Monday, November 20, 2006

"Be Fruitful and Multiply" for Jesus?


I love babies. I'm at that age where I am too old to have them any more and too young for my children to be having them. But, there is no one in the world more important to me than my children. And, I have spent a lot of my career working with people on how to better parent their children.

I just want to be clear -- I am pr0-children...in my life and in your's. I fully support the right of every family to decide when, whether, and how many children to have.

So, why did I find this report in The Nation about the "Quiverfull Movement" so disturbing? Kathryn Joyce in "Arrows for the War" details this religious movement which is encouraging Christian women to have as many children as possible in order to fill the ranks of fundamentalist Christians. It is sexist, xenophobic, and scary. I couldn't help but think of the "Handmaiden's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. You need to read it to believe it.

I can just imagine a new federal program encouraging huge families under the anti-contraception proposed head of the nation's family planning program (which reminded me a lot of "1984"). (I know that sounds ridiculous, but so does an anti-family planning doctor running the nation's family planning program.) On Friday, I told you this was a done deal. But, it turns out that family planning advocates believe that they can reverse this appointment, and urge you to contact Secretary Michael Leavitt with your concerns. RCRC has posted an action letter http://www.actionstudio.org/public/page_view_all.cfm?option=begin&pageid=7461&tmode=0
that you can sign and they'll have it sent to him.

You would think that the people who oppose abortions would be doing everything they could do encourage women to use family planning to avoid unplanned pregnancies. It turns out, that at least for some of them, they'd really rather we just have more children.

Actually, I don't think they want people with my point of view to have more children -- just people like their's.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

yup ... they wouldn't want me to have any more children. ;) In fact, they'd probably want to sterilize people like me ... liberal Christian feminist that I am. ;)