Clockwise Cat Strikes Back

mother, which is why it's paramount that women have the right to terminate their
pregnancies - i.e., to halt the growth of a part of themselves so that it doesn't reach
viability beyond the womb.
I realize for some, hopefully many, I am preaching to a vociferously vocal choir on this.
But some, clearly, need further education on the matter. And why does it always seem to
be men who need the most education on this very fundamental feminist issue? Hmmmm,
could it be that men have lost significant sway over telling women what to do?
So yeah. Abortion is a more humane way to deal with an unwanted pregnancy than
carrying it to term and adopting the baby out. It should be blindingly, blaringly obvious
as to why, but just to ensure we are all on the same page of practical thinking:
The termination of a pregnancy aborts potential for life, and stymies the production of
what could later become a sentient being. Therefore, the fetus feels no existential pain in
being disallowed to progress, as it were.
But a baby, and a child, will indeed endure existential anguish when it lacks a loving
parent to nurture its growth. There is no guarantee the baby will be adopted out - there are
millions of children living in orphanages and foster homes - and whether it is adopted or
not, the child lugs around a lifelong awareness of having been given up by its original
parents.
Does this sound coldly clinical toward abortion, and presumptuous toward children who
do manage to become adopted?
I suppose it does. But I am less concerned about the coldly clinical aspect of abortion
than I am about a possible presumptuous attitude toward adopted children. For I am
aware that there are people who do grow up in loving, adoptive families. Those were the
lucky ones, in my view.
I am also aware that there are those who grow up healthy and happy in orphanages, or
various foster homes. I do believe those are few in number.
My point is: Aborting an unwanted pregnancy thwarts ALL possibility of these tragic
scenarios: a child being given up for adoption only to face the prospect of living out its
days parentless; a child being adopted by an abusive couple; a child being bounced from
foster home to foster home with no substantial stability to anchor him or her.
Clearly the optimistic obverse can happen - a child is taken in by model parents - but that
is not as likely as the other scenarios, statistically speaking.
The other anguishing aspect of giving a child up for adoption, of course, is that the
mother - and father, if he is emotionally involved in the child he helped conceive - is
usually encumbered with a sense that her child is floating around somewhere, possibly