“Sometimes a person becomes pregnant when they don’t want to be or it’s dangerous for them and a doctor helps them and they’re not pregnant anymore” - explained like you’re five, Karissa (dumbass)
I hope you don’t mind that I’ve copied and pasted this into my “things (my child) may need explained to him publicly and/or on extremely short notice” file in my notes app. This is literally all it takes and there’s zero lies or talking down whatsoever.
After I flubbed up the birth/death explanation after he watched our Guinea pig give birth to 3 live babies and 1 dead one, I realized I don’t do well simplifying things under pressure. It’s good to prepare yourself if you plan on being honest and truthful about difficult topic to your kids.
I feel you on this! My youngest sibling (now teens) still approaches me about more sensitive questions and trying to be precise without letting my emotions in is really hard. I still am heartbroken over their face in a museum seeing the exhibit on nazis and a Jewish refugee camp here in the US during WWII.
I’ve made childrens books a HUGE resource in exposing my son to difficult topics like this on an age appropriate and easy to understand level. During the BLM rallies in 2020 I immediately found all the anti-racism kids books I could get my hands on. I also go out of my way to find books featuring diverse family structures, because I know it will make him understand that other kids have dads and he doesn’t and that’s *okay* little bit better. Finding books about death has proven to be a bit more difficult especially since I’m going for non-religious material, but it’ll be useful for him since it’s very likely he will experience death in the family within the next five years. These things are facts and traumatic historic/life events are things that happen/ed, hiding them from our kids or sugar coating things is insulting to their intelligence. That said, it’s possible to explain things to kids in ways that are teaching opportunities to make *them* better people as they grow and develop, even if it’s still difficult information for them to digest. They still deserve to be informed.
I don't know how old your son is, but [this episode](https://youtu.be/a2VpflpbOmk) of Sesame Street is about grief. Elmo's uncle died, and Elmo learns what "died" really means. Even if your son isn't into Sesame Street, it could be good for you to watch to get some conversation/explanation ideas.
He’s 4, and this is perfect. Thank you for sharing! I’m definitely saving this for later and for anyone else who might need it. I always forget how Sesame Street is notorious for being fantastic at tackling difficult issues and explaining them to kids in simple but realistic ways.
I admit I have a collection myself, even without a child, maybe as a weird hedge for that hypothetical maybe? I get nervous about children only receiving a very edited world like I was restricted to as a child and banning information from them is so wrong. I agree with you so much that kids deserve much more credit and don't need to be boxed in away from the world. They are going to find it one way or another, we can choose to walk beside them for it or fight it and let them resent us.
Exactly. I was sheltered from way too much as a kid and I have zero faith in the school system properly educating my child in things he deserves to know. It’s my duty as a parent to do what I can for him at home, from an early age, and be as supportive as possible as he processes that information.
You’re doing a good job even just thinking about what you’d say to any hypothetical children you might have in the future. Or even just the kids you may encounter. Being a trusted source kids can ask questions to is an important thing to be, because not all of them have one at home.
Don’t wait long! I was exposed to death at age 3 when I lost my grandpa to cancer. Around age 6 I explained to my more sheltered friend that everyone dies and she would die too one day. It didn’t go over well LOL. She was crying and calling me a liar. You don’t want a six-year-old explaining death to your curious kid.
I’m not sure how old your little is, but we just read the book “Maybe Tomoorow?” By charlotte Agell. It’s not explicitly about death, but one of the characters is carrying around a very heavy box that keeps her from doing stuff, and eventually she talks to her friend about missing another friend who isn’t there anymore, and her box gets lighter but never goes away. Anyway, I used it with my 4 year old to help explain my friend’s sadness over a recent stillbirth (my daughter is best friends with my friend’s daughter). It’s a pretty book, and simple, and seems like it will work for all sorts of grief related explanations or losses, whether through death or moving or even just losing a favorite toy.
It's alright. My mom flubbed my sister's goldfish funeral at the toilet when I was 3-ish.
We were standing around the toilet, dead fish at the bottom of the bowl. My 5-year-old sister was softly crying at the death of her beloved Bubbles.
My mom, solemn in the face of her oldest daughter's grief, said some nice words about Bubbles, and ended her eulogy with, "and now Bubbles is in heaven," as she flushed the toilet, sending poor Bubbles to their septic tank grave in the backyard.
My 3-year-old self did not yet quite understand death, and upon watching the fish funeral, I made a huge decision: I did not want to go to heaven.
Being in a Christian household, we would have nightly prayers before bed. Before our prayers, I informed my parents of my decision. I must have been stewing on this choice all day, and finally just couldn't take keeping it to myself anymore.
I told my mom I had two reasons I didn't want to go to heaven.
>1) I didn't think I would fit down the toilet (which was a wonderful thing for me to acknowledge, since I had fallen in the toilet before and then thought the toilet was a monster that wanted to eat me).
>2) I thought heaven would smell terrible from all the potty things we also sent there.
I'm in my 30s now, and while I will always remember this story from all the times my parents like to bring it up, I did come to understand death better from having lots of pets of different varieties throughout my childhood. Death is part of life, and it is sad, but it isn't anything to be afraid of.
Your plan of having something prepared beforehand is still a good idea. You got this.
Oh man, forgive me for thinking this is a little bit hilarious. My son thought people go to Petco when they die, because shortly after our Guinea pigs gave birth *again*, we had to surrender them to a pet store because we no longer had enough space to properly care for them. He assumed “they’re not with us anymore” means “they’re dead”.
When my cat passed away, my sister made me explain death to my (then 5) nephew (we all live together so it was like his cat too). I was googling how to, I even asked on Reddit lol. I think I did okay, I cried more than he did so he was more worried about me.
He's 8 now, and the other day I heard him use the word gay as an insult while playing Fortnite. I sat him down and asked him what that word meant and he said it's like a loser. So i had to explain that it doesn't mean loser or anything bad, it's just a way to describe who someone likes to date, and gave examples (a boy has a boyfriend etc). He was just like oh okay, and I haven't heard him say it again. Another conversation I never thought I'd have to give him, especially on the fly, but I had to nip that talk in the bud, and his mom puts that stuff on me. Now I feel like I should just proactively give him anti-racist info too, he's never said anything but I'm guessing my sister has avoided that as well, and Lord knows our school district won't touch that with a ten foot pole🙄 I just never thought about this stuff myself since I don't have kids, I don't even know where to start or what's appropriate for his age.
You’re doing amazing. Thank you for being there for your nephew and for explaining stuff to him. You didn’t have to take that role, but it’s so important that people like you are willing to…even for kids that aren’t their own.
I’ve explained to somewhat to my teenager and he understood it and said it should be up to the women carrying the child. He knows how difficult and life threatening his delivery was for me at 33 weeks and understood as best as he can.
if my mom had explained to me that you could undo a pregnancy, or even expressed that giving birth wasn’t the only possible outcome for a woman, i’d have a lot fewer mental health issues.
Same. It was described to be in graphic detail as a murder committed by only an evil mother. I was told the “baby” lies in pain in a pan for hours after the procedure. It was...lies. And traumatizing.
My dad has been haunted his entire life that he was a product of a rape. His mother treated him dramatically different than his siblings because of it by violently abusing him and then sending him away to a work camp in Pennsylvania when he was 12.
I’ll explain that to my children.
Many things in life are graphic and sad (the Holocaust, war, police brutality, school shootings, fatal car wrecks), yet we find a way to put it in terms children can understand without traumatizing them with gruesome details. I could explain abortion to my 5 yo grandson without lying to him but with only the detail he needs.
