Marriage & family

Are children a form of wealth?

February 19, 2009 By mollie

The only time I experienced culture shock was a few years ago upon return from a convention of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. One night at the bar, some of the people there got in a friendly discussion about our families. And, specifically, the size of our families. The men and women with 10 or more were quickly identified and feted. Then, I came back to DC and went to see the movie Anchorman. It’s a great movie but at the end, the mentally retarded character played by Steve Carrell is identified as a fundamentalist Christian who ends up having 12 kids. The audience roared with delight.

That was my experience with culture shock. In my religious community, having many children is considered an extraordinary gift from God. In my cultural circles, it gets you mocked as an idiot of epic proportions. It may sound silly, but I had never felt that disconnect between my two worlds so strongly as I did that night.

So it was a treat to come across Kate Zernike’s piece in the New York Times about how large families are scorned and mocked by various elements in the culture. The story profiles a variety of different large families and packs an unbelievable amount of thoughtful detail into each description. It tackles big issues but keeps everything very readable.

As most of the media is obsessing about the California octuplets, this reporter uses that as a hook to explore the much more significant phenomenon of family size in general:

Back when the average woman had more than three children, big families were the Kennedys of Hickory Hill and Hyannis Port, “Cheaper by the Dozen,” the Cosbys or “Eight is Enough” — lovable tumbles of offspring as all-American in their scrapes as in their smiles.

But as families have shrunk, and parents helicopter over broods tinier yet more precious, a vanload of children has taken on more of a freak show factor. The families know the stereotypes: they’re polygamists, religious zealots, reality-show hopefuls or Quebecois in it for the per-child government bonus. And isn’t there something a little obsessive about Angelina Jolie’s quest for her own World Cup soccer team?

If you read the article, these paragraphs are clearly not meant to be taken as face value. They’re presenting a common view of large families as opposed to arguing for that view. The story goes on to mention how the British government’s environmental adviser declared it “irresponsible” to have more than two children and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s goal of including contraception in the stimulus package. The story doesn’t overplay the significance of these things but steadily paints a picture of how large families are marginalized and attacked as immoral or costly.

Check out this interesting substantiating detail:

If large families are the stuff of spectacle, it is partly because they have become rarer.

In 1976, census data show, 59 percent of women ages 40 to 44 had three or more children, 20 percent had five or more and 6 percent had seven or more.

By 2006, four decades after the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to use birth control (and the last year available from census studies), 28 percent of women ages 40 to 44 had three or more children, 4 percent had five or more and just 0.5 percent had seven or more.

So many of the families who share their stories tell of unbelievably inappropriate comments or questions about sex or birth control from bosses, random strangers and friends. The article explores the idea that women who have many children can’t also be educated or professional or have ambition. The women in the article talk about having a foot in both the domestic and professional words. One mother, a college professor, notes that much of the criticism comes from educated people who shouldn’t traffic in such gross stereotypes. On the other hand, sometimes people assume you have to be super wealthy to afford a large family.

So the article introduces us to Barbara Curtis, a mother of 12 in Northern Virginia. She’s a Montessori teacher and her husband is a commercial accounts manager — neither super-rich nor poverty stricken.

Mrs. Curtis illustrates one of the many ways that families grow so large: she had two children from her first marriage, then, with her second husband, seven in 10 years. One of those children had Down syndrome, so they adopted another Down syndrome child, believing two would grow up happier together. Since then, they have twice accepted requests to adopt another child with Down syndrome.

“Children are a kind of wealth,” Mrs. Curtis said. “Just not the kind of wealth our society tends to focus on.”

It’s fascinating how quickly the praise for the mother of octuplets rather quickly turned to scorn. A friend noticed that the scorn was based mostly on money. It’s not that people think marriage is a necessary prerequisite for family. And people certainly believe in-vitro fertilization is fine, even if you’re a single mum. But it is morally wrong for a single woman to have in-vitro fertilization if she already has six children — particularly if she doesn’t kill some of the embryos who are growing in her womb. The main — perhaps only — ethical problem seemed to be that the woman couldn’t support these children. It’s just interesting to note how much society views children as economic liabilities as opposed to people.

