Choices for Women

To the Editor: 
Without viewing the ‘big picture’ of the current hot topic of abortion, one can remain angry and bitter about a woman’s very difficult, personal decision.
As a registered nurse of 40 years, there was a time in my career I was afforded a year’s training
to become an operating room nurse. It was truly a focused, specific, goal-oriented, team effort to care for my patients.
The circulating nurse in the operating room must be a registered nurse (RN). The duties are documentation/charting, working in tandem with the scrub assistant who is in the sterile surgical field, and most importantly, providing for the overall safety of the patient.
The physical positioning of each surgical procedure is specific to the body part(s) requiring surgical intervention. The circulating nurse ensures this once the anesthetic has been administered.
My supervisor asked me if I had any personal concerns with circulating on terminations of pregnancies. Initially, it was uppermost in my mind to provide safe and appropriate care for my patients and not to judge them. These women, and sometimes young girls, were depending on the operative team to perform a surgical procedure.
There was one patient I cared for, who arrived to the preoperative holding area within a year’s time for a third termination. A pivotal moment for me when I questioned the birth control counseling and intervention this patient had been receiving in the clinic.
This became the final termination of pregnancy I was assigned.
Abortion is not a method of birth control. It may cause damage to the cervix and prevent carrying a future baby to term.
I recently looked at a very well-written book by a high school teacher of sex education. He has quite an interesting method of viewing our human sexuality and I would recommend this as an informative and fresh new look at who we are; “For Goodness Sex” by Al Vernacchio.
One section addresses the enjoyment and pleasure of physical relations and rather comically expresses that “if it were painful, no one would do it!” So, many of us would not be here in the first place!
How does this relate to the abortion issue? Fortunately, we all know what causes pregnancy. Abstinence is the 100 percent preventative method of birth control. In the meantime, as people, we will not stop having physical relations.
We all need to step back and look at the choices a woman has in the early weeks of an unwanted pregnancy. She can carry the baby to term and deliver the child into a world it’s not wanted. She could terminate the pregnancy. Or, and this is a big or, the people who are truly pro-life, could step up and adopt the unwanted children. Thus, these moms would have a third and very reasonable choice.
Imagine if you will potential adoptive parents who have been screened and legally approved to adopt these children. A master list of loving people. The classified ads of couples looking to adopt would hardly cover the number of babies needing a loving home.
The broken foster care system would not necessarily have to be an option. Education and open dialogues from parents are essential.
Our society, whether it is social media, advertising and/or movies and television, revolves around human sexuality. Unless a person has his head in the sand and lives in denial, our young people need to see the ‘big picture’ and know the consequences of their actions. A lifelong lesson, so that eventually, all children born will be wanted, loved and cherished, as they should.