We’ve had abortions!/We haven't had abortions!

lazybones32

Carry wrote: »

I'm sorry to hear that, lazybones. It must hurt to hear that you are only alive because of a shopping trip . Of course you are glad to be alive, but you see, in this thread it's not about you or the babies, it's about the women who struggle to make a difficult decision.

Does anyone ever think about the women?

Did you ask your mother why she didn't want a child? Did you ask her about her circumstances, and her feelings? Did you ask yourself why she needs to get drunk? Did you ask yourself what your being alive did to her life?

If you care about life so much, please try to care about your mother's life, too, and try to put yourself in her shoes.

I like to be brief but i don't know where to start, or if i could stop, with your post...

Your apology/'condolences' are unnecessary. 1) i wouldn't post anything in AH if it was personally sensitive and 2) judging by what you wrote afterwards, i don't believe there was any sincerity in your words to me.

I must congratulate you though; you are the first person i've encountered online, or in real life, who has advocated Stockholm Syndrome as a solution to anything. I wonder would you encourage a female rape victim to put herself in the shoes of her attacker? Or a woman who was stabbed, to learn to love the one who stabbed her? No, i can't see you encouraging such behaviour to a female victim. I wouldn't encourage you to view an aggressor primarily, as a person who needs your love and understanding but that's me.


Now, don't interpret my timely reply as any indication of respect towards your request that this thread be for women only. I went on a session on Saturday night and only returned to normal capacity yesterday. I had every intention of returning because even though you try to exclude me, i have every right to post here. In our age of equality, my voice is equal to yours; my experience is equal to yours.

lazybones32

Billy86 wrote: »

And what if your mother was raped at 17 by a family member, wasn't ready for parenthood at all, couldn't cope with the pressure, was completely cut off from the family because of the shame her being raped brought on them, wound up having to give birth to you but got depressed and involved in drinking and later heroin during the pregnancy. You got born with a degenerative disease that left you brain damaged and with a life expectancy of under 30 years of age all of which will be stuck in a wheelchair, and your mother tried to hide you from the outside world or keep you off the social services 'radar' resulting in your getting no education, no assistance or training for your special needs, huge levels of neglect, malnutrition and obscenely unsanitary health hazards around the house. Your mother continued to deteriorate into a mess who barely knows who or where she was at any given time, and then eventually when you were about 10 years old she overdosed, dead in her own 20s, leaving you stuck in the house completely stranded until eventually found by fortune before you died, all doing considerable further damage to your physical, mental and emotional condition. Now you're just entering your teens but the combination of all the factors to this point in your life mean doctors estimate there's no way you'll see your 18th birthday, or probably even your 16th, and you spend nearly all day every day fantasising about suicide just to end the misery that is all you've ever known and will ever know. The "beautiful, beautiful gift of life" can also be the complete fucking destruction of it.

I work admin in social services and deal with a lot of the stuff from cases etc, that is one of only a whole lot of similar ones I've come across in a short period of time.

Why not just fuck rape victims again, right?

Is there a question to me in there?
Be concise in future, if you'd like a reply.

Carry

lazybones32 wrote: »

I like to be brief but i don't know where to start, or if i could stop, with your post...

Your apology/'condolences' are unnecessary. 1) i wouldn't post anything in AH if it was personally sensitive and 2) judging by what you wrote afterwards, i don't believe there was any sincerity in your words to me.

I must congratulate you though; you are the first person i've encountered online, or in real life, who has advocated Stockholm Syndrome as a solution to anything. I wonder would you encourage a female rape victim to put herself in the shoes of her attacker? Or a woman who was stabbed, to learn to love the one who stabbed her? No, i can't see you encouraging such behaviour to a female victim. I wouldn't encourage you to view an aggressor primarily, as a person who needs your love and understanding but that's me.


Now, don't interpret my timely reply as any indication of respect towards your request that this thread be for women only. I went on a session on Saturday night and only returned to normal capacity yesterday. I had every intention of returning because even though you try to exclude me, i have every right to post here. In our age of equality, my voice is equal to yours; my experience is equal to yours.

I really felt sorry when I read how you found out about you being in this world. But you are right, after reading the rest of your remarks, especially this one:

So yeah, that's my experience and i'm so glad to be alive. I'm sure the other babies would like to live too, but fcuk them, right?

... I had to supress my anger and that might have seeped through my comment.

Since you don't post anything that is personally sensitive, as you said, I wonder why you posted this story in the first place.
Obviously it is personal, otherwise you wouldn't react as you do now.

I didn't want to hurt your feelings deliberately, but you dismissed anything that was written here.

This thread is not for women only as you might have noticed. Though the initial question was directed at women, because they are the ones who experience actual abortion, it didn't exclude men's experiences.

