Super-speculation time—the U.S. birthrate has gone up, not just for teenagers, but apparently in general. Numerous causes are suggested, and it’s worth remembering that because cause A is true doesn’t mean that cause B can’t be. There can be many factors working at once. Lynn mentions some—immigration, anticipated prosperity, reduced access to abortion and contraception. I would probably guess that part of it is cyclical, too. Generation X was a small generation, but Gen Y is huge, and the first wave of Gen Y-ers are hitting their early-to-mid 20s. Consider that the average age of first time mothers is 25, and you can see how it might just be a numbers game.
But the idea that reduced access to abortion might be a factor is an intriguing one to me. It makes me wonder if anti-choicers have more success at punishing women for sex through forced childbirth when abortion is technically legal but unavailable to a lot of poorer women than if abortion is outright banned. I think about it like this: The abortion debate is all centered around Roe v Wade in your average American’s mind. Most of us aren’t pro- or anti-choice activists and are largely unaware of all the battles to shut down clinics through harassment one at a time. Thus, most women probably think, in the back of their minds, that if they need to get an abortion, they’ll be able to get one pretty easily. Katha Pollitt picked up on how this erroneous assumption played out in “Juno”—there’s very little chance that a teenage girl in a Midwest state could get a speedy appointment without having waiting periods or parental notification in her way in real life. I’d also add that there’s a high chance that, depending on how big her town is, the possibility of finding an actual abortion clinic in the yellow pages under “abortion” might be very slim indeed, since 87% of American counties have no abortion provider. But I’m guessing that with the common nature of abortion and the relentless debate about it, a lot of Americans are under the impression that there’s a clinic right around the corner in every town.
Now imagine if you have that assumption and you find out, nope, no abortionists here. You have to travel 300, 400, 1,000 miles to get to a clinic. You have to come up with the money for the abortion and your travel expenses. What you thought would cost you $500 and a day off work now looks like it will cost $1,500 and many days off work. You have to get the time approved (using vacation not sick leave, so no one knows, if you’re lucky enough to have those benefits and a lot of women aren’t). You have to get childcare. You have to get the money together. By the time you’re able to do all that, it’s probably past the point where you can get a legal abortion and you’re fucked.
But if abortion was banned in some states? Well, everyone would know about that. Underground networks that understood the need for speed would crop up within a few years’ time. There would be no parental notification or waiting periods or having to travel halfway across the country. Of course, a lot more women would try to self-abort right away, giving up all hope of ever getting a safe abortion, and that would drive the septic abortion rate way up, so there’s a benefit for the “punish the sluts” crowd. On the whole, I’m far from convinced that a ban on abortion would result in a drop in the abortion rate at all.
Of course, the spike in the birth rate might not have much to do with abortion. It’s probably more mundane things like demographic shifts. But it’s an interesting possibility to consider.
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I have no doubt that the waiting period in Georgia decreases the number of abortions performed. Everyone in a three-hundred mile radius basically has to spend the night in Atlanta. A few motels quietly donate rooms to the cause, but how many poor women know about that when the motels can’t publicize their charity? People in Atlanta-area pro-choice McMansions don’t particularly want to host a young rural woman who, let’s face it, is probably spouting anti-abortion rhetoric herself: not exactly endearing to liberals with guest rooms.
I would assume an anti-choicer getting an abortion would be humble about it, but I’ve heard the opposite is usually true, that they double the obnoxious to overcome the cognitive dissonance.
Super-speculation time—the U.S. birthrate has gone up, not just for teenagers, but apparently in general.
Noted recently - international comparisons of fertility trends. Italy and Spain have slumped below 1.5 children per couple, Northern Europe (Sweden, Ireland, France, Denmark, Netherlands) have climbed above 2.0, The speculation was that this was associated with family-friendly social policies.
It made enough sense in Juno: she was in Minnesota (which is pretty liberal) and the suburb she lived in was right outside St. Cloud, so she was probably good.
Given recent numbers I saw in my line of work (Texas only) that dealt with average ages of various demographic groups, I’m guessing it’s more an influx of birth-age Latino women. After all, abortions went down as the population went up in the 90s: from about 1.6 million in 1990 to 1.3 million in 2000, and yet I don’t imagine that there was a spike in the birth rate then; in fact:
“The birth rate was 13.9 per 1,000 persons in 2002, a decline of 1 percent from the rate of 14.1 per 1,000 in 2001 and down 17 percent from the recent peak in 1990 (16.7 per 1,000), according to a new CDC report, “Births: Preliminary Data for 2002.”
