The Holy Terrors, Turning Extended Families And Clergy Into Criminals

I confess I haven't followed this very closely until now, but the Senate passed the Child Custody Protection Act this week.

More details here.

Basically, the act makes transporting a minor across state lines for an abortion, without parental consent, a crime. No exception has been made for family members or members of the clergy who might be attempting to help the child in question.

Here's the scenario. A minor gets into trouble. For whatever reason, she feels she can't go to her parents for help. She asks a friend, an adult sibling, a grandparent, or her preacher to help her cross state lines for an abortion. By doing so, that good Samaritan is committing a crime.

Members of the Senate majority argued that the bill protects parents' rights to be informed of their daughters' situation, but common sense tells me that if a teenaged girl could go to her parents with this sort of problem, she wouldn't have to ask a clergyman or family member to help her cross state lines.

In other words, the Senate majority is bound and determined to make sure that if a teenaged girl gets into trouble, she's having that baby whether she's able to or not.

From the article:

Another (proposal), sponsored by U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., would have encouraged the federal government to provide money for more sex education. That bill failed earlier in the day, 48-51."If we do nothing about teen pregnancy yet pass this punitive bill, then it proves that this (bill) is only a political charade and not a serious effort to combat the problem," Lautenberg said.

Abstinence is the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy, responded U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

"How many people really think it's in the best interest of young people to be sexually active outside of marriage? Does anything positive ever come from that?" Coburn asked.

The emphases are mine.

Like I said, I haven't followed this very closely until now. Mostly I'm bringing it up here to emphasize that while everybody wants to reduce the teen pregnancy problem, the Holy Terrors' solution seems to be to keep people as ignorant as possible, make sex as risky as possible, and to force as many people who for whatever reason are incapable of being parents, to be parents to as many estranged children as possible.

Call it the "Dance With The Devil" strategy.