How Do You Like Them Apples?

So not only will an apple a day, keep the doctor away, but it may also keep the abortion away...the tactic of giving out apples as an entree to giving out information about how adoptions are better for society than abortions peaked my interest as I read this article's headline.

I wasn't sure what bothered me more, the abortion and adoption stats that were being spewed as facts without any reference to where they came from or some of the great lines that Suanne Edmiston, the young founder of the George Washington University's Colonials for Life, stated to the campus newspaper.

Adoption is the "most selfless thing a couple can do," Edmiston said, because it considers all of the parties involved, including the parents who do not have to lose a baby, the child whom she believes has a right to life and other families desperately looking to adopt.

I mean what perfect planet is she living on? Adoption is an alternative, to be sure, but it is hardly a rosey scenario for the families involved. It seems to be a complicated process with its share of long-term effects on the families and the adopted baby. How must it feel for that adopted child who grows up, in perhaps a loving and bountiful home, yet feeling lost and wondering why the biological parents put him/her up for adoption? And the parents who put the baby up for adoption feel better about the whole thing because they are supplying the demand for babies and making some other familiy's dream come true? Maybe. However, I am guessing there is more to it than that.

Another gem of a quote was:

Edmiston also said women who choose to have an abortion in a crisis pregnancy are psychologically harmed throughout the rest of their lives, and abortions affect the woman's parenting skills later in life.

This to me was the metaphorical equivalent of having a woman wear a scarlet letter "A" on her chest after getting an abortion.

Yes, these are college students - young adults with barely any life experiences perhaps - and maybe we can chalk some of these statements up to being immature and idealistic somehow. However, if you are going to be in the business of standing on soap boxes and telling people what to do, then maybe you ought to have something to say. And maybe, just maybe, it is worth trying to get people all of the information on the presented options. The pros and cons, the good and bad, all of it.

Yes, choices are good. But informed choices are even better.