Hypocrisy: Conservative Christians / Catholics Pressure Women To Feel Their Only Worth is in Becoming Mothers, But If Women Try to Use Medical Technology to Get Pregnant, the Women Are Condemned by The Same Groups
LANGUAGE ALERT. I blow up a few places in this blog post and use dirty words, including dropping the “F” bomb once or twice.
Thank God I never felt a strong tug or urge to have children. I never cared if I had one or not. I’ve never measured my value or womanhood by if I had a kid or not. THANK GOD.
I feel sorry for women who really, really wanted a kid but were unable to have one, whatever the reason. Women are under a lot of pressure, even from secular culture, to have children. Women who don’t have kids are either viewed with suspicion or with pity.
I have blogged on this topic two or three times before. The editorial I link to below is focused on Roman Catholics, but I have seen a small number of Protestants write editorials condemning IVF and the like as well.
This makes my blood boil.
These Catholic and conservative Protestant (and Baptists) shame women into having children, conveying the notion that a woman’s only value resides in things like getting pregnant and having babies.
If a woman therefore buys into this propaganda and desperately tries to have a baby (or even if she just wants to have a baby, Christian propaganda aside), these same Christian groups criticize these ladies (and their husbands, if their husbands are on board) for using medical technology to conceive.
These Christians tell women they must have babies, that they are obligated to have babies. Christians pressure and nag women to have babies.
But when or if women then have to turn to medical science to conceive because they or their spouse have fertility issues, these natalistic- obsessed Christians condemn them for it.
I cannot begin to communicate how angry this makes me. These groups are putting people into no-win situations, then blaming them for a system, or for failing to meet a set of values, that they themselves created!
It rather reminds me of Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees, when he said to them something like,
- “How dare you put burdens on to people’s shoulders but then refuse to do so much as lend a finger to lift those same burdens.”
It’s the same exact phenomenon.
It also reminds me a tad of Christians who shame and pressure adult singles to marry, but if we singles try to actually get married, take action to make it happen – by flirting, by going to bars to meet other singles, or by using dating sites, or asking church members to fix us up on dates – we gets scolded for trying to do what they tell us we should be doing!
We singles are supposed to just sit with our hands neatly folded on our laps, wait, and pray and hope that God happens to send a spouse across our paths, with no action on our part to make it come to pass. This has been a losing strategy – which is taught by a lot of Christians – for a lot of singles, including me.
For the love of Frank, if you do not approve of IVF (or whatever fertility programs), or, if you do not approve of Christians using dating sites or visiting bars to meet potential mates in an attempt to make marriage come about, stop lecturing or pressuring people to have children or to marry in the first place! Stop treating the childless, child free, or the singles as though they are failures or second class citizens!
You cannot dictate both the what and the how. Pick one or the other.
Or better yet, stop telling people how they should live their lives, and stop telling them that “X” is the only appropriate way or age to make something (marriage, having kids, whatever) happen.
The Bible actually does NOT command anyone to marry or have children and does not specify an age by which it “should” happen – Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, never married nor had kids, and Paul said in 1 Cor. 7 it is better to stay single (and hence celibate and child free).
One portion of the article reads:
- …Not all Catholic bio-ethicists even believe every couple deserves to be parents. “If a couple decides they have the right to a child, the child has become a commodity,” Marie Hilliard, director of bioethics and public policy at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, (Link): told Religion News Service last year. “And if they haven’t been given the gift of a child, it doesn’t mean they have the right to a child as commodity.”
This ticks me off very much.
Who are these douche bags to say some people don’t “deserve” to be parents? Unless we are talking about people who would abuse any kids they have, these bio-ethicists are wrong.
Who are they to say who “deserves to have kids” or not? The ego here is amazing.
Just because a couple wants to have a kid does not mean they view children as “commodities,” give me a fucking break, Hilliard.
This reminds me of Christians who hound adult singles to get married, and if we say yes, we’d like to get married and are using dating sites to pursue that course of action, they then say, “You must stop, for you have made marriage into an idol.”
These groups set up something that they say everyone should have or do, but if that something is out of reach and would require a person to take additional steps (using IVF, or using dating sites, what have you), they then condemn these people.
For fuck’s sake. Stop, stop, stop pressuring people to think they have to do “X” in life, but if they cannot do “X” on their own, but have to get outside help to achieve “X,” don’t sit there and chide them for getting that outside help to do something you say they should be doing to start with.
