NFP: Why We Don't Bother

Excellent guest post by Pr. H. R. Curtis over at CSPP:

http://concordiansisters.blogspot.com/2010/04/guest-post-nfp-why-we-dont-bother.html

For Better Not for Worse

A Manual of Christian Matrimony
by
WALTER A. MAIER, PH. D.

http://olcc.us/files/olcc.us/Maier%20-%20FBNFW/

(Birth control is covered in Chapter 27 - not scanned online yet as of this post)

The Crucible of the (Extended) Christian Family

Spending this weekend with about three-dozen members of my wife's extended family (which is only about half of her side of the family) up at the family lodge (a.k.a. P&BRR), and then a post by Rebecca over at CSPP, On the setting of standards and the adjusting of expectations, got me thinking...

Experience has shown me that living as Christians in a large and extended family provides a paideia that no other institution can replace. From the youngest to the oldest, from the newborn grandchild to the aged grandparent, and from cousins to in-laws, the more we all collide, the more every member of the Christian family continues to grow every day in faith, wisdom, and love - and in repentance for the lack of faith, wisdom, and love such a crucible of life reveals daily in each of us.

This observation and experience, which has intensified over the past ten years of my life, may explain why I have gone from being an educational entrepreneur and desiring to move my family to greener pastures where the external culture at least appears better, to being a homeschool advocate who desires nothing more than for his children and grandchildren to marry fellow believers and settle down near one another, where they can contribute and partake of the blessed heat generated in this crucible of the extended Christian family living under the cross in the forgiveness of Christ.

First Things on Contra-Economics

This article in the current issue of First Things is a must read. In “Bitter Pill,” economist Timothy Reichert, according to the byline, “reveals how the contraception boom has shifted wealth and power away from women.” Here’s a snippet:

With this essay, using the language and tools of modern social science, I will articulate the position that contraception is socially damaging. I will also demonstrate that contraception is in fact a sexist practice. Using straightforward microeconomic reasoning, I will unpack the behaviors engendered by artificial contraception. I will show that the contraceptive revolution has resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men.

Make sure you read the rest of this important article. If you aren’t one already, click here to become a First Things print or online subscriber.

Repenting of Jonah’s Duplicity

Excellent post by the Rev. Kevin Golden of Village Lutheran Church in Ladue, Missouri.

HT: Concordian Sister Rebekah

Only Twelve?

For those who might not know, clergymen of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, have two documents circulated to congregations considering the sending of a Divine Call to a pastor. One is a Self-Evaluation Tool (SET). In the SET a pastor answers a series of doctrinal questions, well not really doctrinal mostly comments about pastoral practice and reactions to various synodical resolutions. This is done so that calling congregations and district presidents can ascertain, for example, if the pastor will break out his acoustic guitar as worship leader, say the black/do the red, or go cruciform on Good Friday.

The second is the Pastor's Information Form (PIF). The PIF gives the pastor's birthday, educational background, pastoral experience as well as the district president's evaluation of the pastor's conduct of the ministry.

The PIF also gives marital status of the pastor; his wife's name and birthday, their anniversary and the names and birthdays of his children. And how many numbered blank lines are there for the pastor to list his children???

TWELVE - 12 - !!!

Now this is good stuff I say. The Synod is anticipating that her pastors will be having large families. Too bad there is no room on the form if you get Duggersized. Still, I think this is great and I thought Missouri deserves a big attagirl! Attagirl Missouri! Encourage those preachers to have a dozen then maybe this whole decline in membership will be take care of itself as the old beloved synod desires (expects???) her pastors to follow the Word..."Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth...Suffer the little children to come to me...".

See brothers, those PIFs are not so bad.

Let the little children come?

The 10:30 a.m. divine service had just concluded. After making the sign of the cross while blessing the congregation, Pastor Meyer made a few announcements, one being a reminder of the special “open forum” that would be held in a few minutes. He explained that it would be for getting feedback from the congregation in preparation for the next Sunday’s voters’ meeting. Generally, that was a cue for the apathetic members of the congregation to head for the parking lot. This day was different. The congregation was at a cross roads.

The meeting was packed, buzzing with several conversations simultaneously. The chairman called the assembly to order and announced the business to be decided at the following Sunday’s voters’ meeting: whether to approve the finance board’s recommendation to increase--dramatically increase--tuition at the congregation’s Lutheran elementary school. The floor opened for suggestions.