The story has some hidden ghosts. A comment about how women with less education have more children on average than women with significantly more education could speak to different priorities in life as opposed to some proof that hicks are breeders. But other ghosts are brought out a bit:

Many large families are religious, and some follow the QuiverFull movement, which takes encouragement for big families in Psalm 127: children are the gift of the Lord, “as arrows are in the hand of a mighty man,” and “happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.”

The article also addresses the efforts by some environmentalists to fight the existence of siblings. Every couple would get one child and then they’re done if some had their way. Large families contend that they have economies of scale and an economic incentive to reduce consumption and reuse resources. The article also notes that women’s fertility in the United States is barely at replacement rate. We don’t hear from any members of large families who have negative comments about them but it’s a long article that covers a lot of ground. It’s a great idea for a story and handled very well.

YouTube: Click it. Listen to the clashing worldviews.

Filed Under: Academia, Business & Economy, Catholicism, Creeping Fundamentalism, Evangelicals, Godbeat, Journalism, Marriage & family, People, Pop Culture, Sex, Social Issues

News from the “flexidoxy” beat

February 18, 2009 By TMatt

As an Orthodox rabbi once told me, the most controversial issue in modern Judaism today is God.

And what about postmodern Judaism? That’s another story, one that the Los Angeles Times waded into the other day with a strange, yet compelling story that ran under a headline straight out of an up-to-day religious studies classroom: “Bible, yoga and YouTube: all part of Jewish identity.” Reporter Ari B. Bloomekatz opens with a shot of Orthodoxy, a dash of yoga and a wallop of Israeli politics. Clearly, Judaism is a religious, cultural and personal thing. Who’s to draw lines or judge? (Don’t say, “God.”)

The sessions, part of the second annual LimmudLA conference, brought more than 700 Jews together over the weekend to learn from each other and from their sacred texts. The idea behind Limmud — a Hebrew word that means “learning” — is to break down barriers that often divide Jews of different religious affiliations.

“The goal was to get people to own their own Jewish experience in the context of building a Jewish community where everyone comes together regardless of their denominations,” said Shep Rosenman, an entertainment lawyer who founded LimmudLA and is a co-chair of this year’s event. “The vehicle we use is Jewish learning, but not only classic Bible study.”

The approach resonated with Ida Unger, a yoga instructor from Tujunga who led one of the morning classes.

“There’s a diversity of spiritual practice within modern Judaism, and coming here to this conference, it’s an opportunity to get a taste of many, many different things,” Unger said.

Some of this may sound familiar, to those of you who read a certain Jewish writer on the op-ed pages of the New York Times. This visit into LA Judaism sounds quite a bit like a term from the book “Bobos in Paradise” by David Brooks (a rare work of cultural commentary that is also laugh-out-loud funny).

Here’s a bite from a column I did for Scripps Howard that introduces the term that jumped into my mind as I read the Bloomekatz piece:

It was a rabbi in Montana who gave Brooks the perfect word — “Flexidoxy” — to describe this faith. This is what happens when Americans try to baptize their souls in freedom and tradition, radical individualism and orthodoxy, all at the same time. One scholar found a Methodist pastor’s daughter who calls herself a “Methodist Taoist Native American Quaker Russian Orthodox Buddhist Jew.”

It doesn’t make any sense, but it looks good and feels right. And that’s the key to the hearts of the intellectuals, artists, politicians and entrepreneurs who came to power after the 1960s. When it comes to the culture wars, they are lovers, not fighters.

Thus, I found it interesting that the Los Angeles Times piece didn’t include any Jewish voices — right or left — that were uncomfortable with the LimmudLA approach. At the same time, it’s clear that the doctrinal differences are right there up front in this conference, with the only question being whether people are truly allowed to agree to disagree. There is that “God” thing, after all.

Still, you have to love this kind of detail.

Most of the conference sessions were rooted in Jewish traditions with modern adaptations and messages.

