Short Response 11/08/10

Although I completely support the idea that women have our rights to completely take control of our reproduction choice, I was enraged when reading And So I Chose by Allison Crews. In And So I Chose, Allison describes her experience of choosing to give birth to her child when she was in high school. Actually, at first, she scheduled three abortion appointments but cancelled each of them. Finally she decided not to abort her pregnancy for reasons like no transportation and money. I can understand that she was a child when she made that choice, but it seems she had no regret at all when she wrote this work. Choosing and actually undergoing to give birth to a child is a big and serious issue. Preplanned pregnancy is far healthier to both the baby and the mother. A well balanced diet, regular exercises, and frequent examinations can help insure both mental and physical health of babies. When my step-mother decided to bear a child, both my parents had prepared for a long time and conducted a lot of actions; my step-mother started taking pteroyl-glutamic acid three months before pregnancy and my father stopped drinking and smoking at the same time. So my little brother is very healthy and smart now. But I do not mean that women should abort unprepared pregnancy; I think women should be really cautious and bear responsibility for their children once the pregnancy is detected and they have decided to bear the children. However, in Allison’s case, she did not make her decision at once but procrastinated until almost the last minute. And during her pregnancy, she remained depressed because the people around her hardly gave her any support. I doubt she cautiously bore her child. It seems she did not take her pregnancy seriously other than on pro-choice or pro-life issues. Her work enraged me because I think she cares more about the respect she received other than the health of her child. She even decided to give birth in her home herself because she felt kind of repressed by the doctors and feminist community members. While describing the doctor’s response when hearing her decision about giving birth at home, she describes the doctor as a sexist who thought “delivering babies is a man’s job”, though I do not agree with the doctor either, I think she purposely neglected the health issue to address the feminism issue. However, giving birth at home can be extremely dangerous especially for young girls like her. How could she be sure that she could handle it? Is her feeling really above the health of her child even though that she/he would be adopted by others? As Judith Arcana states in Abortion Is a Motherhood Issue, “being pregnant meant having a baby growing inside our bodies”. Being pregnant also means have responsibility to the well-being of a new life. Being careless towards pregnancy can cause lifelong harm on the children being born. I myself am a victim of careless pregnancy. My mother was kind of careless when she bore me, she did not prepare for the pregnancy as my stepmother did and she even refused to eat healthily because she had no appetite. It turned out that I was very susceptible to diseases when I was young and I had to suffer from hearing loss which can never be restored again probably because of an infection during her pregnancy.