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Edited on Tue May-02-06 09:57 PM by hyphenate
adopted. Back in an era when abortions were not only illegal, but dangerous. Back in an era when getting pregnant, especially, an unmarried woman, was scandalous and humiliating.
I was adopted within the same family--my biological mother gave me to her brother to raise me, which he and his wife did, from the age of 9 days old.
My bio mother would likely qualify as a slut--she had 7 kids out of wedlock and all were given up for adoption through the years. My grandmother once said if she had to ship her out of town one-more-time to keep the scandal down, she wasn't sure if she could--or would--do it.
I was raised believing my bio mother was my aunt. I spent time with her through those formative years believing this, always assuming she was a "favored" aunt. It slipped out one night as I lay in bed, around 2 in the morning, when my parents came home from a function (and were at least 3 sheets to the wind) and were arguing and the conversation was about me. It didn't click at first, but it eventually came out. I was 11 years old. I spent those teenaged years in a different kind of angst than most--I had a secret that I kept for 7 years, until one night when I was finally told I was adopted. I'd known, and had often over those years wondered what it would have been like to know my father.
But to get back to the point: if I were gotten rid off, how would I have known any difference? I would never have existed at all. You can't construct a straw man argument with people about abortion versus adoption, because there is no comparison. In one, there is a conscious existence, in the other, there is nothing--at all.
I've heard that argument in different times of my life, and it never creates any guilt or a sense of regret, because there is nothing to argue about. One results in a living person, the other results in nothing worth arguing about.
I believe in the right for a woman to choose because if laws are dictated by men about a woman and her body, we remain second class citizens, regardless of what meager offerings amendments have purportedly given us. Asshole Reagan failed to give women equal status, and for that alone, he was among the worst asshole presidents in our country. Women must hold equal status, and control over ourselves is one of the first steps we must take, in order to escape secondary status. Another step backwards and we would be left without any protection at all, and countries like those in the middle east would look positively progressive in comparison.
I was raised in a loving home, I admit, but there are times when living is such a burden that it's quite oppressive. I will never know what traits and features I got from the paternal side of the family; hereditary illnesses and diseases are anyone's guess; and as I found a long time ago, it's difficult enough even determining things like what time I was born, in what city, in what state. Having heart disease early in life was a "gift" from my biological mother, as well as other things that haven't worked out very well, either.
Those on the right would judge every woman who made a choice about their own futures. These hypocrites would choose to be busy-bodies, telling the world about the faults of others, yet never owning up to their own faults. If a person can't keep their privacy away from such nutcases, then what the fuck good is living anyhow? Our nation is already massively screwed up on a psychological level, and these assholes on the right just keep adding straws to the camel's back.
There are far too many willing to pass judgement and declare their own beliefs the best of the bunch, the only rules to be followed. Isn't it sad that our country was founded on the boast that the United States was a "melting pot" of all the rest of the world's people, and to see such intolerance, such hatred of any and all that are different? They have trashed the founding father's most beloved wishes and turned us into the police state that the pilgrims were fleeing from in Europe. If we must pass judgement on women who want to tend to their own bodies and the actions thereof, how can we remain the nation that strove to accept and tolerate the world of differences, as a place where even those left out in other societies could come to for comfort?
Europe has progressed beyond such puritanical observances, but yet every day the RRR can claim an ear in Washington, we digress to that foreign place--that blaring contempt, that intolerance of 400+ years ago, that was desperately fled in hopes of something better. It is here, it is now, and unless we can suppress it, we will need ourselves to flee, perhaps even back across the ocean to the Europe that has now become far wiser than we.
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