Punished with a baby. . .

It hardly seems worth mentioning today but in 2008 Barack Obama created the phrase that has become normative.  Why should I be punished with a baby?   What was once an issue of abortion rights has been translated into the way people generally view any baby.  It is a punishment to have a child, to raise a child, to care for a child...

When the FDA approved the Pill, the average American household had 3.55 children per family.  That meant a healthy growth for the population of America.  Now, some 60 years later, that same birth rate has fallen to an unsustainable 1.6 children per household.  What was responsible for this change?  Not simply abortion but the whole normalization of contraception.  We have bought into the lie that the best sex for anyone is safe sex -- without the threat of disease or the punishment of a child to spoil the consensual pleasure.  

In 1968, Pope Paul stunned the world with Humanae Vitae and looked into the future to see the fruits of this contraceptive culture in the West: (1)a general moral decline; (2)a loss of respect for women; (3)the abuse of power by the state; and (4)the emergence of man’s belief that he had total dominion over his own body.  His prophecy was spot on except for one thing.  He failed to see the day when children would become the equivalent of a disease and be labeled as a punishment.  Yet that is where we are today.  Children are generally seen by Christians and non-Christians alike as a punishment or unfair burden for a mistake.  They petition for a do over in which a morning after pill or abortion fixes the mistake.

Until the early part of the 20th century, Protestants and Roman Catholics alike were united in their understanding that marriage existed for the procreation of children first and foremost.  But at some point in time, the children that were once the fruit became an unwanted fruit, an unintended result of sexual pleasure, and something our technology would, could, and should fix.  At that point in time, contraception was the only issue but only fifty years later would abortion become the invented right that had long lay hidden in the constitution.  When sanity prevailed at the court level this past year, the insanity among the populace did not.  Voters united to restrain the legal code to prevent abortion and instead worked harder than ever on the state level to enshrine the legal right the Supreme Court denied them.  This was not accomplished without the general support of all ideologies and the many religious who insisted that children were only a blessing under the narrowest of definitions and outside of this were a unwelcome and unfair punishment for a few moments of pleasure.

Oddly enough, it seems like the Amish alone stand against contraception and even conservative bodies like the LCMS have no official position on the matter (never mind that Luther and nearly every body and theologian prior to the twentieth century was opposed to contraception because children were a gift, blessing, and heritage from the Lord.  In the end, the silence is a tacit endorsement that the practice is up to the people involved to determine its morality or immorality.  We have learned only too well that children are costly and demanding and some of us are not sure they are worth the sacrifice.  But this could be and has also been said about marriage itself.  If we don't want to be punished with a child, we probably don't want to be punished by a binding legal relationship like marriage either.  

Fifteen years have passed and abortion is no longer a federal right guaranteed by the constitution but it may be too late.  Long before the Court re-entered the debate, the people had already spoken.  Marry if you want but skip the kids -- they are just not worth the time or the effort!  And we think that we have progressed as a people and a culture.  Wow....