She Said: Adoption

The LDS Church believes that every effort should be made to assist young women who conceive out of wedlock to first try to establish an eternal family relationship. If the unwed parents are unable or unwilling to marry, they are then encouraged to place the child for adoption, preferably through LDS Family Services.

The Church stresses that unwed parents who do not marry should not be urged to keep the infant as a condition of repentance or out of some desire to care for one's own. They consider that the best interests of the child in this situation is to be placed for adoption. The Proclamation on the Family states:

Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.

The wording of this sentence makes me uneasy and raises a few doctrinal questions. If children are "entitled" to birth within just such a traditional family, then why does God permit them to come to earth in such varied circumstances as they do? I presume he has control over where the spirits are sent, over men's and women's fertility, and such. I am tempted to believe that when a child is sent to a certain mother that she is "entitled" to raise it as her own.

Since I now have 6 girls who could potentially bear children, this is a topic of concern to me. I would be devastated if a child who was born into our family was given up for adoption. I would be willing to provide any support needed for such a child to remain in the family. I am also concerned that because of the Church's policy, LDS Social Services is not providing much needed information and support so that young women can make informed decisions. Michelle Renaud provides one example involving Don Staheli, who worked for LDS Family Services and now is Regional Representative of the Twelve.

The LDS Family Services site "It's About Love" shows how heavily slanted this organization is toward convincing a young woman to give her child up for adoption. The many options are explored with a purpose of convincing the pregnant woman that the best and most moral choice is adoption.

I have seen a great change in this policy just in the course of my lifetime. When I first joined the Church, the counsel to young women was that they should keep and raise their children. It often was suggested to them that this would be part of the repentance process. I don't feel that this policy, any more than the current one, is perfect for every situation. I feel that the families involved should be counseled on their options and encouraged to pray and make their own decisions based on their desires and family resources. Since the preferred counsel has changed so much over the years, I feel satisfied in declaring that giving up children for adoption is merely a policy currently preferred by Church agencies which may change and is not doctrinal. I don't think that anyone can make a blanket statement that certain types of families or individuals are any less able to successfully raise children than the traditional, two-parent, husband and wife pair.

What do you think?

She Said: The Abortion Debate

Dr. B. said he wanted to do a post on the Abortion Debate, which I thought was a good idea. But I have already written out my ideas in blog form, so I am just going to repeat the following post, which appeared at FMH back in April of 2007, and was actually written much earlier.

The Pro-Love Movement
No single issue has been as divisive of women as that of abortion. Its battle lines are so clear-cut; one is either pro-life or pro-choice. A change of opinion on the issue by a politician is tantamount to desertion and betrayal. Until this moment I did not even realize there was another option.

Until now I have been vociferously pro-life, have used all of the usual arguments, have seen all of the usual films, read the brochures, contributed to the organizations. Until, with a flash of clarity, I have finally decided: I can no longer affiliate myself with the “pro-life” movement.

Have I converted to “pro-choice?” An emphatic NO. I am now “pro-love.”

With all of my heart I believe in the existence of the soul of an unborn child. I have felt its stirrings within me. I have held my 3 pound, 13 ounce daughter in my arms and help her fight–and win–the battle to survive. I have also miscarried tiny, perfectly formed 12-week fetus. How can I support the freedom of choice to end this life-possibility?

However, with 5 children ages 7 and under, I have briefly glimpsed the feeling of emotional exhaustion that would cause a woman to feel that she could not provide for one more child. Because I have removed myself from the battle, I can now empathize with the woman who has conceived a child of rape–part herself and part horror. I can be touched by the plight of a child budding into womanhood whose life potential has been suddenly and drastically reduced by a tragic mistake.

I stand with my sister-woman on one side of the controversy as she views the rights of the unborn child and contends to save a small life. I stand with my sister-woman on the other side as she articulately expresses that the right to choose what we do with our bodies must not be taken away by a state or federal government. I love both women. I agree with both. The view is indeed different from atop the fence.

Because I believe my stance could never be legislated, I am done with one-issue politics. I find myself more free to consider the many policies of political candidates when I do not have to automatically accept or reject them because of their stand on abortion.

As a pro-love advocate, I no longer spend my energy on standing in front of abortion clinics, marching in Washington, angry debate. Instead, my efforts are focused on making a loving world where rapes are less likely to occur, where babies aren’t born addicted to drugs, where children don’t need to find their love in premarital sex. My efforts are focused on better health care, adoption and child placement possibilities, child support issues, education and job opportunities–solutions which might alleviate the need for abortions. In this world, every baby is a wanted baby.

I realize this is an idealistic view. But somehow we have to remove ourselves from the current battle over abortion which is now going on in the United States. Overturning Roe vs. Wade will solve nothing. People will continue to hold divergent opinions and the legality of abortion will flip-flop every few years as different parties gain political control. Roe vs. Wade is not a worthy goal for us as a country. We must set our sights higher. We must unite in a movement which will address the problem.

Until now, the middle of the road has had no name. The activists have been on either side of the issue. I hereby offer the “Pro-Love” movement. It’s an idea whose time has come. It’s an alternative to shooting the abortion doctor.

