Archive for the ‘nutrition’ Tag

BANNING ABORTION IS CHILD ABUSE.   1 comment

“I know it’s hard on a woman,” my acquaintance/friend said, “but I’m thinking of the baby who needs a chance to live.” “Funny thing,” I’m thinking. “Caring for the life of the potential baby/ child/ person is one of the most significant reasons from my point of view for leaving abortion decisions to the people and situation directly involved.” Forcing a child to be born into a situation of being unwanted is nothing short of child abuse that in the long term affects not only that particular individual, but the culture and government that will potentially be dealing with the consequences.

As my sister, the mother of two adopted boys, once said. “A baby is not a Lifesaver” and I would add that a woman’s womb is not just a warm, cuddly container. Okay, forget for the moment about the potential damage to the body that harbors the womb. Forget that part of the process is change to the immune system that prevents the expulsion of the zygote, embryo, fetus, with the potential for long-term effects on the mother’s health. Just focus on the damage to the well-being of the potential person being bathed in the stress hormones circulating via the mother’s blood stream and transmitted by the connecting placenta.

Or maybe the potential mother is sufficiently healthy and well supported that she manages to carry off a relatively stress-free pregnancy. Then the baby has lived for approximately nine months in a comfortable environment from which it is shockingly expelled at birth. Now here’s where we see a lovely diaper ad in which the baby is placed gently on the mother’s breast and, at the best, gazes lovingly into her eyes, drawing on the new source of comfort and support. But this is a baby who started out unwanted. For whatever reason it can’t remain there. Torn, or even gently removed, from that cozy place, it begins life in a condition of grief. And no, that baby is not unfeeling – that body memory will stay with him or her, maybe to be recalled years later in a deep therapy session but always, consciously remembered or not, to be a source of pain. No, a baby is not just a piece of candy to be passed around, no matter how caring adoptive caretakers may be. Have you noticed all the stories lately of adults seeking to learn more about their birth parents, longing for contact with that initial nine-month home?

 “But unwanted babies can always be adopted” my acquaintance/friend claims. Really? Show me the evidence. But if that is the case, then the people who would force the birth of an unwanted child should be supporting massive research into the understanding and support of adoptive situations. Especially the adoption of babies with major, or even minor, birth anomalies calling for special care – often expensive. Or racially complex situations. Yes, I have read news stories of exceptionally loving and giving foster care or adoptive parents who have successfully pored love into the development of several children. They are in the news because, like all news, it is exceptional – out of the ordinary. As my sister said, “babies are not just Lifesavers.” Logic, even morality, would require that those who would ban abortion should be ready to support equally strict governmental legal and financial support to all involved.

I sometimes think that those who oppose abortion have in mind the vision of an attractive young woman in her early twenties who engaged in unprotected sex and now doesn’t feel up to devoting a life to the care of her love baby. Of course, I find myself confused when I say this because, as I understand it, those who fight to ban abortion would also ban contraception. Be that as it may, there are many reasons why people seek abortion. How about rape? Or family rape called “incest?” Not too nice for the child born with the genes of a rapist. Or youth — a young body not quite ready physiologically to sustain a pregnancy and birth and certainly without the wherewithal to commit to a lifetime of support? Or body anomalies that lead to a life of suffering? Or a family’s loss of a mother who dies in pregnancy or childbirth. Yes, that does happen. There are so many other reasons that a seasoned medical person could describe.

But at bottom lies poverty. It’s not the wealthy who will, in general, suffer under abortion bans. As my former husband used to say, “Money can buy anything.” And certainly it can buy an abortion. The fact is, those who suffer under abortion bans – in addition to medical practitioners who are not free to put care of their patients first – are those living in poverty.

Well now we’ve hit on the ways in which government could be helping to avoid the damage of abortion bans. If caring for the child is really at the root of such laws, then there will be active campaigning for that same government to support paid maternal medical care for all, extended parental leave, and family support to guarantee all families adequate healthy housing and provision of food. Plus full and expert mental health care for adults suffering the effects of being unwanted for one reason or another.

