What Matters Most

I spent a chunk of time this week listening to testimony in the Texas legislature. It’s all streamed live online, and archived later. We’re in the final week for bills to be heard in committee hearings and still have any chance at all of getting through the remaining bill stages.

Wednesday I was listening to testimony on a couple of abortion bills. One was a heartbeat bill, similar to those already passed in other states. It would make abortion illegal after a heartbeat is detected—around 8 weeks gestation. It doesn’t, however, acknowledge that the baby growing in the womb was human life before that heartbeat-detecting moment. I also learned recently that it is fairly easy for an abortion technician—getting paid to be part of the abortion-performing act—to either find a heartbeat or fail to find a heartbeat at will. So, while the supporters of this bill are well-meaning, I don’t think it goes far enough.

Another bill in the hearing conferred personhood on the unborn, which I think is the appropriate way to go. There were plenty of opponents, of course. One of them struck me, this week coming up on Mother’s Day, as dystopian.

The woman told her story. Several years ago, she was running for her seat (I think in the Texas Senate, but it might be in the House), and hadn’t announced yet that she was pregnant. But she was ghastly sick with “morning sickness,” which wasn’t confined to morning; it was all day every day. She had a condition called “hyperemesis gravidarum,” which is severe nausea and could be life-threatening because of loss of fluids. As she tells it, people used to die from that condition. I’ve actually known a couple of people who went through this. Both were hospitalized for significant portions of their pregnancies. Fluids may need to be given intravenously. Antiemetics may help, but not enough.

I don’t know what this woman had to do to survive throwing up twelve times a day. But she not only survived; she was able to successfully run for office.

She claims that, knowing she had options—and she means the option to kill her baby, whom she now claims to love and be grateful for—was what got her through. Just knowing that, if it got too rough, she could kill the baby. Now, the bill in question has an exception when the life of the mother is at stake; if the attempt to save both lives is not possible, the doctor prioritizes saving the life of the mother. The subtext of what she’s saying then is, if it’s harder than she bargained for, she wanted to have the “right” to kill the other human being experiencing that pregnancy.

She told of another woman who had a similar condition and already had a toddler running around. She made the choice to abort, because she wasn’t physically able to care for her existing child otherwise. I wonder if, in later years, she will lovingly say, “I killed your baby brother, because you were too hard to care for.”

I know I sound unsympathetic. But I’ve been through some pretty challenging pregnancies—none of which I could have survived while running for office.

I’ve lost a child born premature. I’ve spent months bedridden (three months with my oldest, six with each of the other two). I’ve done it with a toddler running around, and I couldn’t get up to manage him. My husband was gone all day to work. I managed part of days, with a little one bringing me diapers so I could change them from the couch where I lay. I was a huge burden on friends and church congregations—who amazingly seemed to love me more because I needed their help.

That's me, mothering from the couch, for most of 1987

When you can't get up to feed your 2-year-old,
he will somehow find a way.

It wasn’t convenient. It wasn’t easy. The last one, I came to a point I thought I couldn’t endure, when I’d gone several months unable to sleep more than 3-4 hours before waking for the next miserable 24-36 hours before I needed to try to sleep again. You get close to hallucination when that sleep deprived. At the point I thought I couldn’t go on, about nine weeks early, I was asking when we might need to induce so I would survive. But I had a spiritual blessing at that time that eased my burden from that day onward, and I endured. She was born on her due date, a beautiful, healthy 9 lb. 14 oz., 22 ½-inch baby. And I learned that God is there for me, to carry me through when I’m not strong enough on my own.

For me, abortion was never an option, because I always knew I was dealing with a beautiful, innocent, human life.

Last week Andrew Klavan spent much of his podcast talking about dystopian stories. He went through parts of 1984, Brave New World, The Giver, The Stepford Wives, and a story called “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas.” And he drew some conclusions. First, this short observation about The Stepford Wives:

What’s really interesting is the children in Stepford become happy when the women are dedicated to them. One of the points of it is—it’s not a totally feminist book. It’s sort of saying, “Yes, homemaking is a sacrificial act.” Being a homemaker is, in some sense, a sacrificial act. You’re pouring yourself into other people. That is what—that’s to me what makes it so beautiful.  

In this story, of course, if women don’t want to do it, they turn them into robots. So, about dystopian societies in general, he says,

The dystopian novel, the dystopian story, in order to be a story, depends on you having those values. It depends on your having the moral understanding that, in order to achieve this perfect world, something terrible has been done.

He illustrates with The Giver, the scene where The Giver, the older man mentoring the boy, Jonas, who is the main character, shows the boy his father euthanizing an infant. Here’s the dialogue from the clip:

Jonas: That’s death.