John Shoemaker, a parent of three, two of whom were enrolled already, the third of whom would start kindergarten the following year, spoke first. “I’m afraid that a lot of families, ours included, will struggle to afford Christian education if the tuition goes up. We have always appreciated the way this congregations values its children, and the support from the congregation’s budget that offsets tuition.”

Bill Bachman, a member of the finance board, spoke next. “I wish the congregation’s subsidy could continue, too, but the fact is, contributions have been down, utilities and health insurance expenses have gone up—largely beyond our control—and we’ve had to freeze salaries, but that still isn’t enough to make a balanced budget.”

Several others spoke. Some gave assurance that God would bless the congregation and the budget would balance itself. Others raised philosophical questions, debating the pros and cons of tuition vs. congregational subsidy and of charging different tuition rates for member families vs. non-member families. That last topic became an unexpected turning point in the discussion.

Ray Lindemann, a retired schoolteacher himself, raised his hand to be recognized. “Mr. Chairman, and fellow members of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, the issue before us is not simply a matter of meeting the budget, nor of determining the proper balance between congregational subsidies and parents’ tuition payments. The question is whether we value children, whether we say with Jesus, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them.’ And, the question is, if we do believe that, then how will our works follow our faith?”

“Some would say, that if we really value Christian education, then the congregation will subsidize as much as possible, perhaps even—as in our sister congregation, St. Timothy Lutheran—to the point of there being no tuition for member families, and just a small load of book and activity fees. Others would say such a plan is impractical, especially given our current situation here at Good Shepherd, with the number of members laid off during this economic recession.

“But let’s take a broader look, for a moment. Why do we even have a Lutheran elementary school in the first place? Why do we offer Sunday school between the 8:00 and 10:30 services? Historically, Lutherans in America regarded Sunday school primarily as an outreach ministry for non-members. It was assumed that adults who had been raised in the church could provide their own children with basic instruction in the home, through family devotions. Sunday school would supplement this, of course, but it wasn’t the main thing. Now we’ve come to the other extreme, where Christian parents enroll their children in one Vacation Bible School after another, hopping among all the congregations in town, as if VBS has become a free daycare service. Now, that’s wonderful, of course, to have the children learning God’s Word all summer long, but shouldn’t we instead be reaching out to the unchurched with our VBS and Sunday school programs? I fear we have lost the proper focus.”

“Is the Lutheran elementary school any different? Why is it that both a mother and a father should get a job, so they can earn enough money to pay for someone else’s mother or father to teach their children all day long? And why is it, that the teachers would not instead be at home raising their own children? Perhaps this is not the time or the place to mention it, but I find it scandalous that two of our teachers have children under the age of three, whom they drop off at daycare in order to serve in our school. Perhaps we need to seriously rethink what it meant when Christ said, ‘Let the little children come to me.’”

The chairman paused in silence, as murmuring cascaded across the room. Sheepishly, Karie Habeck, a woman in her early twenties, raised her hand. Just six months earlier she had accepted a call to teach the first and second grades. One month before arriving, she had gotten married. “I want to thank the gentleman for voicing his concerns. I am—I have,” pausing to swallow, she continued, “It’s just that I’ve always dreamed of being a teacher. I thought this was God’s plan for my life. I also dreamed of marriage and children. I assumed work and family would somehow fit perfectly together, and they did, in my little dream world. Of course, a little girl doesn’t stop to think through the practicalities of it all. In college, as I trained to be your Lutheran elementary teacher, the importance of the teaching ministry was instilled in me day after day. This is God’s special calling for my life. And yet, aren’t I called to be married now, too? In the capstone class at college, our professor advised us to use birth control for at least the first few years of our teaching career, to help us get established. He said then it would be easier, if we had a child later, to take a maternity leave and get right back into the classroom.”

Some of the older people in the congregation sat uncomfortably. Sex had never been the topic of discussion at a voters’ meeting before, but before anyone dared to interrupt, the teacher continued. “My husband and I love each other. We love this special time in our life, as we begin our new life together. But I feel, somehow, well, robbed. I feel like a part of marital bliss can’t be ours, if we deny ourselves the prospect of having children, just so that I can be a teacher to someone else’s children. Oh, please don’t get me wrong,” she quickly added, holding back a tear.