The 2007 rate alluded to was 14.16 per 1000, higher than 2001 but still 15% less than 1990.
I find it a bit disingenuous that the 87% number from Guttmacher keeps getting quoted, because, while it’s true, 66% of women 15-44 live in a county with an abortion provider. which is to say, there’s a two-thirds chance that, if pregnancies in which the woman desires abortion are approximately spread out evenly over the population (and I’ll admit I haven’t found any data to back that up—the only thing reported is actual abortion rate), the woman has a provider in her county.
Now imagine if you have that assumption and you find out, nope, no abortionists here.
Ugh, maybe it’s just me, but “abortionists” (not to be confused with “appendectomists”), really? How about just Ob/Gyns, or doctors who perform abortions?
Now imagine if you have that assumption and you find out, nope, no abortionists here. You have to travel 300, 400, 1,000 miles to get to a clinic. You have to come up with the money for the abortion and your travel expenses. What you thought would cost you $500 and a day off work now looks like it will cost $1,500 and many days off work.
How exactly does RU-486/Mifeprex fit into this? What’s the reality of its availability and usability on the ground in the US?
If you want to use Mifeprex, the clinics usually ask that you be ready to schedule a follow-up with the clinic that administered it to you, in case something doesn’t go as planned. (Because if your body doesn’t expell all the dead tissue matter, you may still have to have a D&C done.)
PIATOR - RU486 is not readily available by ordinary ob/gyns, and ime, is pretty much only available through clinics. It’s not something that a doctor can just write a prescription for and send you to the pharmacist to get it. Doctors must register with the drug manufacturer, have the pill sent to the doctor, who must then physically hand you the pills themselves. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
I don’t recall if they have to watch you take it, or if you have to come back 48 hours later to get the second part, but I know that it definitely takes more than one visit.
In my case, I was at a large urban teaching hospital (where I worked, btw, so I called everybody in every possible related department that I knew) and no one *in the entire hospital* was registered with the drug manufacturer and able to dispense the pills to me. I ended up having a D&C rather than wait for the vetting process and risk missing my window.
(The other option was to go to Planned Parenthood and paid $400 for the pills, but they insisted on doing their own ultrasound to date the pregnancy, even though my OB had already done so.)
When I spoke to my ob/gyn about it after the whole thing was over, he said that after looking into it, RU486 wasn’t something he’d be willing to give out on a regular basis because of the risk of being held liable if a woman had complications from it. In his mind, a D&C was quicker, easier, and had less potential for complications.
PIATOR - RU486 is not readily available by ordinary ob/gyns, and ime, is pretty much only available through clinics. It’s not something that a doctor can just write a prescription for and send you to the pharmacist to get it. Doctors must register with the drug manufacturer, have the pill sent to the doctor, who must then physically hand you the pills themselves. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
I don’t recall if they have to watch you take it, or if you have to come back 48 hours later to get the second part, but I know that it definitely takes more than one visit.
In my case, I was at a large urban teaching hospital (where I worked, btw, so I called everybody in every possible related department that I knew) and no one *in the entire hospital* was registered with the drug manufacturer and able to dispense the pills to me. I ended up having a D&C rather than wait for the vetting process and risk missing my window.
(The other option was to go to Planned Parenthood and paid $400 for the pills, but they insisted on doing their own ultrasound to date the pregnancy, even though my OB had already done so.)
When I spoke to my ob/gyn about it after the whole thing was over, he said that after looking into it, RU486 wasn’t something he’d be willing to give out on a regular basis because of the risk of being held liable if a woman had complications from it. In his mind, a D&C was quicker, easier, and had less potential for complications.
Great points. I work for a Canadian-based arm of Planned Parenthood in a major city with several abortion providers. Even here, with no parental consent or mandatory waiting period laws, where abortion is mainly covered (for the most part - private clinics sometimes have to charge a bit for antiobiotics in the case of infection - but we’re talking $60, so not too bad)… it sucks for rural women. I work on a phone line where we refer women from all over, and if they’re not in the city it’s always a struggle for me to find a physician and place for them to go (and all the info is on an uber private list as well). They will often have to travel long distances just to get it done in a hospital on an outpatient basis (i.e. sitting around with people getting a mole removed that day). Hardly a supportive environment. At last check (I’ve been on leave for a bit, so I could be wrong now), you couldn’t even get an abortion in PEI at all, so women there have to cross provincial lines to get an abortion. Sorry for the long post, but my point is that even in Canada, the land of no abortion laws, there are “invisible” barriers all over the damn place.
ataralas:
I admit I’m having difficulty parsing that last bit out.
