Category Archives: Contraception

February 22, 2012 · 5:08 pm

A Catholic vote for Obama: Is it a sin? A sign of co-dependency?

If a Catholic you love insists that President Obama is still the best man for the job in 2012, then gather your right-thinking friends and family around them: it’s time for an intervention.

First, you might wonder, are there really any Catholics still in the Obama camp? Plenty, unfortunately.

A recent Gallup poll showed that Obama’s maneuvering on the HHS regulations hasn’t cost him much, if any, Catholic support. Even regular Church-goers (46% of them) continue to back the President, counting him more friend than foe.

Think of the kind-hearted, stubbornly optimistic Catholics you know who insist that President Obama is really a good guy–that we should give him another chance to get it right. You know, the middle-aged social worker who drives to Sunday Mass in a Toyota Prius sporting an Obama bumper sticker. Or the bird-watching professor who praises the compassionate features of Obamacare as he sips coffee in the lounge after daily Mass.

Obama-Catholics insist that, despite actions to the contrary, Obama deeply respects religious freedom and abhors abortion. (And besides, they murmur, who really cares what the Bishops think about birth control?) They still plan to vote for Obama, in spite of the lingering sting from his slap in the face to Catholics–and other believers–whose consciences resist being forced to pay for other people’s abortion-causing drugs. These Obama-Catholics have put all that behind them in light of Obama’s respectful “compromise.” (It’s worth noting, that President Obama’s grand speech declaring that insurance companies, not religious organizations, would be forced to pay for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs, was just speechifying—a promise of fig leaves to come. No rules have actually been changed yet.)

Yes, our good, but misguided, friends are ripe for an intervention. They need help.

By the way, I sadly think it’s past the intervention point for the Doug Kmiecs or Sr. Carol Keehans of the world—their disappointment over the initial conscience-quashing HHS regulations proved but a momentary (strategic?) pause in their unrestrained adulation of Obama-the-good. A promised cosmetic change to the regulations and they both inhaled deeply—again—and floated back into the elevated status of Obama-believers, those who know better than the rest of us that the great Barack “understands the truth of a human person” and rules accordingly.

No, let’s tend to the average person of faith, naïve perhaps, but unwilling to desert the first African-American President, whom they see as an upright family man with a big vision and a very, very hard job.  It’s time to have a sit-down with these people, particularly Catholics, and help them admit they’ve reached rock bottom in this relationship with Obama. It’s time to let go.

How to help your friends see the light? Two excellent articles provide food for thought, from two different angles: sin and psychology.

In Carrie Severino’s light-hearted, but pointed, column over at the Daily Beast, she argues that Catholics who remain enamored of President Obama exhibit the classic signs of co-dependency in an abusive relationship.

And over at his new blog, Notre Dame Law Professor and constitutional law expert Charles E. Rice (my father) makes a compelling case that our Catholic Bishops, individually, as an expression of their personal conviction, ought to tell Catholics in the pew that to vote for Obama would be a sin—an act deeply offensive to God.

Provocative, no?

Read and tell me: What do you think?

 

Share

3 Comments

Filed under Abortion, Catholicism, Contraception, Faith and Virtue, Lessons Learned, Policy and Culture, Prayer and Spirituality

Tagged as , , ,

February 8, 2012 · 11:34 am

Abortion: A Private Matter Between a Woman and Her…Vending Machine?

At Shippensburg University, female students who hook-up for drunken sex on Saturday will find it easy to dispose of just-conceived babies on Monday or Tuesday. A quick trip to the vending machine is all it takes.

Easy. Kind of like buying a bag of Doritos.

Women who wake up in unfamiliar beds or sober up and wonder,  “What were you thinking, girl?” needn’t worry much. Stride across campus, past the dining hall (grab a doughnut for later), and into the University Health Center. Flash a student ID and head to the vending machine in the “self-help” area. There, next to the cough drops and Mucinex, in discreet, feminine packaging, is Plan B One Step. No questions asked. Feed the bills into the slot, grab and go. Empowered with “choices,” these women pop the package blister, swallow the pill, and breathe easy.

Problem solved. Glad that’s over.

Only it’s really not.

Billed as “emergency contraception,” according to the package insert, Plan B inhibits ovulation and thus prevents conception.  But it also alters the lining of the uterus, preventing a newly conceived child from implanting in its mother’s womb.  Without implantation, that tiny human being cannot draw nourishment and will die. (Occasionally, Plan B fails and the pregnancy continues.)

In most cases, however, Plan B ‘succeeds.’

But ‘success’ is not pretty. Our Shippensburg student will have a one-in-three chance of heavy bleeding. And 13% of women who take Plan B One Step end up curled up in bed with nausea, abdominal pain, and fatigue. Worse, nearly one in ten women who use emergency contraception (compared to 2% of pregnancies in the general population) develop severe abdominal pain and require emergency treatment for an ectopic pregnancy.

But no worries, this is a private decision between a woman and her vending machine.

(Maybe the Supreme Court should update that hallowed language about abortion being a private medical decision between a woman and her doctor, eh?)

Back in Shippensburg, it’s been a bad few days for the University’s PR team–one negative link on Drudge would keep anybody hopping—and they’re feeling a bit defensive. “We’re not the first” to make Plan B available on a college campus, they say.

But from a vending machine?

Has our culture so trivialized sex and baby-making that the ‘solution’ to an unintended pregnancy comes out of a vending machine? And the grown-ups in the room don’t even blink?

Shippensburg’s decision seems destined to create a campus norm of casual sex. But in its February 7th statement, the University asserted that it’s “not encouraging anyone to be sexually active. That is a decision each student makes on his or her own.”

But why offer students abortion-inducing drugs, right on campus? (Ironically, the University vending machines don’t carry condoms, the typical must-have accessory for promiscuous sex).

In a phone interview February 7th, Dr. Peter M. Gigliotti, Executive Director for University Communications & Marketing, said the university installed the vending machine “several years” ago after a student survey showed that 85% of students favored on-campus access to emergency contraception. He defended the decision, expressed surprise at the media coverage, and insisted that no one under the age of 17 has access to the vending machine. (By law, Plan B cannot be dispensed to anyone under 17 without a prescription.)

In Shippensburg’s public statement, Dr. Robert Serr, Vice-President for Student Affairs, also downplayed the disclosure and framed the issue as support for reproductive choice: “Reproductive services are a personal decision to be made by every man and woman. As such, the university is providing students with a medication that they can obtain legally elsewhere as part of their ability to make their own choices.”

