Infant abuse and anti-abortion people: perfect together

[Pab Sungenis]

In all the recent brouhaha over at LiveJournal, I've watched with horror as some people have trotted out other communities that LiveJournal is perfectly happy to keep around despite repeated complaints. One that gets to me, even more than the pro-anorexia communities, is the whole "Christian Parenting" movement.

One community actually takes its name from a book that promotes enforcing set feeding and sleep times on absolute newborns, and that parents beat children <i>as young as fifteen days old</i> to enforce their will. (i.e.: the child gets no midnight feedings, gets up when mommy gets up, etc.)

This would, in any civilized society, be considered out and out child abuse, but because these people hide behind a perverted version of Christianity, they're accepted.

Want to know what I blame this kind of parenting style on? It might surprise you.

I blame the Anti-Abortion movement.

For almost forty years, the anti-abortion people have put forward a false equivalency between a foetus and a full-grown human. They have argued that a foetus is fully aware, can "feel pain" at a very early age, and has full cognitive skills. They promote these misconceptions to make abortion seem even worse than it really is, in an attempt to lure fence-sitters over to their side. The whole debate over alleged "partial birth" abortions was a perfect example of these exaggerating tactics.

The problem? The "Christians" who follow the anti-abortion line have drunk the Kool-Aid so much that they've actually started to believe their own misconceptions. A foetal brain is not fully developed. Nor, oddly enough, is a newborn brain. Yet, because it helps their agenda to pretend that it is, they put that belief out there, and it ends up having repercussions.

Newborns cannot use logic. They cannot tell or sense time. Heck, there's arguments about whether or not they can even SEE properly. The brain is nowhere near fully functional at birth. Yet, because admitting that sort of thing even to one's self would undermine their main argument against abortion, they continue to act like their 2 month old is intellectually equivalent to a 2 year old.

Thus, the desire and attempts to "train" and "condition" infants, using tactics like severe beating (even a "light" beating is severe to an infant) and effective starvation. One family who subscribed to this training tactic are even trying to blame their child's shaken baby syndrome on a babysitter, whose defense counsel really needs a copy of this book to show where the blame really lies.

Once again: anti-abortion people. Pro life, until after birth. Then you're on your own.

[iconoclastic cat]

1. Well, it's true that newborns should follow a schedule--their own! nt

[gollygee]

2. Interesting perspective

K&R

[Ilsa]

3. Interesting. Another theory I've heard is that parents like that

are unable to cooperate with others very well, and they expect everyone to bend to their schedule. So, the newborns must also. What amazes me is that there are enough of them promoting this practice when anyone who has done any reading in Human Growth and Develoment knows this is cruel.

Those are children who will probably have a hard time establishing confidence in themselves or trusting their parents.

[mudesi]

4. I don't think abortion has much to do with it...

I don't think abortion has much to do with it as much as religious indoctrination in general does.