Unwanted pregnancies

Children are an amazing part of life. Whether or not you choose to have a few of your own is completely up to you. This statement can be interpreted in a couple different ways. Clearly you can make a choice regarding marriage and kids at some point in your life. But what if a pregnancy happens unplanned? Again, you have a choice to make. Are you going to give birth to the child and raise him/her like a parent, or do you turn to abortion? In America at least, this is totally up to you. However, statistics show that unwanted pregnancies tend to end poorly for the innocent children far too often.

Around 75 million unwanted pregnancies occur each year. This statistic applies to the entire global population. Imagine if every one of these pregnancies resulted in natural birth, but only a small fraction of the parents kept the children. Where do all the others go? Sadly, many people don't consider this aspect of unwanted pregnancies. Who will take care of all these children? Possibly a foster parent that could care less about the child's well-being, but wants to get his hands on a monthly government check. This happens all the time. While it may sound like a horrific scenario out of a movie, it's as real as it gets. I recently watched the local news and saw that two foster parents locked a small boy in the closet and went off on vacation. The boy died. What kind of person could do something like that?

A popular solution to many unwanted pregnancies is abortion. Now, just to be clear, I'm not completely endorsing abortion. However, I think there is a time when abortion is the most realistic option. For example, if a woman is attacked, we can't expect her to carry around the child of her rapist. That would be absurd. There are a number of unwanted pregnancies such as this each year. This is what makes pregnancy and abortion such touchy topics. It's not cut and dry. There's plenty of grey in there. The key is to educate your loved ones regarding unwanted pregnancies and teach them about safe practices. Remember, abstinence is the safest option around.