Put differently, Shippensburg wonders, “What’s the big deal?”

That attitude is precisely the problem.

“Emergency contraception” dispensed from a vending machine is the perfect icon of our culture’s impersonal–and utilitarian–view of sex and reproduction.

The icon’s meaning:

  • Sex is no big deal. It’s entertainment. Condom malfunction? Fix the problem in less time than it takes to rent a Redbox movie.
  • Making—or destroying–a baby is no big deal either. Using ‘emergency contraception’ has the moral significance of taking a cough drop. (One button on the vending machine gets you Plan B, another gets you lemon-flavored cough drops.)
  • Convenience rules. Why bother with nine months of pregnancy—and 21 years of child-rearing–when freedom is just a vending machine away?
  • Like casual sex, abortion (even disguised as “emergency contraception”) turns a union of two into a solo event. No strings. Just another individual experience that requires “appropriate decisions.”
  • Repeat business is a given—the abortion industry depends on it. No one visits a vending machine just once.

To the women of Shippensburg University: wake up! What could be more lonely than heading across a cold Pennsylvania campus “the morning after,” alone, to rendezvous with a vending machine? It’s an automated ‘problem-solver,’ stoically dispensing drugs that not only kill your baby but also numb your heart.  All so you can go back and do it again.

That’s not ‘choice.’ It’s exploitation. And people who really care about you won’t exploit you.

Please, reach out.  Because you deserve better.

 

 

Share

1 Comment

Filed under Abortion, Contraception, Fertility and Infertility, Health, Policy and Culture, Relationships, Sexuality, Women

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 20, 2011 · 10:56 pm

Catholic Youth Ministry under fire over Girl Scouts’ pro-abortion ties.

The Girl Scouts “100th Anniversary” Convention in Houston last weekend sparked a firestorm of protests from conservatives and pro-life advocates over the Girl Scouts’ speakers: an A-list of entertainers, journalists, and philanthropists that included many champions of pro-abortion and LGBT causes.

The speaker lineup was but a symptom of a deeper pathology, according to current and former Girl Scouts. Behind the badges, slogans, and cookies is a deadly reality: the Girl Scouts’ ongoing partnerships with U.S. and international advocates, like Planned Parenthood and affiliated organizations, which sell a distinctly un-holy vision of sexual empowerment secured by contraception and abortion.

Particularly troublesome is the Girl Scouts’ relationship with WAGGGS, the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, an international agitator for abortion, contraceptives, sexual diversity, and “comprehensive” sexuality education. WAGGGS delegates, for example, helped draft the controversial 2010 World Youth Conference NGO document demanding global support for “abortion” and “LGBTTIQ issues.” (See the excellent links at 100questionsforthegirlscouts.org, girlscoutswhynot.com and honestgirlscouts.com.)

It’s a situation that’s unconscionable for Catholics. And a growing number have left the Girl Scouts, embracing a mission to tell other families what they’ve uncovered.

Christy Volanski, a former Scout leader, and her daughters Tess and Sydney are prime examples.  They left the Scouts in 2010 when they saw evidence—materials, resources, and partnerships–that their Girl Scout dues promoted an agenda of abortion, contraception, explicit sex education, and homosexuality.  Their website, speaknowgirlscouts.com, tells their story and offers details, screen shots, and web links that lay the facts bare. “We felt so hurt and betrayed when we found out about this agenda…There is no reason for other families to…be deceived,” says Christy.

So where’s the Catholic Church in all this?

Not where you’d expect.

It’s quite literally in the Girl Scouts’ camp. The National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry (NFCYM), the Church’s representative and “advocate” for Catholic Girl Scouts, occupied Booth 932 in the Girl Scout Exhibit Hall in Houston. The NFCYM, which connects some 700,000 Catholic Scout members with the Church and provides Catholic materials for the Girl Scouts’ religious recognition program, set up shop near the official Girl Scouts’ booth and the large WAGGGS exhibit—a great space to “meet and greet” as they promoted their religious recognition materials.

Nary a public word about the Girl Scouts’ links to groups promoting abortion, homosexuality, and sexual “rights” for teens. Or about the controversial speakers.

For parents like Christy Volanski, the NFCYM’s cozy relationship with the Girl Scouts creates a smokescreen that obscures a disturbing reality. The NFCYM website and FAQs, along with the NFCYM-GSUSA position papers, gloss over the Girl Scouts’ involvement with pro-abortion advocates, suggesting erroneously that parents need not worry. As a result, parents who do see problems with the Scouts find themselves stymied by pastors, bishops and laypeople who interpret NFCYM’s relationship with the Scouts as unqualified approval.

Rochelle Focaracci, a former Scout leader from Georgia and the co-founder of girlscoutswhynot.com, believes that the NFCYM posture simply “confuses the youth they are there to protect.” Her Florida-based co-founder and sister, Lisa Larsson, puts the problem simply: “We need NFCYM to speak out, to acknowledge that there is a problem with the Girl Scouts.”

They’re not holding their breath.

In spite of the documentation on websites like speaknowgirlscouts.com and 100questionsforthegirlscouts.org, the NFCYM and its Executive Director, Bob McCarty, have failed to acknowledge the extent of the Girl Scouts’ problems—and they’ve failed at least in part because the NFCYM’s fact-finding process is seriously flawed. Instead of insisting on rigorous, independent investigations of credible complaints, the NFCYM states in its position statement that questions will be resolved by “directly contacting GSUSA” for answers.

This first step, however, is typically the last, as the NFCYM seems willing to accept GSUSA answers as gospel truth without independent factual corroboration, parent interviews, or consultations with knowledgeable experts (including former Girl Scouts).

It makes no sense, says Rochelle, from girlscoutswhynot.com  “If we had to investigate a robbery, we would not ask the robber if he robbed the bank.”

McCarty’s July 2011 interview with Our Sunday Visitor added insult to injury for these Girl Scout activists. McCarty dismissed out of hand the possibility that the Girl Scouts might advocate or partner with pro-abortion groups. “Most of the concerns I hear from parents are about what they heard or saw written on blogs and websites engaging in misinformation. It’s never anything they saw themselves.”

Perhaps McCarty needs to look more closely.

For example, the NFCYM FAQs flatly state that it’s “not true” that national and local councils support Planned Parenthood. In an interview last week, McCarty referred often to the “position statement” in which GSUSA promised that no Girl Scout “monies” will flow to organizations like Planned Parenthood—as if written assurances settled the matter.

