People that you would NOT recommend.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by breathesgelatin

Aww. This is awful to me on a couple of levels.

First of all, no one can really know this woman's real situation. A lot of times people who have abortions at very young ages are victims of incest or molestation or rape. And people on the outside might not necessarily know it was the case - it can still be a BOYFRIEND who rapes a young teenage girl.

My other point would be is that this is fundamentally her choice and perhaps in some respects a responsible decision, but I know a lot of people would disagree with me there. Whatever your view is, I doubt this young woman was proud of this situation and probably learned and matured a LOT from this decision.

I wonder if the decision to No Rec this would still have been made if this young woman had put her baby up for adoption.

I really hate this kind of thing, and I don't think it's appropriate. I know every individual alum can do what they want, but I think this kind of thing is awful. It's a shaming type of behavior that makes people feel bad about getting pregnant in the first place, and drives them to have abortions.

/soapbox

I am generally more pro-life than pro-choice, but I'm not trying to take this thread in the direction of a conversation on abortion. We've done that before a lot of other places.

But, I think Zillini is on to something about the issue being general reputation maybe more than the act itself.

I suspect there are a lot of people [ETA: okay, maybe not a lot who would no rec, but a lot who would mention it and some who would No Rec] who would write a no-rec for a girl that had a baby, probably just as many or more as the girl who people knew had the abortion.

I suspect any knowledge that alumnae have of a high school girl's sexual activity or the consequences thereof puts the PNM at risk for a no rec. That may not be fair and maybe it's something we should be more mindful of, but I think it IS the way it works.

This is another one of those cases where I think more recent alumnae might not come down as hard, but I'm betting young moms and girls who are known in the community for having had abortions probably don't have great recruitments most places where recs are a factor.

ETA: Hypocrisy kind of drives me crazy too, but when you're dealing with things as ethereal as hometown reputation or being pleased to have someone wear your badge, things are going to get icky.