At a session titled “What Inspires Me: Musicians,” Brooklyn folk-rock singer Michelle Citrin played guitar and sang a song called “Someday.” Citrin, who has earned a measure of fame as “Rosh Hashanah Girl” for her YouTube videos “I Gotta’ Love You Rosh Hashanah” and “20 Things to Do With Matzah,” said the song was influenced by a famous saying from the Talmudic sage Hillel. The chorus goes: “Someday I’m gonna make it happen, but if not now, then when.”

Citrin said her purpose “is to make this ancient wisdom accessible.”

You cannot make this up.

So I’ll ask the obvious question. Is this CJM, “Contemporary Jewish Music”? Watch the Rosh Hashanah video up on top of this post and make sure you get to the sort-of-rap part.

Filed Under: Judaism, Marriage & family, Religion, World Religions

Shameless plug for serious friend

February 13, 2009 By TMatt

millstones-4-8-08-26001 If this weblog has a short list of very close friends, Rod “Crunchy Cons” Dreher would have to be near the top of the list. I feel no shame pointing people toward his work, every now and then.

Normally, you read Dreher at his own Beliefnet.com weblog or, in his day job, as a columnist and writer on the editorial pages of the Dallas Morning News. However, Rod opened a vein and wrote an unusually candid essay the other day as part of the continuing op-ed series that USA Today publishes on religion news and trends.

I point readers toward it because the topic is clearly relevant for journalists who cover religion and, even more so, for religious believers who work in journalism. The headline and read out tells you what is coming:

How much ‘truth’ is too much?

The details of the Catholic sex abuse scandal nearly destroyed my Christian faith. In a painful spiritual epiphany, I learned that the whole truth does not always deliver a greater good. Indeed, full transparency can harm society — and even, perhaps, our souls. But do we always have an alternative?

The column opens with a flashback into the long-standing debates — at times painful — between Dreher and the late Father Richard John Neuhaus about an important question about journalism, personal faith and the waves of clergy sexual abuse that have, for several years, rolled over the Roman Catholic Church.

Thus, the crunch passage:

The breadth and degree of the corruption within the Catholic hierarchy broke me spiritually. I lost the will to believe and became profoundly spiritually depressed. Leaving Catholicism for Eastern Orthodoxy was like an animal chewing off its own leg to get out of a trap. I don’t regret my reporting, nor do I regret my decision to leave Catholicism for Orthodoxy, where God gave me a second chance.

My mistake was to assume that I was strong enough emotionally to put analytical distance between myself and my subject. After I left Rome, I made a deliberate decision not to investigate scandal in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), my new communion. My family and I needed a church more than I needed to crusade against ecclesial iniquity.

I felt, and still do feel, deeply conflicted about this decision. Did Jesus not say, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free”? But the truth that I helped tell about what some in the Catholic hierarchy had done to children did not set me free; in fact, it nearly destroyed my Christian faith. And yet, I could not in good conscience have remained silent. As an Orthodox Christian chastened by experience, am I behaving prudently, or am I being cowardly?

Personally, I think Dreher made a good decision — for a season. But I would hate to hear him say that his journalistic skills have no connection to his own faith and intellect, in the long run. I think that would be a loss for journalism and for the Church. I honestly believe that.

Neuhaus, however, went further, to a place that I have heard clergy in many different faith groups go. He said there are truths that the laity simply do not need to know — for good reasons. This is more than a statement that Christians are supposed to work in public relations and that’s that.

Neuhaus was raising a serious issue, which is what Dreher continues to ponder:

I do not believe Father Neuhaus was a cynic; he really did believe that there were certain things that ought to be concealed from the public for the greater good. And though it might be heresy for a journalist to say, as a matter of general principle, I agree with him.

Very few of us are purists when it comes to transparency. A society in which all secrets were known would be monstrous. The problem in the Catholic case is that bishops abused their discretion not to shield the innocent, but to protect the guilty. It was only when the details of these sordid cases came to broad public light that the Catholic bishops were shamed into serious action.