Even Girl Scout spokeswoman Michelle Tompkins (who deferred comments on these topics until later this week) has distinguished between partnerships by the national organization and those of local councils. “We have not and do not partner with Planned Parenthood on the national level,” she claimed. However, ”local councils are free to partner with whomever they choose…”

And they do. For example, a quick web search yielded 2011 evidence of a Girl Scouts of NY PENN partnership with a Planned Parenthood initiative (with links to explicit websites) for the Scouts’ body image project.

Susan Riedley, a current Girl Scout leader who created the site honestgirlscouts.com “challenges” McCarty to go directly to source materials—on her website and others–and “investigate the links for himself.” McCarty says he’s “clicked around” a few times to address concerns but feels that the grievance procedure established with the GSUSA bears better results.  He insists that, “We need to be in these conversations [with the Girl Scouts]…You can’t even raise the questions if you are not in relationship with them.”

True enough, but the follow-up question is, “Then what?”

The point of raising questions with the Girl Scouts isn’t to prompt technical compliance as they sanitize websites and books. Similarly, the narrow scope of the GSUSA-NFCYM position statement—whether the Girl Scouts directly fund or partner with Planned Parenthood, through dues versus cookie profits, locally or nationally, with parental permission or without, etc.–misses the point.  And it deftly redirects attention away from the enmeshed relationship between abortion-promoting-WAGGGS and the Girl Scouts USA.

In my view, McCarty’s failure to commission a thorough, independent review of the facts behind the Girl Scouts’ affiliations—while taking the Girl Scouts’ denials at face value–betrays the trust of Catholic youth and their parents.

While McCarty insists NFCYM must “stay in the conversation” with the GSUSA, concerned parents find themselves on the outside, rarely consulted and with little opportunity to present their evidence or see it taken seriously.  And, they wonder, when does the desire to “stay in the conversation” morph into playing the willing dupe, providing “Catholic” cover for the Girl Scouts’ complicity in feminist and liberal causes?

“Process” isn’t the only reason why NFCYM needs a push to address the seriousness of the Girl Scouts’ issues. McCarty also disagrees on the relative importance of certain Girl Scout affiliations, including the WAGGGS relationship. McCarty’s current focus is not on the WAGGGS relationship, but on getting buy-in from the Girl Scouts for an approval process for materials, plus an initiative to establish relationships between diocesan youth ministers and local council leaders.

Reasonable goals, certainly.  But they strike me as the scouting equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.

He doesn’t see it that way. McCarty believes that the WAGGGS influence is “fairly far removed from our kids” and “doesn’t filter down.” As for the millions of dollars that flow into WAGGGS coffers from GSUSA? McCarty likens the WAGGGS dues (a head count based on a country’s number of Girl Scouts) to the U.S. taxpayer’s support for the United Nations.

The analogy limps. Girl Scouts’ membership is voluntary. The Church doesn’t have to sponsor troops. (In fact, there’s even an excellent alternative that’s exploding in popularity—the values-rich, American Heritage Girls.) And the Church’s voluntary participation looks like an endorsement.

Jane Petry, a 67-year-old Girl Scout veteran, spent last weekend at the Houston convention distributing flyers highlighting the Planned Parenthood—GSUSA connection. To her, the money flow is a repugnant cooperation with moral evil. Volanski calls it “mind boggling” that, through GSUSA membership, “Catholic Girl Scouts are supporting this global agenda to bring sexual rights (including emergency contraception and abortion) to all young people.”

Volanski says WAGGGS’ influence does have “a real impact on the local Catholic girl in a local troop in many different ways,” from the WAGGGS pin girls wear to express global sisterhood, to the problematic Journeys project books that routinely plug WAGGGS, to WAGGGS-related fundraising activities, to international visits to WAGGGS chalets, to WAGGGS global advocacy.

Even so, McCarty doubts that the influence “is as pervasive as you think.” Besides, he maintains, “We can pretend that we can protect our kids from this stuff or we can prepare them…”

In spite of the disagreement between NFCYM and the Girl Scout activists over the significance of the Girl Scouts’ issues, McCarty did intimate that while he’s committed to dialogue, lack of “movement” by the Girl Scouts on these issues may trigger “decisions” in the future.

The Church has financial leverage, if it’s willing to use it. McCarty estimates 700,000 Catholics are members of the GSUSA. At $12 per year, Catholic support delivers roughly $8.4 million to the Girl Scouts, not including funds earned by Catholic Girl Scouts’ fundraising or cookie sales, or the millions of volunteer hours donated by Catholic adults.

How to move forward?

I strongly urge the NFCYM, or the USCCB in its oversight capacity, to create a focused working group with a mandate to assess the extent and impact of the Girl Scouts’ connection to WAGGGS’ and other groups.

That working group should include at least three leaders from the Girl Scouts watchdog websites.  They know the issues, have spent hundreds of hours on their own time tracking down facts, and have been overlooked by the NFCYM for too long. If the NFCYM can spend hours in conversation with the Girl Scouts, it needs to engage these committed Catholic parents as a resource to be taken seriously.

The project should have a short deadline, delivering a report in advance of Bob McCarty’s planned meeting Anna Maria Chavez, the new CEO of the Girl Scouts. (Reportedly Catholic, in 2009 Chavez spoke at a women’s event co-sponsored by the local Planned Parenthood.)

Finally, the end game must be clearly defined, more than vague “movement.” GSUSA has stonewalled its critics by splitting hairs, arguing narrow points, with semantics about official or unofficial relationships with Planned Parenthood, national versus local level, parental permission or not, whether monies flow from membership dues, cookie sales, or other funds, etc.

In my view, either GSUSA severs its ties to WAGGGS and creates an explicit policy forbidding partnerships, affiliations, and resources from Planned Parenthood-like organizations—or the Catholic Church should withdraw its sponsorship of all Girl Scouts troops (convert to American Heritage Girls) and recommend that individual Catholics withdraw from the Scouts as well.

It’s time. Catholic families deserve clarity, delivered with courage.

(c) 2011 Mary Rice Hasson

Mary Rice Hasson is a Visiting Fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C

(Permission granted for reprints and republication, with attribution.)

1 Comment

Filed under Abortion, Catholicism, Children, Contraception, Family, Kids and Character, Moms and Motherhood, Parenting, Policy and Culture

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

February 6, 2011 · 3:47 am

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, Abortion, and the Ravenous Nature of Evil

“Snip.”

That’s what I do to loose threads.  Or to a strand of hair that gets in my way.

