Last year I blogged about the Child Benefit Payment. It is a proposed program, that I like very much, that would see the government give every pregnant woman a cheque for $10,000 to help offset the non-medical expenses of giving birth, such as food, shelter and clothing.
Basically, I just can't abide my government, biasing in favour of the elective abortion decision, by funding it exclusively. I want the government to also fund equally, some of the costs of birth, to help offset, the real economic and other pressures to elective abortion. By this to show we all care and want to help. Without interfering with anyone's rights in any way.
Well, I don't see the "Child Benefit Payment" happening any time soon. Even the "socialists" the NDP would not go for it, nor the Catholic or Evangelical church in general, nor even, out front, line of fire, pro-life groups. (Besides, this one Coke commercial, can probably accomplish more good, than all the government programs put together.)
And that is OK. Ideas like this are for the next generation to pick up, if they want to. And the future is still a long way out. And maybe, something good will come from the idea after all.
And so not to be daunted, my daughter told me about the Finland Baby Gift Box and showed me this BBC News Magazine article, dated June 4, 2013, called "Why Finnish Babies Sleep In Cardboard Boxes."
Here is a quote from the article, but I hope you read the whole story, because it is very enjoyable.
"For 75 years, Finland's expectant mothers have been given a box by the state. It's like a starter kit of clothes, sheets and toys that can even be used as a bed. And some say it helped Finland achieve one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates."
And so can we have a "Canada" Baby Gift Box?
And so here is the dream. What if there was a contest on how to spend the few hundred million dollars saved by abolishing the Canadian Senate? What if the "Canada" Baby Gift Box idea won, because enough people wanted to make it a new public priority to emphasize encouraging and helping young families with children.
I know, it is only a dream. But Shakespeare said, "We are such things as dreams are made of..." and I'm good with that.
P.S. The BBC article quotes a young father from Finland, Mark Bosworth, as saying:
"We now live in Helsinki and have just had our second child, Annika. She did get a free box from the Finnish state. This felt to me like evidence that someone cared, someone wanted our baby to have a good start in life. And now when I visit friends with young children it's nice to see we share some common things. It strengthens that feeling that we are all in this together.""
P.P.S. Our family attended a wedding in Red Deer on Saturday. Right away, the pastor said the bride and groom, want the guests to encounter the love of God, the way they have. We sang a version of "The Lord's Prayer" and some other songs, that you could tell, were favorites of the bride and groom. The wedding was joyfull and they told how God had really communicated to them, through His word in the Bible, all through their young lives, and that in His time and through His trials, He had brought them together, for this day. And there, on that beautiful, sunny, warm, Saturday in Alberta, (in January), we all did, encounter the love of God. And I thought, that one day, this young couple, could probably really use a "Canada Baby Gift Box", as a symbol, that we all cared so much. And so, could all courageous, young moms, everywhere.