bailouts and babies

A few years ago I had an idea- a bad idea, but an idea nonetheless. It started out like this...

I was tired of reading and seeing story after story of people having babies and mistreating them, abandoning them, or just being rotten parents in one way or another. So often we see people having unplanned pregnancies, but the parents in many of these situations have no interest in being parents, or even the capacity to do so. They lack the skills at times to take care of themselves, let alone a newborn, a toddler, or a child of any age for that matter. So my idea was this:

Tie everyone's tubes very early on. As early as possible. If people want their tubes untied, they should pass a test that would in some way demonstrate that they are capable of caring for another human being. This way there are no accidents, and at least we have a test to blame if things go wrong down the road.

I told you it was a bad idea. But I liked it because I didn't like people having the freedom to create life so easily. Now, I know the verses about God knitting people together and seeing us before we were created, and I affirm that, but this is about babies being born into destructive, toxic, impossible situations because two people who should never be parents became parents.

But God is God, and he can handle all of that.

But this idiot has an idea and its even worse than mine. And the difference between his idea and my idea- I was kidding.

*Speaking of bailout money- why don't we think about spending 700 billion dollars addressing the poor and sick and starving people in America, instead of using it to bail out big business once again??? But that's another entry for another time...