Putting The Child First In Sexual Morality

I have spent some of my morning reading pro life posts dealing with death and murder. In one such post, written from a very personal perspective, the author relates three stories. One deals with a jury deliberating execution for a cop killer, one tells of her relationships with a grandmother who died of Alzheimer's, and one of her acquaintance with a 'crack' mother whose child was taken from her by the state. All three examples deal with separation in some way or another. The interesting thing was in the commentary associated with the article. None of the comments deal with the 'crack' mom story or her sick premature infant.

This represents the thing I find really scary about the pro life movement, and the sexual morality of the Church. Where is any concern shown for the fruits of pro creation? It's as if all sexual morality ends with the ejaculation of sperm into a uterus, followed by the birth of said pro creative product. But what about the morality associated with raising that said pro creative product?

I use the term pro creative product, rather than child, because that to me is the Church's attitude toward born children. Once the product is off the assembly line all concern for it stops. It's not the product which counts, it's the assembly line.

This is taken to such lengths, that it becomes more moral to rape a woman than to masturbate. Since patriarchy perceives sperm to be the start of the assembly line, it's proper placement takes precedent. This makes the receiving uterus, or the actual production line, a subordinate player, at the mercy of the fact sperm is in the area.

I find it interesting that there are never any sermons directed at the phenomenon of male abandonment. I suspect that's because the Church places responsibility for the nurturing and raising of the pro creative product a very distant second in the natural morality associated with males. It's their sperm which counts. Complimentarity says this is the way it is. Men don't have breasts.

Women on the other hand, are morally entrained to be completely at the service of the pro creative product. It's their baggage, their breasts, their fruit. This is their prime reason for existence. They are both the production line uterus and the party primarily responsible for the product, and they are morally culpable for failure in any aspect of this system.

But what if the pro creative product was the start, rather than the finish of our sexual morality? We might have developed a very different sexual ethic. We might have decided it is far preferable to masturbate rather than engage in a procreative act when one has no intention of taking on the responsibility of raising the child.

We might have decided that it is morally acceptable to use RU48 after being raped, rather than forcing a woman to take on the life long responsibility of a child she didn't want and will have no father to help her support.

We might have decided it's a much higher moral good to use any means possible to control births rather than have children one can't begin to raise in a way which truly does cherish their existence as something more than pro creative product.

We might have decided that it is better for children to have parents, no matter their configuration, than to limit parenting to one particular version of traditional family.

We might have decided it's far better to tell our pubescent children what exactly all that hormonal raging entails, in terms of responsible use of their nascent sexuality, than 'don't do it'.

We might have decided, based on anatomy, that sex does serve other functions than just procreation. It's also an endorphin rush about bonding, and that rush, even for women, is just as much about external orgasm as it is internal.

We might have had a really really different attitude about actual pro creative sex: It is a far greater evil to engage in heterosexual activity without any intention to raise a child or bond with your partner, than any other form of sexual sin.

I've often wondered if Thomas Aquinas was alive today if he would place sperm at the top of the natural law sexual morality pyramid. It's hard to imagine he would formulate his theology thinking women were 'malformed' males, and that sperm contained complete little humans looking for fertile soil. I've often wondered if he isn't in heaven somewhere totally appalled that his sexual theology hasn't been updated to reflect the knowledge of our reality.

He might even be nauseated, suspecting that his theology is really being used to maintain heterosexual male supremacy in society, and that's the real reason it hasn't been updated.

Given all of the above, I guess I'm not surprised that the 'crack mom' and her baby weren't mentioned in the comments. Except the crack baby is the perfect symbol for everything that's wrong with our current notions of natural law.

It's of no moral consequence that exploitative heterosexuality frequently produces children born into awful circumstances. Circumstances which all too frequently raise antisocial humans who think nothing of killing cops. Apparently pro lifers feel fine with these pro creative products becoming the state's business. Not worth commenting on---until they kill cops, and then it's morally justified to kill them. A sort of state sanctioned late term abortion.

Unfortunately, this 'leave the procreative products for the state to clean up', is happening way too frequently, and will get even worse in this economy. It's way past time to put the live baby at the front of any notions of natural law sexual morality. Way past time. I really think Aquinas would agree.