Part One of the “Children — Blessings or Burdens?” Series
The unspoken message effectively communicated by birth control, abortion, and even other more “polite” methods of child prevention is that not every life is a good thing. We are given to understand that certain lives/babies/people should be allowed to exist, but not all of them. And what is the determining factor? What is it that makes a person worthy or unworthy of life? According to the current and popular narrative, the thing that makes an infant good (good enough to be permitted) is his being wanted. And if a baby — a brand new person — is not wanted, this is thought to make his existence a bad thing, which we have the right, and even the responsibility, to avoid or end as the circumstances dictate.
Because the world has grown so accustomed to the idea that unwanted children are a problem, it has become a sort of unstated major premise in many questions of ethics and justice today. For example, in her efforts to confront the current mental health crisis, clinical social worker, psychoanalyst, and psychotherapist Erica Komisar offers this free advice to American legislators:
As lawmakers consider enacting restrictions on abortion, they should be mindful of the consequences. Unwanted pregnancies become unwanted children…prone to depression, anxiety, addiction and other social and emotional disorders…Children whose mothers had been denied abortion were more likely to have behavioral and maladjustment issues while growing up… They have a lower quality of life because their mothers were unable to provide for them emotionally.
In summary, Ms. Komisar suggests that making laws against abortion may mean condemning children to miserable lives. The implication here is that ending a child’s life in order to spare him this pain is a good thing. In other words, terminating people prevents them from getting hurt. Hmm, it’s interesting logic.
I certainly agree with this lady that it is a terrible and traumatic thing for a child to come into the world unwanted, but I guess I would argue that death is a radically more traumatic experience. Rather than getting rid of the unwanted infants, would it not be wiser to educate people about the incomparable value of a child? What if lawmakers exercised their influence to foster virtue, to safeguard families, and to penalize destructive behavior? If we are truly interested in promoting mental health, we should know that treating the conception of a baby as a negative consequence instead of a precious gift is out of touch with reality and damaging to the human psyche.
Little children are both extremely impressionable and intuitive. When the prevailing worldview surrounding them says: life is not necessarily a good thing — some people’s existence is a problem — being wanted is what makes us good — they understand that their value as a human being depends on someone else. Can we even imagine the ramifications of such a backwards idea!?
Unfortunately, we don’t have to imagine. We’ve been witnessing the devastation for a long time. For several generations, people have been trying to achieve “goodness” by being attractive enough, smart enough, useful enough — by being somehow desirable, and yet never arriving at security, because a man can’t, in fact, be made good by his fellow man.
So if that’s the toxic error, what is the truth of the matter? Are children good? All children? What actually gives a child value?
They are fine questions. Stay tuned for answers.
Photo by Yukon Haughton; public domain image available under Unsplash license.