“I love teaching! I enjoy working with your children! But I feel lost. I’m not sure which role models to choose. I deeply appreciate the help that the experienced teachers have given me. They are wonderful mentors, as far as teaching goes. But am I to follow in their footsteps, and put my kids in daycare so I can continue teaching? Is that the way to ‘have it all’? It’s not that I ever wanted to be a ‘career woman.’ I just always thought, somehow, that being a Lutheran elementary teacher would be totally family friendly. By now listening to today’s discussion, I must admit, I’m really not so sure. In fact, I have a confession to make: my elementary education degree doesn’t really mean that much. Most if not all of you parents out there could adequately teach your children in your home. Why, then, do we even bother having children, if you’re going to put yours in school with me, and I’m going to put mine in daycare with someone else, and all of us will miss out on the cutest, most memorable moments of their lives—and they’ll miss out on ours?”

Pastor Meyer stood up. He looked out at his congregation, the sheep of Good Shepherd Lutheran. Silently, he prayed for the Holy Spirit to give him the words for such a time as this, and then he said ...

Great Article

from Salvo Mag on how contraception (and subsequently abortion) has stripped women of their freedoms.

Fulfillment of the Law & 1st Article Gifts

Often times when speaking with others about procreation, the issue of one's own fulfilling of God's command comes into play. They say, "But I have fulfilled the command to be fruitful, I have multiplied." Recently one such discussion then led into, "I've been fruitful, I've multiplied, and without making possessions and idol, why can't I stop having children and enjoy the finer things in life?"

I think this is the perception of most in our culture. If they are Christian, they feel that they have fulfilled God's command by having children. And the second, in regards to material possessions is the predominant view.

There are two main theological issues at hand here that I would like to address here:

1. Fulfillment of God's Law

First off, no, God does tell us how much we must multiply by, but neither does he give to us to say when we have "done enough." So you say, you've been fruitful, you have multiplied. Good for you, you Pharisee who looks to the law as yours to fulfill and earn God's grace. The reality is, God gives to us to be fruitful and multiply. And this is not only a "pre-fall command" (as I have heard others say) but one that is given again after the flood (Gen. 9). Being fruitful and multiplying, i.e. having children, is not about fulfilling God's law. We will never fully fulfill God's law, for we are sinners. For this reason, God sent his Son, to redeem us who are under the law (Gal. 4). We must stop looking to ourselves as completing God's work in us, for that is the way of the Pharisees and the Romanists and many American "Evangelicals". But God's law is fulfilled in Christ, we are recepients of his good and gracious gifts... which brings us to:

2. 1st Article Gifts
To be fruitful and to multiply is a part of God's good and gracious gifts to his people. As repeatedly discussed on this blog and elsewhere, children are gifts of God. Rarely will a Christian argue this point. But what about not having more children so that I may enjoy the finer things in life? Regardless of one's words, looking to earthly and material goods for oneself is nothing short of idolatry. You either idolize yourself in your own fulfilling of God's command or you idolize money and possessions for yourself. God has not promised that you will be provided with the finer things of life, you may never own a new car, you may never be able to eat steak and seafood on a regular basis, you may never even have an Armani suit, and you may even never get to go on that fabulous vacation you dreamed about. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with such things, but these are not yours by birth right, they are additional gifts. God "richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life." (1st Article of the Creed, Small Catechism)
In our society, the definition of needs is so highly scewed. The arguement of prohibiting children from the standpoint of gaining earthly possessions is idolatry and shows a lack of faith in the 1st Article of the Apostle's Creed, that we will provided with all that we need to support this body and life. Oh and by the way, did you notice that one's wife and children are part of these same 1st Article gifts

We should not be as fundamentalists, who hinge salvation itself on the fulfilling of God's laws, but neither are we given to reject God's gifts. No other gifts mentioned in the 1st Article of the Creed as listed in the Small Catechism, would anyone reject, except that of children. No, salvation does not depend on it entirely, but hearing God's Word on the issue, receiving God's gifts, earthly gifts as well as the gifts given to us in Christ, "for all this it is our duty that thank and praise, serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true."

