A rotating panel of experts from the worlds of philosophy, psychology and religion offer their perspective on the dilemmas that come with living in Southern California.

Gov. Pete Wilson is thinking of encouraging pregnant welfare recipients, particularly teenagers, to give up their babies for adoption. Under a preliminary welfare reform proposal, caseworkers for the first time would suggest that mothers consider adoption if their financial, emotional and living conditions did not appear to be in the child’s best interests. Is this a proper role for the state?

Miriyam Glazer

Director of the Dortort Writers Institute, University of Judaism, Los Angeles

“What hidden preconceptions, passions, judgments, desires, prejudices, really lurk in Wilson’s image of ‘pregnant teenage welfare recipients’? Promiscuous breeders, social leeches, an unworthy underclass of women of color? Or young women who, with proper health care, educational guidance, parenting classes, child care and job training could both better their own troubled lives and raise healthy children? Which image panders to the moral and class arrogance of Wilson’s implicit politics of punishment, and which serves the state’s--our--real long-term interest by providing the conditions for two Californians, mother and child, to become productive citizens? Or does Wilson plan to beam up poor postpartum primiparas to Portland after their newborns are adopted into white-picket-fence homes?”

The Venerable Karuna Dharma

Abbess, International Buddhist Meditation Center, Los Angeles

“If a young woman is pregnant and will have difficulty in raising her child, I have no problem with her social worker suggesting putting the baby up for adoption. However, we must be careful that the social worker merely makes the suggestion as one of several possibilities. There cannot be any coercion or attempt to make the expectant mother take on the state’s values. Frankly, I do not believe that the suggestion of adoption will change the mother’s behavior, particularly if she was hoping to become pregnant, as many of these young girls are when they enter into a sexual relationship. If we want to cut down on teenage pregnancy, we will have to affect societal change, which will not come about from any of Gov. Wilson’s ideas. The young people need to be loved themselves and not want a baby to fill that void.”

Louke M. van Wensveen

Assistant professor of theological studies, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles

“According to the principle of subsidiarity, articulated in Roman Catholic social teaching, problems should be solved at the lowest possible level of organization; if all else fails, the government must offer support. Thus, when the birth of a baby creates problems for mother and/or child, the responsibility to help extends to their family and local community before it extends to the state. Those who follow this principle for rich mothers but want to violate it for poor mothers carry a heavy burden of proof. If the state must step in anyway, it should offer genuine help. Any prefab solution, such as a policy to encourage adoption, suggests that money is the state’s real minion.”

--Compiled by Larry B. Stammer, Times Religion Writer