Previous | Next 

EDITORIAL
Choosing children

Jim Coggins

“Every child a wanted child!”

This was the slogan of the pro-abortion, pro-birth control movement a generation ago. New medical technology, we were told, would ensure that those who didn’t want children would not have to have them. The result would be that the children who were born would be wanted, loved and cared for.

Over the past 35 years, that philosophy has been put into practice. Birth control is readily available. Abortion is available on demand, and over 100,000 unborn, unwanted children are quietly and legally disposed of in Canada every year.

What has been the result? Are the children who remain more wanted, more loved and better cared for?

It would not appear so. Rates of child sexual abuse and physical abuse have skyrocketed. Governments’ rapidly expanding child welfare agencies are unable to keep up with the flood of family problems they are called upon to resolve. There is an abundance of “problem children” who have been removed from abusive or neglectful parents, and there is a shortage of safe foster homes to place them in. Over a million children live in poverty in Canada, many living with single mothers as a result of divorce. Perhaps millions more children suffer neglect, being passed off to electronic babysitters or peer groups by parents preoccupied with other matters.

What went wrong? Why didn’t the philosophy produce the results it promised?

In the first place, the phrasing of the slogan “Every child a wanted child” expressed only the positive half of the underlying philosophy and left the other, more sinister half unspoken. What was not said was that if some children could be labelled “wanted”, then other children could be labelled “unwanted”. Since there was no room in the philosophy for unwanted children, children who were not wanted had to be gotten rid of somehow. This logically led to the current situation where over 100,000 babies are aborted every year. But the philosophy had an impact far wider than abortion, for if unborn children could be labelled unwanted and disposed of, why not unwanted children who were already born? If it was permissible to kill children before birth, then why wouldn’t it be permissible to abuse them, neglect them or abandon them after birth? The practice of abortion has taught our society a fearsome lesson. Our society has come to see children, perhaps even all children, as an unwanted and unnecessary burden.

In the second place, the new philosophy placed the focus on the “wants” of parents, rather than on the needs or inherent worth of children. Once the rights of children were made dependent on the wants of adults, then they became very vulnerable. We need to learn again that children (and other people) have inherent value because they are persons created in the image of Almighty God and valued by Him, not because some other human being chooses to give them value. We have an obligation to care for children, all children, whether we feel like it or not.

What ties together many current trends in our society is an epidemic of selfishness. People want to act on their sexual desires and take no responsibility for the consequences. They kill unborn babies because they don’t want them. They get married and produce children and then abandon them because they have decided they want something or someone else. Some adults abuse children to satisfy their own sexual desires or their desires to feel powerful. Others neglect their children because the children get in the way of their own self-fulfillment.

The articles in this issue of the Herald, while addressing a variety of specific issues, have this in common. They call us to follow the path of self-sacrificing love that Jesus Christ showed when He died on the cross for our sins. They call us to choose to love children (and other people), even if it is inconvenient, even when it means sacrificing our own desires and pleasures.

Note: The issues raised in this editorial and the faulty logic of the pro-abortion philosophy are becoming obvious to many people, and I make no claims to be exceptionally perceptive. After developing the ideas for this editorial (and this issue of the Herald), I subsequently came across several articles expressing similar ideas (and perhaps explaining them more fully). Among these were Erin Broughton, “Abortion and Child Abuse: The Mentality is the Same” (published in the January 2001 issue of The Interim and reprinted in the March 2001 issue of Voice for Life Newsletter, a publication of the Abbotsford Right to Life Society), and Mariette Ulrich, “Aging baby boomers will be given the same consideration and morality they gave their kids” (Western Report, Nov. 20, 2000).

Previous | Next 

Last modified June 5, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
Masthead and usage information.