After the Talmud posting on child-rearing, I was doing some research into child-raising. I found the following quote. I should warn those who are easily shocked that it is a tough quote.
Infant abandonment was also a fairly common phenomenon in early modern Europe. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the typical foundling (enfant trouvé, French; expósito, Spanish; gettello, Italian; Findelkind, German) was the product of an illicit union, abandoned by a single mother who feared the consequences to her reputation. Since, outside of Italy, the numbers were relatively small, and 80 to 90 percent of foundlings under the age of two died within a short period, various foundling homes, orphanages, and hospitals were generally able to cope with those infants who survived into childhood. The eighteenth century, however, witnessed a sharp increase in the number of abandoned children in Europe, particularly in large cities. In Paris, for instance, the annual abandonment rate more than tripled between 1700 and 1789, going from 1,700 to about 6,000 foundlings per year. By the end of the century, one in four babies was abandoned in the cities of Toulouse and Milan, a rate that continued to climb everywhere in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century. Most of the babies continued to be illegitimate, but married couples also increasingly abandoned their children, sometimes as a temporary child-care measure. Many local studies have established a close correlation between rising food prices (often due to famine) and increased abandonment.
The most extreme fate for an unwanted child was death by infanticide. Here too the majority of the perpetrators convicted during the early modern period were single mothers, usually domestic maids, who feared the reputational and economic consequences of giving birth to a bastard child. A number of new ordinances and legal codes during the sixteenth century, most notably the Holy Roman Empire’s Carolina (1532), brought new attention to infanticide and prescribed precise measures for preventing, detecting, and punishing the crime. There is no basis for believing that such laws corresponded to an actual increase in infanticides. Their social impact, however, was undeniable. By the eighteenth century, infanticide had become the most common cause of female executions in Europe. Only a number of tracts by Enlightenment authors eventually roused pity for the situations of most of these women and led to the abolishment of capital punishment for infanticide.
As those of you who read this blog know, I am thoroughly against abortion. But, the report above does give some credence to the fear that pro-choice people have about the criminalization of mothers who have abortions. Please note that, “by the eighteenth century, infanticide had become the most common cause of female executions in Europe.” Since we pro-lifers make the clear point that there is no difference between unnecessary abortions and infanticide, and since that was the most common cause of female executions in Europe less than 200 years ago, there is some historical reason to fear that illegal abortions will lead to either life sentences or even capital punishment. And, frankly, there are pro-life people who argue that in the case of illegal abortions, both the provider and the mother should be prosecuted for first-degree murder.
But, without getting into the subject of prosecutions, look at the other part of the report, the issue of foundlings and infanticide. Even during the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, both abandonment and infanticide were a problem. Other reading that I have done confirms that in Italy, the number of abandonments was much higher than in the rest of Europe. As the study points out, the death rate of foundlings in orphanages in Europe was incredibly high. In essence, abandoning a baby was almost tantamount to infanticide, given the foundling death rate. Another study says that the reason was the incredibly poor treatment that a foundling received in an orphanage. Thus, the tales about orphanages by people like Charles Dickens are not exaggerations. If anything they actually soft-pedal the reality.
When we speak as pro-life people, we need to look at history and answer history. It is not sufficient to simply say that we intend to pass laws against abortion. We need to give answers as to how we will prevent the type of history quoted above from repeating itself. It is easy to say that it is the Church’s job to take care of infants and foundlings, but our very history shows that we have not exactly previously shown ourselves to be either willing or capable of taking care of the children of unwanted pregnancy. Rather, even church run orphanages were notoriously underfunded and also had a high death rate. In both the United States and Canada, horrendous abuse stories have come out of church run orphanages and boarding schools in the late 19th and up to the middle 20th centuries.
