abortion or welfare?
When Amanda fell pregnant at the age of 16, her mother presented her with two options – have an abortion and get on with your life, or have the baby and end up on welfare – and the direction Amanda took was not the easiest one, but the one that gave her a purpose to life that she didn’t have before.“Most of the help I received from welfare was geared towards getting me off payments and into casual work, without any consideration of who was going to look after my baby,” says Amanda. “It was heart-wrenching, but not as heart-wrenching as having an abortion would have been.”
“Even though I went back to school and gained qualifications, I’m realistic enough to know that a succession of casual, menial jobs is going to be the pattern of my life while I am raising my daughter, because she comes first,” says Amanda. “I’m not complaining, but because my circumstances are going to be miserable, I worry about presenting my daughter with these two options at some time in her life.”
"If my daughter falls pregnant before she is married and has a partner to take care of her," explains Amanda, "I will be in the same circumstances as my mother, and her options will be the same that I had, and that sucks.”
“Have an abortion or become a welfare mom?" sighs Amanda. “These are the only options open to a girl from a poverty stricken background and they are both pathetic directions for a young girl facing such a life-changing event.”
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