Sacramentalist,
I just read through this entire thread, and am feeling sick to my stomach. At school I study political science and theology, and plan on going into political theory–so I could sit here and debate the merits of your ‘solution’. But I’m not going to do that, and my response to you will be completely rational and free from the intrusion of emotion which you apparently so detest.
So you seem to have found an issue on which no pope has made a specific, particular declaration, and which is unique from any other in American history. Yeah, yeah, they’ve said that the sterilization of *innocents *is reprehensible, but not of convicts. Yeah, yeah, the American government has forced the sterilization of thousands of citizens in the past, but they were truly innocent (even though the state found them guilty of ‘genetic defect’), and the ones you’re proposing are truly guilty.
Why don’t we step back, take a deep breath, and think about what it means to be Christian? Remember those theological virtues–faith, hope and **love? **Where is the love in your plan?
Or the mercy, humility, and service to neighbor?
Instead of sitting back in your cushy Constitutional Law summer class and passing judgment on millions of men and women who have not been given the grace (and it is absolutely **God’s grace **that allows you to be in the situation you are) to make good moral decisions, why don’t you try to think of solutions to their problems which are less filled with retribution and condescension, but more filled with love?
I have spent the past two months living and working at a Catholic hospitality home for pregnant single mothers who are alone or on the streets. They struggle with so many issues, such horrible pasts, such abandonment and pain. Things that I can hardly imagine–physical, emotional, and sexual abuse as children, multiple rapes, horrible broken families and broken relationships with men, domestic violence, the trauma of abortion, low self-esteem, the inability to find stable work or living arrangements…I could go on.
And then they find themselves pregnant, and realize that they are bringing another life into their same circumstances.
Are they at least in some way at fault for what has happened to them? Yes, they are. But so much more of what life has thrown at them are evils which they have suffered because of the sins of others.
How blessed are you and I not to have suffered as they have.
But is our task in response to their individual sin of extramarital sex to punish them? NO. We are to correct their errors, indeed, but not to violate them and figure that that will change their ways, much less their hearts.
What I have found more and more is that these women do not understand what it means to live well. They just don’t. They’ve never seen unconditional love or virtue. They can’t fathom it. They must be taught by the example of others.
For many, many, many of these women–the births of their children are the **best **thing that could possibly have happened to them. Their lives are changed. They become great mothers, committed to providing a nurturing environment for their children.
They look forward to a future where they might add more children–who they now see as blessings rather than curses–to their families, but only when they are ready.
It’s much like the sacrament of Reconciliation (hey, Sacramentalist–you should know all about it!). We confess our sins to God, repent for them, recognize the wrong that we have done–and are reborn by His grace. Our sin is no more. We are told that it has been washed away, forgotten in the mind of God.
Should we not show the same mercy of forgiveness to broken women?
Your proposal would so bolster the message of the culture of death that children are burdens and curses. They apparently either are to be aborted in secret or borne with the knowledge that their mother’s very *womanhood *will be completely destroyed because of that baby’s existence.
So much for healing.
If you want to heal our culture of death, and all the moral evils it entails, so that it becomes more friendly to human life, you ***must ***start one person at a time, teaching them their dignity and worth. Even the ‘criminal’–moral or otherwise–has human dignity.
