Polimom’s trying to imagine a situation in which I would consider selling AC (Adorable Child):
Nunn and Bryant allegedly expressed interest in Devon when they saw him with his mother, Dominique Calloway, at a store Saturday. Calloway, a single mother, said earlier this week that one of the women, believed to have been Nunn, offered to buy the child for $6,000.
Calloway said she was tempted, but refused. The women came to her south Los Angeles home Monday to repeat their offer and then drove off with the child. Police said they independently confirmed her account of what happened.
Frankly, my mind smacks right into a wall. How could a mother consider such a thing?
I’ve had to really work – hard – to reach beyond my horror and find at least some empathy, but it was a real challenge, because Polimom treasures AC above and beyond anything else in this life, and there’s no price anyone could put on her.
Was she considering it because she thought the baby would have a better life? I still can’t put myself there, but if I assume that, I can at least think about it without recoiling. Unfortunately, I’m not at all sure that’s a safe assumption.
The mother of this infant is 17, and she also has a 2-year-old. That means she was either fourteen or fifteen when she conceived that first baby. That mom is still so very young. (There are pictures here, and a story in the captions. Gorgeous baby…)
Now, Polimom clearly remembers the teen years, and I’m absolutely positive that no amount of “abstinence only” talk is going to do much to reduce hormone-blinded young people from crossing the line. That’s such naive wishful thinking…
Yet social conservatives are trying to reduce funding and programs for birth control and education (including the “morning after” pill), and apparently have either forgotton about, or were immune to, hormones and how they affect young people.
In their moralistic zealousness, the simple mantra of sex=babies (so don’t have sex) bypasses the unavoidable result: without education, in combination with options for control, sex still = babies.
Perhaps they should start funding a post-coital baby-selling market. Maybe a separate aisle in the grocery store?
Cuz this just isn’t going to work. I’m appalled.
Well, give the young mom points for being honest. (or just plain being young and impulsive) As for the social conservatives…I see it as a matter of control. You see it the world over that conservatives (and they tend to come in the form of religious, note, NOT spiritual, people) have certain ‘moral’ codes that are enforced to them in one shape or another. Be it literally, (Saudi Arabia) or peer pressure (did you see her wear that in the grocery store??) and I think that those people (these people, those people, you people, ha) tend to spread out that form of what they believe is moral or not. Control. Practical, pragmatic it is not. It reminds me of this old (I mean OLD) lady friend I had in the ’90s..’aunt Millie’ we called her. She was born in 1898, died when she was 98. This is when I still lived in Ottawa Canada (sicily, 1922…never mind.) anyhow..She was born in England with a british humour to match. Still had the accent. She told great stories about her life and hardships. She was also married for “over 45 years darling, to uncle Wellington”, she’d say. He was a deacon at a baptist church and during the ’40s, aunt Millie told me, well, they had lots of single gals staying at their house, working and trying to get on their feet. She also said that she had helped more than one of them have an abortion because after all dear, she would say, those poor gals would be ostracized by the church and society if they had a child out of wedlock while the man would go scott free! Then she chuckled in her old lady way at the thought that oh, if only the congregation knew, they’d be shocked dear!
She was so ahead of her time… unfortunately, those who are tend to be few and far in between.
Ingrid
PS..that is actually not an endorsement of abortion on my part. I just don’t feel that preventing people from doing something is going to make them stop ‘doing it’
Ingrid