One of the effects of Roe v. Wade that is rarely acknowledged in public conversation is the culture of “wantedness” versus “unwantedness.”
Before abortion was legal, killing one’s unborn child could not be characterized as a legitimate “choice.” An insensitive parent might refer to a child as an “accident,” but no mother could say that, if she had her way, she would have legally had her baby destroyed before it could see the light of day. But after the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that made abortion on demand, through all nine months, the law of the land, parents gained the societal sanction to differentiate between their “wanted” and “unwanted” children.
Today’s “Dear Abby” throws into sharp relief the bitter fruits of this distinction between the child whose parents wanted him or her to live, and the child who, if Mom or Dad had their way, would have been targeted for death.
Abby’s readers respond emotionally to the story of “Daddy Who Cares,” whose wife is threatening to tell their teenage daughter she was not wanted. Their stories are heartbreaking:
From “Wounded Heart in New York”:
For me a person’s most defining trait is not gender, age or race. It’s whether he or she was wanted. The other traits are things that nature or society put on you. Once you know you were not wanted by the people who put you here, it can easily define you, and it brings pain that will never go away.
It doesn’t matter how much you achieve or how much your parents say they love you. A piece of your life just doesn’t fit. Those of us who carry this knowledge understand the sadness very well. It is something that can’t be taken back.
From “One Who Knows in Chicago”:
When I was a teenager I overheard my mother tell a friend of hers that I was an unplanned pregnancy. To the best of my knowledge, my parents never considered abortion, but nonetheless, it destroyed my self-esteem.
From “Deeply Wounded in New Hampshire”:
I was a child who was both unplanned and unwanted. When I was 13, my mother, in a fit of anger, told me she wished she had had the abortion she had planned to have before I was born. It was then that I realized that the “gut” feeling I’d had all my life to that point and beyond was correct — my mother never wanted me. Neither of my parents ever told me the whole truth, nor did they ever say how glad they were not to have gone through with the plan.
I have always had difficulty trusting my parents, and I have always known I wasn’t wanted.
And from “Wish I Never Knew”:
Ever since I can remember, my mother has told me her “funny story” about how she was “horrified” when she learned she was pregnant with me and asked the doctor for an abortion. And as a result, I have struggled with low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness.
As an adult and mother, I can pinpoint this “amusing anecdote” as the cause of many of these issues. I pray that the girl in that letter never finds out that her parents considered abortion. No matter how many times her dad says he “thanks God every day that she is here,” the damage to her psyche will be forever.
Supporters of legalized abortion claimed that Roe v. Wade would lead to a happier nation because children would feel more “wanted.” Instead, it created a culture in which children feel that their value is not inherent in their personhood, but, rather, is fully dependent on whether they were “wanted” or not. We see the results of this in the teen suicide rate, which nearly doubled between 1970 and 1994, and which, even after having leveled off, continues to be far higher than it was at the time of Roe. This is what happens when a child is no longer a child — a human being of infinite value and dignity — but is instead a mere “choice.”
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
If a woman and/or man and/or their families don’t want the child there are married couples out there who can’t have a child naturally for some reason that would be happy to adopt a child not wanted by their birth parents. There are no unwanted babies/children just unwanted pregnancies!
I was inintended. My mother and father were young and just dating at the time.
Though the times were tough, and the compromises many, they never thought to eliminate me, four years after Roe
I am proud of my parents, not only in taking the courage to bring a child into this world, but also for their faithful and loving marriage and my two sisters.
It isn’t about wanted or unwanted. Rather, it is about thankful and thankless. Perhaps that is one of the most important lessons I can pass on to the future generations, even the unwanted.
Seriously? There have been unwanted children ever since there have been sentient humans. Look at the practice of routine infanticide in the ancient world, and up to modern times in Asia.
My mother was pretty ‘unwanted’ and knew it. (She was born in 1930.) Her mother didn’t make that choice again and had a long series of abortions (she lost count, she once told me.)
I’m am firmly against abortion, and I think that as a society we have to want all children.
But, c’mon. Roe didn’t create the feeling of being unwanted. Exigencies (famine or disease), culture (ancient Rome, as I mentioned) and just desperation for whatever reason, including shame, have made children feel unwanted.