There’s more. We can also apply these questions, of course, to political reporters as they cover real-life politicians. But let’s open this up for discussion. Please focus on the journalistic issues, without turning this into a personal thread about Dreher and his relationship to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Let’s aim wider than that, to questions that all journalists have to ask about their work.

Photo: Why is there a millstone with this post? Think about it.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Marriage & family, People, Religion, Sex

What magic “moment”?

February 12, 2009 By pastorliz

569px-in_disgrace_at_school2

This article on “mindfulness meditation” from the The Sacramento Bee is a “therapy in the schools” story. It’s an important one to follow in an era in which, often, public schools either apppropriate for themselves or are forced into the role of “in loco parentis.”

Additionally, it’s about what happens when religious symbols and traditions get thrown into the great common denominator of American public education.

Is this potential trend being reported “mindfully,” as it were? Is there any religious significance to these practices?

What do the mindfulness practices represent in a culture bombarded with therapeutic solutions –and one which suffers, as I read recently in a book I was reviewing, from a globally staggering rate of Attention Deficit Disorder?

I was looking for answers in this article-and didn’t find as many as I would have liked.

The lede takes readers to Bridges Academy, a school in east Oakland. Actually, from what I can tell, the school has a host of innovative programs targeting disadvantaged children, of which the mindfulness meditation is only one.

The writer focuses on one of the classrooms in which instructor Oren Sofer has been hired to help kids practice meditation.

Hi, Mr. Ooooooo,” the third-graders chimed, then began chanting, “mind-ful-ness, mind-ful-ness.”

Sofer asked the students to show him their mindful bodies. As the students quieted down, he held up a Tibetan singing bowl.

“Let’s begin by just listening to the sound of the bell,” he said gently. “Let your eyes close.”

He tapped the side of the bowl. “Raise your hand after you hear the whole bell.” He waited. “Now, take that hand down to your belly, and let’s take a few breaths together.” Sofer visits this class, and eight others, 15 minutes a day, three times a week for five weeks to teach mindfulness – the ability to be aware of what is happening in the present moment without judgment.

Possibly readers would like to know the religious significance (or lack of religious significance) of a Tibetan singing bowl.

There’s definitely a therapeutic component here, as the write notes a few paragraphs further into the story.

Numerous studies have tracked a rise in diagnoses of mental health problems and mood disorders among children over the past 10 years. Educators in Oakland report seeing the consequences of an increasingly digitalized, increasingly anxious society in their classrooms. Mandatory No Child Left Behind testing especially has spiked the stress level in classrooms among students and teachers, they said.

Studies from UCLA and Arizona State University have shown that mindfulness programs help elementary-school students regulate their behavior, control impulses, focus and plan ahead.

By now my mind is racing with questions. Is meditation part of a multidisciplinary approach to dealing with the problems these kids must face, which seem to include violence, poverty, and family addictions and incarceration? Do local faith groups play any role in helping these kids deal with stress? When the classroom become a stand-in for the therapist’s office?

Meditation has deep roots in many religious traditions, but we hear nothing about that in this article. Instead, readers get tantalizing anecdotes, which seem to suggest that mindfulness (which actually has been the object of evidence-based studies) seems to alleviate stress–but gives us little idea of its principles or background.

What may be happening in Oakland and other places is that ancient practices are being shorn of their religious roots, and used in that great American game of “let’s fix the problem.” But I’d sure like to know more.

Full disclosure–If you hear a slightly exasperated edge in this post, its because I have personal experience of the therapeutic school. This past fall I had to intervene when my son was put into social skills group, because all children in his particular category were put into one-without consulting the parents. It may be a national trend-begging for a story.

Picture of old-fashioned classroom is from Wikimedia Commons

Filed Under: Academia, Journalism, Marriage & family, Pop Culture, Uncategorized

Saved by zero

February 9, 2009 By mollie

Yesterday, I pointed out that journalists covering financial donations to California’s ballot initiative on marriage should attempt to put contributions in context. The latest filings covering donations show same-sex marriage supporters raised $43.3 million in 2008 while the measure’s sponsors raised $39.9 million. This makes it the most expensive social issue race in the nation’s history. Lots of donors and lots of big donors weighed in on this contentious issue.