Exploring the issues related to abortion bans is not easy – much too complicated to be solved by decree. But there is one thing clear. Those who will suffer are babies born into a world that doesn’t want them. So back to my acquaintance/friend who feels sorry for the mothers but cares about the child. Are you willing to think again?

Posted August 15, 2023 by Mona Gustafson Affinito in Uncategorized

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WE ARE ALL ONE BODY – A GOD’S EYE VIEW OF MOTHERHOOD   9 comments

“Set your alarm clock a few minutes earlier” and you’ll tap into your creative juices, Jonah Lehrer suggests in Bottom Line Personal, May 15, 2012. “Our minds tend to be drowsy and unfocused just after waking. Drowsy, unfocused minds are prone to wandering, and wandering minds are great at making creative connections between seemingly disparate concepts.” What a neat example of turning a perceived negative into a positive. Being drowsy and unfocused is a good thing.

Personally I need no alarm clock, not like I did when I was young and could sleep until 5:00 p.m. Really. One time when I was home on vacation from college my mother came to my room at 5:00 p.m., to ask if I’d like some dinner before I went to bed. I did, and I did. Right back to sleep, catching up after intense studying for hefty exams in the five courses I was taking – because that was standard.

Anyway, back to this morning. In my drowsy state, pieces dropped into place like some wiggly jigsaw puzzle: Mother’s day, detoxing – as in nutritional program and/or psychotherapy, skin – our outer layer and largest organ, change and fear/resistance to change, internal warfare, Jung’s Collective Unconscious as I understand it, Freud’s struggle to understand the battle between the forces of life and death, even telephones and automobiles and blogging.. Evolution is the right word.

 I wish I were a poet. The best I can do is a kind of bulleted approach, wondering what the ages look like from a God’s eye view, or even to genuine historians who see the context of time. But here goes.

 I was there when my granddaughter was born. So were my deceased mother and my grandmothers, and the women before them that I didn’t know much about. It was impossible to be unaware of the continuity of life that stared into my video camera as that baby was placed on my daughter’s belly. They tell me that she, now twenty-five, looks like me. I’d like to believe it, because she is beautiful. I mean really. But they don’t mean she looks like me. She looks like they imagine I looked at twenty-five. Together we are part of the life and death of cells in the body of humanity.

 I’ve been in a nutritional program for the past several months. First came treatment of the skin, reducing the inhibiting (he calls it blocking) effect of scars. Is it fair to say that’s removing the effects of our external wounds? Hmm, there’s a parallel in psychotherapy.

 Then came detoxing – slowly, because the body becomes accustomed to the bad stuff we carry around and resists parting with it, getting sick in the process of letting go. Many years ago I spent two years in psychotherapy, so painful I described it later as pulling barbed wire out through my pores, one bit at a time. At the end, everything seemed so clear, I wondered why it took me so long to “get” it. Like every cell in my body – every cell in humankind – I was afraid to release what Adlerians would call the irrational ideas that had me in their clutches. Those two years were years of violent internal cellular battle. The years since have not been without their struggles with personal conflict and sadness, as well as mini-depressions watching the world go through the same thing, wondering what my one little cell can do to help detox. But the barbed wire effect is long gone.

Telephones and automobiles? I am in the process of writing a piece about the evolution of telephones, from French phone party lines to bluetooth convenience, producing the effect of general schizophrenia as we walk around apparently talking to ourselves. Automobiles? My parents dated in horse and buggy. ‘Nuff said?

 Blogging. There are separate bundles of humanity coming together as one. Recently I’ve been moved by the rallying of so many in care of one woman blogging about the joy and stress of caring for her brother. We are all one body, rushing to the support of a part of us in need and, in turn, receiving the gift she gives of faith, hope and health.

And so to Jung as I understand him this morning. We are literally all one body, over the generations and right now. I hope this little cell called Mona will have, in some small way, removed some fear and violence toxins from the other cells in the body of which I am only a part. That would be a happy mother’s day theme.

I expect “A View From the Edge” will cite St. Paul from whom, I believe, I’ve stolen the title for this blog.

Happy Mother’s Day! For now and for eternity. Now wouldn’t that please the God’s eye view?

 

Posted May 13, 2012 by Mona Gustafson Affinito in Uncategorized

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