Like Trisha said, there are no unwanted children, because there are so many people who want to adopt children.
I would say that there are no unwanted children, only unwanting parents. Let’s put the stigma where it belongs, on the rotten attitude of the parents, and not on the children, who have no control over the attitudes imposed upon them.
Unwanted or wanted is not a trait of a child but an attitude of adults.
All children are wanted, if not by the parents that raised them, by the God who created them in His image.
A lifetime of rejection by my parents led me to The Truth.
This is so true. In college I had a roommate who struggled with self-esteem, depression, addiction to pain medication, trust and relationships and more. Once she told me that her grandmother had encouraged her mother to abort her — I honestly believe that this was a huge reason behind, if not the root of, her issues more than 20 years later. In her stories of sexual and emotional abuse growing up, it always led back to the feeling of, like you said, not being “wanted” by her own family — from the very beginning.
I am as against abortion as anyone but I don’t think the connection between being unwanted and abortion is there.
My mother told me at least a hundred times how she never wanted to have kids, how I was a mistake, how horrible it is to have kids, how she couldn’t wait till I was gone, on and on. Like that one person wrote, she thought that telling me all this was a big joke. She’d talk like this in front of her friends and laugh like I wasn’t even in the room. One of her friends used to feel sorry for me when my mother talked like this. I could see it in her face. She liked me. My mother never did. She told me many times that kids are too stupid to understand what adults say, that she had a right to say anything to me and besides that, I’d never remember any of it when I was an adult. This was not a vague feeling; it was a constantly stated belief. She’d even get her one bitch friend to insult me, mock me, and make fun of me. I used to wonder what kind of person would get their thrills from making fun of a four-year-old. Now I know – the kind of person my mother would want as a best friend. My parents encouraged my older brother to beat me up with no consequences. He clubbed me over the head with a hammer, with the phone, with anything. I grew up with bruises all over me all the time. That was normal. Once he made chlorine gas with his chemistry set and forced me to inhale it. My mother thought this was very funny and laughed at me as I cried and tried to soothe the pain by drinking cold water. When I was in second grade I fractured my skull on the playground and the school called her up to tell her that her son had had an accident. She said she forgot that she had two sons so didn’t ask which one it had happened to and so went to my brother’s class. She liked to repeat this story a lot so I heard it over and over again about how funny it was that she forgot she had two sons. She never took me to the doctor for the fractured skull but waited till the next scheduled appointment. I was often told how lucky I was to have parents who loved me, not like those horrible people down the street.
I spent thirty years on drugs, thirty years as a homosexual man, and eleven years in therapy. I’m now over the worst of that. I’m sober for seven years and have stopped practicing homosexuality and I’m back in the Church. I don’t think I’ll ever really fully get over what that [deleted] did to me. I am not ashamed to say this, but when I found out she died I laughed all day. I kept hearing the song, “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead” in my head over and over again. Now, except for the rare times like this when I talk about what happened, I don’t even think about her. The anger is gone, and the great thing is that I finally have a relationship with the rest of my family – now that both parents are gone.
But abortion had nothing to do with this. I was born well before Roe vs. Wade. My parents were both very sick people. My mother was probably psychotic and my father pretended not to notice. Words hurt, especially when they are true. And yes, kids know and it leaves a hole inside that never really gets filled.
Edited by Siteowner.
I guess I was lucky to have parents that wanted me.
But for the parents who don’t want their kids, who is going to visit you in the nursing home when you are an old bat? Eighty or ninety years old?
I hope your roommate in the nursing home is some sweet old grandma, who loved all her kids and grandkids from the time they were conceived. I hope you have to watch her kids and grandkids visit her every day, and stay active in her life.
Meanwhile, your unwanted kids stay away in droves. You know, the kids you were always reminding of their unwanted status, to make sure they wouldn’t forget. Now it would be nice to see them, but forget it. It won’t happen.
Now you are the one who is unwanted. They want to get rid of you. They want to enjoy their children and give those children the childhood they wish you had given them. You don’t fit into that plan, so now they can’t be bothered with you.
What goes around comes around.