member of the family of man, a grandchild of both parents' parents and because of the child's existence is heir to human rights. If the child is conceived of lust or ignorance or crime, the innocent unborn infant is a victim. Doing injustice, victim bashing or aborting cannot bring peace. While adoption offers the victim a chance for life and destiny, the mother, both parents, may be consoled and look forward to knowing that their offspring exists and is alive.
January 10, 2012 at 6:16 pm
More powerful pro-life images here:
http://www.freeprolifeimages.net
January 10, 2012 at 6:21 pm
"This does not change my love for you.
What is most important is the fact that you have sinned before God and need to beg His forgiveness for having offended Him."
That is what I told my daughter when she became pregnant out of wed lock.
Only God can establish guilt and punish it.
We must not accept any sin, and rebuke it harshly; we must admonish the sinner and encourage them to repentance.
To claim Catholics are mean spirited criminals is not fair.
There have been many that did not handle these situations with Charity.
God blasted Sodom and Gomorrah to Hell not just because they were homosexual perverts, but mainly because they no longer resisted sin.
Pray for the repentance and conversion of sinners, and you will also be praying for yourself.
May God our Lord in His infinite and supreme goodness be pleased to give us His abundant grace, that we may know His most holy will, and entirely fulfill it.
Que Dios nos agarre confessados.
*
January 10, 2012 at 7:35 pm
At the opportune time, we will be asked, "how well have you loved?" and not, "how well did you protect your reputation?"
The sin will be forgiven.
The "problem" will be solved.
The child belongs to the mother.
Time heals all and God's plans will not be thwarted.
January 10, 2012 at 7:40 pm
anon@ 12:08pm. look for an After the Gift retreat for those you might know who struggle with this grief. You are correct in saying that a child lost is a child lost and the grief is the same.My Diocese (wichita, ks) sponsors this retreat and it has been very successful.
Thank you for sharing your story and God Bless.
January 10, 2012 at 7:45 pm
I DID talk with my daughter about babies. Other women around her talked to her about babies. But my teenage daughter got pregnant anyways – 'it can't happen to me'. Yes, she thought 'my mom is going to kill me', but honestly, all I thought about was how scared I was.
When my daughter told me she was pregnant, my jaw dropped, my ears started to buzz, but I didn't hate my daughter, I kissed her and told her I loved her and we would handle this.
Yes, after the initial shock I went thru the anger and the embarrassment, but she was still my daughter and I still loved her.
I now have a wonderful grandson, and I still have my daughter. The childs father has been around since the very beginning. Maybe I could have run him off, but I think kids need their dad. My husbands father abandoned him at an early age and it haunted my husband his entire life.
I cannot understand disowning your child when she needs you the most.
Joseph did not abandon Mary.
Elizabeth did not disown her cousin Mary.
Mary did not shun Jesus when he was arrested.
January 10, 2012 at 8:29 pm
I had a Mom who didn't know how to love her kids, period. No, I never got pregnant. But I knew I had a mom that wanted money more than me.
I figured this out when I was about 3 or 4 or so. I knew I was really on my own.
I knew I had pretend-a-parents who didn't care. I entered a convent at age 17, and stayed for 15 years. When I made my first Vows, my parents were on vacation and couldn't be bothered to be with me. (My grandparents did come.)
I think people have to know that there are parents out there who really didn't want their kids, period.
Oh–when my Mom died, she specifically disowned me in writing. gh
January 10, 2012 at 8:59 pm
Dear Anonymous who is referencing the Crescat piece,
Since you did not have an adoption experience, perhaps you should refrain from telling everyone else what it is like to live with that decision. I am sorry that anyone tried to force you into a decision that you knew was not for you; this is never acceptable.
