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June 16th, 2009

Jun. 16th, 2009

  • 2:33 PM
Grumpy Kitten
There was a blog post on the New York Times, featuring a 22-year old woman who is unexpectedly pregnant and recently admitted to a prestigious and extremely demanding graduate program that only offers classes once every two years. The program does not allow deferrals or absentees. The program would entail 20 hours of classes a week, along with 20 hours of studying, paper-writing, and field research. She has no nearby support of family and is in a new town with no close friends. The father is emotionally supportive, but cannot financially support. She makes "too much" money to qualify to social services, grants, or scholarships, but not enough to buy infant supplies. And let's not get into "Well she shouldn't have gotten pregnant, then!", because it's stupid and pointless to say you shouldn't have done something after the fact.

So, they introduced the situation. And the comments were very warm, supportive, and thoughtful. Surprising for the NY times, whose cranky, I-know-better-than-you commenters are never in short supply.

Today they updated to let the woman inform everyone of her decision. She had decided to terminate the pregnancy.

And those warm supportive comments turned into nasty, judgmental stone-throwing about how she was the most selfish person alive.
Someone even said she would be better off keeping the child and working at Wal-Mart the rest of her life.
There was a lot of "so many couples would give anything to raise that child". Not that I don't have any sympathy for infertile couples, but I do not believe it is the responsibility of anyone to provide babies for people who cannot have them. If you choose adoption, great, but don't go around telling everyone that others should do the same.

Anyway. Was just kinda perturbed how those people who were helpful and kind a couple days ago morphed into these ugly name-calling, holier-than-thou idealists. Hope I never have to be at their mercy.

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