Why Child Abuse is on the Rise
by Haven Gow - Mr Cow is Contributing Editor for the United States Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Dr. Louis Sullivan observes that, "Beyond the horrors an abused child experiences at the time, the harm from child abuse and neglect has enormous long-term consequences. The evidence is clear that maltreatment can have deleterious effects on children's mental health and development, both short and long term. Preliminary findings of on-going research indicates abused children are more likely to suffer drops in IQ, learning disabilities, depression and drug problems."
Indeed, studies reveal that the pernicious consequences of child abuse - mental, physical and social - are evident even after 20 years after the abuse; in fact, suicide, violence, delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse and other kinds of criminality often are connected with child abuse.
Judge Charles Schudson, a juvenile court judge in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, says, "Virtually all judges understand that in a substantial and increasing number of cases of violent crime, today's felon was yesterday's abused child.
U.S. statistics also demonstrate a nexus between the pro-abortion mentality and the increase in child abuse. Supporters of the U.S. Supreme Court's January, 1973, Roe v. Wade ruling said legalized abortion on demand would reduce the incidence of child abuse by reducing the number of unwanted babies, but statistics clearly demonstrate that the reverse is true.
In 1978, there were 606,600 reported cases of child abuse, but by 1984, the figure had almost doubled to 1,131,300 cases. Moreover, the ratio of child abuse cases per 1,000 population increased from 2.7 in 1978 to 4.8 in 1984.
As University of Rhode Island philosophy professor Dr Stephen Schwarz points out in his book The Moral Question of Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press), "Abortion is not a solution for child abuse. It is simply false to assume that it is the unwanted child who will be abused while the wanted child will not. That is, abortion for this purpose, even if it were justified, would not be effective."
Indeed, as Canadian physician Dr Edward Lenoski points out, "Many studies have demonstrated that the victim of child abuse is not the ‘unwanted child." In fact more often than not, it is the wanted child.
In his study of child abuse, Dr Lenoski discovered that, "Ninety one percent of the parents admitted they wanted the child they had abused." Moreover "A higher percentage of the abused children were named after one of the parents," suggesting that they indeed were wanted.
Canadian psychiatrist Dr Philip Ney says the abused child is a victim of the results of abortion because: 1. Abortion decreases an individual's instinctual restraint against the occasional rage felt toward those dependent on his or her care; 2. Permissive abortion diminishes the social taboo against aggressing the defenceless; 3. Abortion increases the hostility between generations; 4. Abortion has devalued children, thus diminishing the value of caring for children.
Clearly, when unborn babies are aborted merely for convenience sake, when newly-born babies are permitted to die simply because they are handicapped, and when the elderly are encouraged to die because they are unwanted and cannot care for themselves, it becomes easy for parents, guardians and caretakers to view and treat children as toys to be used and abused, and discarded after use.