Ladies, your clock really is ticking: 88% of eggs lost by age 30

In the Let’s Start Encouraging Young Folks to Marry and Procreate Sooner department, we have this from The London Telegraph:

The new research by the Univeristy of St Andrews and Edinburgh University is the first to colate the actual decline of the “ovarian reserve” – the potential number of eggs women are born with – from conception to the menopause. It shows that on average women are born with 300,000 potential egg cells but this pool declines at a much faster rate than first thought. By the age of 30 there is only 12 per cent left on average and by the age of 40 just three per cent.

Dr Hamish Wallace, the co-author, said: “Our model shows that for 95 per cent of women, by the age of 30 years, only 12% of their maximum ovarian reserve is present, and by the age of 40 years only three per cent remains.”

Best to set aside the “it’s better to have kids after college and career” myth right away, don’t you think?

HT: Ladies, your clock really is ticking: 88% of eggs lost by age 30

Heather MacDonald on Reengineering the Family

Heather MacDonald on Reengineering the Family

An atheist (or agnostic?) writer I find worth reading even when I disagree, since she often raises good questions and makes sharp points:

Indeed, heterosexual demand drove the medical revolution that allows gays to procreate. Infertile heterosexual couples unwilling to accept a biological limit in their lives spurred the ever-increasing array of gamete- and womb-swapping technologies that now includes sperm banks and complicated surrogacy arrangements. Unmarried middle-aged women, similarly unwilling to give up their assumed right to have it all, have also provided a market for revolutionary fertility techniques. Gays have merely piggybacked on procedures that heterosexuals created for themselves.

My question: If engineering is what we are talking about, who has the right and authority to do the reengineering?

HT: Mere Comments

Here's an excuse

to subscribe to Touchstone Magazine. There's fine article by the wife of one of the L&P contributors, subtitled "on the Public Nature of Marital Privacies." (Spoiler alert: I'm going to quote the last paragraph.) "As go the banns, so go babies. Our churches must grow, but our families must be reasonably sized; our sex must be fantastic but never dutiful; our food is organic but our love is not. We sip from empty glasses and sing the expressiveness of the wine. True love waits, or if that's too hard, it can be made to appear to wait. And after the official waiting is over, love need show nothing for itself but a naughty grin."

Touchstone does ecumenism the way it ought to be done, not glossing over what has historically separated our confessions but working together in arenas where there is agreement. Check out sample articles here. If you need more convincing, give the blog a read.

Genetic Lessons from a Prolific Sperm Donor

The ethical consequences of sperm donation and IVF catch up with a donor, from a recent Newsweek post.

It's a crisp fall day in Northville, Mich., a small suburb of Ann Arbor, and Kirk Maxey, a soft-spoken, graying baby boomer with a classic square jaw, is watching his 12-year-old son chase a soccer ball toward the goal. Maxey is doing what he does every Saturday, along with hundreds of other family men and women across the country, but he's not your average soccer dad. Maxey, 51, happens to be one of the most prolific sperm donors in the country. Between 1980 and 1994, he donated at a Michigan clinic twice a week. He's looked at the records of his donations, multiplied by the number of individual vials each donation produced, and estimated the success of each vial resulting in a pregnancy. By his own calculations, he concluded that he is the biological father of nearly 400 children, spread across the state and possibly the country.

When Maxey was a medical student at the University of Michigan, his first wife, a nurse at a fertility clinic, persuaded him to start donating sperm to infertile couples. Maxey became the go-to stud for the clinic because his sperm had a high success rate of making women pregnant, which brought in good money for the clinic. Maxey himself made about $20 a donation, but says he was motivated to donate more out of a strong paternal instinct and sense of altruism. "I loved having kids, and to have these women doomed to wandering around with no family didn't seem right, and it's easy to come up with a semen donation," he says. "You would get a personal phone call from a nurse saying, 'The situation is urgent! We have a woman ovulating this morning. Can you be here in a half hour?'"

