Lesbian fertility rights

Two California doctors endure an eight-year legal vendetta for declining to help bring a fatherless child into the world. In the case of the lesbians versus their doctors, the California State Supreme Court continued its war against religion by declaring that equality trumps liberty of conscience. But, contrary to the impression created in the media, the case of Guadalupe Benitez v. North Coast Woman’s Care is not over. The case still has to be tried. The Supreme Court’s ruling only means that the doctors cannot use religious liberty as a defense for violating the prohibition on sexual orientation discrimination.

The complaint against the doctors is simple: thimageey have a policy of not performing artificial inseminations on unmarried women. Benitez and her allies in the gay rights movement find this offensive and wish it to be outlawed. I believe the doctors’ policy should not only be permitted, but positively celebrated, praised and supported by law.

That is because I believe that every child is entitled to a relationship with both of his or her biological parents. Children have a right to know and be known by both parents. Every child has a right to their genetic and social heritage. Every child is entitled to care, bonding and attachment with both parents.

That is because I believe that every child is entitled to a relationship with both of his or her biological parents. Children have a right to know and be known by both parents. Every child has a right to their genetic and social heritage. Every child is entitled to care, bonding and attachment with both parents.

Children cannot possibly defend these rights by themselves. Adult society must protect them by preventing harm, not through restitution after the fact. By the time a child is old enough to grasp that something of value has been withheld from him the damage has been done. He has gone through a significant part of his childhood without his father. That loss can not be restored.

So when Benitez demanded the use of fresh, non-frozen sperm from a friend, the doctors declined to participate. And for declining to participate, they have endured an eight-year legal vendetta, along with irreparable harm to their medical practice, their personal finances and their reputations.

But the doctors are in the right. Benitez and her army of left-wing lawyers are wrong. Children are entitled to a relationship with both of their parents. The state has no business helping mothers disrupt that most natural of relationships by creating artificial barriers between fathers and their children.

And to require each and every doctor to assist these women is more than cruel to the child. It is unjust to medical professionals who really deserve our respect and gratitude.

(Jennifer Roback Morse, PhD, is the Founder and President of the Ruth Institute.http://www.ruthinstitute.org/)

Europeans begin their decline in just 7 years

While some experts and officials harp on about the population explosion in the developing world, a problem is developing on their own back doorstep which is usually downplayed. This week for the first time the European Union has conceded just how close the region is to demographic decline. A report from Eurostat, the official number cruncher warns that in a mere seven years, deaths will begin to exceed births in Europe as a result of low fertility. image

Germany would lose its status as Europe’s most populous nation but several East European nations would experience a sharp drop in numbers, with populations shrinking by a quarter or more. Ireland would be one of the few countries with significant population growth. Adding immigration at the current level would stave off population decline until around 2035. The EU’s population would grow from the present level of 495 million to 521, but then fall back to 506 million in 2060. By then, the United States population would have grown from the current 301 million to 468 million.

Of course, these are only projections, but the implications are a stark warning. At present, there are four persons of working age for every person aged 65 or over, says Eurostat. In 2060, the ratio is expected to be two to one. The burden of pensions and healthcare for an expanding older population will be economic and political problems. Increased immigration may be an option, but at present it is unpopular with Europeans. Most low fertility countries are trying to encourage more births, but economists tend to be afraid of the impact of an increasing young population needing services right at the time when older citizens are draining the public purse. It looks as though meddling with fertility, as most governments have done, was not a good idea after all.   (International Herald Tribunal-Europe)

Homeschooling: a learning experience for the whole family

Just recently, the California Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District reversed its earlier ruling to make homeschooling in California illegal unless the parents had teacher certification. This ruling, which would have affected over 166,000 homeschoolers, ignited a huge outcry from people across the nation. So strong was the support for homeschoolers, that in the Court of Appeal, the three judges voted unanimously in  favor of reversing the former ruling.

This incident sheds light on the fact that homeschoolers in the United States are now a force to be reckoned with. And their numbers are growing. According to a survey made by the US Department of Education, there were 850,000 homeschoolers in 1999. By 2003, the imagenumbers had grown by 29 per cent to 1.1 million. In 2006, according to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), there were between 2.0 to 2.5 million children being educated at home. “Homeschooling,” writes the institute’s Dr Brian Ray, “is now bordering on ‘mainstream’ in the United States. It may be the fastest growing form of education in the United States.”

Why are so many parents choosing to educate their children at home?According to the same survey, put out by the US Department of Education, 31 per cent of parents chose to home school because of their concerns with the school environment, such as negative peer pressure and drugs. And 30 per cent of parents did so in order to give religious and moral instruction. Indeed, these would be our primary reasons for choosing this path.

Does making babies make sense?

Why so many people find it difficult to see humanity in a developing foetus. In December of 2005 an op-ed piece by sociologist Dalton Conley appeared in the New York Times, stating that “most Americans... see a fetus as an individual under construction.” This widespread vision of the embryo and fetus as “under construction” is the key to understanding why good people may find pro-life arguments to be absurd or otherwise non-rational, eg, religious, particularly with regard to embryonic stem cell research.

The construction idea also may explain hoimagew Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been able to support both the right to life from the moment of conception and embryonic stem cell research.

I think that this is exactly the way that many people see the embryo, like the car-to-be at the very beginning of the construction process. In the first stages of construction you don’t have a house, you don’t have a car, you don’t have a human individual yet. You don’t ever have what you’re making when you’ve just started making it. This does not mean that our “constructionist” friends are anti-life. They may believe that a baby should have absolute protection once it has been fully fabricated. But until that point, for them, abortion just isn’t murder.

What happens when a constructionist hears a pro-lifer argue that a human embryo has the same right to life as any other human being? Journalist Michael Kinsley, writing in the Washington Post, expressed his utter bewilderment: “I cannot share, or even fathom, [the pro-life] conviction that a microscopic dot – as oblivious as a rock, more primitive than a worm – has the same rights as anyone reading this article.

As a result of accident or of age, many of us will become no longer capable (in this world) of expressing well, or expressing at all, the speech, reason, choice, and love for which we remain formed. Our humanity will have once more become partially hidden, as it was when we had just been conceived, but it will still be there.

(A longer version of this article appeared as "Construction, Development, and Revelopment" in XVII LIFE AND LEARNING 243-255(2008), edited by Joseph Koterski, SJ.)