Are you saying that the 66 percent number is something like “66 percent of women having abortions get one in the county they live in”?
Obviously that could mean that the women who don’t get abortions they want are more likely to be in a county with no abortion clinic.
I’m simply saying that 2/3rds of American women live in counties with clinics.
I’m making an (unfounded, but not unreasonable) assumption that pregnancies where women want abortions are spread evenly in the population.
If that assumption is true, then in 2/3rds of desired abortions, women have an abortion provider in their county, which isn’t the obvious implication of saying that 87% of counties lack an abortion clinic.
Is that clearer?
joanne: ataralas is saying that since 66% of women aged 15-44 have an abortion provider in their county, then if the need to have an abortion is unrelated to county of residence, 66% of women who actually need abortions will have a provider in their county.
but maybe it is not reasonable to assume that country of residence is unrelated to need for abortions. in counties with poor access to birth control, women will probably find themselves needing an abortion more frequently. and i’ll bet that these counties are the ones most likely to lack this service.
(on the other hand, maybe women in these places are less inclined to get an abortion, and maybe that balances things out)
Ataralas, what you are saying is sort of clear, but your base assumption is likely erroneous.
Population centers concentrate clinics. They also concentrate wealth. I’d say it is likely that women living in counties without providers may be more likely to choose abortion given availability, rather than similarly likely. That is because their circumstances (lack of resources or support) are probably correlated with both choosing abortion and with lack of abortion availability.
“66% of women 15-44 live in a county with an abortion provider. which is to say, there’s a two-thirds chance that, if pregnancies in which the woman desires abortion are approximately spread out evenly over the population (and I’ll admit I haven’t found any data to back that up—the only thing reported is actual abortion rate), the woman has a provider in her county.”
That a provider is available does not in anyway mean a woman who wants an abortion is necesarily going to have the means to get one.
The social divide in this country is so great that usually, in my experience having lived with and having been very low income, the people lowest of the social strata are the least informed about services available to them in the community–contrary to popular myth.
Then beyond that, there is the cultural fact that although services may be available, the shame that low and no income people feel in getting services is usually pretty high.
Often these people are so stripped of self respect, that the only means they have of feeling proud of not being “one of those” that everyone says they are, is to notge the services which blatantly define them as such (poor, desperate, degenerate, lazy, immoral).
I’ve seen plenty of women who, even though providers were accessible and even monies accessible through non-profit donor services, they still would opt to carry the child to term, because they feel shame in getting an abortion.
The pro-life movement has successfully used shame as a means to keep women away from the clinics and even keep them from discussing abortion options or even birth control with their family or friends.
The sense of having something else to achieve, especially for younger poor women is also a big factor in decisions to carry a child to term. Many no or low income women and young women fail to see any other rewarding role options for them but mother.
There is a distinct disconnect between the haves and the have nots and I think this social disconnect is important to consider. The right wing has exploited the poor and traditionally invisible by promising them honor and prosperity, because of course, their poverty is all their fault to begin with.
Re RU486/Mifeprex: Besides the restriction Pixelfish already mentioned, it’s only suitable for use during the first 7 weeks of pregnancy. This means the same women who are already at risk for late-term abortion or no access at all - those who are young, poor, uneducated - are also unlikely to get their hands on the abortion pill.
If Roe is struck down, RU-486 would probably be available through the Internet. (I wouldn’t be surprised if it is already.). So that might be the best option for women in the states with trigger laws. I’m not especially sanguine about that, because these women would get inadequate follow-up care and be subjected to all the risks of shady Internet pharmaceuticals (unreliable dosing, or even a sugar pill). I just anticipate that Mifeprex-by-mail would be the least-bad option for a lot of women.
unree, when i worked in georgia (until the fall) the waiting period did not actually mean you had to go there in person, wait 24 hours, then come back for your actual appointment. thank god. that was the original text of the bill but it was amended before passage, so that the actual requirement is “you must HEAR this (mis)information 24 hours in advance” - which can be taken care of over the phone when the appointment is being set up - which does still screw over some women but not as far-and-wide as the “physically present” requirement would have. i know some states do have the situation you’re describing, though.