Many of the stories about the latest filings from the California Secretary of State deal with the contributions — of cash or services — by religious groups. This is certainly a most valid angle.

Here’s an early report on the Los Angeles Times site:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contributed about $189,000 in “in-kind” donations to the campaign for the ballot measure that banned gay marriage in California — but the church wants to make it clear that that wasn’t such a large sum.

In a statement, church officials noted that the contributions were a tiny fraction of the roughly $4 million raised by the “Yes on Proposition 8″ forces. (The number does not include church members who made individual donations.)

I know that zeros don’t seem like important numbers but they are. It wasn’t $4 million raised by the measure’s supporters but $40 million. What it means is that the corporate LDS’ contributions represent less than one-half of one percent of the total contribution.

The article goes on to mention other contributions but fails to explain that the cited donations come just from the latest filing. That means that we don’t hear about some of the really notable contributions — such as the million-plus dollars given against the measure by the California Teachers Association and George Soros or the million-plus dollars given in support by the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus.

Even though votes and financial contributions in support of traditionally defined marriage came from a wide religious, racial and cultural spectrum, much of the response to the vote has targeted Mormons. This has included violence against Mormon wards and temples, burning of sacred Mormon scripture, the blacklisting of Mormons who contributed to the battle, and forcing multiple Mormons out of their jobs. While the coverage of this blacklist and violence has been remarkably restrained, much of the reporting after the last filing homed in on Mormon contributions. This brief story, also in the Los Angeles Times, focuses solely on the Mormon reporting and how one of its political opponents interpreted the filing.

And here’s how the San Francisco Chronicle reported the same issue:

Mormon church officials, facing an ongoing investigation by the state Fair Political Practices Commission, Friday reported nearly $190,000 in previously unlisted assistance to the successful campaign for Prop. 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

That is one dramatic lede. It definitely could be — and has been — argued that it’s a bit misleading. It could also have been written that Mormon church officials reported in-kind, non-cash contributions to the successful campaign for Prop. 8 days prior to the reporting deadline.

The story gives the impression that the church disclosed these in-kind contributions solely because someone filed a complaint against them in November alleging they hadn’t fully disclosed the support they gave. That may be true. That may not be true. And unless the reporter has facts to back up the claim, he should probably just lay out the facts. The rest of the story reads more like an op-ed rather than a dispassionate laying out of the facts.

Filed Under: Journalism, Marriage & family, Politics, Religion, Social Issues

The politicization of pancakes

February 8, 2009 By mollie

When the California Secretary of State released the latest report on donors to Proposition 8 related campaigns, I was a bit surprised at the lack of coverage. But then stories started rolling in. The latest filing shows that gay marriage supporters raised $43.3 million while Prop. 8 supporters raised $39.9 million. It was already known to be an expensive campaign, but those numbers are pretty impressive. People care about this issue, it seems.

Anyway, a reader sent along a somewhat funny story from the Colorado Springs Gazette with the headline “Focus gave $657,000 to kill gay marriage.” To “KILL” it, mind you. Anyway, that would be Focus on the Family, which gave $657,000 in money and in-kind support to Prop. 8. That is half the money given by the California Teachers Union in opposition to Prop. 8 — and at least Focus donors were actually in support of what their organization did.

National Public Radio had a great story with original research showing that the $1.25 million of teacher money given in support of an issue with questionable relevance to the interests of teachers wasn’t backed up by the teachers themselves. Turns out the teachers who donated to the cause donated in the opposite direction:

Teachers, aides and counselors in California public school systems gave about $2 to support the marriage ban for every $1 they gave to oppose it.

Back to the Gazette story:

The top donor in support of Proposition 8 remains Knights of Columbus, the New Haven, Conn.-based political arm of the Catholic Church.

That group gave $1.275 million to defeat gay marriage, records show.