And what is it about Stockholm syndrome? I genuinely don't understand the connection to anything I or anybody else said.

pilly

lazybones32 wrote:

I must congratulate you though; you are the first person i've encountered online, or in real life, who has advocated Stockholm Syndrome as a solution to anything. I wonder would you encourage a female rape victim to put herself in the shoes of her attacker? Or a woman who was stabbed, to learn to love the one who stabbed her? No, i can't see you encouraging such behaviour to a female victim. I wouldn't encourage you to view an aggressor primarily, as a person who needs your love and understanding but that's me.

So you equate your mother with a rapist or a stabber because she considered an abortion?

What I took from Lazybones post was that he harbours a lot of anger towards his mother and is still hurt by how close she came to having a termination. It does not mean Lazybones mother is an awful person and no doubt was struggling. He is still entitled to his feelings. This is his own personal experience.

Carry

Deleted User wrote: »

What I took from Lazybones post was that he harbours a lot of anger towards his mother and is still hurt by how close she came to having a termination. It does not mean Lazybones mother is an awful person and no doubt was struggling. He is still entitled to his feelings. This is his own personal experience.

Yes, of course he is entitled to his feelings, and he is welcome to share them. But I don't think he should condemn other people's feelings and experiences or transfer his problems with his mother on other women.

There were posters here who tried to understand their mothers' situation. That's what I was asking for in my first reply to his first post. What about her?

On the other hand it's quite cruel of a mother to tell her son this story the way she did: dismissive, drunk, publicly in a pub, according to Lazybones. I would have been furious with my mother in such a situation - but not with people who see abortion as the only salvation from a desperate situation.

I give Lazybones the benefit of the doubt because he seems to be a very hurt and angry (young?) man.
But it's no excuse for lashing out at other posters with their emotionally sensitive reports.

captbarnacles

The circumstances of your birth are really irrelevant lazybones. You are no less or greater than anyone else whether they were an 'accident', the result of failed contraception, a planned baby, a one night stand, a sexual assault or parents who considered terminating the pregnancy but changed their mind. You exist and if you didn't you would not miss it.

So what if your mother made that flippant remark? she can make that remark and still love you as much as your siblings.

I am pretty sure I was an accident and not meant to happen. I would guess if contraception had not been frowned upon by the church, I and my 2 younger siblings would not exist but so what? now if this affected how our parents treated us that is entirely different.

end of the road

the flippant dissmissal of lazy bones's feelings by a few on here is in my view, absolutely shameful. sadly, i'm not surprised at it though.
it doesn't matter whether he supposibly wouldn't have missed anything if he was not born. the fact is he was born, and he had it thrown in his face that the only reason he is alive is because of a shopping trip. yet a few really come across as dismissing it as if it's nothing, and they then expect him to think about his mother's feelings? nope, why should he, she didn't give a damn about him when she threw that in his face. it's not his fault.
are the few who seem to more or less think this is hardly anything, telling me, that if you had that little nugget of information simply thrown at you, you would be "ah shur tis grand mam, not to worry" . i'm not sure you would.

Carry

end of the road wrote: »

the flippant dissmissal of lazy bones's feelings by a few on here is in my view, absolutely shameful. sadly, i'm not surprised at it though.
it doesn't matter whether he supposibly wouldn't have missed anything if he was not born. the fact is he was born, and he had it thrown in his face that the only reason he is alive is because of a shopping trip. yet a few really come across as dismissing it as if it's nothing, and they then expect him to think about his mother's feelings? nope, why should he, she didn't give a damn about him when she threw that in his face. it's not his fault.
are the few who seem to more or less think this is hardly anything, telling me, that if you had that little nugget of information simply thrown at you, you would be "ah shur tis grand mam, not to worry" . i'm not sure you would.

Let's be honest: You don't give a fùck about Lazybones, you just grab the occasion to do your whataboutery thing.
Just leave it, would you?

mosi

I've never been pregnant, so obviously have never had an abortion but I know people who have.
I was brought up in quite a religious household where I was taught that abortion was murder and "pro abortionists" are evil people who want to go around killing babies. I remember being in primary school during the X case and - in retrospect - everyone was parroting off their parents' positions on the matter. I remember being brought to the big "pro life" march around that time that was organised by YD.
In my early teens, I didn't think much about it but would have maintained an uninformed "pro life" view, even as I started to seriously question religion and it's weird attitudes to sexuality. When I was around 16, I started to get political and got involved in a particular campaign. It had nothing to do with abortion but for the first time, I met people of different backgrounds and ages, and with different life experiences...or actual life experiences compared to my young self. I remember one young woman talking about how she had had an abortion and why she did. She simply wasn't ready at that time to become a mother. I already got on quite well with her and this was the first time I had ever met someone who had had an abortion. That really demystified the whole thing for me and I gradually moved towards my current liberal pro choice position, especially as I have known others since who have had abortions for varying reasons. It's shown me the reality of what it means to be pregnant and not want to be, and that normal, decent people sometimes have to make difficult personal decisions.