More than that, there is the issue of penal punishments. Far too many pro-life people have ducked the subject of the pregnant mother who aborts her child. Yes, all pro-life people say that the person responsible for the abortion should be brought to trial. But, almost all pro-life people avoid the subject of the mother. Sadly, they avoid it because it is politically unpalatable to say that the mother would be prosecuted, particularly if it is a pregnant teenager. But, there is also a history back there of the regular execution of women. We need to deal openly and forthrightly with how we would deal with pregnant females (minors and adults) who would have an illegal abortion. Given history, it is not simply a “technique” for pro-choice people to ask that particular question.
Slowly the polls are changing in a pro-life direction. However, I suspect that we will be able to get those polls to change faster if, in a fairly united way, we answer the questions above. More than that, we really need to look at the back history, and I mean the history after the Early Church Fathers, when the Church forgot to keep on doing what the Early Church Fathers did so well. Because, that is the history that we need to answer, the history that shows the increasing abandonments and infanticide in Christian Europe, the church orphanages with frequent deaths, the church schools with historical bad treatments of their boarders, and the execution of women–mostly maids who were probably impregnated by their masters–while those who impregnated them went scot free. (Does this sound like the woman caught in adultery to you?)
We need to be able to say to our society, in a convincing way, that the history I quoted above will not repeat itself. We need to assure our society that mercy will reign every bit as strong as justice, and that we will not conveniently forget small details–like full funding of orphanages and adoption agencies–once the laws are passed. You see, we need to be believable. There are enough politicians running around who will promise anything, but no one believes them.
I have started this response several times. The fact is that we have to care about children after they are born as well as champion them before they are born. We must care for their mothers and their fathers. We must strive to build a society where no child is unwanted, unloved or ill-treated, where young men are respected for the care they take of their children not their mere fecundity, where women and children are not still seen as second class citizens and where a community responds to the needs of its people. There are no new sins–just old sins recycled and given new names. We live in a fallen world, but as Christians, we are called out and commanded to love one another. This means to me that we care for each other as we would Christ. That must include the poor, the unwanted, the ill-treated–the many Samaritans in our midst. It is not the government’s job, it is ours. We have done it poorly historically, but it is our call none the less. It is a call, I fear, we have sadly neglected. Would that we begin to do a better job.
It has become a mantra to say that it is not the government’s job, it is ours or the Church’s. However, the history Father Ernesto quoted above shows that the Church has not fulfilled that role in her history. Why should Father Orthoduck believe in any way that the Church will mysteriously change now? Moreover, since Romans 13 says that the Church is a minister of God, it is quite appropriate for the government to be involved in various areas. The reason free public education came in, is because the Church was NOT teaching ALL children, for instance. The reason for child labor laws was that the Church was certainly not preaching against the deadly sweat shops in which children worked in the 19th century.
One can only go so long claiming that if people had been truly Christian, then they would have [fill in the blank]. The reality is that part of the job of the government (according to Romans 13) is, indeed, to suppress evil in society, and that includes sweat shops, uncontrolled owners, the failure to teach children, infanticide, euthanasia, abortion, monopolies that harm consumers, contaminated foods, mistreatment of employees, etc. And, since the Church did not even come close to fulfilling her job, Social Security and Medicare became necessary.
Father Orthoduck gets very tired of an argument that has no basis in the history of the Church. There is a reason why God named government as one of his ministers.
One can only go so long claiming that if people had been truly Christian, then they would have [fill in the blank].
Usually this means “If people had truly been Christian, they would have thought, acted, and been Just Like ME.”
And it’s common knowledge outside of the four Thomas Kincade-decorated walls of Christian Bizarro World that Pro-Life Christians lose ALL interest in a kid once the kid comes down the chute. They have value only so far as they can Advance The Agenda.