The Giver: He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Jonas: Doesn’t know what he’s doing? He killed him.

The Giver: But he doesn’t know what it means….

Jonas: How can he not see the baby isn’t moving? Doesn’t that tell him something is wrong?

The Giver: The young and the old are killed. Your friend Fiona—she will soon be trained to release as well.

Jonas: That’s a lie. She’d never do that. If Fiona understood—

The Giver: We are the only ones who understand it.

Jonas: Then it’s our fault—you and me, and all the receivers back and back and back and back and back. There has to be a way to show them, to give them the memory so they can understand. Because, if you can’t feel, what’s the point?

Scene from The Giver
screenshot from Andrew Klavan's podcast

Klavan’s response to this is,

It’s only a dystopia to the people who understand what they are doing. The people who “know not what they do,” like the people who kill Christ, think they’re doing the right thing. They think they’re living in utopia. It’s only a dystopia because of our moral impulses. Right?

It’s just like abortion. Abortion works. Abortion frees women of the responsibilities of the—and the consequences of having sex. Abortion does make their life easier. Abortion does make it so that they don’t, you know, get raped or make a stupid decision and wind up with a baby for life. It works. The only reason it doesn’t work is if you have the moral sense to know that it’s killing. If they can talk us out of our morality, dystopia becomes utopia. You can slaughter your way to perfection.

Someone has been doing the lying, telling people not to value that human life. Not to value motherhood, or parenting, or nurturing, or self-sacrificing at all.

We ought to be telling young people—young women in particular—the truth, that there is nothing she can do that will be more meaningful than giving life and nurturing that child. (If she knew how important it was, she wouldn’t be risking it for sex with a man who isn’t committed to her in marriage. But we’ll save that for another day.)

Jordan Peterson had a conversation with Patrick Bet-David on his Valuetainment podcast. Bet-David showed a clip from a conversation they had together in July of 2019, and then asked him about it. This is Jordan Peterson from that clip:

Little children pay you back immensely, if you have a good relationship with them, you know, if you’re on their side and encourage them, because they’re an unconditional source of joy and love. [long standing ovation]

You know, the other thing I noticed that you should all know is that, as you get older, your family—the family you’ve produced—becomes more and more important.

We teach young women in particular that the fundamental goal of their life is going to be their career. And, you know, first of all, most people don’t have careers; they have jobs. And those are very different things. But you’re not a very happy camper, so to speak, if you’re 45 and you have no one, and it doesn’t go upwards after that.

Patrick Bet-David, left, and Jordan Peterson
screenshot from here

Later in the podcast Peterson refers back to this clip, and shares some more about what makes him happy. He talks about the joy he’s had from touring and talking with people. And then this:

You know, what makes me most happy right now is when my family gets together. So that’s my immediate family: my wife, my kids, and their spouses. And there’s no— There’s nothing buried underneath the rugs. And everyone’s joking and laughing and playing. And that’s— And it’s peaceful. It’s truly peaceful. And that does happen.

He talks about spending time with his son’s family—who live just up the street, and with whom they have a deep and rich relationship, and they have a peace-filled home. And there’s a grandson there.

Their little boy is laughing. He’s playing with laughing. We had some people over for Easter dinner, my son and his wife and a couple of friends of theirs. And they had a little baby named Florence, and she was also the same age, and she was playing with laughing. So she would go “Ha ha ha!” And then this little—my grandson Elliot, would go “Ha ha ha!” And then all the adults would laugh, because these two infants were actually having a conversation with each other—a proto-conversation with laughter. That lasted for about 10 minutes, and everyone was laughing about it. And, well, there isn’t anything better than that.

C. S. Lewis quote image found on Pinterest

Why don’t we tell young people? There isn’t anything better than that. There’s a lot to life, to using our interests and talents and abilities, and making a living. But that making a living, it has a purpose beyond itself. As C. S. Lewis put it,

Homemaking is surely in reality the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, mines, cars, government, etc. exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes?... The homemaker’s job is one for which all others exist.

This is not to say you can’t be happy if you can’t have children. But to think that children are a burden, instead of the very thing that nurtures you into adulthood and gives you reason for living beyond yourself—you simply don’t understand what life is for. All creatures take joy in “filling the measure of their creation” and take joy in their offspring. But only humans have the capacity to understand what that means. When we forget that, we are less human.

It’s not easy. And while I’ve seen some friends who appear to me to be perfect at it, no one actually is. But with God’s help, what you do as a mother can be enough.

