The Daily Item
February 2, 2024
The Standard-Journal
February 2, 2024
The Biden-Harris task force fact sheet on safe and legal reproductive health care includes their administration’s plan to provide affordable access to contraception, ensure emergency care, offer travel services, and provide security for providers and patients. It addresses the egregious overturning of 51 years of women’s constitutional right to an abortion.
But it is not only “women’s health and lives that hang in the balance.” What about the consequences of abortion bans on the many unwanted children produced by those 622,000 unwanted pregnancies annually?
Four percent are placed for adoption. What happens to the 96 percent who are not? Physical abuse. Neglect. Hunger. Unsafe environments. Sickness. Or foster care, but foster homes are woefully lacking in numbers. Adding more children to an already overburdened, under-funded system is not the answer. Orphanages?
Some would argue that abortion should be allowed only under certain circumstances. Under what circumstance should a woman be forced to carry a child she doesn’t want? Has she been so irresponsible that she should be punished by laws that force her into motherhood or resort to unsafe, illegal means? And who gets to make this fundamental decision for her?
All aspects of abortion are covered by the media many times a day. What becomes of the children left in the aftermath of irresponsible laws is not. Our childcare system is, sorrowfully, inadequate. It is not the fault of the children who live in it, yet they are the ones to suffer the consequences.
April Fairweather
Lewisburg