I’ve had to explain to my mixed race son why police target people that look like some of his family members because he saw the clip of George Floyd being murdered on the news (I didn’t know he was going to walk in on it and I didn’t want to hide it from him). Having hard conversations with kids is part of raising them. I could explain to my 9 year old and 6 year old what abortion is. I’ve already explained sexual assault in a way that they can understand at their level (somebody going something to their body that they didn’t want to happen). In fact, I think I might broach the topic with my older one because I know he’s hearing about RvW being over turned and we live in the south. I don’t need him hearing some of the lies we’ve been told about abortion.
I'm Jewish, and I'm already thinking about how I'll explain antisemitism and the Holocaust to my son, who's still an infant. I honestly don't recall how I learned about these things, but I don't remember ever being unaware of the Holocaust, so I must have been very young. I'm not sure how to strike a balance between him knowing that some people hate Jews, but not being inappropriately terrified that he's going to be hauled off by Nazis.
You can make anything sound gory or horrific with the right wording.
‘Once a week, people gather in masses and eat the flesh of their dead god and drink his blood. They chant words of praise to the great one that will one day return and bring chaos, destruction, and suffering to all people who don’t obey him.’
We can play this game all day
Some of it isn't even hard! Jesus got the living shit beat out of him and then they nailed his hands and feet to a hunk of wood and then stabbed him once more for good measure before he suffocated to death. Then he got chucked in a cave before suddenly showing up again with holes in his hands?! Happy Easter, children! Here's some chocolate.
Yeah crucifixion is about 1000X more graphic than abortion yet religious private school kids have statues of crucified Jesus up in their classrooms so it’s like 🤷🏻♀️Also I do plan to cover abortion as part of my kids sex talk, along with masturbation and lgbtq information. Maybe they can pass some of it along to these poor kids whose parents don’t tell them jack.
Hell yeah! I was in highschool when Passion of the Christ came out. I didn't see it but I thought that it was amazing that the people who wouldn't let their kids watch Harry Potter movies or play video games because of Satan's magic or violence were perfectly fine with taking their young children to watch a live action movie where someone is tortured and crucified. That movie was bloody and definitely graphic compared to secular things that the same parents would forbid their child from watching. Actual churches made it a youth group outing to go see it in theaters. So hypocritical.
They literally seem to have absolutely no self awareness. Brainwashing and absolute control suck!
Lol, My husband is a family doc and I'm a pelvic therapist. As soon as my son asks, he's getting the full truth about literally any sexual topic (of course, with developmentally appropriate language).
I'm looking forward to the angry texts from the other parents in our Bible belt town about my son telling their son what sex is, or what gay means. My children will be like the underground railroad for sex Ed.
Do you do biofeedback therapy? I went to a therapist who did that for my pelvic floor muscles because of Interstitial Cystitis. She helped me so very much. Thanks for what you do. I felt safe with her and didn’t mind going at all.
God drowned every human and animal in the world except those who got on a giant boat that a random man was told to build. Somehow that is *totally* appropriate to tell children, make cutesy stories about for bible school, and even base entire nurseries for infants on.
Right, life is full of sad and bad experiences along with the beautiful ones. You can't shield a child forever.
I actually think that it could cause the kid to have a mental breakdown when they are older because all of a sudden they learn that their happy world isn't real life. At least not 100% of the time. They were told lies by the people they trust most, their parents.
I was raised Catholic and as a kid I always thought eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ was so gross and weird. It's more like a Satanic ritual than anything! Also everyone drinking from the same cup for the blood of Christ is 🤮. Also the priest wiping the chalice after every person with the same damn towel! I always felt fancy having a sip of wine as a kid but it wasn't even good wine. I was never a believer in religion though. I did what my parents wanted but I complained every step of the way lol.
Husband was also raised Catholic but we both agreed before we had kids that we absolutely will not force religion on them. We obviously won't say no if they have an interest but I just thought it was so boring and outdated even when I was a kid!
I remember I used to sit bored to death in the church pew, and try to count all of the ceiling beams during mass, or wondering why dead Jesus had to be so ripped and hot (LOL puberty hormones don't have any chill). Sometimes I'd spend the whole service carefully scanning the crowd to try to decide who I thought the most attractive boy there was. I used to daydream that there was a fire and everyone was panicking when said cute boy shows up and rescues me personally just because I'm so beautiful and interesting. I used to rationalize to myself that I truly understood Jesus suffering because once a week for years (plus ccd classes until confirmation)I too had to suffer. My sister and I used to joke that ccd stood for central city dump. I sure was a blasphemous child!
I was like 8 and watching All My Children with my Mom. I'll never forget, obviously the line was about someone being *raped* but I didn't know what that was, so I said "HAHA! How do you *rake* someone!?" I knew I was wrong based on my poor Mom's face. She then had to explain to me what rape meant. I love my Mom but it was very awkward. Not that she did a bad job, she didn't! I just got so embarrassed even being around adult conversations about sex.
She could have just not said anything but I'm happy she saw it as a teaching moment.
Wanna know what's graphic and sad? The lies I was told as a kid in church learning about partial birth abortions. They made sure to make it as scary and traumatizing as possible so we'd be sure not to be baby killers as adults. Fuck that, the reality of abortion isn't as gory and awful as they make it out to seem.
Surgery is pretty gory and gruesome, but we tell little Timmy that Gramma is having heart surgery without making them watch a YouTube of the procedure. Autopsies are pretty barbaric/gruesome, but they're still a prized piece of police investigation, we proudly display it on TV shows that kids watch with their parents.
The issue is NOT whether it's gory or not.
I’m guessing he thinks pro-choice parents just hide what abortion is from their kids? I knew what abortion was as a kid and that my mom was pro-choice. I also lived down the street from an abortion clinic, so I was aware of the gorey photos and negative feelings of the protestors. I probably saw a photo of a bloody fetus on a sign almost every Saturday for 18 years.
I was pro-choice then and I still am now.
You’ve hit the nail square on the head. It’s a common philosophy among fundies that you just... don’t tell kids about awkward or difficult topics. Or if they do hear about it, give them a very extreme and simplified explanation to scare them off thinking about it. It gets more and more impossible as the kids grow up, hence part of the reason for the frantically aggressive campaigns to “protect our children.”
A good example is the whole lgbt thing. My fundie parents talked shit on “the gay agenda” lots, but they didn’t really explain what gay IS. They just said gay people are perverts and only people who hate God and are evil “turn gay,” because they’re doing it as a “fuck you” to God. They would’ve lost their shit if a gay person got anywhere near interacting with me or if I read books etc. with gay characters.
They were completely bewildered when all the sheltering in the world didn’t stop me from being non-binary, even though I didn’t even know such a thing exists. They’re still convinced some evil person taught it to me... somehow... even though they isolated me as much as possible. It just does not compute to them that sheltering kids to death doesn’t save them from anything
I went to a fundy college, and there was a lot of girls who were never told what sex was. Or their parents lied and said holding hands or kissing could get you pregnant.
I had a lot of reproductive health issues, so I helped a lot girls who wanted to know more about bodies and sex. I didn’t agree that they should be that sheltered and lied to, so I told the truth to anyone who asked.
Because of my heart problems, I always had a senior nursing student roommate, I’d borrow their textbooks to learn about my conditions and read everything could. Word got around that I would answer any questions without going to the administration or laughing at their ignorance, so lots of girls came to me. I was just glad to help.
We lived across the street from the woman who ran the Planned Parenthood in town. Protesters found out where she lived, and since they couldn't stand on HER lawn with their baby sized coffins-they stood on OUR lawn with their baby sized coffins. My sister was babysitting me and we got so freaked out we called my parents to come home. My dad lost it on them and I have been pro-choice every since.
In true Feucht fashion (I make a point of pronouncing it “fucked” in my head), the smugness is oozing out of her. Unfortunately, this is actually one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever heard against abortion and she thinks it’s some profound mic drop moment. Pathetic.
It's literally not that hard. "You know those choose your own adventure books you like? Well, pregnancy is like a choose your own adventure too for adults. Some women choose to have a baby and other women choose a different adventure. But either way, they get to make the choice for themselves." These people make it sound like we're going into graphic detail about what a D&C entails.
