Letters to the Editor
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Lisa from the Stand Up Girl
My name is Lisa and I am from the Stand Up Girl website.
As I have read each of your letters, my heart has waivered between shocked, even almost irritated but also very touched. But I also understand that everyone of you that has posted on this "Salon" site is seeing the Stand Up Girl (SUG) website from the "outside perspective" whereas I am on the inside.
Meaning this - guess what everyone. It's ALL real! I'm a real girl, Becky is a real girl and there are about 6 other real girls that are on the site too ... behind the scenes. Each one of us are able to share from different personal experiences that can help so many girls in so many different situations.
Just to give you an idea: Yes there is Becky who was in college & chose life for her beautiful baby girl, then we have another girl who was sexually molested and has found healing, we have another girl who is a virgin and she is in her early 20's and has studied a great deal about STDs ... she is saving herself to marriage, there is another girl who was able to lovingly adopt a beautiful baby boy and now also has a baby by birth. We each live, literally, around the globe.
Then ... we have me. I'm one who chose abortion. I am the one who wept until my eyes swelled shut when I realized what abortion had done to me & my unborn baby. Today I cannot have a baby because abortion ruined my insides. And I feel like if I can make a difference in at least one girls life ... I have saved one from the extreme grief and loss I have experienced.
You see friends, there are real girls behind the skin of the SUG website. Girls who care and hurt for these countless young, teen and even older girls that come to SUG.
When I got pregnant no one told me of any other choice. I didn't know. Many of these girls don't know. You know what? Many broken girls come to this site because SO MANY people say "Come on - get over it! It was just a fetus." (Latin for 'Little One').
Having been there I can (even over the internet) hurt with her, cry with her and correspond with them from my personal experience. She doesn't feel so alone. She almost feels comforted that she found someone that understands. We have resources that so she can locate local help. We receive countless 'responses' from girls who say "I can't believe I've found someone who understands."
Regarding adoption. Ohhh adoption is a wonderful and very loving option. Yes I agree. There are so many families out there that would be so perfect! Though a teen girl is not really mature enough to truly understand the great responsibilities that go with parenting, I think they should be truly educated on the subject of adoption and parenting.
Adoption is a very sensitie subject and we do, quite often, discuss this option behind the scenes in many correspondence you don't see. But we don't want this site to appear to be a 'baby marekting site' rather a place of refuge.
But you see, we at the SUG site are there to encouraged and if possible educate these girls. When a girl is in the middle of a crisis - she doesn't want to hear (as she does from so many others) "Give it up for adoption." "Oh just have an abortion you have the rest of your life ahead of you."
If you've never been pregnant before then you don't understand that maternal instinct that has come alive ... weather you care to admit it or not. I'm not here to debate. Yes many are young girls - but they now have to make a womans decision. So many just want to 'please everyone else' rather than realizing "I have to live with this decision for the rest of my life." She doesn't know nor does she understand. Often times ... she is just hurting and scared.
We love each and every hurting girl that comes to the site.
So carry on with your correspondeces. I hope you now understand that the Stand Up Girl website is there to make a difference in these hurting girls' lives.
Are YOU making a difference in a hurting girls life?
Sincerely
Lisa - Stand Up Girl
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As a former teenage parent myself
These kinds of sites seriously make me want to murder someone (metaphorically, I suppose). Pushing these KIDS to have kids of their own? These poor girls have NO idea what they're getting into, and this kind of propaganda makes me so angry I can barely see straight.
Do I wish I'd had an abortion? No. I have my son, he's great, and I love him. Would I advise any other girl in my then-shoes to do what I did? HELL F**KING NO.
Uneducated, poverty-stricken, and continually stressed about money is no way to raise a child. Would my son have been better off raised in a normal, two parent household where the the adults had finished their education and were financially/emotionally stable? Without a doubt. Every day I know I made a mistake by not giving my son an opportunity to be raised that way.
Sure, I eventually finished my education and am now financially stable. And my son will be heading off to college in a few years. So he is going to have maybe five years tops of a mother who finally has her shit together. He should have had a lifetime. And I'm one of the ones who beat the odds. How many teen mothers actually finish college and then complete grad school? How many just manage college? I'm betting the numbers are dismal.
Shame on the site that promotes this. Shame on anyone who promotes this.
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Lisa
Irregardless of your email (yes, there it is again, you faineant, faux-grammar nerds), you have a long road ahead.
Your rigid ideology does not conform to the feminist rigid ideology that is part and parcel of the Broadsheet perspective.
Ironically, both perspectives are neither right nor wrong. The rigidity of the past has been replaced with the feminist rigidity of the present.
"Pro-choice", ironically, has come to mean "pro-abortion".
"Right-to-life" has come to mean "anti-choice".
Good luck.