What a bunch of double-standard holding, hypocritical ASSHOLES – they put unrealistic standards and burdens on people and tell them they cannot do anything to change or improve whatever the situation is. This kind of thing just drives me nuts, I swear.
Here is the article:
(Link): Begotten Not Made: The Vatican Doesn’t Want IVF Babies by B L Nadeau
- The logic of the Catholic Church rules out many techniques used to help infertile couples.
- … Catholic dogma may be “pro-life” and certainly pro-creation (and anti-contraception), but only for the fertile.
- As it stands, Church teaching offers little for those who can’t conceive naturally, meaning even if science allows infertile Catholics to procreate through assisted fertility, their faith does not. But Patricia and David are hoping that even if doctrine doesn’t change, under Pope Francis the practices and preaching will.
- “What my husband and I would like is not for the church to allow IVF and other reproductive technologies that are currently not allowed, but to show compassion in how the doctrine is taught and especially to be more kind with the language,” Patricia told The Daily Beast by email. “It is important to realize there are devout, married couples who are infertile.”
- ….But those issues don’t pertain to the vast majority of rule-abiding Catholic families who are growing justifiably frustrated that issues relating to their own faith struggles appear largely ignored.
- One such issue is the Catholic Church’s hard-line approach to infertility treatments and solutions, which affects thousands of devout Catholic couples worldwide.
- But as frustrating as the church’s morality judgment is on the widely accepted fertility treatment of in vitro fertilization or IVF (which has led to the birth of almost 5 million babies since 1978, when Louise Brown, the first “test-tube baby,” was born), many couples struggling with problems with infertility say it is actually the church’s language that is the most hurtful.
- Patricia wishes the synod fathers would focus attention on guiding parish priests on how to support families through the difficulty of untreatable infertility and how to guide Catholic communities to do the same. As it stands now, these families are largely left to suffer in silence because the church’s stance offers them so little hope.
- “The language that is used is hurtful to us,” she says, “There are mean, hurtful people in this world who would say that people are infertile because God decided they are not worthy of having children.”
- Patricia and David, who have an adopted son, also wish the church would spend time working on inclusionary language that takes into consideration that biological families are not the only kinds of Catholic families and stop inadvertently lumping infertile couples who adopt together with same-sex unions that adopt.
- “It is hurtful to hear the argument against same-sex marriage focused so much on the inability to procreate, because what does that mean for infertile couples? We feel frustrated that these issues appear to hijack the synod and much of the dialogue in the church,” says Patricia. “We believe that it is important to promote, encourage, and minister to adoptive families. We struggle with how to teach our son about adoption within the context of the church teaching.”
- There is little room for maneuver around the issue. The church, officially, does encourage adoption by married, heterosexual couples, and it does condone certain types of infertility treatment. Its basic teaching is this: Anything that is used to accompany the married, heterosexual couple through natural conjugal conception is acceptable and anything that replaces it is immoral.
- That means sperm testing as long as the sperm is collected during intercourse; hormone injections and fertility pills are OK, but harvesting eggs, masturbation for collecting sperm, and planting embryos in a womb—even if only the devout married couple are involved—is morally wrong in the eyes of God as interpreted by the Catholic Church.
- Patricia argues that “there are infertile couples that are completely unable to have children through love-making or through the reproductive technologies that involve love-making. That is a reality and it should be addressed with compassion.” But the official doctrine of the church is rigid, constructed around a rigid logic.
- …The church considers the discarding of embryos created in the petri dish that are not viable and cannot be implanted in the mother-to-be’s uterus akin to abortion.
- …Not all Catholic bio-ethicists even believe every couple deserves to be parents. “If a couple decides they have the right to a child, the child has become a commodity,” Marie Hilliard, director of bioethics and public policy at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, (Link): told Religion News Service last year. “And if they haven’t been given the gift of a child, it doesn’t mean they have the right to a child as commodity.”
Related Posts:
(Link): Christian Publication Seems To Take Stance Against Uterus Transplants
(Link): Pro-Life Groups Pit Abortion Against Animal Cruelty – How Much People Care Outrage
(Link): Praying for a Child – The Catholic Church makes life impossible for infertile women.
(Link): A Woman’s Fertility is Her Own Business, not Everyone Else’s by L. Bates
(Link): Article by J. Watts: The Scandal of Singleness – singles never married christian
(Link): Renting a Womb – Women Reduced to Baby Breeders (editorial from CP)
(Link): Remaining childless can be wise and meaningful. The pope should know Gaby Hinsliff
(Link): Why do we still have to justify the choice to be child-free? by H. Freeman
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