It’s also what Dr. Kermit Gosnell did to babies, according to news reports.

Snip, dead.

I don’t know about you, but “snip” seems to me like a pretty mild word to describe actions that warrant murder charges…and that doesn’t sit well with me.

But euphemisms aren’t the only thing that troubles me about the spin on this case–and it’s a horrible case, for sure. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist for over 30 years, was charged in January 2011 with eight counts of first degree murder: one count for the reckless death of an immigrant woman, 19 weeks pregnant, who was unmonitored and over-sedated during an abortion; and seven counts for the brutal killings of second trimester babies who were born alive during abortions. The grand jury report also details Gosnell’s routinely callous and dangerous treatment of his clients; it found evidence too that hundreds of babies older than the 24 week statutory limit were born alive, only to be killed by Gosnell and his employees.

In the weeks since Gosnell’s arraignment, pro-choice voices have argued around the case, grasping for a narrative that fits their worldview. Some pro-choice blogs paint Gosnell as a greedy, solo opportunist, a criminal “outlier” running a substandard clinic. Making wads of money by “chopping up poor women” who sought late-term abortions, Gosnell deserved prosecution, they say, but solely because he harmed women, “not the fact that he did abortions.”

One bad guy. One bad clinic.  That’s all.

But the “lone ranger” narrative is a hard sell to a public recoiling from the horror of murderous late-term abortions.

So one pro-choice columnist, William Saletan (Slate.com), has challenged pro-choice advocates with this question: “Is it OK to abort a viable fetus?”

Their answers reveal an extremism the abortion lobby has long sought to hide.

Four out of six pro-choice leaders answered with an unqualified “yes.” Viability doesn’t matter. Only unrestricted legal abortion would prevent women from feeling desperate–and desperation created Gosnell’s market niche. Their mantra: “trust women” to make the right decision. The ultimate moral value: autonomy.

One abortion provider, Ann Furedi, the head of Britain’s leading abortion service, admits up front that the baby is human from the moment of conception. She argues cogently that arbitrary age or viability restrictions make no sense.

“[A]re we really so shallow, so fickle, as to let our view on moral worth be determined by appearance? …Even if at five weeks we can only see an embryonic pole, we know that it is human. The heart that can be seen beating on an ultrasound scan at six weeks is as much a human heart as the one that beats five months later….from the time of conception, as soon as embryonic cells begin to divide, an entity with the potential to become a person is created…unless its development is interrupted or fails, it will be born as a child….is there anything qualitatively different about a fetus at, say, 28 weeks that gives it a morally different status to a fetus at 18 weeks or even eight weeks?”

It’s a startling admission—but ice-cold in its conclusion: though human, the baby is not a “person” and not entitled to any protections. In Furedi’s absolutist view, any solution a woman chooses—even death for a near-full-term baby—is a “moral” solution.

For now, pro-choice have rallied around the cause of ‘easy access’ to early abortion and emergency contraception as the way to avoid more cases in the Gosnell mold of late-term brutality.

It’s an untenable solution, given the humanity of the unborn child.

But it’s also a solution doomed to fail on its own terms: evil, given a foothold, only advances, never retreats.

And perhaps that’s one good that might emerge from Gosnell’s killings: a renewed sense, in our own hearts and souls, of the ravenous power of evil.

If we dismiss Gosnell as an aberration, one bad apple in a barrel of good abortionists, how do we explain the cascade of ordinary people tumbling out of this story who looked away when they saw his atrocities? Who stood next to him, helping, as he “snipped” babies’ spines? Or worse, followed his lead and committed the same despicable acts themselves?

But if we understand the mayhem in Kermit Gosnell’s clinic as a case study in the power of evil unleashed, we can make sense out of his own moral degeneration—the progressive cruelty towards women seeking abortions, the abortions on bigger, older babies, and the uninhibited killing of live-born infants as “standard procedure.”

In Philadelphia, evil arrived when Gosnell’s abortion clinic first opened for business, years before the second trimester killings began. As each baby arrived, nestled in its mother’s womb, and left—dead—bagged as medical waste, Gosnell’s heart hardened. Under legal cover, his conscience died a slow death too.  In fact, at his arraignment, he professed bewilderment that he was being charged in the babies’ deaths.

It’s not surprising, in one sense. A heart that embraces killing innocent human beings up to 24 weeks won’t flinch at killing at 25 weeks. And the flimsy legislative partition of viability has little hope of containing the evil unloosed by the doctor’s lethal, but legal, first trimester work.

Like poison gas, evil seeps under arbitrary barriers, gradually sickening those who remain in its presence, numbing their hearts and sedating their consciences. It corrupts the souls of those who tarry long in its presence—even ordinary people who perhaps mean well initially.

And that’s exactly what happened in this case. Gosnell’s employees watched, accepted, and embraced the evil–a marriage finally consummated as scissors pierced soft newborn skin. The grand jury report noted that, “Over the years, there were hundreds of ‘snippings’…all the employees of the Women’s Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn’t murder at all.”

And what about us? We read numbers (24, 28 weeks), scientific terms (viable fetus), and euphemisms for killing (“snipping”).  We get used to them. They lessen our urgency and blunt our response to evil.  A few days pass, the story fades, and unemployment and tight budgets move to the fore.

I’m not one who favors gruesome pictures of aborted babies as a tool for public debate or evangelism—their indiscriminate use often causes more harm than good and lacks compassion towards women who’ve had abortions. But those of us who pray, work, and sacrifice for the sake of the unborn and their mothers sometimes need a visual reminder of what’s at stake.

Consider taking a look at the grand jury report in Dr. Gosnell’s case, downloadable here. It’s over 200 pages—but words can’t express what happened there.  Spend two minutes with the photos, however, and you’ll forget numbers and remember faces. And you’ll know why we’re fighting this battle.

And “snipping” will forever have a whole new meaning.

© 2011 Mary Rice Hasson

 

Share

2 Comments

Filed under Abortion, Policy and Culture, Women, Contraception, Fertility and Infertility, Children

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 8, 2010 · 10:07 pm

Selfish Parents: Embryos on Ice and Utilitarian IVF

Meet Gillian St. Lawrence, a new breed of IVF mother: fertile utilitarian.

She’s blonde, 30, married for nine years to a nice guy named Paul, and she heads a real estate investment firm in tony Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Unlike other women who pursue in vitro fertilization, Gillian is blessed with fertility, inconveniently so.  Writing in The Washington Post, Gillian recounts how she and Paul want to be parents. Maybe.  Someday.