Antigone said it first, so I will agree with her that Juno’s storyline makes sense considering the fact that it takes place in Minnesota.
There are no parental notification or waiting period laws here and providers are not too hard to find, especially if you are not too far from the Twin Cities.
Amanda, I have no doubt you are on to something. Look at what happened in South Dakota - a law for almost an outright ban on abortion and everyone knew about it
Many women became active to stop it. Molly Blythe (Molly Saves the Day provides ) posted on her blog a guide, titled “For the Women of South Dakota: An Abortion Manual”, for the days of JANE.
Though not totally stopped the measure was modified to the post where the forced birthers are trying to put the ban on the ballot for 2008.
But why go through all the trouble and expense? Women who believe in choice will make sure things, knowledge, resources are in place - we always have (remember the shocking revelations that Frank Sinatra’s mom did abortions?) — why not let women think it’s available while in the background we run doctors out and close clincs - far less noise and attention.
I got a letter from Feminist Majority Foundation today that asks for donations to help fight to keep the last clinic in the entire state of Mississippi open. Even though there has been a PBS documentary on it, you really don’t hear much of an out cry …. shhhhh close down the clinic, few will get radicalized because you aren’t outright banning the practise, you’ve quietly made it totally unavailable.
Leslee Unruh is happy . . . more babies
Antigone– St. Cloud does not have an abortion provider. The closest clinic that provides abortions is in the Twin Cities, which is, what, an hour’s drive if you have a car?
Plus, there IS a 24 hour waiting period for all abortions in the state of Minnesota, as well as a parental notification clause for minors that can only be overcome through a judicial bypass.
So no. Not realistic, even though we are a relatively liberal state.
GumbyAnne– that’s actually completely incorrect. There are only abortion providers in the Twin Cities area and a single clinic in Duluth. And there is a law where you must receive counsel from a doctor at least 24 hours before your procedure, which is essentially a waiting period. And we do have parental notification laws.
I hope this isn’t too much of a repeat of my above comment.
Maybe more to the point, Juno’s storyline makes sense because she happens to have super-cool parents who wouldn’t interfere. I really liked the characterization of the parents, but it sure did make things unusually easy in some ways.
Not that this is really the point, but Minnesota does in fact have parental notification. Access, if you’re in the twin cities (or once a week/month, don’t remember which, in Duluth), isn’t so bad because there’s a judge who is in most Fridays and grants any judicial bypasses requested (and planned parenthood helps minors get there). And as in Georgia, as roula mentioned, it’s a phone recording that you hear for the mandated 24-hour waiting period (which existed at least as of two years ago). So, as in the case of geographic access, these barriers can be more or less harmful depending on implementation. If you look at geographic access in the Minnesota area, though, it’s literally the same doctor who does all of Minnesota (twin cities + occasional Duluth) and the one location in South Dakota. It’s a big state - driving multiple hours to get an abortion is a serious impediment, and scheduling can be difficult given that one provider covers all those areas. I think the 87% number is most shocking if you look at it on a map - there are huge swaths of land that have no providers and where abortion is often stigmatized, making access even harder if it requires you to get someone else’s assistance (since public transit, if it exists, is not going to take you to the next town three hours over…). (As a former rural Minnesotan, I get a bit passionate about this, so sorry for all the MN-specific info…
)
I could’ve sworn there was an old quote from some pro-life leader or other about how they dreamed of a country where abortion was legal but no one could have one. Unfortunately a google search is coming up empty.
And yeah, this is part of why the focus on RvW has always seemed a bit misguided to me. I get the symbolism and believe it’s important to some extent, but it’s a different battle for most women.
kate:
Of course. Geographical access is just one link in the chain of things that lead to accessible abortion.
Money, easily accessible information about geographical location, the bullshit notifications/waiting periods/etc, social and cultural mores: all these things also influence abortion access, and all of these factors are important.
My beef is with the 87% of counties number, which in my view, doesn’t accurately portray the state of geographical access to abortion providers in America. Heck, I’d be even happier knowing the average and median distance in miles (or hours) for American women to providers. With data from Guttmacher and the Census, the miles number shouldn’t be too difficult to calculate.
Wasn’t there a study just a couple months ago that already showed the abortion rate wasn’t any lower in countries where abortion is illegal?
