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From: panix!mara@cmcl2.NYU.EDU (Mara Chibnik)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Giving up one's child (was Re: birth control failure?)
Message-ID: <1991Jun12.143557.22596@panix.uucp>
Date: 12 Jun 91 14:35:57 GMT
References: <14904@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <49657@ricerca.UUCP>
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In article <49657@ricerca.UUCP> jan@oas.olivetti.COM writes:

>Back to the adoption bit.  I admire women who can give up a child for
>adoption, but I suspect they're rare.
>
>[They are.  One source noted that 3 percent of unwed mothers in the US
>actually give up their child at birth.  cf. _Abortion: The Clash of
>Absolutes_ by Laurence H. Tribe.  --CTM]
>
>I could no more do that than donate my heart at childbirth.  Some
>women who *did* give up children in the 40's and 50's have said they
>never recovered.  My kids told me they feel the same way the other day
>when we were discussing "what to do if".  I think some of the
>stereotyping of men as irresponsible may come from a sort of
>flabbergasted inability to understand some very loud men who make it
>sound like this should be easy.


Some years ago I was talking to a close (male) friend of mine about
the likelihood that technology would soon do away with the argument
that terminating a pregnancy meant ending the life of the
fetus/child.  I was quite surprised that he felt that most men would
find this very troubling.  Either, he thought, they'd want the kids
themselves, or they'd want them to be raised by someone they knew
about, or they'd want to know that the fetus had been destroyed.
(His position on abortion was that it was a bad thing but that it
should be legal; "Let people commit their own sins," is the way he
put it.)

I can imagine that it would be extremely hard for a woman to give up
for adoption the child that she's borne.  (It's obvious that this
can be rough even on someone who chose to bear a child on behalf of
someone else.)

I'd be interested to hear how common people think my friend's
feelings are.

(Is this still germane to soc.feminism?  Seems so to me, but I'll
redirect if you think I should.)





-- 
mara@panix.com          Mara Chibnik        mara@dorsai.com

        Life is too important to be taken seriously.