Allison,
My feeling is that you misunderstood what I was saying in my post.
I did not say that I would stand in the way or stop any child that I co-produced who became an adult, who decided to join the service and go fight a war.
Once children become adults they completely think for themselves, unless they ask for their elders feelings/thoughts of the matter.
The parents are responsible for their children as they are growing up and that includes teaching them right and wrong as well as any values that they have.
If the parent believes in love thy neighbor and peacemaking, then they will teach their children to love thy neighbor and to make peace.
I find it hard to believe that parents who teach their children to love themselves and who by loving their children teach their children to love them and love their neighbors and promote peaceful relations between all people are going to have children who when they turn into adults are going to go fight in a war where it was not proven that these children nor their parents, their communities nor countrymen had anything to fear from these other people.
Parents who love their children but don't teach their children love their neighbor as themselves but instead teaches their children to be fearful of others, probably are going to have children who are eager for war, especially if their children are also taught that there is life after death and therefore death is something that can be risked in any conflict.
While it is true that poverty produced Mozart and many great things can come out of poverty, even extreme poverty, that's not a good reason to promote families living under such condition because there is evidence that many unbalanced and violent individuals, especially, recently, have been produced under those same conditions, and the other side of that coin is that many people around the world are dying unnecessarily do to their extreme poverty.
Abstinence and abortion are not the same thing and I don't know why you brought abortion into this conversation.
My feeling is that if the people in the countries where there are so many of them are dying of AIDS for instance were eating a more balanced diet, much less meat and sugar in those hot tropical regions, then their desire to have sex might lessen enough to make it easier for them to practice abstinence and therefore lessen the spread of that terrible disease.
Please understand that when I say that poor people who cannot provide a balanced dietary and social environment for their children should be encouraged to practice abstinence, I'm not saying that they should be forced to do so.
Many religions are suggesting that their followers not practice birth control but the are not forcing their followers to obey them, so for the same token, grown parents and educators could encourage children and young adults to practice abstinence without using force.
I don't know if I am angry as you say or am bitter.
Please explain the basis for what you have said.
Thank you, very much.
Bruce Paine