On the whole, I’m far from convinced that a ban on abortion would result in a drop in the abortion rate at all.
Precisely. It’d be about as effective as banning menstruation. You can’t stop people’s naturally-occurring autonomy over what happens in their own bodies, but you can make it so difficult and painful that they do it differently.
It’s not quite that bad in all Midwestern states. Last time I checked Illinois is a Midwest state.
Illinois has no waiting period and does not require parental notification.
The clinic in my home town will schedule an appointment for you through its website. The wait time for an appointment for a first trimester abortion is about a week.
We’re down south, near St. Louis, BTW, not in Chicago.
Thanks Aririna, I had never heard of those laws being in effect around here. I suppose I have never looked into it too hard because there is a big Planned Parenthood just a couple blocks from where I live, so I know where I would go.
Shows how much I know. Time to brush up on local laws!
Wait, why is there a picture of a coat hanger on this post? Amanda speculates that the birth rate is going up in part because abortion is hard to get. If that’s true, that’s an example of women choosing to give birth, not get back alley abortions.
This argument also cuts against the common pro-choice claim that abortion bans would “be about as effective as banning menstruation. You can’t stop people’s naturally-occurring autonomy over what happens in their own bodies, but you can make it so difficult and painful that they do it differently.” If Amanda’s right, women are deciding to have fewer abortions because of severe impracticableness and inconvenience.
Finally, if having one abortion clinic in a state dissuades women from having abortions, having none would logically have an even greater effect. I really doubt Amanda’s argument that women are “surprised” how hard it is to get an abortion would completely counteract that effect.
The post basically supports the conclusion that abortion laws a) deter and b) don’t endanger many women’s lives. If it’s true that we’re almost in effect in a post-Roe world already, how many women exactly are dying from back alley abortions right now?
Jeff,
I’m going to assume you’re joking, and not tear into you right now. But know this: if you’re seriously saying what it looks like you’re saying, you’re in for Hell itself coming right up to Earth in front of you.
The Guttmacher Institute has the study on their website:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/4000608.pdf
Table 3 breaks it down by state, including not just the counties without a provider but the % of women in those counties. It ranges from a low of 0 in Hawaii and DC to a high of 96 in Wyoming. For the whole US, 35% of women live in a county with no providers; for the Northeast, it’s 17%; for the Midwest, it’s 50%; for the South, it’s 47%, and for the West it’s 15%.
Maybe this is waaayyyy too simplistic, but I think that the birth rate is going up primarily because women desire to have more children. If they desire to have children, they try to have them early, and are very aware of the possibility of declining fertility with age and other possible fertility issues. Several years ago, all women assumed that all women could have children whenever they wanted, well into their early forties, and that getting medical help was no big deal. Infertility treatments are expensive and very taxing physically and emotionally, and no one wants to find themselves like “that woman” who waited, even if she waited for a good reason. A very good friend of mine cast her “good reason” aside, and actually delayed practicing as a lawyer for 2 years to accomodate an unplanned pregnancy. I also decided to take a semester and summer off from school to have my child, at age 28, because, among other things, I was diagnosed with PCOS which effects fertility. Several years ago, both of our decisions would have been seen as a mistake, that career and education was more important and that children were supposed to come “later.” Well, a lot of us have anxiety that “later” means invasive fertility treatments, multiple births, adoption, or not having children at all. This is what I see amongst my peers, who are women in their 20s and 30s, married or single, educated with average or above incomes.
Maybe this is waaayyyy too simplistic, but I think that the birth rate is going up primarily because women desire to have more children. If they desire to have children, they try to have them early, and are very aware of the possibility of declining fertility with age and other possible fertility issues. Several years ago, all women assumed that all women could have children whenever they wanted, well into their early forties, and that getting medical help was no big deal. Infertility treatments are expensive and very taxing physically and emotionally, and no one wants to find themselves like “that woman” who waited, even if she waited for a good reason. A very good friend of mine cast her “good reason” aside, and actually delayed practicing as a lawyer for 2 years to accomodate an unplanned pregnancy. I also decided to take a semester and summer off from school to have my child, at age 28, because, among other things, I was diagnosed with PCOS which effects fertility. Several years ago, both of our decisions would have been seen as a mistake, that career and education was more important and that children were supposed to come “later.” Well, a lot of us have anxiety that “later” means invasive fertility treatments, multiple births, adoption, or not having children at all. This is what I see amongst my peers, who are women in their 20s and 30s, married or single, educated with average or above incomes.