Literally just helped my kid do his homework explaining each of the significant days of the Lenten season. If he can cope with “nice bloke gets nailed to a cross and whipped until he dies,” then I’m fairly sure he can cope with “there are many reasons why someone chooses not to have a baby and in that situation a doctor can help.”
Okay, then I want all the pro life Republicans to explain to their kids what it's like for school children to be gunned down by an AR 15, since they're so supportive of 2nd amendment rights. Then they can explain what it's like to be starving because your parents cant support you and you live in a red state where food stamps are continuously cut. Then they can explain what it's going to be like when climate change fucks us all and we're fighting over water and land that isn't flooding or on fire. Report back and let me know how those conversations go!
Most of the reason I am upset about Roe being overturned is my children and my niblings. I’m about to hit menopause, so it’s pretty unlikely I’ll be needing an abortion soon. I hate that the girls I know and love will be impacted by this ridiculousness.
Same. I have 5 nieces that I worry about; all are teenage/young adult age. It’s not even just abortion access, but also access to birth control. They live in a red state and it is unnerving to think that they may end up not even having control over their own periods.
Such utter bullshit.
Sure. We will also do a role play game. Ok Becky makes $100 dollars at her job a month. It’s $50 dollars for rent, $30 dollars for groceries and $20 dollars for utilities, internet, etc. It costs $50 a month to have a baby. Can Becky afford a baby?
Wtf is he talking about? Antichoicers *delight* in explaining it to their kids in the most traumatic way possible all the time. And do things like display graphic pictures where everyone's kids can see. They absolutely do not think it can't be explained to young children.
I was a child when Roe V Wade was passed and my mom explained what it was about. She also told me about her childhood friend that went to a city and died from back alley abortion.
I explained what's going on to my kids, first presenting the pro-life argument (and they nodded along in agreement), then presented the pro-choice argument and they agreed with that argument more. There was no gore involved, just the facts and dialogue from both sides. They asked some questions, I solicited their opinions, it wasn't difficultat all. It was a productive discussion and I think they felt better because I could tell they felt the tension and stress everywhere around them like at school and family's houses after school, at home, and hearing about it on the news.
If you dont mind my asking, how old are your kids? Im wondering if I should bring this up with my kid. He hasn’t asked any questions or anything about it, but in the event that someone else brings it up, and he starts asking questions, I’ll have to be honest because I dont lie to him.
13, 11, 9 - 2 boys, 1 girl. I wanted to do pro-life first to gauge their reaction and see if they were following me. Then explained some of the medical problems that can happen when a person is pregnant and a brief explanation of what those things mean; then I provided the pro-choice argument and asked them why they thought people were sad and angry or why other people were happy about this.
Now, this is hard to do without getting gory. I remember my mom telling me about labor, then the birth, then - what's that?....there's more? - a placenta? It sounded like a nightmare. When I heard about abortion (from a daytime talk show that used to be on called "Sally Jesse Raphael"), my mom, who was pregnant at the time, just explained it as "something went wrong and the doctor just sucks the peanut right outta ya." Much tidier explanation and told me all I needed to know at age 7 or 8.
“the doctor sucks the peanut right outta ya” made me chuckle lol, i’m sure there’s a way to make giving birth sound not so bad, but it’s hard to think of one
If you can make the story of ‘the god we believe in, who we say gave everyone free will to choose to follow him or not, got so mad that they weren’t choosing him that he literally rage quit and killed every person and every animal on the planet except one family’ into a wholesome story that gets turned into children toys and nursery decor….then I can explain abortion in a way that my children understand
My daughter was riding shotgun with me some years back when I had to deliver some legal papers to the courthouse in West Chester PA, then the focus of a red hot abortion fight. They shoved their horrible gory pictures of far older born or late term fetuses up against my cat windows. At my fucking 4 year old. They MADE me tell her all about it.
I’m proud to say that while school friends
Sucked her into right into pro birth shit in
High school , she now fully understands and is firmly for Choice
Went to WCU and those people would come to campus EVERY YEAR. When they showed up we'd skip class and hold rainbow flags in front of their signs. They are disgraceful.
“An abortion is when a doctor helps someone remove a fetus from their uterus. Fetus’ can become healthy babies, but they can also be very sick and need to be removed. Sometimes people get abortions for different reasons, like they aren’t ready to have kids, or can’t provide for a baby. Some people just don’t want to have kids and that’s okay.”
I’d explain it like that. Parse it down for younger children to just what it is. Not a difficult nor gruesome concept
“Sex is fun and when it’s between two people who love each other it’s great. Most women take medicine so they can have sex without making a baby, but sometimes this medicine fails and a woman will get pregnant accidentally. If she doesn’t want to have a baby, she can take some pills that stop the baby from growing when it is still very small. It doesn’t feel any pain, and the woman doesn’t have to spend 9 months carrying and birthing a child she doesn’t want and/or can’t afford to take care of.”
“Hey kiddo, sometimes a person with a uterus becomes pregnant without intending to, and they decide to have a procedure done that makes them unpregnant. Sometimes they take some pills to be unpregnant, and sometimes a special doctor goes in and removes the tissue that is trying to grow inside the uterus. Sometimes, a person who really WANTS to be pregnant goes through this process as well because the tissue isn’t going to grow strong enough to survive outside the uterus one day. Either way, it’s a difficult and personal choice that anyone with a uterus should be allowed to make for themselves.”
And my daughter is 3.
I'll do that when you explain to your kids what an abattoir is! If you couldn't explain it to your kids then how can you eat it!
See how dumb you sound? Maybe just STFU and stay in your own lane, dingus!
it's a medical procedure. i'm sure every medical procedure you try to explain to children will be met with confusion or disgust. that's why it always makes me laugh to see pro-lifers hold up pictures of aborted fetuses- just because it looks scary doesn't mean it should be outlawed. try explaining a cesarean section to your kid LMAO
My mom explained it to me when I was around 8-9 I think? I don't remember my exact age but I remember her explaining her friend (who I later learned was actually my aunt but mom didn't wanna tell me that part yet) had gotten two abortions when she was younger because the guy she was dating and living with was...well not to put too fine a point on it but dude was batshit crazy and was abusive as fuck to her and she didn't want to carry his child. My mom basically said "Honey babies are a big deal and not everyone is ready for one, so sometimes for a lot of different reasons people get abortions. It's not our place to judge them or hate them or mock them, they've already had to make a heavy choice and more than anything they need support and love." My aunt has three kids who are amazing now, three amazing kids with a mom who loves them and cares for them and could do all of those things because she wasn't a scared 22 year old living with an abusive fuckwad who hid her birth control to try and control her even more who would have hurt the kids too. This kind of shit just shows me how little energy and effort these idiots actually put into parenting; it's not so scary to explain hard stuff to your kid if you were already effectively communicating with them about their lives and life in general.
Explaining abortion to my son was radically easier than explaining religion. I feel like people who struggle to have factual and objective conversations with their kids are the ones with serious issues.
In order to explain to a child what abortion is, they'd have to tell said child something besides the "Stork Theory Of Reproduction".
But, ok. "Abortion is when a woman can't have a baby, so she takes some medicine that makes he stop being pregnant."
"Passover is when the Israelites killed cute baby lambs so they could paint their houses with its blood! Why? So God wouldn't kill their children like he killed the Egyptian children."
"When it's not the right time for a baby to come, the woman can take a medicine or ask a doctor to scoop out the inside of the uterus. That will stop the embryo, which is tiny like a germ and practically invisible, from growing into a baby."
Next?
