The Left proclaims “education” is a main way to solve almost all problems in the world.  Education, even in Spanish and about Mexican culture, will supposedly help children in America become successful Americans.  Fight gangs with education.  Fight racism with education.  Fight sexual harassment with education.  Educate criminals in prison, and they’ll be less likely to commit crimes.  Education will prevent teen pregnancy and the spread of STDs.  Give more money to public schools and we’ll see massive improvements in our society.  Education will bring world peace.

That is what the Left says, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Yet there is at least one glaring exception in the Left’s love of education.

The Left will do everything it can to prevent women and girls considering abortion from being educated about the alternatives to abortion, the risks and consequences abortion presents to them, the development of the child in the womb, and how exactly abortion “terminates the pregnancy.”

If “choice” is really so important, shouldn’t the choices be informed ones?

Can you think of other areas where the Left suddenly loses its love of education?

In our Brave New World with donated eggs, donated sperm, donated human beings (as embryos), and rented wombs (surrogate “motherhood”), there are people who are helping singles and same-sex couples obtain children.  The intent is to raise these children in a home where they will be deprived of either a mother or a father.  (This may also happen with adoption in the traditional sense.)

There have been court decisions granting financial child support to children from men who have donated sperm, regardless of the contracts or agreements entered into by the adults at the time.  The reasoning is that the financial child support is for the child, and the adults could not consent to waive that child support on behalf of the child.

This makes me wonder if a child who was, say, raised by two men could successfully sue a “surrogate parenting” business for intentionally depriving him of a mother?

I think a clever lawyer could make a good argument for this case, especially based on precedents.

People have been successfully sued for “alienation of affection” for “stealing” a spouse.  Grandparents and even those not related to a child have successfully sued for visitation rights.  Why couldn’t a child sue for alienation of parentage?  Isn’t emotional support and role modeling more important than financial support?

Or is child support really about getting the state off of the hook for the expense of raising a child  - even though enforcing child support can cost more that the amount of child support itself – and punishing people (mostly men) for not staying in a relationship, and not really about the child’s well being?

Although people exercise their freedom every day to conceive children without a committed relationship, and thus, quite often the child will be raised without having both a mother and father present, it is another story when a third party gets involved for profit and knowingly, intentionally assists in assigning that child to a life without a mother or without a father.

Those businesses have a financial stake in denying the difference between men and women and the benefit a child will have by having both a mother and father present in the home.

Children should have a mother and father who are married to each other.  This is another reason why people should not risk conceiving children unless they can provide such a home, and another reason why someone should not donate sperm or donate eggs, or engage in procedures that can create “extra” embryos.

I’m presenting a series here called Exposing the Religious Right.

The introduction/first installment is here.

The second installment, discussing the motivations/starting points of the RR is here.

I’m hoping that, through this series on the Religious Right (RR), I can shed some light on the RR, especially to other conservatives and Republicans who are wary of the RR.  This is not necessarily to defend the RR and every typical policy position of the RR, but to explain that there IS a logic and practicality to the positions and activism of the RR, as opposed to mere animus and ignorance, as critics allege.

Euthanasia/Doctor-Assisted Suicide is Wrong and Should Be Illegal

According to what the RR believes, life is sacred.  Death is not.  Death is the absence of life, just as dark is the absence of light.  Living human beings should be protected from harm by others from conception until natural death.  I already wrote about the RR’s position on abortion.

Some people assert that someone who is sick or disabled should be euthanized for their dignity and to ease their pain.  Why do some think death is more dignified?  How do you know the dead are not in pain?  We’d all like to think that someone we care for who is dies goes to “a better place” but how do we know that they do?  In the case of the RR, the redeemed or righteous are believed to be in a better place, but that’s because the Bible says so, and you won’t find euthanasia prescribed in the Bible.  Death is not dignified, no matter what the circumstances, so there is no virtue in suicide or euthanasia to “end suffering.”  "Death with dignity" is an empty promise.

There is a difference between letting someone die and killing them.  There is a difference between giving them medication to ease their pain and giving them something with the intention of killing them.  There is a difference between letting someone die from their organ/system failures and denying someone nutrition if they are bedridden.

Euthanasia has become a slippery slope in some parts of the world, in which the elderly are being killed because they are inconvenient and infants are being killed because they aren’t the Gerber Baby.

Some ask “What’s the difference?  This person doesn’t even know they are alive or who they are.”  Yes, but if YOU know who that person is, and that the person is a human being, and that is what matters.

If someone wants to kill themselves, it is hard to stop them, but doctors should not be in the business of helping them do it.  If they want to kill themselves and are unable to, that still should not allow someone else to commit homicide, certainly not a medical doctor.

Euthanasia has been facilitated by Darwinism and socialism.  Darwinism lets “enlightened” people believe that some human life is not worthy of life or is somehow less than human.  Socialism prompts the productive - and therefore the taxed - in society to seek to end the burdens caused by the old, sick, and disabled who require more health care and other assistance.  When you are told you are a burden on society, you are being pressured to die.  When you see that your family is struggling to take care of you, you may feel pressured to take the “legal, so it must be okay” remedy of having a doctor kill you.  It’s a nefarious slippery slope.

The Bible tells us to care for the sick, not to kill them, and to value life.  Many in the RR do just that.

