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My opinion is that it's better to have a quality life, then 'just' a life. It is absolutely appalling to me that couples (like your relatives) can't get an adoption through, while we then see cases of those people who stick their 'troubled' children in CAGES and force them to live in their own urine and shit. There's no justification for allowing that kind of behavior - it's not okay if you adopted someone else's child or grew it yourself... And I firmly believe that the behavior itself is being perpetuated by our own government.
I know this'll be a can of worms too, but why can't most states understand that it takes *love* and *security* to raise a family, not merely 'a mother and a father'...
In my novel, Dawnlight Chronicles (where Shard and Rue and the rest of them are from) the city has a long-instituted policy of contraception until maturity. Period. When the people with the power decide that a couple (or a woman, they're okay with that) has the stability they would want, their food supply is given additives that cancel out the contraceptives... Yes, they're quite facist but that's how they had to deal with limited space and resources.
Of course they don't TELL the people about this... and, some are immune to it... lol.
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Myself, I am about as far away from being a breeder than ... well, I'm just not interested in children *at all*. I was worried for a while in high school too- to the point that my bf was actually kind of disappointed when it turned out to just be lateness. But even at that point, knowing that I was still a Jr in high school? I couldn't possibly have brought a child to term and continued my life. I knew I couldn't handle that. :/
But it's DEFINITELY so different for every young woman - or old woman for that matter. My jr high science teacher one year came to work in tears, because her mother - the teacher was already in her late 30s I think - who had been pregnant had spontaneously aborted the baby while on the toilet. Her body was certainly not going to be able to support another child in her mid-50s or however old she was, even if her social and financial situation would have supported her. It was so very sad seeing the reaction of my teacher to this news, we are all pretty stunned. It was something you just don't hear every day, and it certainly stayed with me for lo these 25 odd years.
anyway - the law should never make something *unsafe* for anyone. We have laws against pollution, running traffic signals, and wearing helmets in construction areas. The fact that without a law *keeping* abortion legal and monitored, will bring us right back to the 50s with unsafe conditions, death from infection, and doctors being put on the spot for their activities when all they're doing, is their job... I don't want to go to that, it's just so wrong to me.
But I absolutely agree that responsibility and education are the primary places to combat this as a problem in general. To *not* have this as an afterthought or 'oh let's not worry about it now' - it *is* something to worry about, right? And shouldn't be taken lightly. (And unfortunately, seems to be just that, in some folks!)