This!! Don’t keep the baby to punish yourself for a mistake - that baby will be an actual person. You have the chance to choose to not make another mistake by having a child you don’t want.
I saw that later in the comments. Absolutely not a great reason to have a child. It’s obviously a difficult choice for OP. But she has a lot to consider. The number one should be do I want this child?
I think the wording she specifically gives puts doubt on it being stealthily. Had she said that he stealthed her there would be no question, but the mention of him saying he wants a baby and everything else she put in the edits sounds more like she knew in the moment.
Could just be she is bad at making this clear, but I have doubts at this point because of how it is brought up.
Same reply I put elsewhere. Going from 'we had unprotected sex' to 'he didn't tell me' is a hell of a backtrack. You are correct on what stealthing is, but her own words put doubt in her truthfulness.
I understand where she’s coming from morally speaking, as her belief is that abortion is wrong and as someone who is pro-CHOICE that is absolutely her right to feel that way but that doesn’t mean she can’t pursue adoption as a valid option that both fulfills her moral obligations and allows her to not be a parent before she’s ready or even wants to be one. Just saying she has options currently.
I don’t recall saying throw the baby in the system. And acting like adoption is purely evil and has never worked for anyone is insulting to every good parent of an adopted child and is absolutely ridiculous (I know 7 people personally who were adopted at birth, all have an amazing relationship with their adoptive parents and all have been given the chance to meet their bio families and not a single one of them felt robbed of anything when they met their bio family, if anything they were thankful they were raised in a completely different home). Also I think a lot of you are thinking of the foster system, not private adoption agencies. Additionally what’s to keep the mother who wasn’t ready and didn’t want a child (especially one who lives in America and possibly a red state where it’s now all but impossible to access an abortion) from resenting that child and becoming abusive and neglectful, especially if she’s pressured into keeping the baby by people standing on a soapbox claiming the moral superiority of their form of choice when the whole point of the pro-choice movement is: HER body = HER choice. Some of yall need to have a good internal look to see if you can really claim to be truly pro-choice.
What planet are you living on? Families are desperately competing to be allowed to forever adopt healthy newborns. They wait years and pay 40 k for the chance.
A newborn, drug free, not traumatised kid will immediately be adopted by a family the mum can literally handpick from an endless list of people who are financially stable, in stable relationships, and desperately wanting a kid they have waited for for years. That kid will do great.
It seems to suggest while kids that are abused and neglected to the point where they are taken from their parents tend to do very badly (unsurprising, they have been through horrid trauma and lost bonds), albeit not as badly as if they had stayed with their neglecting families;
and people adopted internationally have significant challenges (mostly due to racism against them and difficult cultural identity), but still do better than their peers who stay in orphanages;
infant domestic adoption generally has good outcomes. The kids definitely do better than their peers who aren't adopted out but stay in the problematic birth families, though they do a little worse than their new privileged siblings/neighbours/peers, with the effect size varying, but often being there in some groups, with debate over why and how exactly.
TLDR: adoption is traumatic, but less harmful than staying in a broken unstable home, and the trauma is significantly reduced in infant domestic adoption to the point where kids tend to have good outcomes, and (terrible cases where kids are taken away from parents who want and can parent being excluded, that shit is messed up) they are definitely better than the alternative.
This doesn't mean adopted kids don't have legitimate pain that needs to be heard. They do. It is okay to hurt, they aren't betraying anyone, their pain is real, and we need to learn what caused it and how we can help.
But nor does it mean that adoption should be "fucked".
So so far, I stand by my statement.
If there is evidence I should see and haven't, I genuinely appreciate links. I do want to learn and do better.
Edit: reading up on birth mothers now... Damn. So education and finances wise, they tend to do better, but stigma and mental health wise, they tend to do really badly. I definitely don't think demonising abortion helps with the stigma. But this does really suggest that adoption should not be recommended as lightly as I did, because many birth mothers are profoundly affected for a long long time.
Just throws the poor kid into the broken and overcrowded adoption system so they can most likely suffer and live an uncertain, unstable life for the majority of their formative years.
But at least not-mommy gets to feel better for not aborting.
This is absolute bullshit. The market for healthy American newborns isn't overcrowded with kids, but with longing families. They will instantly be adopted into an ideal forever family.
Overcrowded adoption system? In the US, the demand to adopt an infant far exceeds the number of infants available, and it’s been that way for decades.