One of my favorite speakers, who speaks so many words of encouragement, is Jeffrey R. Holland. He was President of Brigham Young University when I was working on campus many years ago, and I used to pass him and wave hello on my way to my office as he was walking to his. Anyway, he said this:

If I’ve passed on any message to my children, I hope it is that they know I love them and think they were worth any sacrifice I could manage. And, even though I was imperfect at it, I trust that God filled in the differences. He does that in our lives, because He is the ultimate loving parent.

Happy Mother’s Day to all those who know what that means.

A Parent's Nightmare

I have two questions:

·         Do parents have the God-given right to determine the care and upbringing of their children?

·         Is it possible to tell the good guys from the bad guys?

        

Sunday’s Houston Chronicle had a lead investigative piece starting on the front page. It’s about the difficulty medical professionals have in identifying and dealing with possible child abuse.

Much of the piece centers on a particular case, a boy named Tristan Timmerman. The nightmare started when he was four months old. At 3:00 AM the dad woke his wife, panicked because their baby was limp, not responsive, with eyes rolling back in his head. The mom, barely taking time to put on pants (no shoes) quickly drove their baby to the hospital while dad stayed home with their two older boys.

The boy was transferred to a children’s hospital, and brain scans were done. A neurologist assured them it was probably related to a difficult delivery and believed the condition would resolve in a few days, which it did.

But the ordeal wasn’t over. Another doctor looked at the scans and saw the possibility of shaken baby syndrome. This doctor, assigned to specialize in identifying child abuse, didn’t get the neurologist’s report.

As the Chronicle story says, “In their zeal to protect children, some child abuse pediatricians also have implicated parents who appear to have credible claims of innocence, leading to traumatic family separations and questionable criminal charges.”

That’s a nightmare on top of a nightmare.

In the Timmerman’s case, the child was not allowed to return home with the parents, who were now under investigation by Child Protective Services. The mother’s parents were able to take him and allow for the parents’ supervised visitations. After the first two weeks, they were asked how things were going, and in the questioning were asked what they thought had happened. They said truthfully that they did not believe the baby had been shaken—which was “not the answer the child abuse pediatric team was looking for.”

The mother reports that the pediatric team’s note, “read like a call to place her baby in foster care, or worse, an effort to persuade her parents to turn against her husband.” Fortunately, the baby wasn’t taken from the grandparents and put into foster care.

The Timmermans’ battle for their family lasted seven months, with much of the Timmermans’ time spent in attending court-ordered appointments and researching similar cases, discovering the many times certainty about shaken baby syndrome turned out to be not only uncertain by just plain wrong.

It took two months to get the baby returned to his mother, but an additional four months before the dad was allowed to be around his baby unsupervised. A few weeks later Child Protective Services dropped the case. And a year later they reviewed evidence and reversed the original findings of the investigation. In the meantime, the Timmermans had spent $200,000 to defend themselves against a case that should never have been brought against them.

Pardo family, image from BringDrakeHome.com

There’s another case going on here in Texas that Texas Home School Coalition (THSC) has been helping with. Four-year-old Drake Pardo was illegally removed from his home, without warning or charges, on June 20^th.

The boy has a number of health issues. During a recent hospitalization, his doctor had failed to even visit the patient. So the parents transferred his care to another doctor. This seemed to be a triggering factor. A doctor (the one who had failed to visit, or it may have been another at the hospital; I'm unclear on that), who had not seen the child nor reviewed his entire records, suspected that something like Munchausen Syndrome was going on—non-necessary medical treatment because of a mental illness of one of the parents. The doctor asked a question, which triggered an investigation.

But rather than do an actual investigation, CPS jumped to the wrong conclusion that the child was in imminent danger. Even the doctor with the suspicions never believed there was imminent danger or suggested the child should be removed from the home. She just asked for CPS to facilitate a meeting with the parents.

CPS refused for two weeks to reveal to the parents, or their representation, what the charges were. Eventually the doctor’s concerns were alleviated when the parents provided the fuller record of the diagnoses, which had been done by other doctors at that hospital and were readily available. At this point the doctor was fully satisfied, which should have ended the investigation and any problems.

But CPS decided they were going to keep the child, regardless. As they put it, the child was getting the same medical treatment the parents would be giving. No harm; no foul. They failed to create a family plan, as required by law, while insisting that the parents sign a statement admitting to their mental illness, or they would not be given access to their child. The parents couldn’t sign such a statement, since it would be a lie.

The Texas Supreme Court is stepping in on this case, which is very unusual. CPS has its own appellate court system. This intervention by the executive branch—the solicitor general and state attorney general—happens only rarely for CPS cases. There was supposed to be a response last Wednesday, but I believe it was CPS that asked for a continuance. That means something should happen this week. Meanwhile, the parents get occasional one-hour supervised visits, and their son gets no explanation for his trauma.

You can help with the family’s legal defense by donating at BringDrakeHome.com. 