Um, the “political arm of the Catholic Church”? No. I’ll let the reader who submitted this story respond:

Describing the Knights of Columbus as the “political arm of the Catholic Church” is not just factually wrong, but pretty hilarious. While the Knights no doubt did contribute the largest single reportable amount of resources to the Prop 8 campaign, the overwhelming majority of Knights’ work involves the politically troubling and clandestine activities of pancake breakfasts, insurance sales, track meets and tootsie roll giveaways to raise cash for disabled kids. And most of their resources go to the missions and dozens of other Catholic social and educational ministries. They are a loose fraternal order, not political apparatchiks.

And please don’t forget fish fries. Seriously, the Knights back in my hometown had such an amazing and addictive batter that they got every Protestant in the county pouring money into their coffers each Friday during Lent. But political arm of the Catholic Church? No.

I’m not sure how surprising it is that religious groups that hold traditional views of marriage would put time and money into defeating a huge threat to the institution and am somewhat surprised at all the coverage of same. Or rather, is it more surprising and newsworthy that religious groups — who openly claim to support heterosexual marriage and consider it a key building block of society — would give moolah to Prop. 8 or is it more surprising that a teachers union with no discernible interest in the issue would give money against it? The disparity in coverage is somewhat intriguing.

Put another way, no matter which angle you choose to report on, make sure you put the contributions in context.

Tomorrow we’ll look at more of the many stories on Prop. 8 contributions.

Dick Cheney with pancake painting via Dan Lacey, painter of pancakes.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Godbeat, Marriage & family, Politics, Social Issues

“Abortion reduction” gets some ink

February 7, 2009 By mollie

Remember when President Bill Clinton said he wanted abortion to be safe, legal and rare? Remember how he was pro-lifers’ favorite president? Oh wait, that’s right, the “safe, legal and rare” formulation isn’t a pro-life mantra but a pro-choice mantra. And Bill Clinton fit perfectly in the pro-choice camp.

But somehow when President Barack Obama says something along the same lines, we are to believe that he is no longer one of the most articulate advocates of abortion ever to ascend to the White House but, rather, a lightbearing pro-lifer? Time magazine’s Amy Sullivan has a headline up right now that says:

Barack Obama, Pro-Life President?

This is because he created a council — a faith-based “advisory council” — that will look at, among other things, “reducing the need for abortions.”

Yes, with his campaign promise to Planned Parenthood that his first priority as president would be the passage of a bill removing any state-based restrictions on abortion, with his move in the first week to fund international groups that perform abortions and with his 100 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, I’m pretty sure that headline sums it up. Fighting any restriction on abortion is the new “pro-life”! Princeton professor Robert P. George calls the notion “delusional” and I’m pretty sure pro-lifers in general would be willing to trade President Obama’s actual record and actions for that advisory council.

Remember those less complicated times when “pro-life” meant you opposed abortion and “pro-choice” meant you supported abortion rights? Well, President Obama is shooting for a new political paradigm where opposition to any restriction on abortion + support for increased government spending along the lines of what liberals normally support = a new category of abortion reduction. I certainly understand why President Obama would want to push that storyline but it would be nice to have the media exercise a bit of caution before running with it.

Mark Stricherz wrote about the issue during the campaign, noting that government funding of abortion increases rather than decreases the abortion rate. He alleged that while government can promote policies that reduce abortion, they are very expensive. I’m not sure that after we get done borrowing and spending trillions of dollars on these “stimilus” and “bailout” bills that there would be any reasonable amount of money left to experiment with the “abortion reduction” theory.

Other pro-lifers have noted that Obama opposes the Hyde Amendment, legislation that has to be renewed each year to protect taxpayers from paying for abortions. The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, says the most tragic result of this amendment is that women who would otherwise get abortions end up having their children. They say that some 18 to 35 percent of women who would abort their children don’t do it when taxpayer funding for abortion is unavailable. Others give a conservative estimate of 1 million children who were not aborted because of this amendment.