But definitely not now, at 30 and 32.

A child might disrupt their carefully laid plans, which include career, money, and planning to be perfect parents: “My husband wants to be able to coach little league, and we both want very reduced work hours so we never have to look at day care or a nanny…[We] just want to give a future child every bit of our time that we can without dealing with financial stress…” (Um, you forgot to mention winning the lottery, and sailing the globe without a care in the world. Wake up, Gillian, and shake the dreamy visions from your eyes.)

Sadly, unrealistic expectations are the least of her problems.

Gillian anticipates another 10 or 15 years before they will have enough time and money to make room in their lives for a child. That perfect timing, however, has one flaw: infertility increases with age and, as Gillian explains, they risk “higher miscarriage and genetic disorder rates… in babies conceived from parents older than 35.” (Translation: We’ve got exacting standards: an imperfect baby won’t pass muster.)

So what’s a young, naturally fertile couple to do? Change their plans and embrace reality? Buy a minivan instead of a Lexus, eat burgers not shrimp, stay home, and hey, here’s an idea…go make passionate love and thrill each other with the awe and mystery of creating a new life together?

Nah, too pedestrian. Gillian crafted an innovative solution, now complete with explanatory website (is a consulting business far behind?) and carefully totaled expenses and records of 15-minute office visits. She and Paul spent a year and roughly $20,000 to “create embryos, freeze them and, essentially, donate them to our future selves“ through in vitro fertilization, as “insurance against future infertility.” Gillian calls it “Preservation IVF.” (Pardon my skepticism…but for a couple cramped for time and money, that’s a rather pricey solution, compared to a good bottle of wine and a romantic night together.)

Their IVF purchase, which their website bills as “Freedom From Our Fertility Clocks,” buys them the ability to “pursue our goals without giving up the chance to be parents.”

Having their babies and freezing them too.

Let’s be clear.  Gillian and Paul are parents already. They created five little embryos and put them on ice for the next 10-15 years, until Gillian is “ready.” (Imagine the convenience: Freeze-dried children, ready when you’re ready. Defrost, implant, and presto, instant children.)  It kind of reminds me of the compulsive shopper who buys five pairs of winter boots in summertime so she can put them on the shelf for later, “just in case” they fit her fashion whims later on.

Only we’re not talking about shoes here.  We’re talking about real people.  Children, however tiny.

I’ll let more knowledgeable voices address the morality of in vitro fertilization, whether to remedy infertility or preserve “all options,” as in Gillian’s case.

But as a parent, I find Gillian’s story appalling. In spite her meticulous plans and growing bank account, she’s running a catastrophic deficit in the three “must haves”  of good parenting.

First, love. In her pages of analytical discussion about wanting a child and the painstaking research to find the “best” way to make one, she never mentions the word “love.” Not even once. She betrays no awareness of the spousal love factor –that when a husband and wife love deeply, their love yearns to create, to expand and express itself in the creation of another person who becomes a unique reflection of their union.

In this, Gillian’s probably not alone. Scientists predict more couples will join her in severing love from baby-making as they pursue a highly desirable commodity–the perfect child.  A recent report on technological advances in IVF says that, within ten years, some couples will forego the natural context of lovemaking because the quality control features of IVF technology will eclipse the results of natural conception.

IVF, and selective embryo destruction, may eventually yield a better product, (i.e. child), than loving conception, but at what cost to our humanity? At what cost to love?

Fast forward to the future, and Gillian’s love void becomes even more tragic.  She seems tone deaf to a child’s deepest needs—for love, unconditional, unlimited love, regardless of parents’ naturally finite supply of time and money.  In addition, Gillian gives no hint that she anticipates the joy of love, which delights in another’s growth, fulfillment, and flourishing. I suspect she will be too busy measuring her personal return on their joint parenting investment.

Which brings me to the second essential of good parenting: sacrifice. Gillian, being a mom is not all about you.  Good parents, like good spouses, put the needs of others first. They want what is good for the other and will sacrifice their own desires—even their own needs (sleep comes to mind)—in order to provide that.

Parenthood teaches us that life does not revolve around our wants. Rich fulfillment grows when we sacrifice and give to our loved ones. It’s a hard lesson, learned reluctantly, and requiring daily practice.  For the next ten or fifteen years, however, Gillian will ingrain the habit of putting herself first as she elevates her personal goals—career ambition, wealth, fitness, fun–over the children she’s already created and who languish, frozen, waiting for their mother’s heart to thaw.

Her careful planning betrays a stingy disposition, measuring out servings of attention and money according to her own selfish inclinations rather than others’ needs. Pity the poor child who arrives needing more attention, sacrifice, and effort than Gillian and Paul plan to give. After decades spent hoarding the best of their time, energy, focus, and money for themselves, Gillian and Paul will be poorly positioned to learn generosity and true self-giving in the face of a child’s unpredictable and inconvenient needs.

The third vital factor that’s missing is this: a good parent welcomes each child as a gift, a person with an inherent value and dignity, regardless of usefulness, talents, eventual achievements, convenience, or lovability.

Utilitarianism lurks beneath the surface as Gillian discusses her expectations of parenthood. Embryos—children—are a means to an end, helping to secure an idealized vision of parenthood for the real stars of the show: the parents. They will enjoy plenty of time, money, and energy, and a perfect child who will eventually achieve great things and send reflected glory their way, with little or no parental sacrifice required.

But Gillian’s utilitiarian mindset really breaks out into the open when a reader asks her what she intends to do with any “leftover” embryos who are not implanted in her womb. Although they created five children, Gillian and Paul intend single embryo transfer sometime after age 40, meaning they’ll try one at a time. In typical IVF, remaining embryos are destroyed when their expiration date arrives. Not so for Gillian.

Those leftover children can still benefit her: “Statistically, with five embryos, we may only be able to achieve one or two successful pregnancies so it is likely we will use them all. If not, we plan to save them because with advanced technology, 20 or 30 years from now one of us could get a bad disease and those embryos could save one of our lives because of the DNA being from us.”

Using your own children for spare parts. Cold-hearted. Chilling.

But fitting, I suppose, for a utilitarian mama who puts her kids on ice.

