Firstly if she were to keep the child, the responsibilities that come with it are to be realised and understood as they can and do greatly affect the girl’s life and even those around her. While the unborn is maturing inside the mother, she has to take particular care with what she eats as it effects the unborn child’s development and health, this also is a problem with smoking and alcoholic beverages. As her tummy grows in size she will also have to accept the fact that not much can be done about this and if she goes to school then there might also be come verbal abuse from fellow students. Her school life will be affected by absence and morning sickness and therefore time must be allocated to catch up before or after the pregnancy is she is to keep up. Her social life will diminish, as the range of activities that she can perform will shorten. She must realise the amount of care and love that comes with a child and be prepared to give it her full strength. Babies are also very expensive and while the government does help with teenage pregnancies financially extra support would be advisable.
There is a rewarding aspect to keeping the child and that is the love that bonds the mother and child. This love is very special and makes all the extra responsibilities worth it. I suppose there is also a feeling of achievement when you think of the fact that she brought life into this world. I would strongly believe that this love is overpowering.
Next is the choice of adoption, she could give birth to the child then give it to an adoption agency. The fact is that society might not accept a girl going through the whole pregnancy then “giving it away”. Problems might occur when the child is born as the mother may have bonded, as such, with the unborn child in her womb and when it is born, she may regret giving it away and this would distress her greatly.
I believe that this choice is more generous to the child as rather than terminating it’s life, she gives it hope for a future even though she herself does not feel up to the responsibility.
Her final option is abortion. Though after the abortion takes place there are very little permanent physical changes, the mind of the girl would radically change because of destroying the unborn child, the attachments grown since she found out she was pregnant and many other factors that apply to her situation whether it be family quarrels over the abortion issue or even the father denying blatantly any responsibility for example. There is chance, even if very little that harm could come to the pregnant woman during abortion as from a survey for the 1990’s it was said that only one woman died from a legal abortion yet, in 1995 alone, 50 women died due to birth complications. There is help for girls who choose abortion with organisations directed at such cases. Abortions could be more convenient for a person with a busy lifestyle and really have no times to deal with a newborn.
Abortion is the terminating of an unborn child’s life! I would most certainly classify this as murder and though I recognise the advantages of bypassing the responsibilities of a child, I would choose life over convenience and would view the choice of abortion as morally wrong.
If my friend found out to her horror that she was pregnant I would explain to her the choices, sympathise with her and do my best to understand her position. Forcing any opinion on her or the father would be unfair.
