Ever Notice?

I spend a lot of time driving around my town, and in the course of a day I am exposed to a million peoples' opinions on posters, bumper stickers, and spray-painted on walls.

Yesterday a gigantic poster blared at me: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you"--God.

This wasn't one of those plain black billboards. Instead it had a picture of a gappily-smiling baby, sitting in a blanket.

I don't really want to address the whole question of speaking for a god. After all, people from the Khans of Asia to the Tsars of Russia to George W. have claimed to be god's instruments, or at least his tool.

But what I was thinking about was this: One never sees a crack baby on an anti-abortion poster. In fact, it's rare that one sees a black or hispanic baby. So who's the audience?

Shouldn't there be some requirement for truth in advertising? Along with "Abortion stops a beating heart" shouldn't the posters say: "Looking after a severely retarded child will cripple you emotionally and financially", or "We'll fight like demons to enforce your right to raise four kids on welfare"? How about: "Have the baby now, you can always euthanize it once it's a teenager"?

Don't get me wrong. I dislike abortion. But to me, it's a failure to adequately educate children that leads to adults.

I want honesty in education. Children should be given an unemotional perspective on sexuality, free from the influence of religion or embarrassment of parents. And someone needs to stump up and point out that creationism is a fallacy, less likely than evolution.

I've been thinking a lot about religion lately. As a lifelong penny-pincher, 17-year-ex-catholic and comparison shopper, I've been trying to apply a parsing approach to my spiritual life, such as it isn't. Watch this space for further announcements.