Of course that's your prerogative, but knowing what I do about PP, I believe they are one of the most destructive, subversive organizations in the world and I would never, under any circumstance knowingly allow a child of mine to get ANYTHING from them. I care more about people than to trust anything of any of any importance to that group. Besides my other objections, here's my number one reason why - had it not been for PP my daughter might be healthy and we might have a grandchild. I can only imagine how many others have been through as much thanks in part to their attitude and their ineptitude.

I thought that was self explanatory, isn't "abstinence" the same as "not doing it?"

Well now I have to sound like Bill Clinton... :o

I guess that makes two of us (please don't tell anyone I borrowed from Clinton ) :D

When I *did* become pregnant as a teen, PP walked me through ALL of my options, giving me contact information for adoption agencies and government agencies that would help me with raising my child if I chose to parent. At NO TIME did they EVER pressure me into an abortion, though they did let me know that was an option.

As far as abortions go--the only person who can decide whether an abortion is bad is the person HAVING it. Far too many Pro-Lifers have had abortions for me to take them seriously. Apparently the only moral abortion is the abortion that a pro-lifer is having, hmm?

Just my pennies on this--but I can't believe that PP would promote abortion.

Aborting children to save the planet
SURVIVAL OF THE STUPIDEST
Kathleen Parker

Washington Post Writer's Group

November 28, 2007

Hey, did you hear the one about the woman who aborted her kid so she could save the planet?

That's no joke, but Darwin must be chuckling somewhere.

Toni Vernelli was one of two women recently featured in a London Daily Mail story about environmentalists who take their carbon footprint very, very seriously.

So seriously, in fact, that Vernelli aborted a pregnancy and, by age 27, had herself sterilized. Baby-making, she says, is "selfish" and "all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet."

Because Toni and her husband, Ed, are childless and vegan, they say they can justify one long-haul airplane trip per year and still remain carbon neutral.

Sarah Irving is another like-minded nature-nurturer. She and fiancé Mark Hudson decided on him having a vasectomy to prevent the possibility of an inconvenient life interfering with their carbon-perfect ones.

Those of us who have managed to see a pregnancy through to birth recognize the irony of these tales.

If we're not saving the planet for our kids, for whom are we saving it? After we're all sterilized and aborted, who's going to appreciate the fact that global warming is, by golly, under control? Who's going to live to tell the tale?

Tell me: When was the last time you read a good book by a polar bear?

Human beings may unconsciously wish to maintain their genetic line, but that's not the reason most people have children. OK, most of us have children because we get pregnant. But otherwise, the planet -- glorious as it is -- is simply not that much fun with no one around.

The authors of the newspaper story seemed to have a sense of something gone awry, but I don't share their nostalgia for "innocent eyes gazing up . . . with unconditional love" and "a little hand slipping into hers -- and a voice calling her Mummy."

Those little pleasures are for all to cherish in their own private moments. Please.

What I'm nostalgic for is sanity.

The couples who choose abortion and sterilization may not save the planet, but they're saving the gene pool a mess o' trouble by purging their own from the mix. The Darwin Awards folks, who honor those who improve the species by accidentally removing themselves from it, will have to create a new category:

People Too Narcissistic To Procreate.

Far be it from me to suggest that people must have children to be content or to contribute to life on Earth. But abortion should never be confused with a selfless act. It is clearly the ultimate and most-vivid expression of the opposite.

Raising children is quantifiably the most persistently unselfish act known to mankind, as millions of veterans of sleepless nights will attest. Parenthood is when "I" takes a backseat to "thou" -- when the infant-self submits to adulthood so that the real infant gets a necessary turn at the well of self-importance.

Although I doubt there are many willing to sterilize themselves in order to reduce the size of their carbon footprint, such extreme materialism is the evolutionary product of our gradual commodification of human life.

Suddenly, the unborn is of no greater importance than the contents of our recycling bin. Like Weight Watchers dieters substituting carbs for sugars, we trade off future members of the human race to neutralize insults to Earth's balance in the present.
Here's how the mental calculation goes: Let's see, if I abort my child, maybe I can travel first-class to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali.

Is this the slippery slope that pro-lifers prophesied? Once such utilitarian concerns edge out our humanity -- and once human life is deemed to have no greater value than any other life form -- how long before we begin tidying up other inconveniences?

Wouldn't it be helpful to eliminate some of the less productive members of society who, like the cows they no doubt eat, are emitting hazardous methane, one of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming?

That seems an absurd projection, but then not long ago, so did the aborting of babies to thwart global warming. The deeply caring, meanwhile, are always the ones to watch. Tenderness, it has been said, leads to the gas chambers.

On a lighter note, we might have avoided all such concerns if only the mothers of Toni, Ed, Sarah and Mark had been as "virtuous" as they are.




Kathleen Parker can be reached at [email protected].

And while millions of women regret abortion---millions ALSO regret choosing adoption.

But--you never hear those statistics, because there's not an agenda behind them like there is for the pro-life group regarding the regrets of abortion.

That isn't to say that the emotional pain of ANY of those women with regrets about the way a pregnancy ended up is not valid--because it is. But using personal emotional pain to push someone to make a decision different than your own is not the right answer either. Making people aware of the consequences of their choices is one thing--making people not HAVE your choice is something different entirely.

As far as the number of abortions increasing--do you have the statistics about the number of pregnancies in general increasing? And the age groups involved? How about the statistics about single-parenthood increasing? And the statistics about the number of young mothers on welfare? How about the statistics on adoptions? Foster care? Child abuse by young mothers?

Do you have statistics about the number of those women who didn't learn anything about birth control in school, because their school has an abstinence based program (and despite what you say--telling kids about birth control isn't telling them to have sex. That's like saying telling kids about McDonalds makes them fat)?

Sure--the number of abortions may have increased--but the number of areas it was available may have increased, or the number of pregnancies in general may have increased. A stand-alone statistic about the number of abortions going up doesn't tell me the whole story. That's just a number that is used to upset and anger people--it's like saying the number of deaths due to some horrible irresponsible use of Q-tips has gone up 400% over last year--well, if there was only ONE last year, then all it takes is 4 more to make up 400%. Do you see what I mean? Statistics are numbers that mean nothing on their own. If 100 women had an abortion last year, then a 9% increase would mean that 9 more women had an abortion this year than last year. Sure, that's an increase... but without the statistics about how many more PREGNANCIES there were, the statistic means nothing.