LETTERS:PARENTS MUST ASSUM RESPONSIBILITY

To the editor:

When does human life begin? If you ask Professor Steven Pinker of MIT, he will tell you that newborn infants are not persons in the full sense of the word and, therefore, do not enjoy a right to life. He asks, "Who said that life begins at birth" Birth is as arbitrary a milestone as any other." Young people who allow their newborn infants to die in trash bins will be able to sleep better tonight, because Professor Pinker says that you shouldn't be judged as harshly as people who take human life in its later stages. Lucky thing for him his mother disagreed with him.

I think that the recent tragedies in our schools indicate that the children who were lucky enough to escape the womb are still in danger of being taken in this culture of death by the author of death himself, the great deceiver, the one and only Satan. Our young people see that the adults of this world feel free to murder their brothers and sisters legally. In doing so, we are surely, slowly, mortally wounding their children's souls.

Was it the first lady who said it takes a whole community to raise a child? We have abdicated our authority over our children and turned it over to the schools, which in turn rely on government funding to meet budgets. In exchange for this funding, the children are being brought up by the state.

In exchange for our tax dollars, the schools must be politically correct. They have to teach the liberal government agenda, sex education, condoms, birth-control pills, abortion referrals. What is the legacy? skyrocketing sexually transmitted diseases, skyrocketing births to unmarried young women, skyrocketing abortions, more and more infanticides, drug and alcohol abuse, children inflicting injury to themselves and committing suicide or murder.

Maybe it is time that we take back our schools and get involved with our children's lives once more. Raising children does involve the whole community, starting right in the homes of our children. Take the time to learn what is being taught or not taught in our schools. Attend the PTA meetings. If you are alarmed by what you find out, do something about it before it is too late.

Although some people may feel that things are hopeless, not I. I see that there are young people out there who are trying to lead us out of the darkness we have created. They are leading the fight to bring prayer back into our schools and to bring back commonsense education.

By the way, whatever happened to common sense anyway? Education is wonderful, but you have to have common sense to go with it. If you don't have common sense, you don't have anything.

CHRISTINE STEPHENS

Cape Girardeau