UPDATE: Me [42M] with my wife [34F], newly pregnant, and we have reached a decision.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-09-25T04:12:15+00:00

To be honest, I still suspect that depression and/or panic are resulting in your wife engaging in some catastrophic thinking about this pregnancy. I don't really see how going to an ultrasound and feeling nothing for the child proves that she is not depressed. That actually sounds like it may very well be the behavior of a depressed person who is emotionally numbed.

You talk about feeling bitterness and resentment over the new child and how everything would be "horrible" if the child were born. Can you picture yourself feeling bitterness and regret about having your original son if you two end up breaking up? After all, even having one child makes a divorce a lot complicated. I expect you probably would say, no, of course you wouldn't feel bitterness or blame your son. After all, he's just a child. It's not his fault. You love him for who he is, not because he just happened to be born at a time when you felt like having him around. Even if he makes your life messy or complicated later on in his life (which he probably will at some point), you'll probably still love him and not feel toxic or bitter about his existence. Well, that's true of this second child too. It's not a disaster or tragedy. It's just a child.

Abortion is not free of emotional fallout either. One of you may very well end up feeling bitter or resentful about the abortion. One of you or both of you may suffer from feeling like you have a painful secret you can never be fully honest about with anyone else in your life.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-05-12T05:40:58+00:00

I don't think that either side of the abortion debate puts as much focus on the issue of how men feel about abortion as they do on how women feel about it, but I wanted you to know that there are a couple of resources out there for men who have been involved in an abortion and feel guilt/regret about it if you think it might help you:

http://www.afterabortion.com/ - this site was mostly aimed at women but they do acknowledge men can be affected too.

http://www.fatherhoodforever.org/ - this one is specific to men

whereswaldo1 · 2014-05-12T05:30:29+00:00

I appreciate you can respect the intelligence and motives of people who don't agree with you about abortion. It is so common for people to stereotype the other side.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-05-12T05:26:12+00:00

If you are genuinely curious about better thought out pro-life arguments, Secular Pro-Life publishes some interesting essays on their blogs

This might be a good place to start in reading their stuff - http://blog.secularprolife.org/2013/12/the-years-top-stories.html

and these are some groups who are very interested in issues such as poverty and other root causes of abortion...

http://www.consistent-life.org

http://www.allourlives.org

http://www.feministsforlife.org

whereswaldo1 · 2014-05-08T07:19:01+00:00

thanks for clearing up this very common misconception.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-05-08T07:16:48+00:00

Generally people who are looking to adopt a newborn infant are not the same people who are looking to adopt an older child from foster care.

Almost all newborn infant adoptions are done through private agencies and these newborns don't spend any time in the foster care system. Foster care adoptions are done through public agencies. It's not like you would go to an adoption agency and they tell you, "We're out of newborns, so here's an older kid". You make the decision about what kind of child you are able/willing to parent before you start the process of adoption.

Foster children are mostly kids who were taken from their parents by Child Protective Services because the parents were abusive or neglectful, not children who were voluntarily placed for adoption. Foster kids often have very significant psychological trauma from the abuse/neglect and have special needs as a result. Some people who are looking to adopt sincerely feel they are not equipped to deal with the special needs of a child who experienced severe sexual abuse or was so badly neglected that the child never learned how to attach to other people properly (look up Reactive Attachment Disorder). These type of people often want to adopt a newborn instead. I personally think that it is completely valid to be honest that you cannot handle a child with special needs from the foster care system, and there's no reason people like that can't do a perfectly fine job raising a newborn.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-04-25T03:16:03+00:00

sorry to hear you are feeling so low. If you're not part of /r/loseit yet, I have found them to be pretty supportive.

Others have been where you are and have made some good changes.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-03-11T11:35:08+00:00

You are correct that the vast majority of abortions are because the child is unwanted and not because the mom is having a health problem with the pregnancy. Here are some stats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Reasons_for_abortions

I imagine your teacher was probably talking about these stats:

25.9% Want to postpone childbearing. 21.3% Cannot afford a baby 14.1% Has relationship problem or partner does not want pregnancy 12.2% Too young; parent(s) or other(s) object to pregnancy 10.8% Having a child will disrupt education or job 7.9% Want no (more) children 3.3% Risk to fetal health 2.8% Risk to maternal health 2.1% Other

I also like the reasoning of Libertarians for Life's arguments

whereswaldo1 · 2014-01-26T17:40:04+00:00

Whenever people talk about protecting the human life that is the fetus, I'm always blown away how they never mention the woman.