(c) 2010 Mary Rice Hasson

Share

3 Comments

Filed under Children, Contraception, Family, Fertility and Infertility, Lessons Learned, Moms and Motherhood, Parenting, Policy and Culture, Relationships, Sexuality, Women

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 25, 2010 · 4:11 pm

Kids, Condoms, and the Provincetown School Board: Arrogance on Display

Parents, you’re irrelevant—at least in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The school board there voted this month to give condoms–free for the asking and of course we won’t tell your parents—to elementary school students, regardless of age. That’s right, no age limit. We’re talking grade school here. Even a six-year-old could wander into the nurse’s office, ask for and receive condoms, and the new policy PROHIBITS the school personnel from telling parents what’s going on.

Why on earth would the school board approve such a policy?

Arrogance.  They know better than parents what’s good for kids. And what’s good for kids, in their view, is facilitating “safer” sex—never mind the pesky data that shows teen sex—let alone sex for 12 and unders–is rife with harm and exploitation. More on that in a minute.

Beth Singer, the school superintendent, defends the decision saying, “In Provincetown it’s the correct policy in order to protect kids.”  She goes on, justifying the decision with a fatalistic shrug: “We know that sexual experimentation is not limited to an age, so how does one put an age on it?”

Under the policy, that omniscient public servant—the school nurse—gets to decide what’s best for your child.  No matter if she barely knows his or her name or with whom the child anticipates having sex. (An older teen?  An adult?) If a child requests a condom, she offers “counseling” and provides birth control.  Unlike the parents, the nurse can even refuse the child’s request for a condom, depending on her judgment.  Parents don’t even get a courtesy call.

Part of the problem with the condom-pushing crowd, and sex educators in general, is that they all suffer from a feigned agnosticism when it comes to sex.  They can’t presume to say whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing for a child (or a teen) to have sex.  “Counseling” takes the Planned Parenthood approach that tells kids, “We believe you’re the only one who can decide what’s right for you.”  So when teens—or little kids—have sex, it’s just a “fact” that school boards deal with by doling out discrete little packages.  They are dead wrong on this.

Consider this data from the Kaiser Family Foundation: the younger a child begins sexual activity, the greater the age difference between partners is likely to be. (Can we say “child sexual abuse” or exploitation?).  At least a third of teens report feeling pressured to do unwanted sexual acts—common sense tells us that the 12 and under set is even more vulnerable to pressure and manipulation. In spite of widespread condom awareness and use, STDs are rampant among teens: adolescents are more physiologically vulnerable to sexually transmitted infection than are adults. And little kids? It’s gut-churning to think of their immature bodies playing host to grown-up diseases.  They can’t possibly even understand the long-term implications for their fertility or sexual and mental health. (Sexually active teens are more likely to suffer from substance abuse problems, increased depression, and suicide.)

And the best a Provincetown school nurse has got to offer is a packaged panacea?  A condom that does little to protect from physical harm and nothing to protect from emotional or psychological wounds? Parents need to insist not only on the right to guide their children in sexual matters but also on a school policy that teaches the truth.  Schools must stop pretending that they “can’t say” whether adolescent (or child) sexual activity is a good thing or a bad thing.  The “you decide what’s best” message to kids, when it comes to sexuality, is an utter failure.  Providing condoms—and shutting parents out of the conversation—ensures only that children will suffer more harm, not less.

Arrogance is expensive. And in Provincetown, unfortunately, it’s children who will pay the price.

(c) 2010  Mary Rice Hasson

Share

2 Comments

Filed under Children, Contraception, Education, Family, Kids and Character, Moms and Motherhood, Parenting, Policy and Culture, Sexuality

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 12, 2010 · 4:35 pm

Sex, Women, and The Pill: Insights on The Pill’s Real Consequences

“The Pill.” It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, reading the commentary leading up the 50th anniversary of the pill’s debut (celebrated ironically on Mother’s Day).

The New York Times engaged in revisionist history, finding an historian who promotes the view that “the pill had little effect on the sexual behavior of unmarried men and women.” (Only a modern day Rip Van Winkle, having slept through the past 50 years, would maintain such a ludicrous thing.)

The Huffington Post looked at the pill from several different angles. Dr. Christine Northrup,  a New-Age-y doc who specializes in women’s health, gave a scary litany of the health problems associated with the pill. She ended, however, with the unsupported conclusion that, compared to the potential ill effects of an unplanned pregnancy, the pill is an overall boon to women’s health.  Another Huffington Post writer extolled the life choices enabled by the pill: “[A] woman no longer has to choose between having a family or a career and a couple has more options for controlling whether, when or if they have a child. Women’s economic status overall has improved….” However, she goes on to acknowledge the pill’s dismal failure in preventing unplanned pregnancies. (Do the pill’s 12 million users know that?)

The Los Angeles Times offered data, reporting that in spite of near-ubiquitous pill use (80% of women take the pill at some point in their lives), “about half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended and 22% of pregnancies end in abortion.”  The immediate solution? More pills, but with over-the-counter availability.  Gobble them down, ladies. Princeton expert James Trussell, however, believes the pill is “not going to be the answer to unintended pregnancy– we can be sure of that.”  He and other experts point towards IUDs and implants as the longer-term solution.

All the talk about more choices and better medicine, however, obscures a more significant point about the pill. (And, ironically enough, it’s an “aging sex symbol” who lays bare the pill’s most troubling legacy.) In a provocative piece, actress Raquel Welch laments “how low moral standards have plummeted” because of the pill and the sexual recklessness it unleashed. She deplores the self-delusion and lack of responsibility among women who believe, “Now we can have sex anytime we want, without the consequences. Hallelujah, let’s party!”

The pill did promise a sexual utopia, without the usual consequences (like babies).  Now, fifty years later, the myth of sex without consequences permeates media, advertising, sex education programs, and the culture at large. A chimera, really, it lines the pockets of the pill purveyors while creating untold heartache for real women.

In the laboratory of life, the pill has proven that sex still has consequences. What’s changed for women is the context in which they  have sex and the consequences they face.

Instead of married sex that sought to space the number of children born within a marriage, we now have unmarried sex, uncommitted sex, teen sex, hook-up sex, and sex that wants nothing to do with kids, ever.

And instead of wives jiggling more babies on their hips (which for many women was indeed a great hardship), sexually active women now face consequences that promise a lifetime of suffering:

  • Abortion: The contraceptive mentality (we want sex but no babies) requires abortion as a backup. According to the Guttmacher Institute, about a third of American women will have had an abortion by age 45 and 54% of them used contraception in the month they became pregnant.
  • Sexually transmitted infections (STI): The CDC reports that forty percent of sexually active teens have an STI and many have more than one.
  • Infertility: One in eight couples suffers from infertility, typically from an STI or from delaying childbearing too long. (Did anyone warn them?)
  • Mental health disorders: Eating disorders, depression, self-injury, and feelings of poor self-worth have skyrocketed among college-aged women. (No surprise, according to former UCLA psychiatrist Miriam Grossman. In the campus nirvana of no-consequences sex, young women find themselves confused by  sad, empty feelings in the wake of last night’s drunken hook-up, or by unexpected romantic feelings for a friend who only wanted “benefits.” And they find themselves dismayingly alone when they face an unexpected pregnancy or a lifetime of genital herpes.)

