Abortion and Child Abuse
My favorite curmudgeon, Garth George, writes today on how he thinks that abortion is at the heart of child and wife abuse. I find I can’t really agree with his conclusions. As I have blogged recently, I see abortion, child and spouse abuse as general symptoms of a lack of respect for the value of life. We have swallowed the idea that we are all no better than the animals and that idea pervades even our social interactions with other human beings. Egalitarianism is fine unless it means that we are all worth the same because we are all worthless. The inevitable result of humanism (man being the measure of all things) is that the yardstick (man) becomes very tiny indeed.
DPF suggests over at Kiwiblog that abortion may reduce child abuse by preventing unwanted children. The reaction to that statement was predictably large and polarised, as you can see in the enormous comments section. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that DPFs suggestion is true. Countries with high abortion rates (of which New Zealand is one) manifestly do not have low child abuse rates (neither is the opposite true, low abortion rates do not denote high child abuse). Clearly there are other factors at work. Besides, what DPF is really talking about is contraception – and abortion is absolutely the worst method of contraception. If you really want to prevent unwanted children then use some form of protection or a preventative.
But promoting contraception (or abortion) will not reduce child abuse rates. We know the situations that statistically produce increased rates of child abuse – Poverty, fatherlessness, youth and inexperience are the main ones. I would suggest tackling these things along these lines:
- Develop the economy by seeking high value and high tech solutions – allowing us to reduce our low-income labour force.
- Provide as much opportunity as possible for families to advance and develop themselves, so that they may find work in these higher value jobs.
- Restructure DPB so that there are disincentives to staying on it long term (My thought here would be cancel at age six or third child). Note that exceptional circumstances should be able to appeal directly to the minister for consideration.
- Significant tax benefits for marriage and children (up to four?)
- All young (under 20) mothers with or without partners should have extended midwife and Plunket visits and be monitored three to six monthly by CYFS or a similar organisation. Note this is supposed to be enabling, NOT penalising.
- All mothers of any age without partners should have extended midwife and Plunket visits.
- Maori may wish to consider their own similar monitoring system if they prefer.
These things may help to alleviate our shocking child abuse figures. However, until we all learn to value human life as something precious and unique, little we do in the way of social, economic and political re-organisation will help.
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Nov 27 08 5:12 pm
Tell me Doctor,
Are you going to take in a solo mother who is thrown out on the street because her DPB is cancelled?
Try reading the post again and then make a sensible comment.
Nov 27 08 6:52 pm
I generally agree with those suggestions, but I’m not too sure about tax incentives for marriage. It might encourage marriage for the wrong reasons (financial) when the mother and children would be better off moving out of an abusive relationship, I also see marriage providing enough benefits already without the government needing to intervene.
Nov 27 08 7:52 pm
Iago: Tax incentives are currently very slanted against marriage (Civil or Religious). Abusive relationships are exactly what DPB was originally designed for, which is why you don’t see me suggesting that it is scrapped, just redesigned.
Nov 27 08 11:08 pm
Spot on Doc, though you are more generous than I am. Single parent families are the primary cause of poverty, with the unfortunate resultant over-represented incidences of child abuse. The DPB is supposed to help mothers survive without a supportive partner. However, arranging the DPB such that mothers actually lose benefits when additional children are born outside of stable relationships would provide a disincentive to the “breeding for lifestyle” mentality currently in effect amongst a proportion of the population. The present government’s proposal that mothers return to work when their youngest child goes to school is doomed to failure, since it simply encourages further procreation to delay the requirement to enter the workforce.
Nov 28 08 7:46 pm
I agree abortion is a very, very complex topic and that correlation doesn’t always mean causation.
The overrepresentation of asian women in the figures backs up my experiences there where it is used as a weird form of contraception due to societal attitudes to pre-martial sex. Young women who carry or insist their partners use condoms are seen as being ‘bad girls’ while the males don’t use because they don’t like them but there are large number of teens having sex. I’m not sure how many girls are using birth control pill, but as medical privacy is as strict over there, I’m guessing not so much. Adoption isn’t popular due to obession over family bloodlines and the shame of unwanted pregnancy. But kids, especially boys, are valued when they are conceived in the ‘right’ circumstances.
Half of women New Zealand undergoing an abortion do so having already given birth themselves at least once or more. Women undergoing abortions are also more likely to be single.
The case of a single mum not wanting to add to an already difficult job is understandable as is not wanting to go throgh the pregnancy and adoption process with a child to care for. It is a large burden for society to expect her to carry when she is one of the most disempowered groups in society.
Also macdoctor, I remember reading somewhere that spousal abuse is present in all strata of society yet it is often seen as a problem of the poor since they might not come to ‘private arrangements’ for it like Tony Veitch. I imagine that child abuse may also suffer the same misconcpetion and your policies do nothing to catch those kids.
Nov 28 08 10:03 pm
Stef: I remember reading somewhere that spousal abuse is present in all strata of society
You are absolutely correct. However, I was directly addressing the risk factors, one of which is poverty. Both child and spouse abuse are far more common in low socioeconomic groups. I don’t think that abuse is under-reported in wealthier families at all. The Tony Veitch arrangement is very unusual. It is my experience that under-reporting occurs mostly in poorer families where abuse is considered a norm (giving her the “bash”) and where the options for getting out of the situation seem fewer.