Who has the right to make life?

God’s creating continues through nature and, especially and

primarily, people. “Procreation,” producing offspring to extend

humanity generation to generation, is a sacred responsibility. Unless

we procreate, well ... there is no future for humankind. However, the

“right to procreate” is not absolute. Holy Scripture and history

witness that many blessed people did not procreate and should not

have done so.

As both a father and dad, I appreciate the sound bite: “Any male

can be a father; it takes a man to be a dad!” Don’t we all know

people who should not be parents? Society is obligated to make

decisions about who are, and who are not, responsible adults, able to

live among the rest of us without specific restrictions and to

exercise their rights freely in our society. Clearly, there are

people we don’t want around our children; there are others who should

not be out and about alone. Should there be criteria for who may

parent?

When, in the first chapter of Genesis, God said, “Be fruitful and

multiply,” neither “without limitation” nor “irresponsibly” were

included. I think that both “responsibly” and “with reasonable

guidelines” were implied. In the Ohio case cited, it seems to me

unlikely that this fellow will “start paying child support” unless

his wages are appropriated, so the lower court’s promise to imprison

him may be enforced. Attaching wages seems appropriate; imprisonment

for procreating, even irresponsibly so, seems harsh to me. At least

no one is threatening more drastic actions. God forbid!

THE VERY REV’D CANON

PETER D. HAYNES

St. Michael & All Angels

Episcopal Parish Church

Corona del Mar

Absolutely not. No state, organization or person should impose on

another person the inherent right to procreate. The Ohio Supreme

Court made the right decision. Had the courts ruled otherwise, then

other “unacceptable standards” of parenthood could also be argued.

This is not to say that the father should not be held accountable in

sustaining his children; to the contrary, he should be hounded.

IMAM SAYED

MOUSTAFA AL-QAZWINI

Islamic Educational Center of

Orange County

Costa Mesa

This one is a bit dicey, because it pits the morality of

responsibility against the morality of personal rights. What happens

if the government gets in the business of determining who has the

right to become parents? Over time, could these same restrictions be

applied to people of color, social status or religion? Granted, it is

far fetched, but why open the doors? Once precedent is set, things

change very quickly.

I do believe this man needs some extreme measures. However, like

the judge ruled in this case, there must be a remedy for the man if

he pays his debt. This man’s irresponsibility becomes our

responsibility, as our culture must step up and care for his children

and the lifestyles they choose as a result of being raised by such a

father.

Therefore, our society does have a right to bring justice for

these children and make efforts to educate this man about how we are

paying for his carefree lifestyle. However, government is very bad at

this kind of stuff. Faith-based institutions, their neighbors and the

like are much more effective than government programs.

We -- nongovernmental society -- need to step up and stop passing

the buck to the government. We need to decide that it is our

responsibility to reach out to these people and not simply respond by

calling the police or social agency. We need to start dropping off

groceries, helping the kids with their homework, training the parents

in resume preparation and interviewing skills, budget development,

etc. Until WE do better at reaching out to those in need, we should

be careful about government remedies.

SENIOR ASSOCIATE PASTOR

RIC OLSEN

Harbor Trinity

Costa Mesa

The Judeo-Christian ethic teaches that couples are gifted with

children, rather than entitled to them. Both faiths underscore the

state’s stake in the family, the sanctity of human life and orderly

progression through the generations. According to these traditions,

having children is not only a private matter, but involves duties to

the children who are born, to the family unit and to the community.

Giving birth not only involves the creation of a close connection

between parents and between parents and children, but also a social

bond, for it presents new members into society whose prospective

needs and capacities have considerable public implications.

But it is a constitutional, not Biblical, matter that we take up

here. While I sympathize with the position that parents who abuse

drugs, give birth to multiple children sent to foster care, do not

pay child support, neglect their children, place a burden on social

services and drain our taxpayer dollars should not have more

children, there is no limit in the Constitution on the number of

children one can create. Enforcing celibacy, allowing the state to

regulate birth, employing a financial means test to validate the

right to have children, strikes me as an unwarranted invasion of

privacy.

Historian Lucy Davidowicz writes: “Almost as soon as the Nazis

came to power, they began to apply their racial ideology and enact

these racial notions into law. The first step came with the law on

compulsory sterilization. Thereafter the German dictatorship embarked

on a program to carry out a policy of racial eugenics, or racial

biology. That program had two aspects: positive eugenics and negative

eugenics. Positive eugenics was a program designed to increase the

population of persons who were regarded as racially pure “Aryans.”

Negative eugenics was a program designed first to halt the

procreation of persons or categories of persons who did not meet the

standards of racial purity through sterilization.”

Shameful flirtations with regulating births have marred the

American record. According to the Center for Individual Freedom, it

was in 1924 that Carrie Buck, a teenager in Charlottesville, Va., was

chosen as the first person to be sterilized under the state’s newly

adopted eugenics law. Ms. Buck, whose mother resided in an asylum for

the epileptic and feebleminded, was accused of having a child out of

wedlock. She was diagnosed as promiscuous and the probable parent of

“socially inadequate offspring.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, in the landmark case Buck v. Bell (1927),

ruled 8-1 to uphold the sterilization of Ms. Buck on the grounds that

she was a “deficient” mother. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

Jr., an adherent of eugenics, declared, “Three generations of

imbeciles are enough.” The shameful Buck v. Bell decision led to the

forced sterilization of more than 65,000 Americans.

For the government today to interfere in this area could create a

slippery slope, in which the sphere of procreative liberty would be

increasingly curtailed. It could well lead back to a dark time in

America’s moral history when the fundamental right to privacy was

assaulted.

Margaret Sanger wrote about the difficulties presented by the

ideas of “fit” and “unfit.” She asked, “Who is to decide this

question?” Indeed.

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yam

Newport Beach

How can we help children who are being raised by one parent or who

are living in poverty? How can we teach people to be responsible

parents?

First steps would involve being more serious about finding fathers

who dodge child support payments. There have been excellent results

in states where enforcement was really a priority. We could also

create realistic ways for fathers who are unemployed or working at

minimum wage to contribute to their children’s support.

Parenting or family skills classes should be required of all

students in eighth and ninth grade. This is more important than many

of the subjects currently taught. Unlike driving cars, no test or

license is required to have a child, but we could include parenting

in the curriculum.

We can challenge the gender stereotypes that make taking care of

children “women’s” work and of low value in our society. We can

encourage people to value men who take care of their children, both

financially and by providing day-to-day care at home.

We can support sex education, contraception and keep abortion

legal. At the same time, we can offer good adoptive services and

various kinds of support to give as much choice as possible to women

faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Just as importantly, we can help

girls to develop healthy self-esteem, which affects whether they

choose to have babies at a young age, since studies find that they

often equate it with maturity, accomplishment and independence.

The idea of laws that limit procreation seems to come up around

public funding. Sometimes the context is that women who receive

public assistance should be sterilized if they continue to have

children or if they want to receive benefits. In the United States, I

think most people disapprove of foreign governments that limit the

number of children families can have. We also see that it results in

an imbalance between the sexes, because so many people prefer to have

a boy rather than a girl if they can have only one child.

I am opposed to proposals to limit procreation by law. I am in

favor of more effective social services to help people make better

choices and raise their children in the best possible conditions.

REV. DR. DEBORAH BARRETT

Zen Center of Orange County

Costa Mesa