If pregnant women are unable or unwilling to birth/raise the child, should our gov't make woman have them?

Question

The Q asked above is the headline Q.
Here is the full, properly worded Q that I wanted to ask but couldn't because it wouldn't fit in the Q-box : If pregnant women are unable or unwilling to birth or raise the child in them, should our government step in and compel the women to give birth and then later take the children away from them(to be raised by someone else)?

ZCT, I asked a Q. I advocate nothing. I want people to think because there are some who do advocate the action my Q addresses. TWH 08232006

Many answerers suggest positive ways to give a woman a better & safe option to encourage her to have her baby who would be given to someone able and willing to responsibly raise the child.

The issue the Q focuses on is the role of government and the use of its power to obligate the kind of women I described to go through a nine month pregnancy and deliver the baby under custody. The Q was not about abortion per se, it is about a coersive draconian way to minimize/ stop women who might see abortion as a solution. Thanks to all who answered thoughtfully and compassionately.
TWH 08232006

Having reviewed several times all 29 answers, I narrowed my choice for beat answer to these answerers:ZCT,the nothing, genaddt, robert43041,& martin L.
And the winner is:

Answer 1

No. In order for the government to "sentence" a woman to a nine-month term, they must convict her of a crime. Here, the term is nine months of servitude to an unwanted fetus. What is the crime? It is currently not a crime to have an unwanted and accidental pregnancy, and no civilized society would ever make it one.

From a practical standpoint, what kind of care would the mother give her unwanted fetus anyway? Could you count on her to abstain from smoking, drinking, drugs (legal or otherwise), etc., during her pregnancy? Could you count on her to take her vitamins every day and to keep the baby's best interest at heart? NO, especially if she has no interest in the baby.

Keep the government out of the equation, and let the religious convictions (or lack thereof) of the individuals involved guide their choices.

Answer 2

Yes if pregnant women are unable to raise their children due to their poor or miserable or poverty,they can contact the foundation of orphanage to take care their babies.But they should give the foundation a letter from the chief of village that they are really poor that could not afford to raise their babies..The chief of a village will release a letter if there is a letter from yhe chief of a group of neighbouring families which tell the reality of their economy condition.If a woman is pregnant for 120 days or more,she could not abort it because it is a crimal act and she will be caught and will be sent to jail...Its penalty will be same as a murder and in islamic teaching it is a very great sin..The foundation can gives the baby to other family who will adopt the baby as their own by obeying some procedural processes in line with regulation.The pregnant woman who unwilling to raise the ba
by but she is able and capable to raise her baby,she will get a sin.She has received an entrusted will by our God but she would not take care him/her.

Answer 3

I would far rather see the government help women not get pregnant in the first place than to force them to have babies they don't want who might end up in disastrous circumstances to be brought up. I think there are some areas where the government just doesn't belong, and this is one of those areas. If a woman is unwilling or unable to birth or raise a child, don't you think she would find a way to get rid of it, in spite of government intervention?

Answer 4

The government should have nothing to do with this. It should be strictly a woman's choice. Some cities (in Europe, Canada and the US) have centres (and hospitals) where new mothers who don't want to keep the child, can just drop it off in a safe place, no questions asked. That is the best option: no difficult question, trauma or agony (except for the mother).

Answer 5

What WenckeBrat said, in spades, in big capital letters.

You're asking whether "unwanted pregnancy" should be considered a crime, where the women (but not the men, I notice) are incarcerated and rendered helpless so they cannot end the pregnancy. I assume forced feedings or feeding intravenously would be available. And since these women can never have the freedom of their bodies during the pregnancy (to prevent them fromt aking action to termination the pregnancy), bathing and waste removal will have to be done by a stranger (who works for the institution you'd have to erect to keep these women imprisoned).

And this incarceration will benefit those who want to adopt a child. What about those children no one wants? Raised by foster parents? How many?

"what the..."

Answer 6

Yes. The woman should not have gotten pregnant if they didn't want a child. And the old rap/incest arguement really isn't valid since it accounts for less that 2% of all abortions. The baby can be born and then put up for adoption if they dont want to raise the baby.

Answer 7

Of course not. What kind of society would we live in where the government told women that they would be forced to have babies and then give them up for adoption? We live in a free country where women have rights. Taking those rights away takes us one step closer to crazy religious extremism like you see in the Middle East.

If you really think this country needs more children in it we should start by having proper health care. Then maybe our infant mortality rate would be in the top 30 countries in the world, which currently it is not. 1 in every 200 babies die in this country because we don't have proper universal health care. So if we as a society cannot be bothered to protect wanted children with proper health care, why advocate that we bring unwanted children into the society as well?

Answer 8

If I am understanding your quistoin correctly then yes. I believe that instead of the option of abortion they should have the child they stupidly crawled into bed and made, and then forced to give it up for adobtion if they are unwilling to try to raise it. If you are so dumb that you had sex and created a child that you dont want then you should let someone else have the chance to raise it.

Answer 9

No. The woman should use birth control and not have a child "in them". If they do end up pregnant adoption is always an option. One thing you always hear a girl say before she gets an abortion is "I can't raise this child and I don't think anyone else would take care of it as well as I would, so that's why I'm getting an abortion". What if something happened to one of your parents and the remaining parent didn't feel capable of taking care of you by themselves as well as you were cared for previously. Would you want them to put a gun to your head anad shoot you?

Answer 10

a little scenario
a woman is raped by the man who she thought loved her .. he beats her .. she runs off with her 2 children and his 2 children for safety
she has nowhere to live so separates the children with family and tries to find a place safe because this man is after her ...
she spends months saving and hiding and during that time she finds out that she is pregnant with this mans baby
does she A - carry it to full term with nowhere to go and hardly any food ?
B - get it aborted knowing that she will be safe and so will her other children ?

this woman was my mother and i support her decisions totally
she pines each year for the baby that she didn't have and she was anti abortion before she made this incredibly difficult choice

please consider the individual cases before judgement