{"id":165777,"date":"2017-05-14T09:27:13","date_gmt":"2017-05-14T13:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=165777"},"modified":"2017-05-14T10:27:43","modified_gmt":"2017-05-14T14:27:43","slug":"a-young-mothers-thoughts-on-mothers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/a-young-mothers-thoughts-on-mothers-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother’s Day Reflection: Every child and every mother should be celebrated"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mother\u2019s Day from now on will forever be different for me than it was in the past. New motherhood\u00a0gives me a different perspective about my mother, and all the other women who have been mothers before me. Last year, at\u00a0approximately six months pregnant with my daughter, it was the first time the holiday really meant something special to me personally. With my daughter having been born nearly nine months ago, on August 19, 2016, this year will be even more meaningful.<\/p>\n

This Mother’s Day, my daughter will have been outside of the womb for as long as she was in it. But\u00a0she has been a human person this whole time, for 18 months now.\u00a0Despite how I was six months pregnant for Mother\u2019s Day 2016 and many had already known that I was pregnant for over a month, not everyone our\u00a0lives knew. Not everyone was in a position to know, as my daughter’s father and I\u00a0were not engaged or married, and were no longer together\u00a0when I found out I was pregnant.\u00a0I have shared the details of my pregnancy<\/a>, which was unplanned, but certainly not unwanted, no matter my circumstances.\u00a0I am so blessed to have my daughter; she has brought my family closer together. We\u2019re always remarking how wonderful it is to have her, even with the difficulties of being a young mother to an active baby.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately in our society, unplanned pregnancies aren\u2019t always treated as happy news. It cannot be emphasized enough that regardless of the circumstances of a child’s conception, he or she is still a human person. Being planned does not determine our rights or humanity; being conceived as a human person does. Indeed, once a child is born, the law, for all its failures in the United States, recognizes that the child is\u00a0afforded rights as all others are. Once the child is born, the law doesn\u2019t ask or care if he or she was “planned” or “wanted.” The same should be the case\u00a0while the child is still in the womb.<\/p>\n

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If I learned anything about the pro-life movement in experiencing an unplanned pregnancy, it\u2019s that there is very little, if any, judgment<\/a>. The preborn child is treated as a human person worthy of the right to life, whether or not his conception was planned. There is also likewise love and respect\u00a0for the mother’s choice to carry her\u00a0child for nine months and then to parent or to bless another family with the gift of\u00a0adoption, both selfless decisions in their own way.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the abortion movement\u2019s message<\/a>\u00a0suggests that women have to choose between having a baby\u00a0and finding success in school or in a career.\u00a0This is not pro-woman.<\/p>\n

A Humans of New York post<\/a> from February of this year truly resonated with me. A mother from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, shared:<\/p>\n

Society doesn\u2019t treat the child of an unwed mother like a blessing. When you\u2019re married and pregnant, people come up and ask all kinds of questions: \u2018Is it a boy? Is it a girl? How are you feeling?\u2019 But that doesn\u2019t happen when you\u2019re single. People saw me getting fatter, but everyone avoided the subject. Instead they asked each other: \u2018What happened? Do you know anything?\u2019 I felt invisible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Her daughter is now eighteen, and she shares how \u201c[t]hankfully a few close friends carried me through.\u201d Whether it’s\u00a01999 or 2016, children, planned or unplanned, should be celebrated.<\/p>\n

So this Mother\u2019s Day will be special in a certain kind of way for me. I will be blessed to be a mother and have my daughter. My hope that our culture will become one in which\u00a0all human beings are respected and treated equally.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: If you are in an unplanned or difficult pregnancy, there is help for you!<\/em><\/p>\n