And University of Alabama professor Michael New has published studies showing that legal restrictions on abortion, such as public funding restrictions and informed consent laws, are responsible for declines in the abortion rate.

In other words, while Obama and his supporters say that you can oppose any restriction on abortion and support bigger government programs and that this combination means you support “abortion reduction,” there’s a lot of debate over whether that’s a reasonable claim to make.

It sort of seems like some in the mainstream media have just lost all of their cynicism and desire to hold elected officials accountable — traits they had in abundant supply even weeks ago. Take this puffy piece from Politico, about how awesome Obama and his religious outreach is:

Faith leaders say they are already seeing results. Most notably, Obama lifted the ban on federal funding for overseas abortion services, but he did it quietly and privately, heeding advice from the religious community not to follow the example of his two predecessors by tackling the issue on the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Instead, he waited until the next day to sign the memorandum.

Waiting a few hours to fund groups that perform abortions is a “result” to crow about? Of course, contra this story, Obama lifted the ban on funding of groups that perform abortions rather than on the direct funding of the abortions themselves.

Let’s head over to Rob Stein’s piece in the Washington Post, headlined Obama Tries to Appease Both Sides of Abortion Debate. It’s a solid story all about how Obama is trying to change the debate over abortion from its legality to his claim that certain government spending programs can reduce “the need for” abortions. The article is built around the Obama paradigm-shifting efforts but it’s not a puff piece:

Obama’s approach has already been tested: Three days after his inauguration, he lifted a ban on U.S. funding for international health programs that provide abortions and abortion counseling, and last week he persuaded House Democrats to drop from the stimulus package a plan to allow Medicaid to expand contraceptive services.

Both moves produced mixed results: The international funding decision thrilled family-planning proponents but infuriated abortion opponents, even though some praised Obama for doing it quietly and for postponing the announcement one day to avoid the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide. The decision to back off the Medicaid family-planning expansion was welcomed by some conservatives but surprised and disappointed women’s health advocates.

Again, this trumpeting of the hours-long wait — can this be for real? And I’m not entirely sure that Obama’s pressure on the condom package IN A SUPPOSED STIMULUS BILL should really even fall into this debate. The outrage over Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s $200 million for contraception was more about whether such a provision belonged in a “stimulus” bill rather than whether contraceptive services were good or bad or appropriate for government funding in general.

Still, the story lays out the fault lines pretty well:

Obama’s approach will be tested again by a series of upcoming decisions on sensitive issues, including how he deals with the Bush administration’s restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, which is controversial because the cells are obtained by destroying human embryos. Obama is also under pressure to reverse a Bush administration regulation protecting the rights of health-care workers who object to providing abortion, the morning-after emergency contraceptive pill and other types of medical care, to take steps to increase access to contraception and abortion, and to cut funding for abstinence-only sex education.

It’s really nice — refreshing even — to see this reporter clearly explain why embryonic stem cell research is disliked by pro-lifers. Remember how reporters use to lump embryo-destroying research with all other stem cell research? It’s also helpful to see what the two sides will be battling over. He mentions a likely upcoming Supreme Court justice nomination, too.

And there’s more on how Obama waited a few hours before sending funds to groups that provide abortions:

When he took office, he was expected to immediately reverse the international family-planning policy, but instead of doing so on the Roe v. Wade anniversary, Obama used the day to issue his first statement as president on abortion — a statement that included similar conciliatory language.

Said Joel C. Hunter, pastor of the evangelical Northland Church near Orlando: “I’m pro-life. I hate abortion. But this administration is trying to be very sensitive. They are trying to approach things in the least inflammatory, least contentious way so we can work together and have a more nuanced approach.”

But the story also includes the perspective of pro-lifers who fail to see how this is in any way noteworthy:

“The common ground Obama seeks for the pro-life movement is the burial ground,” said Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee.

Even some of those taking a wait-and-see approach dismissed Obama’s low-key reversal of the international family-planning restriction as meaningless.

“For me, it’s the difference between killing you in broad daylight and me taking you out and killing you behind the barn,” said Daniel Akin, president of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. “The result is the same. And I’m one of the evangelicals willing to give him a chance.”