We need activists who will reach out with love to human beings with all idealogies in all situations. A pro-love world will take all the energy we can muster. We have none to waste on a war.

He Said: The Abortion Debate

In this weeks issue of Time Magazine there is an interesting article by Nancy Gibbs on Understanding America's Shift on Abortion she says that recent polls show that Americans are becoming more increasingly pro-life:

In 1995, when Gallup started asking the question, the split was 56-33 in favor of abortion rights. Now the lines have crossed, and 51% call themselves pro-life while only 42% say they are pro-choice. It's a shift that stretches past personal convictions and into legal constraints. For 35 years, a majority of Americans have wanted abortion to be, essentially, legal with limits. But the movement toward greater restraint is clear. In the mid-'90s, when pro-choice forces were especially dominant, only 12% believed abortion was always wrong; now that number has nearly doubled. At each extreme, slightly more people now believe abortion should be illegal under all circumstances (23%) than legal under all circumstances (22%).

One of the reasons that younger Americans are becoming pro-life according to Gibbs is that "People under 30 are more opposed to abortion than those who are older, perhaps because their first baby pictures were often taken in utero."

I think she makes a very good argument that with sonogram technology women can see that as early as ten to twelve weeks that the fetus is very developed. She also says that in some states they give stark evidence of the babies development prior to abortion.

Nebraska is the latest state to debate what activists call "window to the womb" laws, which require that women be shown an ultrasound of the fetus before going ahead with an abortion. The Missouri Senate just passed a bill that would require doctors to talk about a fetus' development and its ability to feel pain.

I think the LDS policy on abortion is one that takes in to account the possibility of terminating abortion for extreme situations such as rape or deformities. The leaders first encourage a person to keep the baby but allow for personal choice in consultation with a woman, her family, and church leaders. I am not sure how many women actually have an abortion after this process since it is not discussed.

In my own life I encountered an abortion situation which made me very much pro-life. I wasn't a member of the LDS Church nor was my first serious girlfriend. After high school when I was seventeen this first girlfriend was a fifteen year old upper-middle class girl who was very sexually active. She was your typical Catholic school girl. She had relations with three boys during the same three month period in which she became pregnant. When she discovered she was pregnant she decided to have the baby. I loved her even knowing that she had two other boyfriends being young and naive I offered to marry her. Her mother who was a radical feminist and president of the NOW group in Las Vegas did not want her daughter to repeat the same mistake she felt she had made at seventeen and scheduled an abortion. The girl and I tried to convince her that we should get married. My father met with her mother and they both decided that the best thing for us since the paternity was unclear was to not marry and for the girl to have an abortion.

The night before she was to have the procedure I went to their house and stood in the front yard and held a knife to my stomach. I was not intending to kill myself but to make a point about how I viewed abortion. For fifteen minutes I gave reasons for why what they were doing was murder in my eyes. The whole neighborhood came out and watched my performance. My parents came to get me. Finally I heard someone say that the police had been called so I threw the knife down and ran off.

My girlfriend babysat a local judge who lived one block away. I went to his house and rang the door bell and told him about the situation and asked for his help in getting some legal counsel in stopping the abortion. He told me that I had no rights in the decision and that the girl and her parent could do whatever they wanted with the unborn fetus. I hid under a cardboard box behind some hedges after my brief conversation with him as the police tried to apprehend me. They shined their light on the box but didn't see me.

I made my way home and my father and I went to see the Catholic priest. He was totally unsympathetic to me and harped on me for nothing going to church more often saying he didn't remember ever seeing me in his congregation so he wouldn't get involved and there was nothing the church could do for me anyway.

The next day I tried to go down to the hospital but my dad restrained me. My girlfriend who didn't enjoy the morning sickness had the procedure in forty-five minutes. Her family immediately sent her out of state to keep her from running off with me. I saw her one time before she left and one time years later after I joined the church and went on a mission. Sadly having the abortion made it so she could never have any children which at 21 she regretted. She had been married three times from the age of eighteen to twenty-one and felt unfilled she could never have a baby.

This experience caused me to reject the Catholic Church and embrace the LDS church which is pro-family. Three months after my experience I read the Book of Mormon, received a testimony, and joined the LDS Church. A year later I went on a mission. Eventually I married an exceptional returned sister missionary who believed at the time the same way. In fact when her father a Protestant minister discussed birth control with us she used the argument of which child should we give up if we only had two children like they suggested. After our second child my wife had toxemia and our Mormon doctor suggested she not have any more. She was adamant that with a change of diet she could have more. I briefly thought of following that counsel but respected her decision. I have never used birth control including a condom except an occasional use of abstinence my entire twenty-six years of marriage and have had nine pregnancies resulting in eight children. Personally I consider abortion a reprehensible practice and only in the case of rape would I consider it even then I would probably oppose it in favor of adoption should one of my seven daughters be raped. If a medical situation had occurred I think I would have accepted an impaired child but I would have thought long and hard about it.

Take the Poll: The Abortion Debate