Stress and Abortion
South Dakota's governor signed an abortion ban into law today. I can only wonder what this will mean for women in that state who find themselves pregnant and who would have found such a procedure necessary. I'm not trying to be political, but I am trying to look at the facts as they may play out.
Recently, I read Freakonomics in which the economist Steven Levitt takes what he knows is an unpopular stand regarding abortion. He analyzes the data and finds that there is a direct relationship between unavailability of abortion, as in Roumania a decade or so ago, and the rise of crime. How do these two facts correlate?
Levitt says it may be that these mothers who did not abort were teenagers unable to raise children, too poor or unavailable emotionally and their children ended up in lives of crime as a result. All of this may be true, but what else do we know about unwanted pregnancies?
Unwanted pregnancies are stressful pregnancies. We can only imagine how this stress affects the fetus as it develops and how the emotional climate after this child's birth will continue to affect it in negative ways. Children born to stressed mothers, according to a 1999 study from the University of California School of Medicine, are more likely to have low birth weight and to be born prematurely. Mothers in these situations are more likely to decrease their attention to nutrition, smoke, drink or use drugs. Alcohol abuse in response to stress in a pregnant woman can lead to children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, a life-long problem of lower intelligence and behavioral outbursts. Then there is the problem of insomnia brought on by the stress, irritability, increasing anxiety and increasing levels of stress hormones.
I can remember my mother telling me many years ago about how poor women in the neighborhood, who had no access to birth control, went to back-alley abortionists. In some instances, it meant a large family without a mother after she died as a result of this.
Related Topics: Less Stress for Healthier Mom and Baby, Abortion Impact: Long-Term Stress?
Technorati Tags: abortion, teenagepregnancy, abortionlaw
Recently, I read Freakonomics in which the economist Steven Levitt takes what he knows is an unpopular stand regarding abortion. He analyzes the data and finds that there is a direct relationship between unavailability of abortion, as in Roumania a decade or so ago, and the rise of crime. How do these two facts correlate?
Levitt says it may be that these mothers who did not abort were teenagers unable to raise children, too poor or unavailable emotionally and their children ended up in lives of crime as a result. All of this may be true, but what else do we know about unwanted pregnancies?
Unwanted pregnancies are stressful pregnancies. We can only imagine how this stress affects the fetus as it develops and how the emotional climate after this child's birth will continue to affect it in negative ways. Children born to stressed mothers, according to a 1999 study from the University of California School of Medicine, are more likely to have low birth weight and to be born prematurely. Mothers in these situations are more likely to decrease their attention to nutrition, smoke, drink or use drugs. Alcohol abuse in response to stress in a pregnant woman can lead to children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, a life-long problem of lower intelligence and behavioral outbursts. Then there is the problem of insomnia brought on by the stress, irritability, increasing anxiety and increasing levels of stress hormones.
I can remember my mother telling me many years ago about how poor women in the neighborhood, who had no access to birth control, went to back-alley abortionists. In some instances, it meant a large family without a mother after she died as a result of this.
Related Topics: Less Stress for Healthier Mom and Baby, Abortion Impact: Long-Term Stress?
Technorati Tags: abortion, teenagepregnancy, abortionlaw
6 Comments:
From a perspctive of philosophy...
Let's say that at some point, a fetus has consciousness -- at least enough to recognize a death threat. [There's compelling enough reason to consider that this "could be" the case.] And it seems obvious enough that the intent or desire to abort is, at least at the level of thought, a death threat.
Should we be surprised to find that an individual who knows his parent wished him dead would have "issues" growing up in the home with that parent? Might that knowledge create attachment problems?
From the perspective of the individual's self-protection, I should hope it would. The conflict of being completely dependent upon a parent who has issued a death threat toward you must certainly create stress of its own.
This is a situation with no easy answers. Yet surely we can come up with a better alternative than requiring parenthood from people who are at least wise enough to realize they're not ready. Parenting is challenging enough when the child is wanted!
www.StressIntoPower.com
Certainly, it's stressful either way.
My concern here is that you've provided a web link and, when I look at it, I do not find your qualifications to offer what is listed on the website. Perhaps, in the future, you'd just use your name to avoid this problem.
Let Freedom Ring! Will this ever be true? If a man can just say I'm not the Dad,and play no part in a womens life...or beat a women, or lie, or runin her life and the childs.
why cant a women say?
"im in NO way ready to be a mother or carry a child."
Let Freedom Ring! Will this ever be true? If a man can just say I'm not the Dad,and play no part in a womens life...or beat a women, or lie, or runin her life and the childs.
why cant a women say?
"im in NO way ready to be a mother or carry a child."
With being a 16 year old, with an 18 year old brother, and a 3 year old baby brother, I can say seriously, it's not just unwanted pregnancies that are stressful. Us teenagers probably give more stress than those pregnancies.
It the mother is a teenager, really, she should have thought about the consequences before hand. Don't you think? If she has a kid, it's her own fault. There's no reason to kill someone else for her (and the fathers) mistake of premature sex.
If anything, adoption is best if the mother is unwilling, or unable to raise a baby. But another thought, if she raises this baby, with help of others, in the end, she'll be happy she did.
Abortion is always on your conscience. You can't live that down. And there's certainly no way that you're better than the actual killers, if you have an abortion.
Let freedom ring? Let children live. If the woman says she's not ready, she's not ready, but don't take a life to try to make up for her idiocy.
STRESS IS NATURAL!! IF YOU DIDN'T WANT EXTRA - DON'T BE STUPID!!
I'm so glad to hear from a 16yr. old has his head on staghter then most of you..... abortion is murder anyway you look @ it, your afraid of the childs stress cuz you didn't want em well then give the child a better parent then you seem to be!!!! glad to hear @ this day and age the kids r learning more about the truth....
way 2 go comment b~4 me.......
mother of 4 myself........
Post a Comment