In the midst of his family's mourning and the world's loss, the pro-life community is disgustingly USING this tragedy for their own personal agenda! The man is barely in the ground and they are politicizing the fact that he was adopted to spread vicious and specious lies connecting adoption and abortion.
Clara Matthews of LifeNews.com writes in "Steve Jobs’ Adoption Defied Planned Parenthood’s Abortion Agenda":
"if Planned Parenthood had any say over his destiny, chances are he would have never been given the chance to live such an extraordinary life and lead the next generation of technological advancements.....Clara and Paul Jobs [his adoptive parents] valued the life of a child Planned Parenthood labels a “crisis,” and Steve Jobs did not become just another “problem” Planned Parenthood attempted solve."A Bakersfield, CA Opinion Letter by Audrey Cochran echoes this belief that Planned Parenthood has the power to make decisions for mothers:
The title of that piece says it all. There is NO connection whatsoever between Steve Jobs and adoption anymore than there is a connection between any living human being and abortion unless they've had one personally (which I doubt in Jobs' case) or performed or recommended one!Steve Jobs and abortion
During an excerpt of one of Steve Jobs' news conferences that was rebroadcast the other day, he mentioned he was born to an unwed mother who gave him up for adoption.
This makes me wonder how many babies who would have turned out to be equally innovative and brilliant have been aborted, and how much better our world would be had they been allowed to live.
I believe Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions in many U.S. cities, is a liability, not an asset, and eliminating the millions of dollars we taxpayers give them each year would help balance the budget.
Erick Whittington ponders, again in LifeNews.com, "Are Abortions Claiming the Lives of People Like Steve Jobs?"
What if Steve Jobs was conceived today? Since his parents weren’t married and both attending college there is a much higher chance he would have been aborted. Could his mother have withstood the pressure from her friends, her classmates and her family members to abort? Would she of withstood the pressure of a Planned Parenthood abortion salesperson telling her pregnancy is just a blob of tissue & abortion is harmless?
Hmmmm. what if....what if Steve Jobs had been born female instead of male? Would she have had the same opportunities to achieve what he did in the business world and particularly the It sector? I don't many female IT execs. What if Steve Jobs had been gay? Why doesn't the gay rights movement get on the bandwagon as long as we are dealing with "what if' scenarios.
Donald R. McClarey of The American Catholic goes further and blames politics. In a piece entitled "Steve Jobs, Adoption and Abortion" McClarey:
I assume that he was a Democrat due to his large political contributions to that party, which is somewhat ironic considering one event at the very beginning of his life.He concludes:
Abortion has robbed us of many geniuses such as Steve Jobs, some villians [sic] no doubt also, and a great many plain ordinary folks who never got their chance to show what love and work they could bring into our world. We are immeasurably poorer for their loss.
Steve Job's adoption is a perfect case in point, as a matter of fact, of the fallacy of assumptions about attempts to connect two very different situations: adoption and abortion.
Job's mother and father were in love. Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, a Syrian, and Joanne Carole Schieble (later Simpson), an American of Swiss and German descent wanted to marry. They were forbidden to marry by their parents because of ethnic differences. They loved the child their love had created so much that when forced to relinquish him for adoption, they stipulated very firmly that the adoptive parents must be college educated and must promise to provide a college education for their son. These are all acts of pure love and concern, not the acts of anyone who had even for a second considered ending their son's life!!
Adoption and abortion have as much to do with one another as do marriage and joining a monastery or the circus. They are choices available to all, but one who chooses one, has by no means ever considered the other.
Abortion is a reproductive right. It is a pregnancy outcome choice.
Adoption is NOT a reproductive right! Not for the expectant mother, nor for those who adopt because adoption does not involve anything whatsoever to do with the PREGNANCY. Adoption is the transfer of custody of living, breathing, human being. Abortion, on the other hand, does not involve a viable, independent, sustainable human life that could be cared for by alternate care-givers. Aborted fetal matter could not be kept alive by any means.
Adoption involves two families and a child they ultimately share. Abortion involves a mother, her conscience, possibly her religious beliefs and her physician. No other living human being is involved in that decision before or after.
It is common PR practice to piggy back on news events. But this campaign to use the death of an adopted person is offensive to all adopted persons and their original parents, and is especially libelous to John Jandali, and Joanne Carole Schieble Simmons. How DARE anyone make publicly defaming assumptions about these specific people.
There is no more validity to claims of what John and Joanne may or may not have contemplated that to put into a print a claim that The Pope considered having sex before entering the priesthood!
