I’ve been granted the opportunity to express my opinions and offer them to a wider audience than I would otherwise have. I’ve taken this opportunity very seriously, and have tried to choose topics that are important and relevant, that would be thought provoking.

Over the course of the six years that I’ve had this contributing column, I’ve had to find a topic each month to write about. This time the topic has found me.

Since the setting where it found me involved a societal issue of immediate concern which also contributes to the one I will be addressing, I’ll mention it briefly. The League of Women Voters recently presented a forum on Homelessness in Chautauqua County, which was well attended, and a thank-you to the OBSERVER for covering it and helping with that.

Homelessness is one of many factors which contribute to childhood trauma. Childhood trauma is one of the many factors that adversely affects society along with the other results of a significant homeless population. At the event, I was approached by a respected community member with a deep concern for children who suffer from the effects of childhood trauma, who has noticed that not much attention has been paid, in all the recent controversy regarding women’s rights, to the children.

I am not experienced at all in the sciences of child development, the closest I can come is a bachelor’s degree in psychology and raising my own family. I have acquaintances who have worked in social services and a daughter who teaches children with developmental and emotional difficulties who would know much more through training and from firsthand experience how children are adversely affected by what is called toxic stress. So, this will be an attempt at an introduction to hopefully encourage awareness and concern.

A study was done which defined and measured the effects of childhood trauma. The CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study measured 10 types of childhood trauma. Categorizations vary among experts, but mainly ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) can be put into three basic groups: abuse, neglect, and household challenges. The study analyzed the data obtained from adults who described having experienced childhood trauma, and broke it down according to various demographics, but the simple conclusion is evident, any of these ACEs can and will cause lasting, permanent, recurring, and perpetuating emotional, behavioral, and physical effects on the children, continuing into their adulthood, and affecting their children and beyond. The study found that the more ACEs a child experiences, the greater chance that even the health of the adult will be affected, with increased risk of chronic mental or physical health conditions, heart disease, cancer, obesity, and early death. ACEs tend to be passed down from generation to generation in a vicious cycle.

When a child is exposed to ACEs, it causes toxic stress, which is stress that is extended or prolonged. The immediate negative effects on children involve brain development, immune system development, attention, decision-making and learning abilities, self-control and social development. As adults, they may be unable to form healthy relationships, have unstable work habits, struggle with depression, anxiety, alcoholism or drug abuse.

Children experience toxic stress in situations like these: emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, emotional or physical neglect or abandonment, witnessing parental domestic violence, losing a parent to divorce or death, living with an adult who abuses drugs or alcohol or is mentally ill, or being the target of bullying or racism. Homelessness and food insecurity are definitely stress-inducing and harmful to the mind and body of a child.

We know these things occur. We do our best to protect our children and prevent, to the best of our ability, any of this happening to our children.

But we don’t live on a deserted island. What happens to others, affects us all in some type of ripple effect. We are all products of the culture that we have collectively created. We need to care about the children that are being produced in our society. They did not ask to be brought into situations like these, and the more frequently we subject them to these toxic situations, the worse our society will be for it.

Children are like sponges; they absorb what they experience and learn from it. If they are not given a loving, stable existence with adults setting a good example and being able to provide, they will find it difficult to grow into a successful, well-adjusted, positive adulthood. Of course, no situation is perfect, but what is very concerning is the converse of that scenario, what they will become when given the opposite environment.

Without proper brain development, critical thinking skills and emotional control are lacking and it leads to bad decisions, cults, gangs, crime, violence, suicide, mass shootings. And frightening is the idea that with each generation, the problem of anti-social behavior, mental illness, and chronic health problems multiplies.

So how is this cycle to be broken? Not by criminalizing abortion. Not by cutting government funding for social services, clinics, housing, food subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid, and SSI. Not by neglecting our service men and women, traumatized by conflict. Not by cutting support for public schools and school lunch programs, not by strapping college graduates with huge debts. Not by allowing media services to spread lies and hate indiscriminately without regulation, not by believing those lies, by blaming instead of helping those in need.

But we all can support agencies and non-profit groups who are there to intervene and alleviate some of the causes of toxic stress. We can advocate for their need for funding for more facilities and trained staff.

As I said, I’m no expert in child development, but I can recognize how restricting women’s reproductive healthcare would extremely exacerbate the problem of childhood trauma and its effects on American society. Forcing women to deliver babies into a situation where they may be unwanted, and therefore neglected or abused, where the mother has no means of supporting a child, no responsible father in the picture, where the pregnancy itself was forced upon her by rape or incest, how is that fair to the child?

Where are the child’s rights? What about a non-viable fetus? A fetus with no chance of ever becoming a whole person or who may live in terrible pain – should they be made to suffer needlessly? For the sake of argument, if the belief is that a fetus is a person from conception, then that fetus has the rights of a person. Since the fetus is a juvenile, the parent must decide for the child. Knowing what would be in store for the child, what would be the most humane decision? The woman must have the right to make that decision for the child, and be allowed the support and council to make the right decision.

I know people who have worked in child services, they don’t want to speak about how bad it can be. We have the ability now to reduce the occurrence of these situations. It doesn’t have to be abortion, but in some cases, sadly, that is better than having a child suffer, possibly their entire life.

Agencies like Planned Parenthood provide counseling, education, birth control- ways to prevent pregnancies that should not take place. Giving a woman options logically increases the chances of a better result for the woman, the child that may be produced, and society as a whole. That’s why we need agencies like Planned Parenthood to help with informed, good decisions and government that supports these services as well as the others that can improve the quality of life for those in stressful situations, especially the children.

Susan Bigler is a Sheridan resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com