Raquel shakes her lovely tresses in dismay over the pill-induced sexual frenzy.  She astutely notes that it impairs a woman’s likelihood of finding what she really wants–a loving, faithful relationship with a lifelong partner. “[A] lack of sexual inhibitions, or as some call it, ‘sexual freedom,’ has taken the caution and discernment out of choosing a sexual partner, which used to be the equivalent of choosing a life partner. Without a commitment, the trust and loyalty between couples of childbearing age is missing, and obviously leads to incidents of infidelity.”

Going further, Raquel urges women to embrace with maturity the most likely consequence of sex—motherhood, the pill notwithstanding. Unexpectedly pregnant at 19, Raquel realized that the pregnancy, ultimately, was “not about me. I was just a spectator to the metamorphosis that was happening inside my womb so that another life could be born. It came down to an act of self-sacrifice, especially for me, as a woman.”  Her two children became an “ongoing blessing.”

That’s Raquel Welch talking, today, in 2010, with the hindsight of experience.

Her words remind me of someone else who worried that the pill would “open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards…. a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may …reduce [the woman] to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.”

That’s Pope Paul VI talking, in 1968, with the foresight of truth.

Sex still has consequences. Let’s choose well. In the words of Raquel Welch, “Come on girls! …We’re capable of so much better.”

4 Comments

Filed under Abortion, Catholicism, Contraception, Lessons Learned, Parenting, Relationships, Sexuality, Women

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 8, 2010 · 6:27 am

Condoms for 12-year-olds

(Warning: graphic)

Sorry to spoil your breakfast, folks, with revolting news, but you should know about this. The largest Swiss manufacturer of condoms announced a new product launch last week: condoms, size extra small, designed to fit boys as young as 12.  Why the push? According to the latest Swiss government-funded study, more 12-14 year-old boys than ever are having sex—and they are doing it without condoms. Man-size “protection” apparently doesn’t fit and falls off (a problem shared by nearly 25% of teens, according to a German study).

So, are we surprised that a boy’s child-size anatomy—which goes along with his child-size emotions, understanding, and judgment—doesn’t fit into daddy’s prophylactic? The Swiss apparently are. The researchers declared themselves “shocked” that “young boys… display apparently risky behaviour. They have more of a tendency not to protect themselves. They do not have a very developed sexual knowledge. They do not understand the consequences of what they are doing….” (Emphasis added).

So they need condoms? What, in Narnia packaging or an Avatar-blue color? Maybe they should stock them right next to the Nintendo DS games at Toys-R-Us. Nah, this isn’t a game—it’s all about health. Better stick them next to the neon Bandaids. And price them singly, so a 12-year-old doesn’t spend his whole allowance on protection and have nothing left for Doritos after school. Oh yes, they’ve already named the condoms– “Hotshots,” a double-entendre striving to be cool.

Morality aside, what are these adults thinking? Parenting 101 says that when a kid doesn’t understand the consequences of certain behavior, he’s nowhere near ready to do it (whatever “it” may be).  At best, these adults are idiots.

Unfortunately, I really don’t think they are. The whole thing feels creepy to me, evil in fact.  Any 12-year-old boy engaging in sex needs a parent—not a condom–to protect him. If he’s having sex with someone older, the law calls that abuse, sexual assault, or rape. And if he’s experimenting with a peer, he needs an adult to step in and prevent it precisely because the kids “do not understand the consequences of what they are doing.”

This condom ploy is about two things: money and license. For the condom company, greed tramples any real concern for children. Lamprecht AG, the Swiss condom manufacturer, boasts of its intent to market the extra small condom in the United Kingdom next: “the UK is certainly a very attractive market since there is a very high rate of underage conception.” (Sounds like Planned Parenthood, here in the U.S., which makes huge amounts of money dispensing contraceptives and providing abortions.) There’s money to be made. Like any company trying to grow a market, Lamprecht AG ultimately must “grow” the need. They make money off the extra small condom only if more children have more sex. Good for kids? No way.  Good for Lamprecht? Absolutely.

Worse than the condom company, in my view, are the professionals complicit in this whole effort—the Swiss government, the family planning advocates, and the AIDS activists.  They all pushed for development of the kid-sized condom, even though they know the research shows that sex is not good for kids. They are well aware that young children who are sexually active may indeed be the victims of abuse.

They don’t care. Their agenda is to brand sexual license– in all its variations, with any number and combination of genders–as normative and beneficial. Sex, in this view, has all the moral significance of a damn-good back scratch. Emotional significance? Only if the participants choose to invest it with meaning.

And the only sin is to fail to use protection…which brings us back to where we started.

Lamprecht AG, the maker of the Hotshot condom for kids, declares that, “Wellness is our business.” What they really mean is they’re banking on doing well in the “sexualizing your kids” business.

How do you feel about that?

Contact them online at http://www.lamprechtag.com/contact.jsp?l=0

© 2010 Mary Rice Hasson

Share

2 Comments

Filed under Children, Contraception, Family, Kids and Character, Moms and Motherhood, Parenting, Sexuality

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

March 6, 2010 · 7:26 am

Tweeting Abortion

My heart is so sad.  I just watched the chilling YouTube video by Angie Jackson, a Florida mom undergoing an abortion at-home using RU-486. Angie wants the world to experience her abortion with her—so she’s “tweeting” about, in graphic detail and with appalling coldness. Her purpose? According to her video, she hopes to “demystify abortion” so that women will know, “It’s just not that bad.”  Her tweets themselves tell a different and tragic story.

For those who twitter, see hashtag #livetweetingabortion.  For those who don’t, Jill Stanek, a pro-life activist, reprints Angie’s tweets here.  Fox,  ABC, and others also covered the story but with few quotes from the tweets themselves. I think it’s important to read the Twitter posts, not to condemn Angie but to understand who she is and the misery wrought by her adult choices.  (Her wretched childhood, rife with religious exploitation and sexual abuse, scarred her soul. She calls herself an anti-theist.)

