Yesterday’s vote in the U. S. House of Representatives to sustain Bush's veto of the popular S-Chip Program is true to the pattern of Protecting the guilty and punishing the innocent, we have come to call govenrance in this sad era. It has been like one of those Polaroid photographs I knew as a child. As you watched the picture develop, you saw what you knew was there, because you had just seen it.
The so called Pro Life* contingent of the Christian Right were suddenly and dramatically “outed” by their votes on Children’s Health Insurance. As Sister Joan Chittister has pointed out the agenda is to take responsibility up to the point of birth, then to cut mothers and their children loose. But family values are about taking total responsibility, aren't they? So what is going on? These folks are not Pro Life, they are only Pro Birth. After a fetus matures and is brought into the world, then their affections turn to the concerns of insurance and drug industries, those willing to pay so that government intervention might not interfere with burgeoning profits. There is an accountability crisis in the Christian Right.
We need to pursue an agenda that is Pro Life and responsible to women and families. It is not enough to protect children up to birth. We need to find a way to protect them after birth. First, that means trusting their mothers. It also means offering the sort of support to families that counts, like child care, medical support, a world free of shock and awe; a world where a woman's preprogatives about her body are protected, even affirmed.
For more on the subject,check out,this website: www.rockridgeinstitute.org The article, "Could You Explain a Vote Against Children's Health to the Children?," offers some actionable ideas. You may want to try them out.
*Pro Life is a tragic misnomer for the irresponsible Christian Right, where a woman's independent choice is subverted and stifled.
Friday, October 19, 2007
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