There’s also the “Abortion is MURDER!” mantra of pro-lifers. (Personally, I lean more towards splitting the difference and classifying it as Manslaughter; at least acknowledge a homicide has occurred.) You know the Only Biblical (TM) Penalty for Murder, don’t you? Put these two together, and…
Please note that I didn’t say that the church WOULD do it–just that it SHOULD–that being said, the fallen nature of human beings often precludes them doing what they SHOULD–but I do think one of the sins of Christians is that we so often fail to put our money where our mouths are. WE will feed the hungry–but not in our own middle class or upper class neighborhood–not that I live in one of those, but….. and we will feed them with the hands of others if you get my drift. We will adopt babies who are the right color or in perfect health, but too often will not adopt the ones who are different or too old or whatever. We assign visiting the sick to the pastor and the jail ministry to someone–anyone else–now I am not talking everyone–but too often, we want to help the unfortunate but not if they are dirty, ignorant, or live in the wrong section of town. We forget that Jesus didn’t say that we should only feed the RIGHT SORT of hungry or those with the PROPER SORT of thirst or the kind of illness we can STAND and not get our hands dirty.
I have been a psych and substance abuse nurse for many years–now retired–and have heard over and over again–“I couldn’t do that. How can you take it?” etc etc–My response is always that that alcoholic may have been at detox 20 times, but he is still a child of God–and that schizophrenic may have lice because he is too psychotic to remember to take care of himself, but he is also God’s child. That 15 year old from the ghetto with a 2 month old baby whose mother had HER when she was 15 needs someone to do things like teach her how to hold a baby and how to change a diaper nto people who preach abstinance at her–she already failed Abstinance 101 and needs to know how to care for this little person who is depending on her. I get so angry–and the government doesn’t do such a great job either. Working in Mental Health for many many years, I watched the deinstitutionalization of thousands of mental health patients without ANY plans being made for their care and their follow up in the community. I saw government folks place a 68 year odl woman who had been in a state hospital since she was 19 when she first became psychotic in a home placement that was a rooming house in a bad section of town over a bar with the bathroom down the hall and then wondered why she didn’t thrive in her “freedom.” After bweing mugged for her check and ending up in the institution for which I worked all she could do was wonder why they had kicked her out of her home. You see at the state hospital she had lived most of her life in, she was safe, had medical care, had clothing and food.. She worked in a little garden and did fine sewing to sell at the gift shop and for employees for a little pocket money. Then there was the retarded man of 35 who had been institutionalized at 12 for some unknown crime–we never found out–who had never shopped or cooked food, handled money, bought clothes–nothing–He was “freed” from the institution and was supposed to be grateful for his little room–again in a bad neighborhood–and when he bounced back to us he was mal-nourished and dehydrated because he didn’t know how to get money for that piece of paper that came in the mail with numbers on it–nopr did he know how to buy food, open a can, turn on a stove and cook it.
Okay–rant over–I am done–
I just wanted to say thanks. I was a two-time teen parent and that life experience still shapes who I am today as a middle-aged man. My life experience is .. complicated, but I suffice to say that I did not really begin to become however much like a Christian I might be until my thirties. Nevertheless, abortion was never something I ever felt was right. I wouldn’t trade my children for any sort of different life. Concerns about abortion are hardly limited to those within Christian belief, though Christian faith should certainly strengthen them. Nevertheless, I still don’t really call myself “pro-life” in the sense of the pro-life movement and much of it is for exactly the reasons you outline. Nowhere in that movement (and I’ve been an “evangelical” Christian now for fifteen+ years, so I am quite familiar with it) is any sort of detailed plan for how laws would be structured, how infants would be supported, the precise penalties and against whom they would be imposed, or any of the structure that would be required to prevent exactly the sort of historical results you described. Abortion is not really something with which most people are comfortable — certainly not at the rates at which they presently occur in the US. But it’s not enough to simply be against something. You have to be able to demonstrate that you have a plan that will improve the status quo rather than make it worse. And I don’t see that right now. I certainly don’t know how to proceed in a way that untangles that knot and makes things better for all. I have a hard time imagining what a different American society might look like. But absent such a vision, the “pro-life” movement isn’t going to convince anyone who isn’t already a true believer. And, as you outline, no such society will be possible without the full involvement of our government — not just as the enforcer of laws, but as the safety net for those who would otherwise fall through the cracks or be crushed between the stones.