“Those of us who can remember back to the late sixties and early seventies no doubt remember the advent of family planning organization clinics. These organizations tried to bring appeal and noble purpose to their agenda by promoting the slogan: ‘Every child a wanted child.’ ”

While this phrase seemed lofty on the surface, the implications were not so lofty. The every-child-a-wanted-child concept was based on a selfish desire to be free from the responsibility of children, the hindrance that children might be to a career or a hedonistic life focusing on “fun” and pleasure.

Few stopped to consider the small step from “every child a wanted child” to “every unwanted child should be aborted.” Abortion on demand was the next logical step. To use the logic of the early family planners, one would think that having and nurturing only wanted children should make for happier families and far less domestic violence. Such has not been the case. Even wanted children have become the objects of hatred and violence when they “interfere” with their hedonistic parents.

Indeed, there is but a short step from “every child a wanted child” to “every person a wanted person.” The next step in the logical progression of this concept is euthanasia. Resistance to euthanasia has been stiff, up to this point. However, it is becoming increasingly acceptable. If it is acceptable to put unwanted babies out of their “misery,” then why is it not acceptable to put the aged and the terminally ill out of their misery as well?

But such a step will not make the world any happier. Violence will still cover the earth, even escalating. Man’s problems will still not be solved. Abortion has well illustrated that. Violence in the home continues to escalate. One would think that with all the free contraceptives and easy abortions, there would be few unwanted children and less urge to get rid of children already born.

This well illustrates a growing problem that has sometimes been swept under the rug. Case after case has been reported of mothers abandoning their babies, leaving them on doorsteps or throwing them into the trash. A USA Today article noted that “trash-can babies are a problem that Americans literally can’t ignore.” Each year hundreds of young women give birth, only to bury their unwanted babies in shallow graves, throw them into dumpsters, and worse. Bodies of babies have been discovered in such widely divergent places as a trash bin behind a Texas high school, in a gas station restroom in California, and in the Mississippi River.

“Save your baby” campaigns have mushroomed throughout the country. Hospitals and other public facilities have tried making it easier for mothers to turn in their unwanted babies, no questions asked and no penalties for doing so.

In 1996, a housewife in California established a cemetery for abandoned (and dead) babies. She “adopts” abandoned infants who have died. This housewife claims the infants from the morgue. Little caskets and volunteer-knit blankets are provided for each baby. They are buried in a cemetery plot called “The Garden of Angels.” The organization continues and works to help living, unwanted babies to be adopted.

Our society is proposing all kinds of fixes for the problem of unwanted children. Some claim that pregnancy prevention and abortion should be made still easier. Others recommend making stricter laws against murdering or abandoning an infant. Fewer recognize that the only lasting solution lies in changing the hearts of men and women. When people turn their lives over to Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Bible, only then can basic problems be solved. The abandonment of the Bible’s teaching against premarital sex and other forms of immorality only leads to more “unwanted” children. Ignoring the Bible’s teaching on the sanctity of human life, inside and outside of the womb, compounds the problem. For the true Christian, every child (and every person) is indeed a wanted child (or person) regardless of the circumstances of his conception, birth, or health. We will want our children, whether they were expected or whether they came as a “surprise.”

God is calling you; He is calling our society to surrender to His Son, Jesus Christ, and to follow His guidelines for families. “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church... Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord... Ye fathers [parents], provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 5:25, 22; 6:4).

From: Reaching Out

Language

English

Author

Roger Berry

Publisher

Reaching Out

Topics

Abortion

Morality

Christian Home