Category: Single Parenting

Fallout

Fallout is defined as the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. It is the consequences of the unleashing so much raw energy after such a powerful event. I was wondering today about the fallout after an abortion.

What I have seen on the Facebook is the accusation against Pro-Life Christians to the effect that Christians, who are pro-life, ignore the plight of poor, hungry children whose parents can’t afford to feed them. That Christians are all for the saving of the unborn, but are apathetic to the plight of poor and under-served children. The narrative goes like this:

Our typical seeker of abortion (we will call her Roshanda, since abortion disproportionately affects the black community) goes to the abortion clinic. She is going because she already has six children and simply can’t afford to have another. Yet the Christians who intervene convince her to have this seventh child. After the child is born, where are the Christians who will help her raise this child, help pay for medical bills, make sure baby number seven has enough to eat? The question is: Why are Christians pro-life until the baby is actually born? Where did the Christians go? Isn’t it better just to let Roshanda have her abortion?

Let me express my imperfect and under-informed opinion for the pro-choicers. The Pro-Choice movement expresses that Roshanda ought not to burden herself with that seventh child, and encourage here to “terminate the pregnancy” (i.e., kill the unborn child) so that she won’t have to suffer. They would want Roshanda to go through with the procedure.

Roshanda instead goes to the abortion clinic. She is told that she wouldn’t want to burden this child with life and that she should just terminate her pregnancy. Roshanda has some misgivings, but the nurse convinces her that she is doing the right thing. She then meets the nurse in the procedure room who preps her for surgery. The doctor flies in, doesn’t talk to her, because he is just going room to room as fast as he can, and quickly begins the procedure. But he cuts an artery (or something else equally significant) and she starts to hemorrhage, and Roshanda is rushed to the ER via ambulance.  Roshanda spends a couple weeks in the hospital recovering from a botched abortion procedure by a doctor that shouldn’t be practicing medicine and an abortion clinic that is not subject to the standards and protocols that EVERY OTHER clinic and hospital is subject to. Now Roshanda not only has an ambulance transportation fee, but a long list of hospital bills, lost wages, money spent now on legal bills because she “abandoned” her other six children while she was in the hospital. Why? Because Child Protective Services noticed there was no parent in the home.

Then, after Roshanda returns from the hospital, she is faced with debilitating depression. Why? Because her hormones, originally gearing her up for motherhood are now flooding her with guilt. Yes, GUILT. She has to go into therapy. Who is paying for her therapy sessions? Who is paying for her hospital bills? Who is paying for her legal bills? And who will pay for her children’s upbringing if Roshanda commits suicide because of her post-partum depression? This one choice has cost her thousands of dollars. Is this equal if not greater than the amount of money most people estimate for the cost of raising a single child? Will the Pro-Choice people step in and help pay for any of these things? Where are the Pro-Choice trust funds for survivors of botched abortions? For the children of those survivors?

Pro-Life Christians promote adoption. Christians promote and run homes for children. We used to call them orphanages. Any child who is left at a fire department, ER, police station, etc. will be placed in foster care. Foster Care is not perfect, but isn’t it better than death? Is there evidence that some Christians abandon some children after they are born? I’m sure you can find some. But is there any evidence that the Pro-choice people help with the survivors of abortion and their families when things go wrong? I don’t know much, but I doubt it. I believe you will find that Pro-Life Christians in general support and assist children in far greater numbers than the Pro-Choice folks do for those that have an abortion.

Just my thoughts on the subject.

God Bless!

The Present Crisis

Not to be alarmist or anything, but we do have a crisis of family in our community. This is the gift of modern “civilization.” Let me tell you what I see. Because I am sure you see it too. Everyday, after school, kids get off of the bus. Perfectly normal, yes. But where do those kids go? Do they go home? Some do. Some stay out, go down to the park, to friends’ houses, or they simply roam the streets, looking for something to do. Where are the parents? Not at home. They are working. They are out, often with no option but to leave their kids to fend for themselves. These kids, roaming unsupervised, are allowed to do anything they want, to go through backyards, church lots, and responsible to no one. Will there be any discipline of these kids? Not if the parents are too tired to give it.

Is this the parents’ fault? Not entirely. Many of these are single parents, who must work these long hours to support the household, to pay the bills, to make ends meet. Why are they single? They are single because a husband, a wife, a boyfriend, or even a girlfriend have walked out and abandoned them because. Life with them was too “difficult” too “stressful” and “they just couldn’t take it anymore.” Everyone has heard these words at one time or another. But somehow some couples manage to stick it out, while others fall apart.

The reasons for this abandonment are legion. When all is said and done, we have single parents trying to help their families survive with what Minimum Wage is willing to pay them. It’s not that these parents don’t care, it’s that they have no energy left-over to care. What energy they do have is making supper, ordering the kids to be quiet, and off to bed. I’m a parent. I know how much energy is required, even demanded to “raise up a child in the way he should go.” A single parent doesn’t have anyone to talk to. They have no one to lean back on. So, yes, many will take up the next boyfriend or girlfriend willing to give him or her an ounce of concern. We have adults in our community so starved for affection that they will take up with anybody, settle for anyone to give them that affection. Have they lost their senses? No.

As adults, we are hungry, and this is the necessary stuff of life that we need. Marriage was designed by God to fill that niche, to satisfy that need for intimacy and affection in a healthy and loving relationship with someone of the opposite sex. When marriage ends in divorce, when marriage is avoided altogether, parents suffer, and children, just as we see it today, roam the streets looking for affection, attention, from anybody. This is the reason for nearly every problem we have in our community. The Breakdown of the Family. If our families don’t function, our community doesn’t function.

Is there hope?

I believe so, or I wouldn’t be in the ministry that I’m in. Obviously, the correct Sunday School answer is Jesus. But what does that mean for hurting families? That means a community of faith like the church that will reach out and will embrace these hurting parents, will support them and strengthen them. That will give them hope for tomorrow through our Savior Jesus Christ. That means reaching out to the kids of your community and giving them guidance, leadership through the rocky years of adolescence and beyond. It will require the members of your community that are Christian to reach out to the families that aren’t. And that begins with you.

In order to avert this crisis, we’ve got to begin where we can do the most good for the moment, at home.