(Swans - February 27, 2012) In an unprecedented convergence of family, faith, conscience, community, education, taxpayer welfare, freedom-from-government, and legacy investment groups in the United States, a formidable and richly endowed new organization has just been formed for the birthing, adoption, raising, and education of all children whose biological mothers had originally sought to dismiss them by having abortions.
The new private agency is the Richland Inter-Faith Right-To-Life Trust (RIFRTLT). This Trust is a non-profit partnership of all the American Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Mormon religious organizations officially recognized by the United States government, as well as all the anti-abortion and right-to-life activist groups, and all the family advocacy lobbying groups in the nation.
RIFRTLT also includes private enterprise and small government groups as major funding contributors, because this trust is a complete free-market solution to having an abortion-free America. The Trust is capable of adopting all 1.6 million children initially destined for abortions annually, and caring for them up to age 20 at an average cost of $10,000/year, a figure achieved because of the Trust's many economies of scale. The Richland IF-RTL Trust has a $320B annual operating budget, and 100 million individual members (56% of Americans oppose abortion), besides its many institutional contributors, all providing in total an annual income that averages to $3200 per individual member.
RIFRTLT's 100 million members have each made a lifetime pledge to personally tithe time, effort, and money to the cause of ensuring that no abortions ever occur in the United States again. A free-market, abortion-free America will be assured by the loving intervention of the Trust, not because of the coercion of or violence toward pregnant women and their doctors, and which marred previous anti-abortion efforts. Each undesired child will be adopted by the Trust and sponsored by one or more of its members. Each Trust child will be properly raised and cared for up to their age of majority, when they would be prepared to enter the workforce in a productive capacity, or enter a profession, and be both physically and economically independent (and debt-free) in a completely successful manner.
The loving intervention of the Trust would begin immediately when a woman sought an abortion. She would be given free and complete medical coverage for the entire term of her pregnancy, and for whatever postpartum period her medical supervisor thought best for the stabilization of the child before transfer to the adoptive sponsorship. Should the woman decide to keep the baby, she would be contracted to the Trust as a "natural birth sponsor" having the obligation of caring for her child independently thereafter, or of giving the child up to the Trust in the event she is unwilling to continue parenting or is found unfit for parenting by government child welfare agencies. She would not be indebted for the medical expenses of her pregnancy (after all, the entire purpose of the Trust is to ensure the sanctity of life).
Those children who were born with debilitating physical and emotional handicaps would be cared for and developed up to their abilities for the remainder of their natural lives. "The right to life is too important to be left in the hands of a soulless government," declared the Richland IF-RTL Trust CEO, who along with the entire pro bono corporate management and the pro bono board of directors was present at the grand opening ceremony. The press release announcing the new trust went on to describe the motives behind its formation as follows:
The many predatory pressures and immoral influences on families today make it increasingly difficult to raise children safely and comfortably, as many of us were raised in simpler times.
Some decry the corrosive effects of salacious television, video, electronic, and motion picture entertainment on children's moral development. Others object to the family- and faith-alienating effects of peer pressure, the desire among young people for popularity sweeping them into unhealthy practices like drug use and sexual promiscuity, and into socially and intellectually dead-end associations and relationships.
Other critics of the modern ills assaulting family life will point to the extremely competitive and frankly amoral nature of commercialism today: the exploitation of children in unduly sexualized and adult-themed advertising and entertainment, as well as the heavy pressures on parents to devote an excessive amount of their attention to work and thus neglect their families, by essentially being absent.
Finally, all observers concerned by the breakdown of family values in the United States agree that the excuses offered in economic terms to justify abortions (nearly 1 in 4 American children live in poverty, an added child can seem like an excessive cost) are an affront to the moral character of the nation, and a challenge to that moral character to rise up and show itself through its good works instead of hollow words.
We believe that government is always the worst solution to family problems and must always be the very last resort we turn to. Hence, our family, faith, conscience, and private enterprise communities have joined together to uphold the moral standards we deem sacred for the proper care of America's children, without the ills of government interference in family matters, and without the practice of abortion, which we find morally repellent.
We have joined together in the Richland Inter-Faith Right-To-Life Trust to put our principles into action, and redeem our nation's character in the eyes of a Highest Power we jointly and humbly acknowledge.
We invite all like-minded people to join us and share in this work; the only real morality is what we do, not what we say.
It is now necessary for me to declare that almost everything stated above the dashed line is fiction, and everything stated below it is true. I am sorry if this disappoints you. The last 12 words above the dashed line are true, as are the facts that about 1.6 million abortions are performed annually in the U.S., about 56% of Americans oppose or dislike the practice of abortion, and 22% of America's children live below the federally-defined poverty line.
The fantasy of the Richland Inter-Faith Right-To-Life Trust is a reflection on recent news stories on the exploitation by contenders for the Republican nomination for president of popular sentiments and prejudices regarding abortion. It is also a reflection on recent political skirmishes in the ongoing war by American religious fundamentalists to Talibanize the United States government for control by a patriarchy over females, fecundity, and the anima and animus anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind (e.g., abortion, contraceptive coverage in health benefit plans, gay marriage).
Another thought motivating composition of this article is a biblical quote from the New Testament. Jesus Christ has told his apostles that his period of earthly existence will soon end, after which they must find distant Christian communities and enlarge them. How will the apostles know these distant Christians? "By their works shall ye know them." Whether one reads the New Testament as history or myth, the clarity of this point is undimmed.
What keeps the Richland Inter-Faith Right-To-Life Trust in the realm of fantasy rather than reality is simply a lack of "works." If you use the criterion of works to seek out Christians, you will find far fewer than you hear about. The only real morality is what we do, not what we say.
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About the Author
Manuel García, Jr. on Swans. He is a native of the upper upper west side barrio of the 1950s near Riverside Park in Manhattan, New York City, and a graduate engineering physicist who specialized in the physics of fluids and electricity. He retired from a 29 year career as an experimental physicist with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the first fifteen years of which were spent in underground nuclear testing. An avid reader with a taste for classics, and interested in the physics of nature and how natural phenomena can impact human activity, he has long been interested in non-fiction writing with a problem-solving purpose. García loves music and studies it, and his non-technical thinking is heavily influenced by Buddhist and Jungian ideas. A father of both grown children and a school-age daughter, today García occupies himself primarily with managing his household and his young daughter's many educational activities. García's political writings are left wing and, along with his essays on science-and-society, they have appeared in a number of smaller Internet magazines since 2003, including Swans. Please visit his personal Blog at manuelgarciajr.wordpress.com. (back)