A Human Being in the Embryonic Phase is Still a Human Being

The sanctity of life is also why the RR is against certain reproductive technologies, cloning, and embryonic stem cell research.  They either kill human beings or produce human beings who will be killed because they are “unwanted”, “extra”, or have a deformity.  They are also turning human beings and their body parts into commodities.  Yes, they are small human beings, but they are human beings.

Contrary to all-too popular ridicule, the RR’s opposition is not because they are against progress or are scientifically ignorant.  Rather, they are well aware of the scientific facts involved.  They just do not want “progress” at the expense of innocent human beings, citing that science should serve humanity, not the other way around.

Fortunately, in the case of stem cells, there are promising treatments being developed by using “adult” stem cells, which do not result in the killing of a human being.

A genuine conviction in the sanctity of human life motivates the RR to oppose killing the young, the old, and the sick – no matter how young, how old, or how sick.  It is scary enough when individuals are allowed to kill other human beings for reasons other than legitimate personal protection.  It is much more scary when the government protects such actions, then supports or even mandates such actions.  Do we really want our government to be in the business of killing innocent human beings?

I’m presenting a series here called Exposing the Religious Right.

The introduction/first installment is here.

The second installment, discussing the motivations/starting points of the RR is here.

I’m hoping that, through this series on the Religious Right (RR), I can shed some light on the RR, especially to other conservatives and Republicans who are wary of the RR.  This is not necessarily to defend the RR and every typical policy position of the RR, but to explain that there IS a logic and practicality to the positions and activism of the RR, as opposed to mere animus and ignorance, as critics allege.

Highly relevant to the RR position I discuss below is their position I discussed previously, that Sex is For Marriage.

Abortion is Wrong and Should Be Illegal

See how so much is tying back to the principle that if you reserve sex for marriage, you’re not going to find conflict with the RR?

The legality of abortion is one of those areas where some conservatives and libertarians disagree with the RR, even if they believe that is abortion is wrong.  Their objections are that personal freedom and privacy outweigh the state’s interest in, or ability to, effectively recriminalize abortion.

While some people think the RR is simply trying to force people to live with the consequences of fornication, the RR has many reasons to seek the outlawing of abortion.

First and foremost, abortion kills a least one innocent human being each time it is successful.  You may quibble about “personhood” and all of that and joke about sperm and eggs that do not unite with each other, but the fact is that abortion kills a genetically distinct individual human being that did not exist before the sperm and egg united in conception.

Secondly, the RR cites abortion as bad for the pregnant woman in that, according to studies they cite, it:
-Like any surgery, may result in hemorrhaging and infections, though in this case it may not be readily apparent.
-May result in injuries leading to sterilization.
-May increase the risk of developing certain forms of cancer.
-May cause difficulty in bonding with children.
-May bring about emotional complications.
-Has given men a "reason" to resent women when the woman carries a pregnancy to term if he does not want to be a father or pay child support.

As for that last one… yes, strictly speaking, if the man doesn’t want to be a father he can avoid sexual activity, but likewise so can the woman, and yet she still gets more choices than the man.

Abortion is also bad for society, as it devalues human life and cuts short the life of someone who could contribute to society.

While members of the RR may agree that it would be hard to eliminate elective abortion, they cite the ability of law to discourage behavior and that there should not be a “right” to an abortion.  Decriminalizing abortion was successfully presented as a privacy issue in the past  However, the public “wrongful birth” lawsuits in recent years have shown that it is actually a “right” to a dead baby.

People in the RR get that people don’t want to see women get injured from “back alley” abortions, and  many "pro-choicers" work to keep abortion legal for those reasons, agreeing that abortion is terrible and should be rare.  However, if you really believed abortion was so terrible, though, wouldn’t you be directing your resources into helping women in crisis pregnancy instead of fighting for their “right” to get an abortion, especially the girls abused by family members, thereby eliminating the “need” for “back alley” abortions?  Proper use of contraception for those who refuse to abstain should have greatly reduce abortions, and in the rare instances where contraception fails, there is the option of adoption.

The RR maintains that these unborn babies are human beings, with a complete set of human DNA, that as long as he or she has shelter, nutrition, and respiration, will continue to develop AS a human being, NOT into a human being.

You can’t expect RR people to see a need for abortion, because they believe that sex is for marriage in the first place.  You’re asking them to not only affirm what they see as murder, but affirm something that tries to mitigate the consequences of something of which they disapprove of in the first place, rather than seeing their point that not wanting to carry a pregnancy to term is one reason you should agree to their original moral stance.

Even with the recent SCOTUS decision, the “right” to abortion is so sacred to some that we’ve gotten to the point where there is a “right” to take underage girls across state line for a late-term abortion - paid for by taxpayers -  without parental notification and without informing her of the alternatives, risks, fetal development, etc.  I dare say our Freedom of Speech isn't that strong.

So this is why the RR works to recriminalize abortion.  They see it as murder, as devaluing human life, as harmful to the mother, as something that causes discord between the sexes, as something that causes division between the generations, and government force as a legitimate means to discourage abortion, as the government exists to protect individuals from harm by others.

The RR isn't pushing for abortion recriminilization to "keep women down."  RR folks genuinely believe in the value of human life, which is why they also oppose doctor-assisted suicide/euthanasia. I’ll get to that one later.  There are many RR pro-lifers who, individually or corporately, work to help women in crisis pregnancies and who do adopt children.  They aren't simply focusing on "legislative solutions."