Yesterday, Jessica at Feministing pointed out this anti-choice horse shit on the government’s “4parents” site, which exists to help parents (like me?) help their kids make “healthy choices.” This is what it says about teen pregnancy:
If a teen girl finds out she is pregnant, she and her parents, and the father of the baby and his parents have some tough decisions to make. None of them are easy:
- Some teen mothers decide to continue their pregnancy and then choose adoption for their baby. Adoption may be the best choice for the baby and the teen parents. There are many adoption agencies and types of adoption. Some teens are able to meet the parents who wish to adopt the baby.
- Many teens decide to keep their babies. Some marry the baby’s father and raise their baby together. Sometimes the baby’s grandparents or other family members help raise it so that the teen mother can stay in school and work. But it requires a lot of additional hard work for a teen parent to finish school and get a good job. Children of teen mothers face greater risk of poverty, behavioral problems, poor academic performance, incarceration, and teen pregnancy, so good parenting skills are very important.
- Some teen pregnancies end in abortion. Abortions can have complications. There may be emotional consequences, as well: some women say that they feel sad and some use more alcohol or drugs than before. Some states require teens to have their parent’s permission to get an abortion. To understand the scope of this situation, consider these numbers: In 2002, there were over 750,000 teen pregnancies in the United States, including over 215,000 teen abortions.
Emphasis mine. Apparently, adoption is the BEST choice for pregnant teens, period. I mean, look at that! Motherhood and abortion, those choices are nothing but a laundry list of risks, problems and consequences.
But there are NO downsides to adoption! No risks or possible lifelong regrets for the birth mother, no chance that the child might not be completely content with being adopted, no chance that anything bad might happen at all!
Sarcasm aside, I don’t mean to make adoption sound like a bad choice. I’m sure it’s a good choice for those who DO choose it freely and willingly. But to pretend that there are NO risks or problems at all with adoption, and NOTHING good about abortion or motherhood, is just flat-out dishonest. There’s a reason (many reasons, actually) why a third of pregnant teenagers abort, while only about 2% of women choose adoption for their unwanted pregnancies (and the rest choose motherhood). This site is ridiculously biased.
And let me just say that as a parent, it’s not particularly helpful, either. It just looks like the standard fundamentalist Christian view of sex, except with all the Christianity taken out, leaving behind very little substance.
cross-posted