Kudos to The Columbian’s Father’s Day editorial, “Dads matter from Day 1.” I’d like to take this a little further by asking the question: what is “day 1”? Certainly, the child’s birthday, which modern dads are privileged to experience in the delivery room. And yet the child’s “day 1” occurred months earlier, as did the transformation of the man and woman into a father and mother, when the child was conceived as a consequence of intimate contact between the “soon to be” parents.
And, yes, dads matter from “day 1” of the child’s conception.
Turns out that marriage has a great influence on whether dads and moms include their newly conceived child in their future. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2009 data: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db136.htm), unmarried couples abort their children 31 percent of the time, while married couples only 5 percent, which raises another question: Do dads and moms really matter in a society that allows the destruction of their newly conceived child and encourages them to be complicit by referring to the newly conceived child’s continued existence in his/her mother’s womb as a woman’s choice?
For more information, check out Clark County Right to Life’s website at http://www.clarkrtl.org.
Gerry Parmantier
Vancouver