I am so sad, for Angie and women like her.  Her child is now with God.  Angie remains in her own internal pain.  She says she’s been astonished by the outcry over her tweets, in which she calls her baby a “parasite,” “tapeworm,” and a “squatter” and celebrates death (“Yay, I’m bleeding.”) How does a heart become so callous? And what kind of doublethink causes a mom–with a four-year-old son whom she loves—to depersonalize her unborn child in such appalling terms?

Angie’s reactions, chronicled by impulsive tweets, capture a dark reality that contradicts her scripted rhetoric. In one interview, she called her boyfriend “completely supportive,” citing his ready agreement to pay for the abortion.  Her real-life tweets curse him for leaving dishes in the sink while she’s in pain that even Vicodin can’t dim. She claims she’s “relieved to see how simple it’s been,”  while her posts bemoan the failure of the first round of meds, the drawn-out process (at least a week from start to finish), the cramping, and the pain. While her interview says an RU-486 abortion is like a “menstrual period,” she repeatedly talks about her need for support, to avoid feeling shame, to lessen the taboo of abortion.  Since when do most women feel a taboo, shame or in need of support to cope with their monthly period?

Most revealing, she says, in a Facebook Q & A , “I had imagined, naively, that people would accept it [the abortion] because I’m in a committed relationship. I was monogamous. I was using protection. I had a kid. I have health risks. We paid for this out of pocket and not out of any taxpayer means. If I can’t talk about my first trimester abortion, which was legal and in my case life-saving, then who the hell can talk about her abortion?”

This is a woman who desperately wants approval for what she’s done.  She, like others who become militantly pro-abortion, wants the whitewash of “normalcy” to camouflage her awful choice—and her even-worse decision to provide play-by-play coverage.

Angie desperately wants to silence the whisper of God in her own heart. But unlike the clamor of condemnation from some harsh pro-lifers, God’s whisper is a message of His love, steadfastness, and forgiveness.  And it’s a whisper so powerful that it can open even the hardest heart. Ironically, Angie’s inability to still the whisper gives us hope—hope that she’ll take the armor of hurt off her own heart and hear the God who loves her.

Angie, I hope you’ll tweet again when you’ve found the love that never fails. And in the meantime, even in sadness, I’ll be praying for you.

Share

Leave a Comment

Filed under Abortion, Children, Contraception, Family, Fertility and Infertility, Lessons Learned, Moms and Motherhood, Parenting, Policy and Culture, Sexuality, Women

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

January 25, 2010 · 1:11 am

Bump+ and the Fatal Flaw

Today, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a new web-based series,  “BUMP+,” serves the abortion issue up to the American public in a new way.  The 13-week series unfolds the stories of three women facing crisis pregnancies. What’s unusual about this series is that the ending is not yet written—whether the characters in BUMP+  will give birth or abort their children depends on viewer input.

The creators of BUMP maintain that they are not taking sides, just pursuing an “open, honest exploration” of abortion in hopes of uncovering a solution.  Inspired by President Obama’s Notre Dame speech, calling for a civil conversation about abortion, Catholic entrepreneur Dominic Iocco decided to try something new.  He believes that people on both sides of the issue need to understand each other better—and that stories allow us to engage issues more deeply than slogans or talking points.

BUMP is a reality-style series that unfolds the proverbial “hard cases:” an immature single woman with two kids, pregnant with a third, and living with an abusive boyfriend, the military wife finally pregnant—but by another man–while her husband soldiers in Iraq, and the nursing student with a career trajectory and two prior abortions. As the press release puts it: “The final cliffhanger is so unpredictable, even the writers and producers don’t know how the series will end. From Juno and Bella to Glee and Desperate Housewives, a woman’s right to choose has been explored across the media landscape. What makes BUMP+ different?  We’re letting the viewers decide how our characters’ stories will end. We’ve opened the official website to comments and invited people to share their personal stories. Our team will craft the final episodes, including the ultimate decision about each pregnancy, based on audience feedback. “

The trouble I have with this series, however, has nothing to do with how the vote turns out.  Either pro-life or pro-choice advocates could pack the comments, outnumbering the other side or providing the compelling stories that make scriptwriters take notice.  I suspect that the writers will literally split the baby—one or two of the fictitious unborn children will make it, while one or two will not. Perhaps the creative types behind the series will even portray a decision to abort as a mistake, no matter how trying the circumstances.

My worry is that the overall format of the show—with its theme of “you decide”– plays right into the hands of those who believe there is no truth about abortion.

After 13 weeks of dramatic, emotional engagement, a decision–either pro-abortion or pro-life– is most likely to persuade the viewer of the most damaging fiction of all: “It was a hard decision, but she did what she felt was right.  She made the right choice for her situation.”  Who am I to judge?

And that’s the real evil stalking American culture: the highest ideal is the exercise of individual choice. Its insidious corollary is that “good” inevitably happens when I decide—or because I decide.  And the more agonized, deeply felt, or even wrenching my choice is, the more unassailable it becomes.  It’s my decision—I feel it, I own it—so it must be right for me. For the reigning relativists who dominate the media and walk the halls of Congress,  “choice” makes “right.”

Back to BUMP… the idea is brilliant—an interactive approach to engage cultural issues. But its fundamental message, I believe, is fatally flawed. The overriding “you decide” message validates the American fiction that the only “wrong” is to fail to make your own decision, sincerely and reflectively.  When it comes to solving the problem of a difficult pregnancy, the question of objective right or wrong never even enters the conversation. In the series pilot, the sincere doctor-character expresses the relativist’s creed perfectly: he reassures the military wife, poignantly indecisive and alone, that,  “We’re here to support you to make the best decision you can.” The “right thing” is for each woman to make the choice that she feels is right for her (or, put differently, that makes her feel right).

I say, don’t play that game. Relativism is the real evil here—the fatal flaw that results in real lives being lost.  For thousands of women today—and their unborn children—abortion is not a pseudo-reality show. It’s life or death.

And God knows, even if our nation forgets, that the choice to take the life of an innocent baby can never, ever be right.  End of story.

Mary Hasson, an attorney and writer in the Washington, D.C. area, is the mother of seven children, ages 8-24, and has been married to Seamus for 25 years.  When she’s not writing, she’s likely to be found cheering loudly on the sidelines of soccer games or out on a good run.

Share

Leave a Comment

Filed under Abortion, Children, Contraception, Family, Moms and Motherhood, Parenting, Policy and Culture, Sexuality, Women

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,