It's always nice when a relative brings your child a new toy or game to play with, but what is a mom to do when the gift seems wildly inappropriate? That's the problem one woman had to deal with after her mother-in-law bought her nieces "pro-life" fetus dolls. Shocked, she felt like the girls were too young to play with "anti-abortion" toys and was outraged that her MIL was already trying to manipulate them into going along with her beliefs. Now, the mom is bravely speaking out against these "toys" so other people will consider the impact they'll have on their kids.
The drama started when the woman made a visit to her in-laws' house and saw her nieces playing with tiny, plastic dolls.
The anonymous woman, who went by Georgie, shared in an essay on Kidspot that she had gone to her in-laws when she saw her nieces playing with "some little rubber squishy dolls."
"When they proudly showed me their little babies, they didnât look quite right," she continued. "They werenât fully formed and were tiny." She then asked her 4-year-old niece about her new toy, seeing as how they were so unusual. To which the girl happily told her, "This is what little babies look like in your tummy.âÂ
Her older niece agreed. "Look, this is what they look like at 12 weeks!â she said while flipping over the toy. On the back of the doll the aunt could see it was labeled "12 week old fetus."
Shocked, the woman was quickly filled in that the dolls were created by pro-life campaigners.
As she described them, they were intended to be an âincredible reminder of the sanctity of human life.â
The gift bothered the woman for several reasons. First, as a mother herself, she felt as if these toys were inappropriate for a child who wouldn't understand their significance. "How will I feel if (my mother-in-law) tries to give my child a guilt-laden pro-life fetus doll?" she wondered. Though her sister-in-law is more religious than she is and didn't mind the present, the mom admitted she wasn't sure if she would be as accepting.Â
And second, the woman shared that she had an abortion when she was 19 years old. "My family are Catholic," she added. "Under this faith they believe: 'human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.'"
But of course the woman had gotten pregnant — and made a decision that went against these beliefs. "I wasnât sure which of the two guys I had on the go was the father," she explained. "I was far too young to be a mother, so I aborted my embryo at eight weeks."Â
Seeing her nieces play with the pro-life dolls made her wonder what impression it would have made on her as she was forming her own ideas about sex and motherhood as a pre-teen had she been given such a gift. Would she have kept the baby? Would she have been a young, single mother with no idea who her child's father was?
"My response has always been 'what about a womanâs right to choose what happens to her body?'" she wrote. "If she has been raped, is too young, canât afford it, is in an abusive relationship or even if she just doesnât want to have a baby, she has more of a right to have a say than a zygote."
The mom cites George Pell, the Australian prelate of the Catholic Church convicted of child abuse in her essay. She points out he once said abortion was a âworse scandal than priests sexually abusing young people." But, the mom points out, the recent child abuse scandal within the Catholic Church is "abhorrent," and it would take a pretty hypocritical person to feel that abuse is better than abortion.
"How can you possibly concede that an embryo has more rights than a young child falling victim to abuse?" she asked.
In the end, the mom argued that giving children these dolls is manipulative and needs to be stopped.
"When I walked into that abortion clinic I had protestors walking up to me with images of embryos on placards and telling me what I was doing was wrong," she recalled. "It was unpleasant but I was an adult. I had full development of my frontal lobe so could understand the impact of my decision and how I felt about it."
She admitted that her abortion was a painful and sad procedure. "I did feel awful," she wrote. "It was sad, and I felt a sense of loss." Though she sometimes tries to imagine what her life would have been like had she chosen to keep her baby, "I absolutely donât regret my decision for a second."
The mom has decided to speak out against the fetus dolls because children don't understand the complicated topic they're being asked to consider. "When we feed images to children about embryos in the form of a doll that they nurture and care for, we create a cloud of guilt around a potential future decision they may be faced with," she argued.
She also said parents would be manipulating their children into beliefs using the "most cunning of ways. Which is why if my mother-in-law decides to gift a similar doll to my child someday, it will be sent straight back and requested to never be returned again."