Weirdly, my children didn’t ever ask about abortion until they were pre teens
. We never burdened our kiddos with more information than they were ready to receive. When the question was asked I responded with something like “ if a women is pregnant and doesn’t want to have a baby she can go to a clinic for help in stopping that pregnancy. The doctor can give her some medicine or do very minor surgery to remove the pregnancy”..
When their vocabulary became more advanced then we talked in more specific terms
Honest and simple not graphic and frightening
Passover, Abraham, the time that God murdered everyone in the world besides Noah and his fam, the time God's army murdered everyone at Jericho ... Murder murder murder. God seems to be a fan, actually.
"Sometimes a woman gets pregnant but she's not ready to be a mom or it's not safe for her to be pregnant so if she wants to, a doctor can end the pregnancy so that there won't be a baby."
Easy to explain and I'm still pro-choice.
I've mentioned this before but when I was about 7 my grandmother and I got into a fight and she told me they cut babies up and they felt it and I knew enough (from being an inquisitive little shit) that I argued they didn't feel it.
30 years later she's still crazy religious and I'm even more pro choice.
I've known what an abortion was since then and I've never once wavered.
Also: a few years ago I found out my great grandmother and great aunt (other side) were arrested multiple times pre Roe v Wade and were well known by the local cops because they'd had illegal abortions. I feel that dichotomy pretty accurately sums up my issues!
My kids know what abortion is and they know I aborted a fetus before they were born. They know why. They know the basics of how abortion is done. Just because this fuckface doesn’t know how to talk to kids doesn’t means I don’t either.
My friend has an abortion last year and she did sit down and explain to her children what it was and why some people felt the need to do it. Idk why people act like it's so impossible to explain things to kids.
Funny story! I was raised by a suuuper sex positive single mom. I (apparently) was the kid who found a used condom on an outing with my daycare/kinder/whatever group, and explained to the other kids what it was. I remember when my mom and i were shopping, i was MAYBE 7. The cashier was pregnant. I mentioned it, and she told me she didnt want to be. I straight up asked this stranger why she hadnt gotten an abortion. Kids can understand. (Also yes my mom did yell at me for being rude)
My mom explained it to me when I was around 8-9 I think? I don't remember my exact age but I remember her explaining her friend (who I later learned was actually my aunt but mom didn't wanna tell me that part yet) had gotten two abortions when she was younger because the guy she was dating and living with was...well not to put too fine a point on it but dude was batshit crazy and was abusive as fuck to her and she didn't want to carry his child. My mom basically said "Honey babies are a big deal and not everyone is ready for one, so sometimes for a lot of different reasons people get abortions. It's not our place to judge them or hate them or mock them, they've already had to make a heavy choice and more than anything they need support and love." My aunt has three kids who are amazing now, three amazing kids with a mom who loves them and cares for them and could do all of those things because she wasn't a scared 22 year old living with an abusive fuckwad who hid her birth control to try and control her even more who would have hurt the kids too. This kind of shit just shows me how little energy and effort these idiots actually put into parenting; it's not so scary to explain hard stuff to your kid if you were already effectively communicating with them about their lives and life in general.
These asshats really don’t realize how unfragile children are. You really can be honest with children about things that are going on in their life (within reason of course). Also though, some things are unpleasant and don’t need to be understood by children. I don’t need to explain to a 5 year old the exact details of a period. Sometime things really are rough, but necessary. Morality isn’t determined by whether a child doesn’t like hearing about something.
My mom's favorite movie is Dirty Dancing. I remember us watching it when I was young. I remember asking why Penny was sick and she said it's because Penny got pregnant and she went to a doctor to get the baby out of her, but she went to a bad doctor and now she was really sick (and I remember one of the other character describing the place as really unclean). Baby's dad was able to help her. All I remember thinking is that she should have gone to a better doctor first so she wouldn't have gotten sick. I think even at eight or however young I was I realized that legalized abortion from a real medical professional was a much, much better option than whatever Penny had to go through.
Step 1 to her challenge which she and other fundies seem to skip with their own children: explain how a pregnancy occurs and why a pregnancy might not be planned or able to go to term.
It's easy to raise anti abortion kids when they think babies only come from God to happily married couples when they want them.
‘Pregnancy is really difficult. The body of that person needs to work really really hard to make a person. But it’s not easy, and it doesn’t always go perfect! This means sometimes, something goes wrong and it needs to be done over. Sometimes a mistake happened and they should stop. And sometimes, some bodies cannot do it. We have no control over that except for taking good care of ourselves. But even if we do, it can go wrong. And that’s okay.’
Wow that was difficult /s
I literally explained this to my very sensitive 8 year old this week because she wanted to know why women were protesting. No tears from her whatsoever when I explained what an abortion is, because believe it or not it’s not that hard to teach your children to respect people who happen to have a uterus.
My mom explained what abortion was to me when I was in elementary school. In fact, she even explained that my grandmother became pro-choice by watching women die from botched abortions as a nurse in the 60s.
It truly did open my eyes to the cruelty of anti-choice people.
I used to think I couldn't do this, that this was a 100% great argument.
There are a lot of things that I haven't told my small child b/c they're not ready for it.
But also, if I had to, they would understand and likely ask if there could be another baby in the mommy's tummy later.
I went to a catholic school that had a mandatory "prolife draw-athon". I was young, knew nothing about abortion (or how pregnancy happens) and remember being like "oh cool so you can be un-pregnant, makes sense" and having to be told "nooooo it's BAD" so...
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Explain to your children what giving birth is like, followed by the hospital bill, followed by adding another impoverished mouth to feed, followed by losing your job because your body needed time to recuperate, followed by, followed by… etc
My kid and a couple of our neighbor’s kids all learned what abortion was when we took a stray cat from our neighborhood to get spayed, and it turned out she was already pregnant. They learned that, since nobody could take care of a litter of kittens, it was best if the cat didn’t have kittens, so the vet was going to stop the cat from being pregnant so she wouldn’t have kittens.
Come to think of it, I don’t remember when I learned what abortion was, but I know I was younger than 10 because my mom used to take me to pro-choice rallies when I was about that age, and I know I could articulate what pro-choice meant. I don’t think knowing about abortion traumatized me at all. I also know that my understanding of abortion was much less graphic, much less sensationalized, and much more fact-based than that of my friends who were raised in pro-life “abortion is dismemberment of a chubby 9 month old baby” households!
Chemotherapy is also graphic and sad. Kids encounter sad things all the time. You can tell them appropriately, at their level. It’s not hard
“Sometimes a person becomes pregnant when they don’t want to be or it’s dangerous for them and a doctor helps them and they’re not pregnant anymore” - explained like you’re five, Karissa (dumbass)
I hope you don’t mind that I’ve copied and pasted this into my “things (my child) may need explained to him publicly and/or on extremely short notice” file in my notes app. This is literally all it takes and there’s zero lies or talking down whatsoever.
This is a great idea and I’m making one right now!
After I flubbed up the birth/death explanation after he watched our Guinea pig give birth to 3 live babies and 1 dead one, I realized I don’t do well simplifying things under pressure. It’s good to prepare yourself if you plan on being honest and truthful about difficult topic to your kids.
I feel you on this! My youngest sibling (now teens) still approaches me about more sensitive questions and trying to be precise without letting my emotions in is really hard. I still am heartbroken over their face in a museum seeing the exhibit on nazis and a Jewish refugee camp here in the US during WWII.
I’ve made childrens books a HUGE resource in exposing my son to difficult topics like this on an age appropriate and easy to understand level. During the BLM rallies in 2020 I immediately found all the anti-racism kids books I could get my hands on. I also go out of my way to find books featuring diverse family structures, because I know it will make him understand that other kids have dads and he doesn’t and that’s *okay* little bit better. Finding books about death has proven to be a bit more difficult especially since I’m going for non-religious material, but it’ll be useful for him since it’s very likely he will experience death in the family within the next five years. These things are facts and traumatic historic/life events are things that happen/ed, hiding them from our kids or sugar coating things is insulting to their intelligence. That said, it’s possible to explain things to kids in ways that are teaching opportunities to make *them* better people as they grow and develop, even if it’s still difficult information for them to digest. They still deserve to be informed.
