Let’s hear it for the former foster children on TikTok clapping back against the pro-abortion rights narrative that their lives are so miserable they’d be better off dead.
You know the narrative. It goes something like this: There are children conceived into bad situations, including abusive homes and cycles of poverty, and therefore, abortion must be legal to ensure their parents can end their lives and preempt their suffering.
“I have seen firsthand what happens to children born to parents who don’t want them,” one foster mother explained tearfully on TikTok. Her takeaway was clear: It would be better if the children had never been born, an outcome the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will threaten.
The viral mother isn’t alone. Her stance is ubiquitous on Twitter, where similar statements are dutifully retweeted by Handmaid’s Tale avatars and the types of “Good White Men” recently savaged on Substack.
Of course, there’s overwhelming merit to the premise they propound, that foster care is a brutal way of life. And the outcomes for children raised in the system aren’t better. In Ohio, for example, a recent ABC6 investigation reported that nearly 4 out of 10 foster children had been incarcerated by age 21.
But to suggest these children are better off dead is a logical fallacy. Worse, it’s plain offensive, according to former foster children who are speaking out against this line of thought on TikTok.
“I just wanted to get on here because I see a lot of [pro-choicers] on here using kids that are wrapped up in the foster system as a pawn to be able to justify aborting children. Well, unless you’ve lived that life, don’t speak on that f***ing life,” TikToker @jd_sway explained.
“For you guys to sit here and say basically that we’re not worth it, that we’re better off dead than having our chance on life, you’re wrong for that s***,” he continued. “You got your chance. Why don’t I deserve my f***ing chance? Why don’t them babies deserve their chance?”
TikToker @bellacarlie concurred, writing: “If you are using foster/adopted kids as a means to promote abortion, you don’t actually care about us, those in the system need advocation for a better system. Not advocation for us to have been aborted,” with the caption, “Keep my trauma out of ur mouth.”
As the video suggested, the situations that many foster children experience are indeed traumatic. To pretend otherwise is dangerous and insulting — “gaslighting,” in TikTok parlance. But they don’t justify a constitutional right to abortion, as the Supreme Court recently confirmed.
Thus, the challenges ahead for pro-lifers will lie in difficult conversations, such as those these TikTokers are initiating and, yes, reevaluating the foster system and improving conditions for families. The solutions will never be pat, but there are brave child welfare advocates tirelessly paving the way.
In Florida, Megan Rose’s nonprofit organization Better Together works to keep families intact through a holistic foster care alternative that harnesses volunteerism and philanthropy to re-home children outside the system temporarily and help parents find counseling and jobs. The work Rose is doing affirms the dignity of human life at every stage, even the messiest ones: addiction, incarceration, and poverty.
Rose knows too well that the lives of children born into abusive conditions don’t lend themselves to glib foster care portrayals in sitcoms such as Boy Meets World and Full House. Their situations should never be romanticized by pro-lifers with no appreciation for the trauma at-risk children incur.
But take it from survivors themselves: A difficult childhood doesn’t warrant a “mercy kill.” Let the foster children live.
Nora Kenney is a media professional at a think tank in Manhattan.