The story gets quite a bit of perspective from religious opponents of abortion including Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on how Obama could attempt to moderate his support for research on embryos without compromising his principles.

It’s actually a really helpful introduction to the two sides, although it does give a bit of short shrift to pro-choice activists who loathe the whole “abortion reduction” moralizing.

My big beef with these stories, though, is that they just sort of assume that increased government spending and programs — on, say, increasing contraceptive availability, expanding health care benefits or subsidizing day care — are undeniable methods of reducing the need for abortion. There is a correlation between poverty and abortion (and wealth and contraceptive use) but a) correlation is not causation and b) there are many economists who disagree that many federal welfare programs achieve their stated goals in any case. We’ve been warring on poverty for a long time now without altogether that much success and it’s not a universally accepted belief that government spending is the best way to tackle economic problems. Anyway, how many of these “abortion reduction” proposals are different from the legislative agenda of the left for the past several decades? Is this just dressing up old proposals with a new selling line? Does that matter?

Filed Under: Academia, Business & Economy, Catholicism, Evangelicals, Godbeat, Journalism, Marriage & family, Politics, Social Issues

“Badly botched” doesn’t quite cover it

February 6, 2009 By mollie

We frequently discuss the “ghosts” that are present in various stories. It pains me to use that term for this story about a child born at 23 weeks gestation who was allegedly killed by an abortion clinic owner outside Miami. This is another story that had been percolating around the internet before being picked up by mainstream media this week.

Written by the Associated Press’ Christine Armario, the story is actually rather well done:

Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.

Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure.

Only Renelique didn’t arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida Department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.

What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic’s owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant’s umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

The headline to the piece is “Fla. doctor investigated in badly botched abortion.” But there are two investigations. There’s a hearing in front of the state Board of Medicine to determine whether the doctor who was to perform the abortion should lose his license. And the state attorney’s homicide division is investigating the death of the child.

I wondered whether the death should be referred to as a “badly botched abortion” or an “infanticide” or plain old “killing” — but the story, while also trucking in some euphemisms, does a much better job of distilling a rather complicated story in a straightforward fashion.

The story writer has some interesting background on the doctor in question and solicits comments from attorneys on both sides, one firm of which has some religious angles:

The case has riled the anti-abortion community, which contends the clinic’s actions constitute murder.

“The baby was just treated as a piece of garbage,” said Tom Brejcha, president of The Thomas More Society, a law firm that is also representing Williams. “People all over the country are just aghast.”

Would that be the pro-life law center named after Saint Thomas More?

A National Organization of Woman chapter president said the story disturbed her. The story includes a ton of details and even mentions why the woman seeking an abortion changed her view of ending the life of her child:

“She came face to face with a human being,” [attorney Tom] Pennekamp said. “And that changed everything.”

The complaint says one of the clinic owners, Belkis Gonzalez came in and cut the umbilical cord with scissors, then placed the baby in a plastic bag, and the bag in a trash can.

Williams’ lawsuit offers a cruder account: She says Gonzalez knocked the baby off the recliner chair where she had given birth, onto the floor. The baby’s umbilical cord was not clamped, allowing her to bleed out. Gonzalez scooped the baby, placenta and afterbirth into a red plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

The story is very thorough, explaining that most 23-week-olds have a slim but legitimate chance of survival, noting a case last year of quadruplets surviving at that age. The baby was born alive, according to a medical examination.

It’s a heartbreaking story (for me, at least, as the mother of a baby who is 26-weeks-old currently) but the reporter did a good job of being balanced and including a ton of information.

Sure, there are many questions or angles to be explored in the future. I think an interview with Jill Stanek, the Illinois nurse who (after witnessing a failed abortion attempt) has been influential in attempting to pass the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act, is in order. And perhaps a discussion of President Barack Obama’s efforts against the bills that came up on the matter while he was a state senator. It’s probably too much to hope for a discussion of what religious adherents in the culture war think are the central issues at play in a story like this.