Rather than ceding Jeff the power to push my buttons, I wanted to go a little OT after reading Pollitt’s article.
I don’t know if it’s reflective of changing times or what, but one of the seminal movies of my youth was Fast Times at Ridgmont High. In Fast Times, one of the main young teen characters got pregnant, got an abortion, and the angst was about the boy’s non-support (financial and emotional), not about whether she was immoral to terminate the pregnancy. Like many of my generation, that was also my take on it. As a pregnant teen, the first response would be to decide whether to get an abortion. Alternatives would then be thinking about adoption or keeping the baby. Now, abortion is not mentioned or is treated cartoonishly. Of course, we all base our decisions on movies, but I find the difference between current movies and Fast Times interesting.
Thanks Aririna, I had never heard of those laws being in effect around here. I suppose I have never looked into it too hard because there is a big Planned Parenthood just a couple blocks from where I live, so I know where I would go.
Careful of that assumption– there is, in fact, only one Planned Parenthood in the state of Minnesota that provides abortions.
I really doubt it’s abortion access per se, because the situation for lack of clinics has sucked for years. It’s been getting worse, but not all that rapidly. The two things that have been getting worse have been contraceptive education, with tens of millions of federal dollars pushing lies about contraception to teenagers and young adults, and the economic status of poor women and men, with real income falling for the lowest quintiles during the Bush Administration. Make it a little more expensive to get an abortion, allow people less money to spend, and lie to them about the circumstances under which they might need one…
And tempting though it might be to think that outlawing abortion would finally stir people to action, I wouldn’t bet on it. Think of all the things that were supposed to be the last straw in the authoritarian war on US liberties. Think of all the people who would be able to get abortions anyway without making a big deal of it, and the deleterious effect a surveillance state has on activism. No college loans if you don’t register for the draft, no college loans if you can’t prove you didn’t contribute to Planned Parenthood…
And pretty much the best you would get would be a return to the status quo ante.
The reason we aren’t seeing an uptick in illegal backalley abortions and coathangers has partly to do with the medical options for abortion available to women (as opposed to surgical), but also, women and girls aren’t using coathangers. They’re getting their boyfriends to hit them in the stomach with baseball bats, or throwing themselves down stairs. They’re trying to induce a miscarriage through external trauma. The women who know about the history of the coathanger know why it’s a symbol of the pro-choice movement — because it will kill you, so they’re not going to try that and probably opt for more medical abortions. Women who don’t know about the coathanger symbol and why it’s a symbol of the pro-choice movement wouldn’t think of it as a means of aborting because they don’t understand how surgical abortion happens.
And if a woman was as desperate and ill-informed as to try all of that, there’s a good chance she’ll actually be treated and saved at the hospital because abortion isn’t illegal and so the doctors and nurses aren’t under orders to withhold treatment when a woman comes in with a ruptured uterus. Since she didn’t die, there’s no news story, and we don’t hear about it.
Kevin Drum has some insight I think. First the L.A. Times notes that the drops seem to be in states with less restrictions on abortion:
He goes on to note the drop in unwanted pregnancies:
So I think the possibility Amanda is hypothesizing about makes sense but probably isn’t a main driving factor.
Apparently Jill Stanek is the living embodiment of “Love the fetus, hate the child.”
Is it worse to remove an insensate wad of tissue, or to leave a real, live child to “suffer?”
From Jill Stanek’s own blog:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You are projecting. I am by no means bitter. My son
suffered due to an immature mother who would sometimes rather party than
spend time with him, back in the day.
I sinned. But God saw an opportunity for the blessing of giving a unique,
special child to the world, despite that.
I met Rich when Michael was 3-1/2. We married when he was 5, and Rich
adopted him, which was another blessing.
Posted by: Jill Stanek at January 16, 2008 4:51 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jess, I did not. I got pregnant at age 19 and married to my
18-year-old boyfriend (who was still in high school) at 4-1/2 months
along. I had my oldest at age 20. I was divorced and a single mom by age
23.
I cannot regret my lapse because that would mean I regret my wonderful
son, who has now given me 3 beautiful grandsons.
But our life was hard for a time. And he suffered most for it.
Posted by: Jill Stanek at January 15, 2008 10:34 AM