Making any claims that any adoptee is lucky not to have aborted is discriminatory as adopted persons would be at no greater risk than any person! How many of us were the result of unplanned pregnancies? And how many married couples with or without children - of every faith including those who call themselves "good' Catholics" have considered, and had, abortions! Why single out adoptees as having been at a risk any human being in the world is at equal for.
The conjuncture of the pro-lifers is as absurd as to speculate that the world would have been a different place if Gandhi's mother had miscarried while pregnant with him, or if The Dalai Lama's parents had not had coitus on the night he was created. "IF."
But the pro-life campaign linking adoption and abortion relies heavily on lies. The Catholic Conference and other pro life groups lobby state by state to deny adult adopted persons equality in regard to access to their own original birth certificates, keeping them second class, discriminated against citizens.
They do this under the bizarre pretext that allowing such access would cause mothers to abort rather than place a child for adoption and fear being "found out" defying the following facts:
- The days of mother relinquishing out of shame of being pregnant "out of wedlock" are long gone with typewriters and phones with cords attached to the wall.
- Abortion is a very time limited choice that can only be made during the first trimester. Adoption, cannot be chosen until after the child is born!
- The majority of mothers who relinquish children to adoption, are more like Jobs' parents than women who are debating killing the child they are carrying. They are loving, caring people caught in situations with few really good options, lacking sufficient resources to remain an intact family.
- The vast majority of mothers who lose their children to adoption or are pressured to or chose it as the best option available to them at the time, long to know their child is alive and well, as did Steve Job's parents and sister.
- Finally, the argument that access for adopted adults would create more abortions has been proven to be totally absurd and unsubstantiated. In states which have reversed the Draconian laws that forbid access and maintain secrecy in adoption, disallowing people access to information that could be a matter of life and death, there has been no increase in abortions or decrease in adoptions. this has been documented repeatedly and the pro-life contingent knows it full well yet continues to spew their lies and acts to harm the living in an effort to save a few "unborn" fetuses to increase the profits of those who earn their livelihood redistributing children through adoption.
If anything is going to increase abortion rates it is rhetoric that constantly makes the claim that mothers who make a loving sacrifice to carry a child for nine months will be forever labeled as someone who might have considered abortion!
The other thing that has a chance of increasing abortion is the secrecy of closed adoptions. More mothers today choose open adoption and report they would not have relinquished unless they were assured the adoption would be open.
STOP the insanity! Stop comparing apples and oranges. And for goodness sake stop WHAT IT scenarios about people's lives! What if Jesus was never born? What if Henny Penny is right and thee sky is falling or the hat if the hokey pokey really is all it's all about? Makes as much sense as ridiculous speculations tying and innocent man's death and his loving, caring parents to a pro-life anti-abortion agenda.
Pro-lifers would decrease far more abortions if they stopped making mothers in crisis pregnancies choose between the devil and deep blue sea and were more supportive of helping them find the resources they need to nurture their children safely. THAT choice saves the unborn just as much as adoption!!!
Lorraine at FMF blogged about another interesting aspect of Steve Jobs life; his denial of paternity of one of his children. See it here.
UPDATE: Steve and his father actually met without knowing it! Steve frequently went to a reastaunat owned by his Dad, according to his forthcomin biography an excerpt reported on Huffington Post.
3 comments:
You said two things that really hit home for me. First, "If anything is going to increase abortion rates it is rhetoric that constantly makes the claim that mothers who make a loving sacrifice to carry a child for nine months will be forever labeled as someone who might have considered abortion!"
I get s.o. s.i.c.k. of being told, "Well at least you didn't have an abortion." It was NEVER something that ever crossed my mind, yet because I relinquished my child for adoption, everyone assumes abortion was on the table, too. Nothing is further than the truth for me.
You also said, "Pro-lifers would decrease far more abortions if they stopped making mothers in crisis pregnancies choose between the devil and deep blue sea and were more supportive of helping them find the resources they need to nurture their children safely. THAT choice saves the unborn just as much as adoption!!!"
Amen to that, sister.
Thank you so much for this post. The whole Steve Jobs situation has been making my blood boil over. The issue was never between abortion and adoption. It was between his natural parents keeping him (which they wanted to do) and giving him up for adoption. Adoption certainly seemed like a FORCED choice (if one can even call it a choice) from everything I've heard and read.
I think in his case being given up for adoption was a tragedy not something to be applauded. I remember an interview Steve did not long ago and he said that he had suffered lifelong emotional pain because his mother had given him away. Sometimes I wonder, if he had not had that emotional burden would he have risen to even greater heights? Hard to imagine I know, but maybe possible.
Excellent points, Robin. Or maybe had he not had to deal with rejection he would have been a better father and maybe even nor denied paternity of his first child.
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