Actually, YOU are having it both ways. And you misread my post entirely.
Pro-life has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
You, as a God-loving person of conscience and belief, decided to have your child. Great and good and God bless the both of you. It is what I would wish for my sisters or daughters.
What I was referring to was the removal of the onus for children "born out of wedlock," as the quaint saying goes. That onus kept a lot of women from "going too far," as they knew the consequences were great.
Abortion, in the olden days of 25-30 years ago, was not a remedy for a bad situation like it's become today. It was relatively rare. When a woman of consience got pregnant outside of marriage, she toughed it out and raised the child, or gave it up to adoption (third option, unacceptable to both of us, she aborted it).
But what's going on today, with our "relaxed" society? Get pregnant? Abort. As people here know, abortion, for too many women, is not much more than a very late birth control application (and yes, damn their murdering souls). But now there's another option: Just have the kid. Cool. And I don't need a husband, because, in virtually every neighborhood in the US, no matter the income level, almost no one has the gonads to say, I disapprove of what you're doing.
It's all a complicated, confusing stew of morals and choices (and amoral choices!) coming out of the moral relativistic, feel-good, do what's best for me attitudes the left has--successfully--been foisting on us for two generations. Now you have millions of people who reflexively say, No one can tell a woman what to do with her own body!
Anyway, I appreciate your passion, which is born of your emotionalism for your situation and your child, and that is in no way any kind of criticism. I just think it led you to misinterpret what I was saying. You, I infer, are one of the exceptions--conscience, love, taking a moral stand.
Safe travel to you both.
You neglect to mention that single motherhood is not only a result of unmarried and unprotected sex, but from deadbeat fathers leaving their children behind when they leave their marriage. I am sure you realize that this is pathetically common and is in no way to be construed as a "choice" made by the mother except for her initial decision to marry a loser.
Even the most amicable divorces with two parents who love the child often result in one parent having physical custody and the other ending up with visitation. This is another scenario for single-parenthood where the custodial parent may not have "chosen" their situation, but rather agreed to it or was ordered by the court to comply.
so what do you say to the child who IS born out of wedlock? that they are "less than" worthy of societal integration because of a bad decision their mother made? Because thats what I hear every time I hear the word bastard...and how children born out of wedlock were automatically shunted out of the 'normal' flow of societal movement...is this what you think we shoudl return to?