Pedophobia? The Doctor has a Point

It's Saturday of Labor Day weekend here in America, so I'll let something I saw in the news do the 'heavy lifting' of this post.

'No Children Until We're Ready,' 'Every Child a Wanted Child:' Sounds So Nice

Wouldn't it be nice, if young people could have the fun of getting married and having exciting and rewarding careers, and not have to put up with changing diapers and finding out why the baby woke up screaming at 3:00 a.m.?

Maybe. It'd also be nice if everybody had the sort of good looks that screen stars have after makeup and photo retouching. Maybe.

These days, quite a few people are able to conceive children and put them in cold storage until after they've had some fun. Then, thanks to techniques that can be put to better uses, if they feel like it, they can see which children have the qualities they want.

The "wanted children" get to live. The others are thrown away and die.

That's nice for the couple: they get to collect more money and live it up while they're comparatively young; and then have kids that meet their qualifications.

It's a little rough on the people who get thrown out with the rest of the medical waste: but they weren't 'wanted,' so it's okay.

Or, not.

Based on my own experience, an unplanned child who wouldn't pass eugenics screening might very well prefer being alive to the alternative.

Afraid of Children? Maybe

If today's western culture isn't afraid of children, we're certainly quite ambivalent toward them. With some reason. Many of us have bought into the idea that the individual - particularly the one we refer to as "me" - is of first importance.

So far, so good: Each of us is important. Even if we don't match some standard of physical perfection, we're still made in the image of God. (December 18, 2009)

Those two hypothetical young people who don't want to be bothered with kids yet are important. And so are the kids they'll have someone throw away a few years from now.

We're all important. Which, I think, is why each of us can't act as if that particular "me" is the only person around - or the only one that matters.

Here's an excerpt from what started me writing this post:

"Italian Doctor Condemns Culture That Fears Children"
Catholic News Agency via EWTN News (September 3, 2010)

"According to an Italian neonatal doctor, 'pedophobia'-the fear of children-is an obstacle to the realization of the full rights of children today. In an article published in L'Osservatore Romano to mark the 20th anniversary of a U.N. convention for children's rights, he made a case for making children, born and unborn, more accepted in society.

"Doctor Carlo Bellieni is a frequent contributor to L'Osservatore Romano on issues of health care, especially bioethics. In a Thursday article to mark the anniversary of the U.N.'s Convention on the Rights of the Child, he addressed a recent report that said children are still 'invisible' two decades after its adoption. The 1990 U.N. convention promoted 54 articles outlining special safeguards and care for the children of the world...."

"...Based on today's worldview, Dr. Bellieni extrapolated, the child only has rights if it meets certain set standards, an idea that he called a 'terrible premise for universal rights.'

"The inability of many to accept the child, said the doctor, derives from the fact that adults today have a difficulty acknowledging human dependence. A child, he explained, 'obliges us to recognize our personal fragility and dependence - something that deep down scares us.'

"Emphasizing that it is 'a scared and phobic society that rejects the child,' he listed several signs the fear of children existing in contemporary culture.

"Children, he said, are no long left to 'simply play' on their own and 'get dirty,' for example. It is 'a pedophobic society,' he pointed out, that only allows a baby to be born after it is submitted to a battery of tests, which sees them as a 'parents' right,' which sees parents 'freeze them as small embryos only to (later) suffocate them with toys to cover their own incapacity to be present.'

"The 'pedophobic culture' also reaches schools, he asserted, pointing to how children are bombarded with information as if they were adults, when the children are just 'desperately in search of free social and creative games.'..."

Sure, kids need to learn quite a bit to make it later in their lives - but they also need, I think, to learn how to be kids. And that's another topic.

Related posts:

• "Is it Wrong to Kill One Person on the Chance that Someone Else Might Benefit?"
  (August 30, 2010)
• "A Social Worker, a Stubborn Latina, and Another Hispanic Baby"
  (May 21, 2010)
• " 'Your Life, Your Choices is Back"
  (August 23, 2009)
• "Face Transplant: We Can Do it, But is it Right?"
  (May 6, 2009)
• "Medical Ethics and Human Experimentation: Why I Take it Personally"
  (February 3, 2009)
• "Human Clones Possible: Don't Worry, They're Just for Parts and Research"
  (February 2, 2009)