Maxey, now the CEO of Cayman Chemical, a 300-person global pharmaceutical company, says back then he just "didn't think about it a lot." He didn't have to. When he began volunteering, he wasn't asked to take any genetic tests and received no psychological screening or counseling. He merely signed a waiver of anonymity, locked himself in a room with a cup and a sexy magazine, and didn't consider the emotional or genetic consequences for another 30 years. Both his cavalier attitude and the clinic's lax standards, Maxey says, explain why he may have so many offspring. But now a fierce conscience is catching with his robust procreative drive. When he's not running his company, Maxey has become a devoted advocate for better government regulation of the sperm-donor business. He is also making his genome public through Harvard's Personal Genome Project, and hopes that the information collected there might one day help his offspring and their mothers. "I think it was quite reckless that sperm banks created so many offspring without keeping track of their or my health status," he says. "Since there could be [many families] that could have to know information about my health, this is my effort to correct the wrong."

via Genetic Lessons from a Prolific Sperm Donor

The Road to Hitler Was Paved With Abortions (and Contraception)

See http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1209-gardiner for the full review of Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany. By Cornelie Usborne. Berghahn Books. 284 pages. $90.

The following is an excerpt:

In her research for Cultures of Abortion, Cornelie Usborne examined literary works, movies, trial documents, medical records, social workers' notes, police interviews, and newspapers from the years of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933. She consulted archives both in Protestant Prussia and Saxony and in Catholic Bavaria and the Prussian Rhineland. Although she is pro-abortion and thinks reality is "socially constructed," her research is valuable because it shows how the groundwork for Adolf Hitler's eugenic-abortion policies was laid.

But even before abortion was an issue, contraception was "big business" in Germany prior to World War I, due to "Neomalthusian propaganda." In 1913 Max Marcuse interviewed 100 women in Berlin and found that all but three used contraceptives — forty of them also admitted to having had "one or several abortions." In 1914 Oskar Polano interviewed 500 women in Würzburg and found that 81 percent of the wives of civil servants and 72 percent of the wives of workers used contraceptives. No surprise then that in 1927 the law was changed to allow contraceptives to be advertised, though some of these, like the uterine coil, were also abortifacient.

A steep decline in the population was inevitable: those who married before 1905 averaged 4.7 children per family; those who married in 1925-1929, only two. The top civil servants who married before 1905 averaged 3.5 children; those who married in 1925-1929, only 1.6. In Protestant Ohren in 1910, 389 villagers had 86 children in school; in 1925, 382 villagers had only 36. Two million men had died in the trenches in World War I, yet in 1919 a feminist hailed the decline in the birthrate as "the greatest, non-violent revolution" achieved by women, one that gave them "control of life." No wonder the Weimar Republic was distinguished by "the lowest birth rate in the Western world." With this fall in birthrate came "a new hedonism in women's sexuality."

Contraception, of course, was not foolproof, so abortions multiplied and "official disapproval" of them faltered. In 1917 new guidelines set forth by the Reich Health Council allowed abortions "on the strictest health grounds," only if approved by two doctors. In 1926 the law on abortions was mollified, and in 1927 the Supreme Court allowed doctors to perform "therapeutic" abortions. German law on abortion became "one of the most liberal in the world" because doctors could easily convince officials that any abortion was necessary for "health" reasons.

Men find it hard to look evil in the eye and call it by its true name. It was no different in early 20th-century Germany, where women spoke of the need to "curb coercive procreation" by legalizing abortion. Coercive here meant having to bear to term a child who was already in the womb.

* * *

You Big Fundamentalist Churches with all your Darn Kids are Ruining the World for the Rest of Us

This article at the Financial Post left me completely slack-jawed.

Readers of this blog need no convincing that the population scare is mere myth. But feel free to suggest other policies from China that would work on a global scale as well. Judging by the the author's thoroughly thoughtful article, Chinese suppression of information is off the table since it's already been implemented. Freedom from religion, a vital component of any "healthy" regime, is also not open to discussion, since it would have to come along with a global one-child policy. Er, I guess state-sponsored abortion would also be necessary, since we can't get people to stop having sex merely by telling them to limit their progeny to half the number of people required to reproduce. Hm. So what's left? Replacing "In God we Trust" on our currency with "Psalm 137:9"?

HT: Mere Comments

Defusing the Population Bomb

Listen to "Defusing the Population Bomb", available at Catholic Answers at http://www.catholic.com/radio/calendar.php, which originally aired on Friday, December 4 at 3:00 p.m. ET.

An Interesting Tool to Chart Fertility Rates Around the World

See http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:USA&q=%22fertility+rate#met=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:USA

Adventide Beichtspiegel

There are other, somewhat simpler versions of "confessional mirrors", as well as this Pruefungs-Tafel from 1914, but the "teeth" of this particular Beichtspiegel ("confessional mirror") are particularly helpful in my penitential season devotions, not to mention regular self-examination for Holy Communion and Confession. This past Lent was the first time this particular Beichtspiegel was made available online. If you find any typographical errors, please let me know in a comment below so that I may correct them.

