Children: A Blessing or a Curse?
If we asked the question, "Are children a burden or a blessing?" of course, the answer would be "a blessing." The Bible says so. But you wouldn't necessarily know it today.
President Obama said famously that he hopes his daughters wouldn't engage in sex before it is time; but if they do, he wouldn't want them to be "punished with a baby." A baby is punishment?
It was reported recently that China might possibly be re-thinking their one-child only policy.
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In the meantime, they prosecute the current policy. Writing for the Agence France-Presse Felicia Sonmez says: "Top Chinese film director Zhang Yimou is facing a $164 million lawsuit after violating the country's controversial one-child policy."
Zhang's "crime"? Fathering two sons and a daughter in addition to another daughter he had with an ex-wife.
Sonmez notes, "Critics say China's late-1970s family-planning law, which restricts most couples to one child, is selectively and sometimes brutally enforced, while the wealthy and well-connected are easily able to pay the fines levied for extra offspring."
Those who suffer the most are the children who are murdered. The numbers are staggering.
For example, Reggie Littlejohn, President of the Women's Rights Without Frontiers posted an article in which she said: "In the United States we've had 50 million abortions since Roe vs. Wade. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) boasts that it has 'prevented' 400 million births through its One-Child Policy, which was instituted in 1979. That's more than the entire population of the United States!"
While some liberals have touted China's policy as a model to follow, the epidemic of gender-selected abortions with males favored over females is proof of the flawed philosophy.
Why are girls targeted? Partly because with a girl comes the expense of a dowry and of marrying her off. For many poor families, that could be a difficult burden. Hence, if you could only have one child, many parents choose that child to be a boy.
And now, there's a shortage of young ladies for young Chinese men. Writing for CNN Rob Brooks notes, "approximately 30 million more men than women will reach adulthood and enter China's mating market by 2020."
Policies like the "one-child" rule in China are driven by fears of overpopulation. However, abundant evidence shows that overpopulation is not the cause of economic hardship in nations like China; bad government---particularly communistic government---is at fault.
Economically thriving nations like Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan, actually have more population density than China, but succeed because they are not burdened by the economic system that has failed everywhere it is tried---Marxism.
Meanwhile, sex-selection abortions also disfavor little girls in India too. But that's the parents' doing, not the government's policy.
For millions of these parents in the Far East, they are making tough anti-life decisions in the face of tough anti-life situations economically. That's not to justify this, but to understand it.
However, the premise is all wrong. The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches freedom (resulting in centuries of Western economic dominance), and that human beings are made in the image of God. Therefore we have value. Christians believe God sent His only Son to receive the punishment on the cross our sins deserve. Therefore, we have infinite value.
Life is a gift. Children are a gift. The Bible says, "Blessed is he whose quiver is full of them."
Perhaps one of the drawbacks of the promotion of the abortion mentality is not recognizing the humanity of the unborn. When a mother wants the unborn, he or she is a baby. But when the mother doesn't want the unborn, then "it" (actually he or she) is a just blob or tissue or a POC (a "Product Of Conception").
When Mary (newly pregnant with Jesus) greeted her cousin Elizabeth (six months-pregnant with John the Baptist), the baby (i.e., John) leapt for joy in his mother's womb. The late D. James Kennedy noted that babies leap for joy, but blobs of tissue don't.
What is it about the "progressive" mindset that often views human beings, even babies, in a negative light? Perhaps they haven't come to grasp the great joy of Christmas---prophesied by Isaiah 700 years Before Christ: "For unto us a Child is born…"
