What’s wrong with planned parenthood? It’s opposite is unplanned parenthood. If a child is unplanned, either its conception was accidental, unwanted, unhealthy, or the result of circumstances such as incest or rape.
In our society, the stigma of being a bastard has lessened – it used to signify a person whose parents were not married; now we think of a bastard as being a jerk. But anyone who learns that their birth was unwanted, whether they confess sheepishly to being an accident or find out in adulthood that they were adopted, must have difficulty.
Likewise, everyone who knows that their birth was intentional, that they were always loved, should feel pretty good. We have had friends who enjoy their large families; one man told me, “We’ll never be rich in money, but we’ll be rich in children.” And their brood of a half dozen or so were happy and well-adjusted people.
The initial idea of planned parenthood was that women should not be at the absolute mercy of men in matters of giving birth, but that they might choose for themselves at what age and frequency to do so. If they understood how conception occurs, they might take steps for birth control, resulting in increased health, happier families, and reducing the effects of hardship and poverty of too-large families.
In elementary school, I believed my family with five children was small, because among my neighbors and classmates were households with seven, nine, 11 and 14 kids. My wife and I have three children – which probably seems large to some 21st-century Americans.
As a young couple, we employed every known form of birth control, both natural and doctor-prescribed. After examining our calendars and finances, we planned to have a baby and quit contraception altogether. We knew my wife had brief labor, for she had born a daughter from her first marriage. A couple of years later we planned another birth. We were fortunate, both fertile and willing, and experienced no complications during pregnancies or births.
Not everyone is so fortunate. The flip side of the debate about abortion is the ethics of medical fertility interventions. Not so long ago, if a couple planned to have children but could not conceive, adoption was the only avenue to fulfill their goal.
Now they might utilize fertility drugs, which may result in twins or quintuplets. Or they may make a withdrawal from a sperm bank or hire a surrogate mother to carry the fetus. Surrogacy also allows same-sex couples to have children where at least one spouse is the bonafide parent.
Stranger yet, last year I read about a doctor who bragged that he actually had DNA from three people put together in a test tube to create an infant. All of these possibilities are forms of birth control – controlled births by people working with their advisors – physicians, pastors, adoption agencies, etc. And we haven’t considered cloning, which is certainly on the horizon.
These factors all represent a pro-choice perspective: Do I want to have children? If so, how many? Am I ready to be a parent? Am I old enough to be a parent? Too old? With whom do I want to be a parent – or do I choose to be a single parent? If necessary, am I willing to adopt, or endure expensive and time-consuming medical interventions? If I already have children, what will be the effect on them of having more?
To say the options are pro-choice or pro-life is false; all of those pro-choice alternatives in the paragraph above are pro-life. When we consider having children, when we plan becoming parents, we are automatically pro-life. Which is why we are horrified by stories of child abuse or people drowning or selling their own children.
In the U.S., the rates of teenage pregnancy and abortions are dropping – signifying that people are becoming more conscious of planning parenthood. No one advocates abortion as contraception. Generally speaking, it is a valid option only under certain circumstances. But that option should be available to any woman who believes it is her best option.
Kirk Ashworth