A Modest Proposal

Catholics in Australia are beginning the new year with an interesting proposal. Says Cardinal Pell:

"We want to respond to the needs of women facing an unexpected or difficult pregnancy by providing them with life-affirming options," he said.

"Through the [Centacare] program, expectant mothers and, if required, their families, will be provided with social, emotional and practical support to enable them to continue with their pregnancy to full term. Women need real alternatives to abortion, and this new program is targeted to meet the specific needs of women contemplating abortion."

Dr Pell asked the Catholic agency, Centacare, to develop the program. He said he believed very strongly in the importance of such a service because it would be able to offer assistance to all women, including those who felt they had no one to turn to for help.

I was tipped to the story by John Ray, a former Catholic and now a self described atheist libertarian, who likes the idea and has a "modest" suggestion for taking the idea further:

my libertarian instincts... tell me that coercion is not the way to stop abortion. I leave coercion to the Leftists. Paying mothers to have the baby would work a lot better. Good old capitalism again! A payment of (say) $10,000 to all mothers who produce a healthy baby should do the trick. And with the now catastrophically low birthrates in most of the developed world we probably need such an incentive scheme for all mothers anyway. So conservatives should be helping to support and encourage reluctant mothers rather than threaten them with the law -- perhaps even setting up special, discreet, resort-style homes for them during their pregnancy.

It's an interesting idea but I worry that the money would lead to abuse. I would look for a financial figure that would get mother through the pregnancy, but not so much that someone might be tempted to come back intentionally. The biggest thing we can do, and the best thing such a program would do, is to be a public beacon declaring that we stand behind mothers and children. Workplaces should be encouraged to be generous with leave and should even consider something like a Christmas bonus if they can afford it. But the biggest thing is just clear, open and warm support. That would change things radically. Without the needed support (*shrug* it's your problem and yours alone. What are you going to do?) in a society where abortion is fully legal and 100% state supported (like Canada), we are running along a very dark path. We are saying to the mothers and the children that they are deeply unworthy of life, something that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was quite clear about, and proud of:

Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature's working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman. Then and then only can the mother cease to be an incubator and be a mother indeed. Then only can she transmit to her sons and daughters the qualities which make strong individuals and, collectively, a strong race.

The death of the child is a death of both the mother and the father. All the Darwinists out there know that, right?