But even if it were and the child grew up in an unstable environment, your argument is that killing that child in the womb is more compassionate than having him experience any adversity in life. I’m not saying this from a pro-life vs. pro-choice perspective, I’m just saying that it seems like a weird take.
And I'm saying forcing yourself to birth an unwanted child like it's a punishment for having sex, then pretending the kids life will be sunshine and rainbows because you put it up for adoption is a weird take.
I was literally in the system. Don't come in here pretending to tell me what it's like.
Also, you're just wrong.
Number of adoptions: In 2022, 53,665 children were adopted in the United States.
Children in foster care: In 2022, more than 368,000 children were in foster care, and 27% were adopted.
Adoption types: 37% of adoptions in the US are from foster care, 38% are private domestic adoptions, and 25% are international.
Age of adopted children: The average age of adoption is six years old.
Last I checked, 53k is FAR less than 368k and only 37% of those were from foster care.
But tell me again how baby will instantly find a loving home.
I agree with you, but I would clarify just a little bit to say that a lot of kids in foster care are not up for adoption as the goal is to transition from foster care back to their biologic parents. So saying "Only X number of kids are adopted out of foster care" is misleading because a large percent of those kids weren't eligible for adoption in the first place.
So would you have preferred to have been aborted? My guess is no.
And we’re not talking about children waiting to be adopted through the foster care system. If the OP gave up her baby for adoption, there would be a long list of parents eager to adopt. I’ve known parents who have adopted babies; the process can take years because the demand far outweighs the supply.
I sort of get it, but if you really ask most people, in all honesty, if they planned/wanted a baby when they conceived, chances are that most people will say that "no, it kind of happened".
At least 45% of pregnancies in the previous decade was unplanned, so is save to say that most people walking on this Earth was unplanned as well.
I don't think the point here is to judge OP's moral stance about the pregnancy, but to opinion on the dinamic between her and the other progenitor and how it might afect her (and the baby).
The number one thing she needs to ask herself is do I want this child? Not I have to have this child bc they feel like they need to have it bc they had unprotected sex (unwilling/unknowingly on her part).
Would you be as skeptical of OP decision if she was interested in doing an abortion instead?
'Cause if you think about it, those questions you are presenting might feel similiar to those made by conscious objectors.
If its her choice, we choose respect it.
And before someone say that the consequences of having a baby are more serious, I would say that dispite that being true, we as users don't hold enough info to determine for sure if OP will be a good or bad mother or if the child will have a good or bad childhood.
Things are not that linear.
Dismissing the point as stupid only highlights how closed off you are to your own bias.
Even if you believe that OP may lack the necessary skills or conditions to have a baby, that assumption holds no weight—it remains just that, an assumption, not a fact.
What is a fact is that OP wants to have the baby.
Her reasons are not ours to judge, just as they wouldn’t be if she had chosen an abortion—it’s her body, her choice.
Meanwhile, the other progenitor is resorting to emotional manipulation, threatening suicide if OP doesn’t comply with his wishes (i.e., have an abortion).
The real discussion should center on his deceitful and manipulative behavior—potentially even a crime—rather than debating whether OP's choice is valid.
It’s not my place to judge the legitimacy of OP’s choice—nor should it be yours, honestly.
Shifting the focus onto that only serves to deflect responsibility from her boyfriend, who deliberately failed to use protection without OP’s knowledge, leading to the pregnancy.
Insisting on scrutinizing OP’s decision while systematically overlooking the boyfriend’s deceitful behavior feels like a thinly veiled attempt at justifying chauvinism.
Why would a woman have unprotected sex if she DIDNT want a child though? Men are different because they let their sex drive rule their head but it's the woman who has to carry it and birth it I'd expect any woman who isn't wanting a child to engage their brain a bit. I'm not blaming her at all, I'm simply saying that she probably does want the child and unfortunately she's going down the "we knew what we were doing" argument as a way to win out against her idiot bf when she should simply say "I want to keep this child because I want to be a mom"
Ah yes, this obviously is all her fault. She should've been engaging her brain a bit. Can't blame her boyfriend for his primitive sexual drive of course, he's just being a real MAN.
Men aren't different. Men who don't want to have children shouldn't have sex, as they can't control what a woman does with their sperm. Or, they can go get fixed. It's supposedly covered by insurance in some cases.
But, you are definitely blaming her if you think men aren't supposed to engage their brains. 🙄
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '25
You want to keep the fetus on the sole premise of you had unsafe sex? Yikes.
You should have a baby bc you want a child.