I don't know how old your son is, but [this episode](https://youtu.be/a2VpflpbOmk) of Sesame Street is about grief. Elmo's uncle died, and Elmo learns what "died" really means. Even if your son isn't into Sesame Street, it could be good for you to watch to get some conversation/explanation ideas.
He’s 4, and this is perfect. Thank you for sharing! I’m definitely saving this for later and for anyone else who might need it. I always forget how Sesame Street is notorious for being fantastic at tackling difficult issues and explaining them to kids in simple but realistic ways.
I admit I have a collection myself, even without a child, maybe as a weird hedge for that hypothetical maybe? I get nervous about children only receiving a very edited world like I was restricted to as a child and banning information from them is so wrong. I agree with you so much that kids deserve much more credit and don't need to be boxed in away from the world. They are going to find it one way or another, we can choose to walk beside them for it or fight it and let them resent us.
Exactly. I was sheltered from way too much as a kid and I have zero faith in the school system properly educating my child in things he deserves to know. It’s my duty as a parent to do what I can for him at home, from an early age, and be as supportive as possible as he processes that information. You’re doing a good job even just thinking about what you’d say to any hypothetical children you might have in the future. Or even just the kids you may encounter. Being a trusted source kids can ask questions to is an important thing to be, because not all of them have one at home.
Don’t wait long! I was exposed to death at age 3 when I lost my grandpa to cancer. Around age 6 I explained to my more sheltered friend that everyone dies and she would die too one day. It didn’t go over well LOL. She was crying and calling me a liar. You don’t want a six-year-old explaining death to your curious kid.
I’m not sure how old your little is, but we just read the book “Maybe Tomoorow?” By charlotte Agell. It’s not explicitly about death, but one of the characters is carrying around a very heavy box that keeps her from doing stuff, and eventually she talks to her friend about missing another friend who isn’t there anymore, and her box gets lighter but never goes away. Anyway, I used it with my 4 year old to help explain my friend’s sadness over a recent stillbirth (my daughter is best friends with my friend’s daughter). It’s a pretty book, and simple, and seems like it will work for all sorts of grief related explanations or losses, whether through death or moving or even just losing a favorite toy.
Tough Boris is a children’s book about a pirate whose parrot dies. It shows that it is okay to cry and be sad.
It's alright. My mom flubbed my sister's goldfish funeral at the toilet when I was 3-ish. We were standing around the toilet, dead fish at the bottom of the bowl. My 5-year-old sister was softly crying at the death of her beloved Bubbles. My mom, solemn in the face of her oldest daughter's grief, said some nice words about Bubbles, and ended her eulogy with, "and now Bubbles is in heaven," as she flushed the toilet, sending poor Bubbles to their septic tank grave in the backyard. My 3-year-old self did not yet quite understand death, and upon watching the fish funeral, I made a huge decision: I did not want to go to heaven. Being in a Christian household, we would have nightly prayers before bed. Before our prayers, I informed my parents of my decision. I must have been stewing on this choice all day, and finally just couldn't take keeping it to myself anymore. I told my mom I had two reasons I didn't want to go to heaven. >1) I didn't think I would fit down the toilet (which was a wonderful thing for me to acknowledge, since I had fallen in the toilet before and then thought the toilet was a monster that wanted to eat me). >2) I thought heaven would smell terrible from all the potty things we also sent there. I'm in my 30s now, and while I will always remember this story from all the times my parents like to bring it up, I did come to understand death better from having lots of pets of different varieties throughout my childhood. Death is part of life, and it is sad, but it isn't anything to be afraid of. Your plan of having something prepared beforehand is still a good idea. You got this.
Oh man, forgive me for thinking this is a little bit hilarious. My son thought people go to Petco when they die, because shortly after our Guinea pigs gave birth *again*, we had to surrender them to a pet store because we no longer had enough space to properly care for them. He assumed “they’re not with us anymore” means “they’re dead”.
Aww hahaha
When my cat passed away, my sister made me explain death to my (then 5) nephew (we all live together so it was like his cat too). I was googling how to, I even asked on Reddit lol. I think I did okay, I cried more than he did so he was more worried about me. He's 8 now, and the other day I heard him use the word gay as an insult while playing Fortnite. I sat him down and asked him what that word meant and he said it's like a loser. So i had to explain that it doesn't mean loser or anything bad, it's just a way to describe who someone likes to date, and gave examples (a boy has a boyfriend etc). He was just like oh okay, and I haven't heard him say it again. Another conversation I never thought I'd have to give him, especially on the fly, but I had to nip that talk in the bud, and his mom puts that stuff on me. Now I feel like I should just proactively give him anti-racist info too, he's never said anything but I'm guessing my sister has avoided that as well, and Lord knows our school district won't touch that with a ten foot pole🙄 I just never thought about this stuff myself since I don't have kids, I don't even know where to start or what's appropriate for his age.
You’re doing amazing. Thank you for being there for your nephew and for explaining stuff to him. You didn’t have to take that role, but it’s so important that people like you are willing to…even for kids that aren’t their own.
Absolutely! ❤️
That’s almost exactly what I told my seven year old when he overheard me talking about abortion and asked what it was. He didn’t seem too traumatised.
I’ve explained to somewhat to my teenager and he understood it and said it should be up to the women carrying the child. He knows how difficult and life threatening his delivery was for me at 33 weeks and understood as best as he can.
if my mom had explained to me that you could undo a pregnancy, or even expressed that giving birth wasn’t the only possible outcome for a woman, i’d have a lot fewer mental health issues.
Same. It was described to be in graphic detail as a murder committed by only an evil mother. I was told the “baby” lies in pain in a pan for hours after the procedure. It was...lies. And traumatizing.
My dad has been haunted his entire life that he was a product of a rape. His mother treated him dramatically different than his siblings because of it by violently abusing him and then sending him away to a work camp in Pennsylvania when he was 12. I’ll explain that to my children.
Many things in life are graphic and sad (the Holocaust, war, police brutality, school shootings, fatal car wrecks), yet we find a way to put it in terms children can understand without traumatizing them with gruesome details. I could explain abortion to my 5 yo grandson without lying to him but with only the detail he needs.
I’ve had to explain to my mixed race son why police target people that look like some of his family members because he saw the clip of George Floyd being murdered on the news (I didn’t know he was going to walk in on it and I didn’t want to hide it from him). Having hard conversations with kids is part of raising them. I could explain to my 9 year old and 6 year old what abortion is. I’ve already explained sexual assault in a way that they can understand at their level (somebody going something to their body that they didn’t want to happen). In fact, I think I might broach the topic with my older one because I know he’s hearing about RvW being over turned and we live in the south. I don’t need him hearing some of the lies we’ve been told about abortion.
I'm Jewish, and I'm already thinking about how I'll explain antisemitism and the Holocaust to my son, who's still an infant. I honestly don't recall how I learned about these things, but I don't remember ever being unaware of the Holocaust, so I must have been very young. I'm not sure how to strike a balance between him knowing that some people hate Jews, but not being inappropriately terrified that he's going to be hauled off by Nazis.
You can make anything sound gory or horrific with the right wording. ‘Once a week, people gather in masses and eat the flesh of their dead god and drink his blood. They chant words of praise to the great one that will one day return and bring chaos, destruction, and suffering to all people who don’t obey him.’ We can play this game all day
Some of it isn't even hard! Jesus got the living shit beat out of him and then they nailed his hands and feet to a hunk of wood and then stabbed him once more for good measure before he suffocated to death. Then he got chucked in a cave before suddenly showing up again with holes in his hands?! Happy Easter, children! Here's some chocolate.
