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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Not a substitute for abortion

vendredi 31 décembre 2021 à 11:51

Giving away a baby is not a simple and painless substitute for abortion. It isn't painless for the mother, nor for the baby's subsequent life.

I wonder to what extent the pain, nowadays, of an adopted child's subsequent life is socially constructed. Was it painful in general 200 years ago to be adopted, if your adoptive parents were not poor and treated you as well as their other children? I don't know. Perhaps in most cases you would know all along who your biological parents were and the reason for the adoption — for instance, because your parents had more children than they could support, or because they had died, or to give a childless relative an heir. But there would have been shame imposed on you if your parents were unmarried.

In my view, making one more human being is not inherently a plus — and even less so nowadays, considering the disaster that any newborn today would be heading for.