child abuse

Here is a perfect example of the type of argument I find hard to swallow.

…the anti-abortion campaign is a scare tactic, not a pro-life lesson. If we want to debate children’s rights, let us look at all the neglected, abused and lost children who need loving homes.

Sadly, it seems that a woman can have numerous children to increase her welfare cheque…

This is a recurring thought. Let me point out, then, that abortion is legal in Canada, and that neglected children remain. How can this be? If abortion is legal and accessible, shouldn’t the problem of “unwanted” children be solved? However, the number of children in foster care increases exponentially every year. (There are currently over 76,000 children in foster care in Canada.)

Let’s face facts. Abortion has not created a society where “every child [is] a wanted child,” as the Planned Parenthood slogan goes. Rates of child abuse and numbers of foster-children have only increased since legal abortion became part of our national profile.

Is it safe for me to say, as it has been suggested many times before, that abortion has offered a skewed view of the value of children within our society? Could it be that our country has it all wrong? Maybe, just maybe, devaluing unborn children has caused Canada to under-appreciate the value of all children. Who dares call that a scare tactic?

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Andrea adds: That same letter writer says this:

The CCBR website offers a number of convincing but fundamentally wrong arguments. When anti-abortion gimmicks stop, and pro-life rationale presents itself in the abortion debate, I will be on board…

Really? For years and years and years the pro-life movement has been offering nothing but a sound rationale–reasoning up and down the block, reasoning that runs circles around pro-choice arguments. That letter writer may take issue with the Genocide Awareness Project; I know many reasonable people who do. But she says she’s on board if only pro-lifers could present arguments “minus the propaganda.” Well, this is her lucky day: I can personally refer her to any number of pro-life groups that do nothing but that, and have done so, day in, day out for years on end.

From the National Post this morning:

The societal panic over childhood obesity, already entrenched in the medical system and evident in the furor over school lunches, is beginning to influence custody judgments and child-welfare authorities in their decisions about fitness to parent.

An Ontario family court judgment involving the Children’s Aid Society recently cited obesity as a reason for removing a child from the parental home, after determining the mother was contributing to her child’s weight gain and was oblivious to the required medical regime.

The details of the case are covered by a publication ban, but the theme is echoed in another case, an epic nine-year custody battle that wrapped up in a Newmarket courtroom last month, much of which centred on the comparative merits of the battling parents in adhering to a diet plan for their obese twins.

While I dislike government meddling in family affairs in principle, I appreciate that there are times when intervention is needed to save innocent children from harm. Incest, abuse, gross negligence being among the most obvious. I am not convinced exposing children to, say, tobacco smoke or junk food is necessarily detrimental – you can do a lot more damage to your children with emotional abuse than with second-hand smoke. I don’t know when overfeeding your children becomes abuse that requires state intervention. But I’m glad we’re getting a chance to discuss the problem, which is unfortunately all too real.

Common reasoning

Except I wouldn’t call it ‘panic’

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