I am anti- adoption.

In my heart, I don’t think that bringing a child into the world only to reject it is a good thing. Perhaps my view is colored by having parents who couldn’t give a rats ass about their children, but I think it must be one of the deepest kinds of hurt to realize that the first person who should have loved and wanted you, didn’t. When I decided to be a parent, I searched my soul long and hard. If I couldn’t love this kid with everything in me, then I shouldn’t have him. Of all the kids I could have had, I’ve only felt that way once. And I have only one kid. As craptastic as our life is, he never has had to question whether or not I love him and want him. He knows it. Not all kids get that from their parents.

Of course, as a rational human being I understand the need for adoption. Children need parents, there are lots of children whose parents cannot or will not care for them.

So I don’t condemn women who have chosen differently from me, even if they have made a decision I abhor.

And I wonder about those women who do condemn other women their choices. I wonder what secret regrets they are covering up. Almost always when someone is that full of hate they have their own psychological skeletons they are trying to keep at bay, justifications they are making to themselves to rationalize their choices. Like the forced pregnancy godbags who get abortions themselves. Their choices are the only ones that are righteous and good, all other women in their situation are dirty sluts.

But those same godbags aren’t that different from the screaming abelist assholes on the left asking if Sarah Palin choosing to have a baby with Downs Syndrome is a horrible affront to modern science, or trying to end sex selection abortions in India.

It is a choice, people. Every woman gets to make one, even if their choice if different from yours.

If you really want to end abortion (not possible, but dream big people) then you have to make birth control widely available and infallible, make rape non-existent, and make a big, cushy safety net for people who are going to be impoverished by having more children than they can afford. If you really want to end sex selection abortions, then you have to change the environment so that girls aren’t undervalued by society. If you want to stall the birth rates in poor countries or to poor women, you educate the women and girls and give them access to employment and birth control and control over their own reproductive and economic futures.

But all that is a lot of hard work and expensive programs. Judgment, shamming, and abstinence programs are cheap excuses to keep society just as oppressive to both women and children without actually doing anything to fix the problems they scream about. Whining about babies being born to older mothers is ageist and in the case of Palin, abelist. Complaining about how many babies someone has is just as bad as complaining about how few babies someone has*.

It’s a choice. It’s not your choice unless it’s your uterus.

*Except in the case of Quiverfull families. Anyone who keeps having babies specifically to become fodder in a religious war is pushing the boundaries of child abuse. May god bless such families with many gay sons and lesbian daughters.