CPS’s suggestion that the only thing the parents need to concern themselves with is whether their child is getting adequate medical care feels like some dystopian world.

I’m currently reading Son, by Lois Lowry, the concluding book in The Giver series. The premise is, in this extremely controlled community within our contemporary world, a nebulous “they” makes all decisions for the very compliant people. At age 12, each child is given his or her life work assignment, and goes on to get whatever training that entails. As adults they can apply to be given a spouse, who is assigned to them. Couples may be granted up to two children, which are birthed by "vessels" called birthmothers—those assigned that responsibility, who are kept separate from the population, and who are inseminated with the child they carry. Nurturers take care of the new children from birth until the annual ceremony at which the babies are assigned to their families. It is at this point the babies are given names, rather than numbers, also assigned by the collective leaders.

In The Giver, there’s one boy, Jonas, who is selected at age 12 to receive the knowledge that the Giver, an older wise man, maintains. He is the only one to see color, to feel emotions beyond very simple innocuous feelings, or to experience real pain. In that book, Jonas’s father, a nurturer, brings home a baby that is failing to thrive, to have him sleep at their house so as not to disturb the night workers at the nurturing center. At the end of that book, Jonas realizes they are going to euthanize the child, and he makes an escape, taking the baby with him.

In Son, we follow the story of the baby's actual mother, Claire. Her parents were disappointed, as was she, that her assignment was only to be a birthmother, which, while valued as a necessity, is considered what they assign people to if they have no other aptitude. Her birth went badly and had to be done cesarean, and the decision was made to reassign her. She gets sent to work in a fish hatchery, where she has no particular interest.

She happens to discover where her baby went, what his number is, and keeps track of him—none of which is ever supposed to happen. No one is supposed to be interested in such information.

The summary on the book cover suggests that most of the story is mainly about the time after her baby son is taken from the community (by Jonas, so we’re looking back to The Giver), and Claire follows. So the rest of her story is beyond the community. But I’m 100 pages in, and that escape hasn’t happened yet.

There’s a part where Claire has visited her baby boy in the nurturing center, where she has volunteered from time to time to see him. No one knows she has made the connection with her son, which would not be permitted. As she leaves, she chokes back tears. She can’t enjoy her meaningless life at the fish hatchery; she’s obsessed with her son:

She wanted only to be with the child, to feel the warm softness of his neck as he curled against her, to whisper to him and to sense how he listened happily to her voice. It was not right to have these feelings, which were growing stronger as the weeks passed. Not normal. Not permitted. She knew that. But she did not know how to make them go away.

This is a dystopian novel. Of course a mother feels an affinity for her child, an aching to hold him. The novel is showing us that centralized control doesn’t work for human beings—that’s the point.

But here we are, in real-life Texas, and some CPS workers claim to have as great a right to control the care and upbringing of a child as the child's parents. They dismiss the reality that the parents and children have a right—even a need—to be together and love one another. They wonder why anyone is complaining. After all, the child is getting the right medical care. What else is there to be concerned about?

I can hardly imagine how painful this must be for good, loving parents. This preventable trauma should never happen to these families.

There are times when actual abuse does happen. It’s surprising how often those stories appear in the news. Children are left in dangerous situations until the unthinkable happens. Heavy caseload is blamed, to excuse the social workers who were vaguely aware of the danger but didn't act.

And yet these overworked CPS employees have time to pursue families in which the child is in no danger. Why?

Every session the legislature looks at CPS reforms. Maybe there are tiny, incremental improvements. But to the regular citizen out here, we don’t understand why a CPS worker can’t tell the difference between a truly abusive situation and a healthy, loving family.

I think that, unless and until CPS workers can tell the difference between good parents and those who are actually harming or neglecting their children, they should cease and desist. Maybe we could require CPS workers to prove that they have this discerning capability before they are allowed to do any casework. If that’s fantasy (and it probably is), then we need better guidelines. Something that will safeguard the good families while exposing the bad. And, as we see from the Chronicle story, trusting "experts" isn't all that useful.

In the meantime, when CPS makes a mistake that deprives a family of their child, they should be liable for damages—including all defense costs for the family, after-care to deal with the trauma, and damages that would at least be a token compensation for the pain of kidnapping the child. My knee-jerk reaction is to give the CPS workers jail time for kidnapping. If you can talk me out of that, then at minimum the workers involved should lose their jobs—and maybe they should be held personally responsible for at least some of the damages.

Parents do have the God-given right to see to the care and upbringing of their children. It’s one of those Tenth Amendment rights reserved to the people without the need to spell them out, because no one questioned that the people had those rights. Until we have the power to discern between good and bad, government shouldn't be in any sort of position to infringe on that right.