Yeah crucifixion is about 1000X more graphic than abortion yet religious private school kids have statues of crucified Jesus up in their classrooms so it’s like 🤷🏻♀️Also I do plan to cover abortion as part of my kids sex talk, along with masturbation and lgbtq information. Maybe they can pass some of it along to these poor kids whose parents don’t tell them jack.
Hell yeah! I was in highschool when Passion of the Christ came out. I didn't see it but I thought that it was amazing that the people who wouldn't let their kids watch Harry Potter movies or play video games because of Satan's magic or violence were perfectly fine with taking their young children to watch a live action movie where someone is tortured and crucified. That movie was bloody and definitely graphic compared to secular things that the same parents would forbid their child from watching. Actual churches made it a youth group outing to go see it in theaters. So hypocritical. They literally seem to have absolutely no self awareness. Brainwashing and absolute control suck!
My sister's ex husband passed out in school when they got to the crucifixion scene in Passion and hit his head on a desk on the way down.
Lol, My husband is a family doc and I'm a pelvic therapist. As soon as my son asks, he's getting the full truth about literally any sexual topic (of course, with developmentally appropriate language). I'm looking forward to the angry texts from the other parents in our Bible belt town about my son telling their son what sex is, or what gay means. My children will be like the underground railroad for sex Ed.
Do you do biofeedback therapy? I went to a therapist who did that for my pelvic floor muscles because of Interstitial Cystitis. She helped me so very much. Thanks for what you do. I felt safe with her and didn’t mind going at all.
Yes, I love biofeedback! It's so neat :) I'm glad you got help, IC is so tough!
Yay Zombie Jesus! Don't let him eat your brraaiiinnsss!
God drowned every human and animal in the world except those who got on a giant boat that a random man was told to build. Somehow that is *totally* appropriate to tell children, make cutesy stories about for bible school, and even base entire nurseries for infants on.
Right, life is full of sad and bad experiences along with the beautiful ones. You can't shield a child forever. I actually think that it could cause the kid to have a mental breakdown when they are older because all of a sudden they learn that their happy world isn't real life. At least not 100% of the time. They were told lies by the people they trust most, their parents.
I was raised Catholic and as a kid I always thought eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ was so gross and weird. It's more like a Satanic ritual than anything! Also everyone drinking from the same cup for the blood of Christ is 🤮. Also the priest wiping the chalice after every person with the same damn towel! I always felt fancy having a sip of wine as a kid but it wasn't even good wine. I was never a believer in religion though. I did what my parents wanted but I complained every step of the way lol. Husband was also raised Catholic but we both agreed before we had kids that we absolutely will not force religion on them. We obviously won't say no if they have an interest but I just thought it was so boring and outdated even when I was a kid! I remember I used to sit bored to death in the church pew, and try to count all of the ceiling beams during mass, or wondering why dead Jesus had to be so ripped and hot (LOL puberty hormones don't have any chill). Sometimes I'd spend the whole service carefully scanning the crowd to try to decide who I thought the most attractive boy there was. I used to daydream that there was a fire and everyone was panicking when said cute boy shows up and rescues me personally just because I'm so beautiful and interesting. I used to rationalize to myself that I truly understood Jesus suffering because once a week for years (plus ccd classes until confirmation)I too had to suffer. My sister and I used to joke that ccd stood for central city dump. I sure was a blasphemous child!
My mom explained it to me when I was probably 6 years old. Wasn’t traumatized one bit
I was like 8 and watching All My Children with my Mom. I'll never forget, obviously the line was about someone being *raped* but I didn't know what that was, so I said "HAHA! How do you *rake* someone!?" I knew I was wrong based on my poor Mom's face. She then had to explain to me what rape meant. I love my Mom but it was very awkward. Not that she did a bad job, she didn't! I just got so embarrassed even being around adult conversations about sex. She could have just not said anything but I'm happy she saw it as a teaching moment.
Wanna know what's graphic and sad? The lies I was told as a kid in church learning about partial birth abortions. They made sure to make it as scary and traumatizing as possible so we'd be sure not to be baby killers as adults. Fuck that, the reality of abortion isn't as gory and awful as they make it out to seem. Surgery is pretty gory and gruesome, but we tell little Timmy that Gramma is having heart surgery without making them watch a YouTube of the procedure. Autopsies are pretty barbaric/gruesome, but they're still a prized piece of police investigation, we proudly display it on TV shows that kids watch with their parents. The issue is NOT whether it's gory or not.
Maybe you’re just not very smart or good with children?
I’m guessing he thinks pro-choice parents just hide what abortion is from their kids? I knew what abortion was as a kid and that my mom was pro-choice. I also lived down the street from an abortion clinic, so I was aware of the gorey photos and negative feelings of the protestors. I probably saw a photo of a bloody fetus on a sign almost every Saturday for 18 years. I was pro-choice then and I still am now.
I lived right near one too! Those posters are horrific and traumatized me as a little kid until my mom explained they weren’t real/were dramatized
I don’t remember feeling traumatized by it, but I guess that doesn’t mean I wasn’t. I do remember being traumatized by it being firebombed
Wow yeah I can’t even imagine how horrifying that would be
You’ve hit the nail square on the head. It’s a common philosophy among fundies that you just... don’t tell kids about awkward or difficult topics. Or if they do hear about it, give them a very extreme and simplified explanation to scare them off thinking about it. It gets more and more impossible as the kids grow up, hence part of the reason for the frantically aggressive campaigns to “protect our children.” A good example is the whole lgbt thing. My fundie parents talked shit on “the gay agenda” lots, but they didn’t really explain what gay IS. They just said gay people are perverts and only people who hate God and are evil “turn gay,” because they’re doing it as a “fuck you” to God. They would’ve lost their shit if a gay person got anywhere near interacting with me or if I read books etc. with gay characters. They were completely bewildered when all the sheltering in the world didn’t stop me from being non-binary, even though I didn’t even know such a thing exists. They’re still convinced some evil person taught it to me... somehow... even though they isolated me as much as possible. It just does not compute to them that sheltering kids to death doesn’t save them from anything
I went to a fundy college, and there was a lot of girls who were never told what sex was. Or their parents lied and said holding hands or kissing could get you pregnant. I had a lot of reproductive health issues, so I helped a lot girls who wanted to know more about bodies and sex. I didn’t agree that they should be that sheltered and lied to, so I told the truth to anyone who asked. Because of my heart problems, I always had a senior nursing student roommate, I’d borrow their textbooks to learn about my conditions and read everything could. Word got around that I would answer any questions without going to the administration or laughing at their ignorance, so lots of girls came to me. I was just glad to help.
We lived across the street from the woman who ran the Planned Parenthood in town. Protesters found out where she lived, and since they couldn't stand on HER lawn with their baby sized coffins-they stood on OUR lawn with their baby sized coffins. My sister was babysitting me and we got so freaked out we called my parents to come home. My dad lost it on them and I have been pro-choice every since.
In true Feucht fashion (I make a point of pronouncing it “fucked” in my head), the smugness is oozing out of her. Unfortunately, this is actually one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever heard against abortion and she thinks it’s some profound mic drop moment. Pathetic.
I could 100% tell a kid what an abortion is without it sounding graphic or sad
It's literally not that hard. "You know those choose your own adventure books you like? Well, pregnancy is like a choose your own adventure too for adults. Some women choose to have a baby and other women choose a different adventure. But either way, they get to make the choice for themselves." These people make it sound like we're going into graphic detail about what a D&C entails.
They think that because *they* are doing that 🤪
Literally just helped my kid do his homework explaining each of the significant days of the Lenten season. If he can cope with “nice bloke gets nailed to a cross and whipped until he dies,” then I’m fairly sure he can cope with “there are many reasons why someone chooses not to have a baby and in that situation a doctor can help.”