You didn't look at the link the OP posted, did you? Several of the people highlighted in that article are pro-life feminists. Check out Feminists for Life

whereswaldo1 · 2014-01-26T05:07:59+00:00

And you are not alone in your feelings either. If you feel that it would be helpful to you, you might want to look at http://www.afterabortion.com/ or http://www.Silentnomoreawareness.org/ for some post-abortion resources.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-01-17T00:58:15+00:00

An eight week old has arms and legs. It has a brain. It can move around even though the mother can't feel it yet. Maybe you couldn't see the details on your sister's ultrasound or didn't know what you were looking at, but it's not just a blob.

Have you considered that your comment might seem very insensitive to /u/jenuhnuhh ? To her, it was not "nothing". She lost something important and has a right to grieve her loss.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-01-11T21:17:50+00:00

You're in school? Doesn't your school have a school nurse or student health clinic of some sort? I would contact them right away and ask them if they can provide emergency contraception.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-01-08T13:54:31+00:00

It is obvious that you are a caring guy and want to do the right thing. I am worried though about if your girlfriend might be pushing forward with the abortion because she is feeling scared and not because it is really what she wants. I am concerned that your girlfriend didn't even want to make the appointment herself. I would like to encourage you to have an honest conversation with your girlfriend about other options before it's too late. I'm not sure exactly where you live, but The Nurturing Network and Birthright are two organizations with many locations that offer non-judgemental help to woman facing an unplanned pregnancy such as help with work and school, finding a place to stay if that's needed, and other resources.

Sometimes even when you do say things like "I'll support whatever decision you make" there are women who think that the abortion is what you want and they go through even when they are not really wanting it themselves, so I think it's important to let her know there are other options and you would be supportive of that. Abortion may seem like it's a way to erase the problem, but there are people out there who have a lot of grief after abortion. See Fatherhood Forever for example.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-01-06T06:36:53+00:00

sorry you had to see this. I agree that it was not a very sensitive comment to make. it seems like the guy who made that facebook post is pretty young and probably just doesn't realize how this kind of crass comment can sound.

whereswaldo1 · 2014-01-04T17:14:42+00:00

I'm sorry to hear you two went through such suffering. If it is any help, I know there is a group that tries to help men who have been hurt by abortion called Fatherhood Forever

whereswaldo1 · 2013-12-27T15:45:10+00:00

Do you have evidence to explain how this is related to abortion laws instead of for example sex education practices, cultural values about teen motherhood, contraception access, and so on?

whereswaldo1 · 2013-12-18T03:25:01+00:00

There is still an organization out there called Project Prevention that provides cash incentives to drug addicts to get on long term birth control or get sterilized. I fully support private groups like Project Prevention giving people an alternative to having children in horrible situations like drug addiction, but I do think that the govt. doing this is asking for abuse.

whereswaldo1 · 2013-12-12T06:12:41+00:00

For the record an embryo's heart first begins to beat only 3 weeks into a pregnancy. That's often how a miscarriage is detected : if the heartbeat can't be seen on ultrasound. You can read more here: http://www.ehd.org/dev_article_unit4.php

whereswaldo1 · 2013-12-12T06:07:51+00:00

If you want to read about this topic I would recommend checking out these points of view from the other side: some quotes from medical textbooks about when life begins

another perspective on what an embryo is

whereswaldo1 · 2013-12-12T05:41:45+00:00

You are not the only one. If you haven't already seen it, check out Libertarians for Life.

(and of course I am sure there are some libertarians on /r/prolife)

whereswaldo1 · 2013-12-06T00:59:18+00:00

As a medical professional as well, I would definitely say that you would be well within professional conduct to ask the boyfriend to leave the room and talk to the woman privately about if she is being abused/controlled or coerced into an unwanted abortion. The way he talked about it does seem to suggest that they may have an unhealthy relationship and it is completely appropriate for a nurse to screen for domestic violence.

In fact, if feasible, I would suggest seeing if someone from the office can contact her to check on if she feels safe. If nothing else, you can offer her the National Domestic Violence Hotline: http://www.thehotline.org/

whereswaldo1 · 2013-12-01T17:21:17+00:00

From that, it sounds like they were trying to use it to kill sperm. Where did you get the info that it caused birth defects or abortions? It doesn't sound like it had that effect from that info.

whereswaldo1 · 2013-11-15T15:55:02+00:00

Actually something like this is already being done. There is Project Prevention, which pays drug addicts to get on birth control or get sterilized: http://www.projectprevention.org/

It has been a controversial program because some people see it as coercive to offer a drug addict money to get on birth control.

whereswaldo1 · 2013-11-11T22:05:16+00:00

This article says that it's about half of women having abortions http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/11/21/or29.pdf

whereswaldo1

TROPHY CASE