Six months after giving birth to her first child, Raina J. Johnson got pregnant again. A recent college graduate, Johnson decided that a second child would be too expensive and take up too much of her time and energy. So, she aborted her child.
Johnson recently wrote about her abortion for The Establishment, arguing that it gave her more time and money to devote to her already born son.
She wrote:
Though we rarely talk about it, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 60% of women who seek an abortion already have at least one child. In my case, I knew that an abortion was the only responsible decision. By this time, I was done with college, but my time and finances were already strained, and adding another child to the mix would only complicate things even further. I didn’t have the tools or resources to devote to two children who would’ve been very close in age. My abortion allowed me to be the best mom I could be for the son I already had.
Being a decent parent takes hard work and a lot of energy. Some folks might have more tools, resources, and energy to give to multiple children. But I don’t, or at least I didn’t at the time. Acknowledging that fact about myself allowed me to make what was ultimately the best decision for my family.
You won’t hear my story from abortion opponents. What you will hear instead is that poor, minority, uneducated women seek abortions because they are “irresponsible” and “unfit” to parent. You’ll hear that women who seek abortions are incapable of or uninterested in the responsibility of caring for a child. But if 6 in 10 women who have abortions are already mothers, we need to recognize that for many women, the choice to have an abortion is a responsible parenting decision.
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… My decision to terminate, just like my decision to bring a child into this world, was made from love.
She went on to claim that “pro-lifers are the ones who don’t value motherhood” because some pro-life lawmakers vote against welfare programs that help mothers and children.
“They show no commitment to ensuring that, if and when a women decides to parent, she and her child will be supported in the way they need,” Johnson wrote.
Government programs, while helpful to many families, are not the only ways to provide support to women and their children. Johnson neglected to mention that there are more than 2,000 pro-life pregnancy help centers across the U.S. that are dedicated to providing resources that empower women to choose life for their babies.
Pregnancy help centers, maternity homes, adoption agencies and other groups work to provide pregnant and parenting women with everything from food and shelter to medical assistance and day care. Not only that, but they also provide compassionate, caring emotional support and counseling for women who are struggling through difficult life decisions.
Pro-lifers are the people who help women make truly responsible parenting decisions in their most desperate moments. They provide women with the facts about abortion and its risks, information about their unborn child and resources to give them hope. Most importantly, they help women see that being a responsible parent means nurturing and caring for their child in the womb, not killing it.
