Stronger Than You

The conversation around abortion shouldn’t be “are you absolutely sure you want an abortion” it should be “are you absolutely sure you want a child”. You can get pregnant again. You can adopt. But you can’t half-heartedly raise a child or change your mind midway through parenthood. Children are a huge responsibility and if someone isn’t 110% sure they are willing and able to do it, they shouldn’t. Having a baby shouldn't be the default because of how extremely demanding and difficult parenthood is and the irreversible damage it does to a kid to be raised by someone who didn't even fully want parenthood and wasn't prepared for that level of responsibility.

Naomi from The Handmaid’s Tale is everything I hate about socially mandatory motherhood like

in a way that should be obvious to everyone, if you kidnap a child from their birth parents, you’re not a good parent, you’ll never be a good parent no matter how much you love that child, because you have taken away a child from their parents without anyone’s consent, which means you’re going to do your damnest to keep it that way whether that includes lying to “your” child, change their whole identity or forcibly restraining them but

Naomi not only did/agreed to/was complicit in all this; she had a child, someone else’s child, and she didn’t care for her, didn’t provide emotional or even physical comfort for her, she “had” a child because it was expected of her, even if she wasn’t meant to be a mother, and she almost let that child die from touch starvation !!!

like sure, this is fiction, but do you know how many people have kids because “it’s expected of them” only to then fail to meet the basic emotional requirements to be a parent?? I mean it’s fucking scary! why is it more important to have a kid than to have an emotionally healthy kid?? and this is all apart from the cases where parents can’t provide for their kids’ material needs, because that’s a whole different issue related to different circumstances. I’m talking about people who materially can afford to have kids, but emotionally they cannot. People talk about being pro-choice as “murdering babies”, while the whole point of being pro-choice is to stop motherhood from being something you fall into and make it an effective choice, so that when you actually bring a baby into the world, they would have been genuinely wanted, and will be properly cared for.