It takes a lot for me to say “I am pro-choice” because when I do people say “so you’re alright with killing a child,” or start talking about God blessing people with children, or saying “there is always adoption.”

It always ends with me feeling like the bad guy because I wish we didn’t have circumstances that needed a safe abortion, I do believe that babies are a blessing, and I am realistic to know that adoption is not always an option.

Abortion is not something I would be able to do personally, but a child in my life would have a support system outside of just me and I am capable of caring for a child.

I also don’t believe that other people should be required to make their decisions based on my religious beliefs.

I value life, but I know that if there is an issue in the quality of life, such as a child being in extreme pain for its short life, that allowing a child to suffer is not love.

Or the possibility that the mother’s life could be in danger if she carried the child to term.

Adoption could be a fantastic option if there weren’t 25,000 kids aging out of foster care each year who will likely end up incarcerated, pregnant, on welfare and/or (in any combination) dead within a few years.

I hate that it is not a system that provides an extremely viable option.

People tend to think that women want to have an abortion.

It isn’t like women wake up and say “I am going to go get pregnant then have an abortion; that sounds like a good plan for my month!” they definitely don’t carry a child for months and months just to decide they don’t want it and ask for late term abortions “because they feel like it.”

Now some women may be just that heartless but I’m pretty sure that isnt’t the case for the majority. Sometimes, the pregnancy or carrying the child to term is not an option.

Maybe she’s too young, the child has serious issues, the pregnancy has serious complications, she was raped, she can’t afford the child or she just isn’t ready.

It is a tough decision to make no matter what the circumstance, but the circumstance is no one’s business unless they are willing to step in to feed and finance mom and baby.

  It isn’t that I like the idea of a child not being born, I don’t think anyone does, and it isn’t that I don’t value their lives.

I genuinely wish we lived in a world that supported women and children better, but the systems are set up to fail them.

Being pro-life should be about ensuring that children are healthy and able to thrive regardless of their parent’s situation, not about being born.

Our nation refuses to teach sex education, does not make birth control easily accessible, wants to eliminate abortion and also has a problem with supporting children after birth because of the “don’t breed them if you can’t feed them” mentality even though it is not the child’s fault and they deserve care.

This idea that “pregnant women must have their child, even when they can’t afford a child, but I do not want any of my tax money going to help this defenseless child that I demanded be brought into the world because the parents should do it all by themselves” is ridiculous.

Something has to give.