This Beichtspiegel is published in The Brotherhood Prayer Book, Emmanuel Press, 2007 (www.emmanuelpress.us). The authors, Rev. Michael Frese and Rev. Benjamin Mayes, compiled this "confessional mirror" from the writings of the best American and German Lutheran father-confessors. The text is public domain and therefore may be formatted, copied, and distributed as much as you wish without copyright concerns. You also have the blessings, explicit permission, and even encouragement of the authors to do so. Though it is not required, please acknowledge the authors and The Brotherhood Prayer Book. However, if you modify this text in any way, which you may certainly do if you wish, kindly do NOT mention the source. May God bless your use of this Beichtspiegel with fruit according to His will.

Free Beichtspiegel download links:

PDF

MS Word

Senate Health Plan to Provide Surrogate Fatherhood?

MSNBC reports that the Senate version of the proposed health care overhaul would fund educational programs that, so far as I can tell, would not even be under consideration if it weren't for the plague of fatherlessness infecting our nation's body politic. That such programs as those described below would be seriously entertained suggests that those with the primary responsibility for helping teens become adults--their parents--have done an inadequate job or, as too often is the case, no job at all.

Learning to be an adult
Being a teenager is tough. The Senate wants to help with a provision allocating $400 million from 2010 to 2015 to help teens make the transition to adulthood.

The money goes to states primarily to set up sex education programs. But the money can also be used for "adult preparation" programs that promote "positive self esteem, relationship dynamics, friendships, dating, romantic involvement, marriage and family interaction."

In addition, the programs can teach financial literacy and other skills such as goal setting, decision-making and stress management. About $10 million of funding would go to "innovative youth pregnancy prevention strategies" in areas of the country with high teen birth rates.

The Personal Responsibility Education for Adulthood Training funding was approved as an amendment in the Senate Finance Committee. Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine joined all the Democrats in passing it.

I recognize, and appreciate, the benevolent intentions that appear to be motivating this proposal. I worry, of course, that "sex education" is anything but "chastity education," i.e., that the Senate bill would fund the standard endorsement of contraception, abortion, and sodomy. But I'm not posting this to point a finger of blame at the liberal-progressives in Congress. I'm simply acknowledging that they are offering a solution to a problem that, sadly and starkly, is real. Let this fact humble all of us into a heartfelt search of how we can manage our own homes better, and reach out to mentor and assist those in need. The teen years, there's no denying, are challenging. Contraception and abortion are as tempting as premarital intercourse. Perhaps you can serve as a "big brother" to someone you know who is struggling through these issues. Otherwise, Big Brother will do it for you.

In Utah, Down syndrome is more prevalent

By Heather May
The Salt Lake Tribune

Utah babies are more likely to be born with Down syndrome than in nine other states studied by the federal government.

The study, published online today in the American Academy of Pediatrics' journal Pediatrics , showed one in 730 babies born in Utah had the genetic disorder, compared with one in 848 among the 10 states studied.

The study didn't explore why. But a Utah expert on birth defects says it's likely because of Utah mothers' ages and attitudes.

Many continue to have children into their late 30s and 40s, which increases the risk of the chromosomal disorder, said Lorenzo Botto, a medical epidemiologist at the Utah Birth Defect Network, which provided data for the study.

And Utah women are less likely to have abortions once the condition has been detected prenatally, he added.

The higher prevalence is "not because there is something wrong with Utah," he said in an e-mail, "but is basically a function of family choices."

Amy Moore, whose 14-year-old daughter has Down syndrome, was not surprised by Utah's ranking. When she lived here -- she now lives in Wyoming -- Kenly had friends with the condition and Moore had a larger support system.

Moore said her teenager is a cheerleader, swims and after years of speech therapy can "say whatever is on her mind, for better or for worse. She's nothing but a blessing in our lives."

In a word, why does Utah have more children born with Down syndrome? Love. It's sad that Mormons, as a whole, have a more biblically sound understanding of life and the value of children than do many "orthodox" Christians.

See http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_13891834 for the full article.