Your writing goes on and may convey to others that since adoptive mothers suffer as others mothers who have experienced "loss," the choices are one among many. I AM an birth mother. I can assure you it is no Hallmark ending, but at the end of the day, MY child is alive. In my darkest moments of living with my decision, it is hard but I still know it to be the right decision. The hardest part most days is NOT that I am away from my child (and he is not "lost"); it is that I live in a culture that says what I did was not important, it was just another "choice" among many. Feminists would have you believe that abortion and adoption are the same morally equivalent 'choice.' Lies! I'm not holding my breath waiting to be handed a medal for my decision, but my child was not KILLED.
January 10, 2012 at 9:10 pm
This is going on my tumblr immediately. I find it quite powerful
January 10, 2012 at 9:28 pm
To Anonymous of 3:59
I am the original Anonymous you are referring to. I help support young women who wish to keep their babies but are being pressured from all sides to do otherwise — by their parents, their boyfriends, by their churches, and by adoption agencies. I have spoken with young women who gave their babies up under duress and I have researched the existing data regarding women who've given up children for adoption. I'm not speaking from a place of ignorance. I know the kind of pressure many young women are under and how easy it is to succumb, and I want to make sure that as many young women as I can possibly help never feel cornered into making a choice they will regret.
The abortion industry and the adoption industry are both guilty of preying on vulnerable young women. The abortion industry wants their money and to further their agenda. The adoption industry wants their babies and to further theirs.
Yes, some women freely make the choice to give their babies up for adoption, but many more do so because they feel they have no choice.
Adoption is a big business. With more and more women waiting until they're past peak fertility to begin families, an American, white baby is a big commodity these days and adoption agencies can be just as coercive as abortion clinics when it comes to acting out of self-interest.
The pro-life community is often guilty of reducing a pregnant women to a zero in their efforts to prevent abortion. All a vulnerable young woman hears is "the baby, the baby, the baby, and we'll take it, you can give it to us…".
She disappears. She's clearly nothing to them. It's "the baby" they want, not her. The pro-lifers go on about the baby, the child, the dignity of the unborn, but where's their talk of motherhood, the mother and child bond, or of the mother herself?
You chose freely to give up your baby, but other women didn't. Until you've walked in their shoes, or spoken with them at length, you're not necessarily their voice, either.
January 10, 2012 at 9:43 pm
This pictures speaks volumes for me. It could be the poster for my life. http://www.postabortionwalk.blogspot.com
January 10, 2012 at 10:36 pm
Original "Anonymous" commenting on the Crescat piece: You compare the abortion industry to the adoption industry, a comparison I find truly revolting and disingenuous to begin with. But then you label the pro-life movement as only caring about the baby. Perhaps you're completely unfamiliar with the MANY pro-life, pro-WOMAN pregnancy centers across America. Perhaps you don't have one near you, which would be unfortunate. But the ones I work closely with (as are most) are NOT only pro-baby. They actually help the moms find jobs, housing, childcare, finish school, give free baby items, clothes, diapers, food, etc. You should do some research before you imply that the pro-life movement doesn't care about women. Nothing is further from the truth.
January 10, 2012 at 10:37 pm
My maternal grandmother was precisely in the situation of the young lady in the picture. Pregnant with my Mom, and abandoned by the father, she turned to her mother. While her mother raised my Mom, my grandmother went out each day to work to support all three of them. Nanny Barry, as my Mom called her, was a saint according to my Mom, and my grandmother was one of the strongest women I have ever met. All three of them are long dead now, however, as a result of the courage of my grandmother and the love of my great-grandmother, six people are alive today. Not a bad legacy.
January 10, 2012 at 11:00 pm
1984 – my sister gave up her only daughter. My sister was abandoned by her mother at 16 years of age, by her father at birth. In 2006 – that daughter publicly thanked my sister for saving her life… twice. For you see, she was born with genetic defects my sister never would have been able to care for or heal. We are sinful creatures… my sister forgave her parents and was blessed with love, joy & life and a daughter who loves her.
Whether we are "abandoned" or must give another our child for care we must ask for mercy and forgiveness – but ultimately we must never destroy life.