To Rewrite a Letter

By Seth -


On Friday, March 18, 2011, a letter to the editor entitled "Abortion Issue" appeared in the Columbus Dispatch. It is available online here.

I elected to rewrite the letter changing only the principal topic---exchanging "toddler killing" for "abortion"---while keeping the rhetoric intact. My rewrite is below.

Disclaimer: This is intended to prove a point concerning the prejudice our culture has against the preborn. It is not intended to suggest the religious groups named herein lobby for the act of killing toddlers.


The Issue of Killing Toddlers

Allow me to surprise some of your readers. I'm a deeply religious person, and I am for the choice of killing toddlers. So are many others in my Presbyterian congregation in suburban Upper Arlington. So are many other deeply religious people and clergy (men and women) that I work with across the state through the Ohio Religious Coalition for Parenting Choice. We come from Judaic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalist, and Lutheran faiths. Yes, you read that right. Religion and the Choice to Kill Toddlers. In fact, when our legislature writes laws that restrict our access to killing young children, they are restricting our religious freedom.

We share common ground with our brothers and sisters who are proposing seven anti-toddler-killing bills at the state house (two up for vote on Wednesday). Our common ground is the goal to reduce the number of toddlers killed. Our difference lies in the methods we seek to reach that goal. We at the Ohio Religious Coalition for Parenting Choice back the "Prevention First" bill (defeated for several years now, but to be reintroduced again this year) which offers comprehensive sexuality education for our kids, to prevent unwanted toddlers from being born. We back programs like universal health care and other programs to address addiction, poverty, abuse, and sickness social conditions which lead to women killing their toddlers. In contrast, the anti-killing bills before the Ohio legislature would return us to the days of women killing their toddlers in secret at home alone, and would not keep toddlers from being killed. Is the traumatic experience of killing toddlers in a bathtub what God would want for a beloved daughter?

Here's where we come from: God is a compassionate, forgiving God. God's love extends to everyone. Even people who are sick, who have been raped, who have suffered abuse, who are addicted, who have no support system, ... Even people who cannot continue to raise their toddlers for whatever complex reason. God loves these people. And as religious people, we are called to love these people, too. If we do not offer them a safe, legal, insurable option of killing toddlers, then these people, these people God loves, will resort to unsafe, illegal, cheap options for killing them. Think bathtubs. Think driving cars into the lake. Think dumpsters. Suffering will increase, and the rate of toddler-termination will not change. Our organization's roots extend back to the days before (insert landmark case decriminalizing toddler-killing), when a large group of rabbis and ministers (all men back then) networked to refer women to safe toddler-killings in other states and countries. They risked prosecution when making these referrals, but they did it to alleviate the suffering of these women.

Please don't call us pro-toddler-killing. Our clergy counsel women facing problem children with all options on the table: parenthood, adoption and termination. In some very tough circumstances, killing the toddler is the best of several bad options. Life is hard. Life is complicated. People who are anti-toddler-killing seem to see only the life of the toddler as being worth fighting for, but it is more complicated than that. There is the life of the mother and her family at stake. To ban the act of killing toddlers would lead to desperate measures by women. Toddler-killing would still occur. In a perfect world, there will be no poverty, no rape, no addiction, no sickness, no pain. In a perfect world, no woman would ever choose to kill her toddler. But we're not in a perfect world yet.

Let's not pretend we are.

Please stop these anti-toddler-killing bills.


Inane? Then why is this rhetoric successful in keeping preborn-killing legal?

Comments

  1. Bryce and ErinMarch 22, 2011 at 10:04 AM

    The rewritten version indeed makes a powerful point. Shocking, isn't it?

    ReplyDelete

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