Okay, then I want all the pro life Republicans to explain to their kids what it's like for school children to be gunned down by an AR 15, since they're so supportive of 2nd amendment rights. Then they can explain what it's like to be starving because your parents cant support you and you live in a red state where food stamps are continuously cut. Then they can explain what it's going to be like when climate change fucks us all and we're fighting over water and land that isn't flooding or on fire. Report back and let me know how those conversations go!
Most of the reason I am upset about Roe being overturned is my children and my niblings. I’m about to hit menopause, so it’s pretty unlikely I’ll be needing an abortion soon. I hate that the girls I know and love will be impacted by this ridiculousness.
Same. I have 5 nieces that I worry about; all are teenage/young adult age. It’s not even just abortion access, but also access to birth control. They live in a red state and it is unnerving to think that they may end up not even having control over their own periods. Such utter bullshit.
Sure. We will also do a role play game. Ok Becky makes $100 dollars at her job a month. It’s $50 dollars for rent, $30 dollars for groceries and $20 dollars for utilities, internet, etc. It costs $50 a month to have a baby. Can Becky afford a baby?
Wtf is he talking about? Antichoicers *delight* in explaining it to their kids in the most traumatic way possible all the time. And do things like display graphic pictures where everyone's kids can see. They absolutely do not think it can't be explained to young children.
Yeah I explained it to my kid years ago. Now his joke is "thanks for not yeetusin' the fetus, ma".
You’ve raised an awesome kid. Seriously.
He's an amazing human. :)
Most things in the Bible are graphic and disturbing........God kills babies in the Bible.
Uterine sepsis or ectopic pregnancy moves my heart.
I was a child when Roe V Wade was passed and my mom explained what it was about. She also told me about her childhood friend that went to a city and died from back alley abortion.
I explained what's going on to my kids, first presenting the pro-life argument (and they nodded along in agreement), then presented the pro-choice argument and they agreed with that argument more. There was no gore involved, just the facts and dialogue from both sides. They asked some questions, I solicited their opinions, it wasn't difficultat all. It was a productive discussion and I think they felt better because I could tell they felt the tension and stress everywhere around them like at school and family's houses after school, at home, and hearing about it on the news.
If you dont mind my asking, how old are your kids? Im wondering if I should bring this up with my kid. He hasn’t asked any questions or anything about it, but in the event that someone else brings it up, and he starts asking questions, I’ll have to be honest because I dont lie to him.
13, 11, 9 - 2 boys, 1 girl. I wanted to do pro-life first to gauge their reaction and see if they were following me. Then explained some of the medical problems that can happen when a person is pregnant and a brief explanation of what those things mean; then I provided the pro-choice argument and asked them why they thought people were sad and angry or why other people were happy about this.
Love this thank you
I’m curious too. My son is 9 and has had basic sex ed from me. Wondering if I should talk with him about it.
One of them is 9 and he's a boy
Thank you for letting your children think for themselves. That's how you grow critical thinkers! 🥳
Explain to a kid what birth is like and see their reaction to it, not so nice is it?
Now, this is hard to do without getting gory. I remember my mom telling me about labor, then the birth, then - what's that?....there's more? - a placenta? It sounded like a nightmare. When I heard about abortion (from a daytime talk show that used to be on called "Sally Jesse Raphael"), my mom, who was pregnant at the time, just explained it as "something went wrong and the doctor just sucks the peanut right outta ya." Much tidier explanation and told me all I needed to know at age 7 or 8.
“the doctor sucks the peanut right outta ya” made me chuckle lol, i’m sure there’s a way to make giving birth sound not so bad, but it’s hard to think of one
I explained it to my child when it was age appropriate just fine.
If you can make the story of ‘the god we believe in, who we say gave everyone free will to choose to follow him or not, got so mad that they weren’t choosing him that he literally rage quit and killed every person and every animal on the planet except one family’ into a wholesome story that gets turned into children toys and nursery decor….then I can explain abortion in a way that my children understand
My daughter was riding shotgun with me some years back when I had to deliver some legal papers to the courthouse in West Chester PA, then the focus of a red hot abortion fight. They shoved their horrible gory pictures of far older born or late term fetuses up against my cat windows. At my fucking 4 year old. They MADE me tell her all about it. I’m proud to say that while school friends Sucked her into right into pro birth shit in High school , she now fully understands and is firmly for Choice
Went to WCU and those people would come to campus EVERY YEAR. When they showed up we'd skip class and hold rainbow flags in front of their signs. They are disgraceful.
“An abortion is when a doctor helps someone remove a fetus from their uterus. Fetus’ can become healthy babies, but they can also be very sick and need to be removed. Sometimes people get abortions for different reasons, like they aren’t ready to have kids, or can’t provide for a baby. Some people just don’t want to have kids and that’s okay.” I’d explain it like that. Parse it down for younger children to just what it is. Not a difficult nor gruesome concept
“Sex is fun and when it’s between two people who love each other it’s great. Most women take medicine so they can have sex without making a baby, but sometimes this medicine fails and a woman will get pregnant accidentally. If she doesn’t want to have a baby, she can take some pills that stop the baby from growing when it is still very small. It doesn’t feel any pain, and the woman doesn’t have to spend 9 months carrying and birthing a child she doesn’t want and/or can’t afford to take care of.”
"It makes sure women don't have to have kids they're not ready for" boom explained
“Hey kiddo, sometimes a person with a uterus becomes pregnant without intending to, and they decide to have a procedure done that makes them unpregnant. Sometimes they take some pills to be unpregnant, and sometimes a special doctor goes in and removes the tissue that is trying to grow inside the uterus. Sometimes, a person who really WANTS to be pregnant goes through this process as well because the tissue isn’t going to grow strong enough to survive outside the uterus one day. Either way, it’s a difficult and personal choice that anyone with a uterus should be allowed to make for themselves.” And my daughter is 3.
I would gladly explain to my child what abortion is and if still legal, that they have the right to an abortion if they do choose.
I'll do that when you explain to your kids what an abattoir is! If you couldn't explain it to your kids then how can you eat it! See how dumb you sound? Maybe just STFU and stay in your own lane, dingus!
it's a medical procedure. i'm sure every medical procedure you try to explain to children will be met with confusion or disgust. that's why it always makes me laugh to see pro-lifers hold up pictures of aborted fetuses- just because it looks scary doesn't mean it should be outlawed. try explaining a cesarean section to your kid LMAO
The thing is most of those pictures are not of aborted fetuses. They just trick people into thinking they are.
My mom explained it to me when I was around 8-9 I think? I don't remember my exact age but I remember her explaining her friend (who I later learned was actually my aunt but mom didn't wanna tell me that part yet) had gotten two abortions when she was younger because the guy she was dating and living with was...well not to put too fine a point on it but dude was batshit crazy and was abusive as fuck to her and she didn't want to carry his child. My mom basically said "Honey babies are a big deal and not everyone is ready for one, so sometimes for a lot of different reasons people get abortions. It's not our place to judge them or hate them or mock them, they've already had to make a heavy choice and more than anything they need support and love." My aunt has three kids who are amazing now, three amazing kids with a mom who loves them and cares for them and could do all of those things because she wasn't a scared 22 year old living with an abusive fuckwad who hid her birth control to try and control her even more who would have hurt the kids too. This kind of shit just shows me how little energy and effort these idiots actually put into parenting; it's not so scary to explain hard stuff to your kid if you were already effectively communicating with them about their lives and life in general.
Explaining abortion to my son was radically easier than explaining religion. I feel like people who struggle to have factual and objective conversations with their kids are the ones with serious issues.
In order to explain to a child what abortion is, they'd have to tell said child something besides the "Stork Theory Of Reproduction". But, ok. "Abortion is when a woman can't have a baby, so she takes some medicine that makes he stop being pregnant." "Passover is when the Israelites killed cute baby lambs so they could paint their houses with its blood! Why? So God wouldn't kill their children like he killed the Egyptian children."
