I could write today about the absolute sadness I feel at the FDA’s decision to sell a pill intended to end the life of children in the womb over the counter as if it is just as inconsequential as a baby aspirin or allergy medicine. But I trust many others will expound on this calamity. I may well add my thoughts about this later.
But today I want to write about a different aspect of this story. With this decision 15 year olds (and no doubt this restriction will soon be be eased) can walk into the local Walgreens or CVS and make the decision to end a life dwelling in their womb without ever consulting their parents. The drug store worker steps in and parents the child through the process.
This is part of a much larger problem. Increasingly, parents are being removing from the parenting process. And it is such an easy move for those who are pushing it. The main stories of parenting we hear about and experience are so atrocious that making the case that society or government must step in is so easy.
Think about how much of our children’s lives we outsource to someone else. How often are children even in the presence of their parents?
But here is the truth from Scripture and nature: Children belong to parents. Some may not like the word belong since it’s connotation is often that of ownership. Americans understandably recoil at the thought of one human being owned by another due to our history with slavery. But children belong to parents meaning first and foremost that their wellbeing is the responsibility of the parents.
And this means that we must be intentionally hands off with other people’s children. This is an easy thing to do when we think about it as people keeping their hands of our children. But it also means keeping our hands of other people’s children even when we do not agree with how they raise their children. And I should be clear, this is not to say that all parenting is equal or that some parenting is quite sinful. But it is to say that we need to resist the urge to save children from their own parent’s ways even when we do not agree with them. We can exhort, rebuke, and help other parents with this responsibility. We may at times (abuse) have to criminally punish parents. But we must resist the urge to remove the responsibility of raising children from parents.
Sometimes we wonder why parents are so bad in our day at raising children. Part of the problem is that they so rarely have to truly do it. Others have taken over so much of the responsibility of parenting. We must stop this trend.
We need to stop doing parenting over the counter. We must go back to Plan A when it comes to children.
