Washington. -- Yesterday you enjoyed one of life's most satisfying experiences: watching your children's faces glow over the unwrapping of every present, reveling in the tastes of a Christmas dinner and enjoying the love and affection of a happy family.
I'm no grinch, but I can think of no better time than this to ask you whether we ought to prohibit some Americans from having children because they seem incapable as parents of providing their offspring with the food, toys and joys of the Christmas you and I have just experienced.
I recently read an article in The American Prospect by Christopher Jencks and Kathryn Edin asking "Do Poor Women Have the Right to Bear Children?" They write:
"Those who would like to prevent the 'underclass' from reproducing have never devised a plan for doing this that stands a chance of winning broad political support.
"The problem is not that the public is deeply committed to the principle that everyone should be able to have children. Rather, the problem is that we cannot predict in advance which children might eventually need welfare. . . . If we tried to prevent married couples from having children until we could be sure that they would not need AFDC . . . we would have to regulate the most intimate behavior of millions of married people."
This sane observation has not persuaded either white or black welfare bashers from asserting a right to make it physically impossible or socially dangerous for poor women to have babies; to seize and put into orphanages the children of needy women, especially those of unmarried teen-agers, or to otherwise punish in many ways women who bear babies for whom they cannot provide all the comforts of home and the joys of Christmas as most of us non-poor know it.
Marion Barry, who is about to start another stretch as mayor of the financially troubled District of Columbia, recently shocked this city with a suggestion that the government should make the medically controversial Norplant contraceptive implant mandatory for welfare mothers who continue to have children.
Many political jurisdictions have decreed that welfare money for poor households will not be increased (or may be ended) if the mother has another baby, especially one who is "illegitimate."
The campaign to pressure poor women not to have babies, especially "bastard" babies, lies at the heart of President Clinton's ill-conceived "welfare reform" campaign. It takes on a more punitive, even vicious, nature as proposed by some Republicans.
Mr. Jencks and Ms. Edin cite compelling research about welfare in Mississippi that makes it clear that to deter poor women from having babies to any meaningful degree, states would have to deny all poor women (more whites than blacks) any money for shelter, food, clothing, medicine, dental care, day care, food stamps and other basic essentials of a minimally healthful life.
Do any of us who celebrate this holiday in basic prosperity and good health want to target our poor female neighbors with such a scarlet letter of scorn? All but the timid among us must speak out against the craven politics of those who are now clamoring for a "welfare reform" that would persecute poor, "immoral" mothers as the fundamental cause for America's cultural and economic sicknesses.
There is no spirit of Christianity or any other religion that permits us such silence when we see such meanness perpetrated in the name of "welfare reform."
Carl T. Rowan is a syndicated columnist.