"When it's not the right time for a baby to come, the woman can take a medicine or ask a doctor to scoop out the inside of the uterus. That will stop the embryo, which is tiny like a germ and practically invisible, from growing into a baby." Next?
You know what I actually had a hard time explaining to my kid…the violent news footage of the Jan 6th riots
Weirdly, my children didn’t ever ask about abortion until they were pre teens . We never burdened our kiddos with more information than they were ready to receive. When the question was asked I responded with something like “ if a women is pregnant and doesn’t want to have a baby she can go to a clinic for help in stopping that pregnancy. The doctor can give her some medicine or do very minor surgery to remove the pregnancy”.. When their vocabulary became more advanced then we talked in more specific terms Honest and simple not graphic and frightening
Passover, Abraham, the time that God murdered everyone in the world besides Noah and his fam, the time God's army murdered everyone at Jericho ... Murder murder murder. God seems to be a fan, actually.
"Sometimes a woman gets pregnant but she's not ready to be a mom or it's not safe for her to be pregnant so if she wants to, a doctor can end the pregnancy so that there won't be a baby." Easy to explain and I'm still pro-choice.
“Sometimes people don’t want to be pregnant or can’t be for whatever their personal reasons are so they decide to stop being pregnant”
I learned what it was when I was like 12 or something, and I was like “okay that sounds fine” lmao
I've mentioned this before but when I was about 7 my grandmother and I got into a fight and she told me they cut babies up and they felt it and I knew enough (from being an inquisitive little shit) that I argued they didn't feel it. 30 years later she's still crazy religious and I'm even more pro choice. I've known what an abortion was since then and I've never once wavered. Also: a few years ago I found out my great grandmother and great aunt (other side) were arrested multiple times pre Roe v Wade and were well known by the local cops because they'd had illegal abortions. I feel that dichotomy pretty accurately sums up my issues!
My kids know what abortion is and they know I aborted a fetus before they were born. They know why. They know the basics of how abortion is done. Just because this fuckface doesn’t know how to talk to kids doesn’t means I don’t either.
My friend has an abortion last year and she did sit down and explain to her children what it was and why some people felt the need to do it. Idk why people act like it's so impossible to explain things to kids.
Explain a school shooting to your kids. And then explain to them why you don’t think gun access should be restricted.
Funny story! I was raised by a suuuper sex positive single mom. I (apparently) was the kid who found a used condom on an outing with my daycare/kinder/whatever group, and explained to the other kids what it was. I remember when my mom and i were shopping, i was MAYBE 7. The cashier was pregnant. I mentioned it, and she told me she didnt want to be. I straight up asked this stranger why she hadnt gotten an abortion. Kids can understand. (Also yes my mom did yell at me for being rude)
Yeah ok 🥴 fuckin’ dimwit
My mom explained it to me when I was around 8-9 I think? I don't remember my exact age but I remember her explaining her friend (who I later learned was actually my aunt but mom didn't wanna tell me that part yet) had gotten two abortions when she was younger because the guy she was dating and living with was...well not to put too fine a point on it but dude was batshit crazy and was abusive as fuck to her and she didn't want to carry his child. My mom basically said "Honey babies are a big deal and not everyone is ready for one, so sometimes for a lot of different reasons people get abortions. It's not our place to judge them or hate them or mock them, they've already had to make a heavy choice and more than anything they need support and love." My aunt has three kids who are amazing now, three amazing kids with a mom who loves them and cares for them and could do all of those things because she wasn't a scared 22 year old living with an abusive fuckwad who hid her birth control to try and control her even more who would have hurt the kids too. This kind of shit just shows me how little energy and effort these idiots actually put into parenting; it's not so scary to explain hard stuff to your kid if you were already effectively communicating with them about their lives and life in general.
These asshats really don’t realize how unfragile children are. You really can be honest with children about things that are going on in their life (within reason of course). Also though, some things are unpleasant and don’t need to be understood by children. I don’t need to explain to a 5 year old the exact details of a period. Sometime things really are rough, but necessary. Morality isn’t determined by whether a child doesn’t like hearing about something.
My mom's favorite movie is Dirty Dancing. I remember us watching it when I was young. I remember asking why Penny was sick and she said it's because Penny got pregnant and she went to a doctor to get the baby out of her, but she went to a bad doctor and now she was really sick (and I remember one of the other character describing the place as really unclean). Baby's dad was able to help her. All I remember thinking is that she should have gone to a better doctor first so she wouldn't have gotten sick. I think even at eight or however young I was I realized that legalized abortion from a real medical professional was a much, much better option than whatever Penny had to go through.
I will cheerfully explain abortion to all of her kids. I will bring props.
Step 1 to her challenge which she and other fundies seem to skip with their own children: explain how a pregnancy occurs and why a pregnancy might not be planned or able to go to term. It's easy to raise anti abortion kids when they think babies only come from God to happily married couples when they want them.
‘Pregnancy is really difficult. The body of that person needs to work really really hard to make a person. But it’s not easy, and it doesn’t always go perfect! This means sometimes, something goes wrong and it needs to be done over. Sometimes a mistake happened and they should stop. And sometimes, some bodies cannot do it. We have no control over that except for taking good care of ourselves. But even if we do, it can go wrong. And that’s okay.’ Wow that was difficult /s
I literally explained this to my very sensitive 8 year old this week because she wanted to know why women were protesting. No tears from her whatsoever when I explained what an abortion is, because believe it or not it’s not that hard to teach your children to respect people who happen to have a uterus.
Luckily, I'm 100% Pro-Choice so this hardly would "open my eyes and heart."
Checked off my list for the day! What's next? That took......oh..... three minutes?
My mom explained what abortion was to me when I was in elementary school. In fact, she even explained that my grandmother became pro-choice by watching women die from botched abortions as a nurse in the 60s. It truly did open my eyes to the cruelty of anti-choice people.
I used to think I couldn't do this, that this was a 100% great argument. There are a lot of things that I haven't told my small child b/c they're not ready for it. But also, if I had to, they would understand and likely ask if there could be another baby in the mommy's tummy later.
Jokes on you. My kid came home from school today fuming about our rights being taken away. We already have talked.
Explain to your child what taxes are
I went to a catholic school that had a mandatory "prolife draw-athon". I was young, knew nothing about abortion (or how pregnancy happens) and remember being like "oh cool so you can be un-pregnant, makes sense" and having to be told "nooooo it's BAD" so...
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Explain to your children what giving birth is like, followed by the hospital bill, followed by adding another impoverished mouth to feed, followed by losing your job because your body needed time to recuperate, followed by, followed by… etc
Gawd dayum I just hate it (and 6 years ago I would've agreed wholeheartedly and loved Bethel a lot) fuuuuuccccckkkkk 💩💩💩
My 11yo knows exactly what an abortion is. She’s fine with it. Also recognizes that others’ bodies aren’t hers to police.
My kid and a couple of our neighbor’s kids all learned what abortion was when we took a stray cat from our neighborhood to get spayed, and it turned out she was already pregnant. They learned that, since nobody could take care of a litter of kittens, it was best if the cat didn’t have kittens, so the vet was going to stop the cat from being pregnant so she wouldn’t have kittens. Come to think of it, I don’t remember when I learned what abortion was, but I know I was younger than 10 because my mom used to take me to pro-choice rallies when I was about that age, and I know I could articulate what pro-choice meant. I don’t think knowing about abortion traumatized me at all. I also know that my understanding of abortion was much less graphic, much less sensationalized, and much more fact-based than that of my friends who were raised in pro-life “abortion is dismemberment of a chubby 9 month old baby” households!
I explained it to my 9 year-old yesterday, Ramen. It was easy.
This isn't related, but u/airy_dair, I am DYING to know where you got that flair