By Ted Kipping

My first response to this issue was a blast of rage.  Here's my next. 

If life begins at conception, why do some people act --and try to set policy --as if life ends at birth?  Since we, unlike reptiles, are born totally dependent and stay that way for many, many years, why entrust tender, helpless, little beings to people who may not have a clue about the kinds of care needed for children to thrive today?  In older, longer-lived societies, parenting was a skill known, taught and practiced by a community.  At best, children grew at the center of a protective circle of concern. 

Since our relatively young and mobile social system may as yet be unrooted or have been shredded in so many areas, without education of parents in parenting, and without suffucient communal concern and support, children are vulnerable to every sort of ignorance, neglect, and, saddest of all, abuse.  The tragic results are everywhere if we look around or follow the news.

Until we fund and equip effective, inspiring and safe public schools and fund health care for children and emotional health and parenting education for young adults, the absolutist take on "life" seems too harsh.  Why not be pro-all-of-life not just obsessed with its inception?  Why banish all birth control programs and sex education?  Why is the need to control women's private lives greater than the need to protect living dependent children?  When long-held, morally sincere religious beliefs impede an open discussion by adults and experts, where do we look for hope?

One hope I hold firmly is that the nature-based curriculum that an increasing number public and private schools around the world are adopting will eventually make a difference.  When children learn their lessons in a garden-based or agricultural-based environment, not only do math, science, the arts and social studies come alive, but so does the awareness that nature's laws and the ways you treat and care for plants, trees, and flowers determine how things grow and thrive.  Parents and grandparents from every background can particpate in school gardens.  Just as importantly, when children attend schools with garden-based education, they experience the solace and beauty of nature, the environment from which all life arises and upon whose health everything depends.  Let's just make sure these gardens bloom in time!