Then don't get pregnant

A little while ago I reprinted a Letter to the Editor in The O that resonated with me – it was about the cost of having a baby in the context of health care reform.  Not surprisingly, there was a follow-up to it recommending that the letter’s author take more personal responsibility - never mind that fully 51% of pregnancies are unplanned (why?  uh, s-e-x last time I checked). 

We heard a lot of that (too much!) didactic “you people and your kids…” talk while debating paid family leave in the 2009 state legislative session.  So I’m reprinting the reply letter (title “Then don’t get pregnant”) today – what do you think of Lisa Iliffe from Sherwood’s take?  She wrote:

Regarding Dayna Morrison's Sept 8 letter ("Pregnancy changes picture"), where is the "personal responsibility" on Morrison's behalf? She admits she barely makes enough money for food for herself, yet finds herself pregnant with apparently no thought given prior to pregnancy regarding taking care of a baby with her limited income. (As she says, "I did not realize the lack of support for pregnant women until I became one myself.")

It appears from her letter that she did not give much planning or thought to this situation, yet expects government to pay for her to have this child in addition to helping with the monthly insurance to insure the child plus paid maternity leave.

Theres's a problem nowadays with people expecting other people to bail them out. I have a few suggestions for Morrison: Before having children, try to be somewhat financially prepared.

Try birth control or abstinence. Another option is adoption: There are many families who are stable financially and emotionally and looking to adopt children. Please, take some "personal responsibility" for your "personal" decisions.

Yowza.

Comments

[getting pregnant]

thanks for this article
very interesting info for pregnant girls like me
sarah

[W. Kirk]

I want to add that Mrs Morrison is my niece. She has a bachelor's degree from Lewis and Clark and a Masters in Public Health from Tulane. She is married, and both her parents and his are not ill off. But young people do want to have children sometimes especially after they set out on their own, and it's generally best when their bodies are up for it, which timing need not coincide with that of their wallets.

[Danae]

Just because welfare, unemployment and Medicare aren't making anyone big bucks doesn't mean they're 'bankrupting the village,' nor does it mean those programs aren't valuable in other ways. Like being a nation who takes care of its tired, weak, hungry and sick for example. And you really don't know how hard someone has worked in their life by their amount of wealth, so it is silly to assume that there are all these lazy people out there who just want to sit around and siphon off your hard earned tax dollars. Believe me, there's no platinum welfare option! It is a hard life to be stuck in and a hard life to climb out of for many complicated reasons, the least of them being laziness or a lack of responsibility. Even if we made people apply for permits to have babies so that only those with a solid financial plan were allowed, then the rip-off approach of the real estate and medical industries would keep inflating their costs until only the wealthiest were allowed to have kids. And that might just be the way we're headed with people who support beliefs like Lisa Iliffe's...if we haven't already.

[Responsibility is Cool]

I completely agree with the letter writer. We have become a society that expects others to be responsible for our personal choices, and it's destroying us. Too many takers (California anyone?) and not enough providers.

I know it sounds harsh, but so is reality. The reality is that this trend isn't helping our society, and 'The Village' has taken on so much of the financial responsibility of parents that it's broke.

[Colleen]

Not getting pregnant is not only not realistic, it's impractical. There are EU countries like Germany and Italy, and Japan, who are facing troubles because they don't have enough young population to support the aging. There's a theory that the downfall of the Roman Empire was enhanced by not enough middle class having children. Contemporary countries are now implementing incentives to having children, so that there are enough workers to support the elderly.

I agree with the previous poster that to tell someone who suddenly finds themselves in a difficult financial situation because of a pregnancy to have an abortion is pretty disgusting. I guess that's part of our society not learning how to have balanced understanding of issues.

Having a child is joyful and miraculous and parents should be able to celebrate, planned or unplanned.

[Richelle]

So only people of means should have children?

Birth control is 100% effective? (not according to the small print on the box)

It's OK to charge $10,000 to bring a child into the world?

It's OK to have someone fully insured -- charging them and/or their employer hundreds of dollars a month -- and still require them to pay $3,000 to bring a child into the world?

The woman wrote to tell about the broken system, not have her life choices judged by people wholly unfamiliar with the details of those choices. Would the letter writer rather the woman have had an abortion?

I saw this debate-by-letter and was disgusted -- not surprised, but still disgusted.

[Katherine]

The only thing I can say to Lisa Iliffe from Sherwood is this: Asking for help is not the same as not taking responsibility. Things happen, things we can't undo. It's how we deal with them that's important. At the individual level, I admire the woman who find herself financially unprepared for a pregnancy and seeks out the support she needs to get through this time. Seeking help now doesn't mean she's going to ask for state assistance forever and ever.

As a society, I so wish that we could all look at the the big picture and see that helping out this woman now means that she and her child are less likely to need more expensive help later, and are actually more likely to contribute to the web of support that future people in need can call on.