WASHINGTON (Map, News) - It all comes down to good PR. Sporting their prairie dresses and pompadours, the women of that Texas polygamist sect just aren’t cool enough to attract sympathy from the usual defenders of “non-traditional families.” Rosie O’Donnell isn’t running her bilious yap. The American Civil Libeties Union hasn’t filed any amicus briefs on behalf of the plural wives. Brad Pitt hasn’t vowed not to marry the mother of his children until polygamists also are free to wed.

Of course, their silence actually isn’t surprising: Members of the Texas sect are religious fundamentalists, which renders them ineligible for left-wing support. And let’s get real: Despite all their yammering about supporting laws enacted “for the sake of the children,” liberals, through their policies, represent the biggest threat to American youngsters since polio.

Before you roll your eyes and stop reading, consider this: Welfare programs implemented and maintained by leftists for more than 40 years have enabled, if not encouraged, unmarried teenage girls to have babies they cannot afford, whom they raise in dangerous and unhealthy environments. We know from research conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute and the American Journal of Public Health, among others, that adult males father two-thirds of the babies born to these school-age mothers. If we agree that it is awful for adult men to impregnate teenage girls in polygamist compounds, why isn’t it just as bad for adult men to impregnate teenage girls in housing projects?

Yet states don’t round up those young mothers and children and put them in protective custody. To the contrary, we send them a check every month and provide housing, groceries, medical care and dozens of other taxpayer-funded amenities. And we do so knowing that we’re rewarding foolish behavior and subsidizing calamity.

Children born to unwed teenage mothers are defined as being “at risk.” No one denies that those children are more likely to fail academically, to engage in criminal and other anti-social behavior, and to be the victims of child abuse or neglect. Yet while it is a crime in many localities to allow a child to ride a bicycle without wearing a helmet, almost no one condemns parents who selfishly produce children in circumstances that put the youngsters in automatic danger. Liberals might shake their heads and murmur sad nothings about children caught in neighborhood gunfire, but it is when middle-class parents smoke cigarettes in front of kids that leftists become outraged enough to take action. 

Consider, too, leftists’ typical support for illegal immigration, which also creates a demonstrably unhealthy environment for many children. According to the authors of a 2006 study in the Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, “U.S.-born children of Mexican immigrants who live in unmarried families may face exceptional risks. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study [a joint project of Princeton and Columbia universities], the authors find that … Mexican immigrant mothers have significantly lower levels of education and employment and much higher rates of poverty, as well as less access to social services. [Their children’s] poor socioeconomic and social service profile suggests that even when healthy at the starting gate, they may potentially face poor outcomes during childhood and beyond.”

The authors didn’t specify “illegal” immigrant, but their meaning is clear: If the mother were here legally, her access to social services would not be limited. Yet leftists continue to defend those who invade our country unlawfully, despite the harm that it evidently does to many of those immigrants’ children. 

Certainly, what appears to have been going on in that polygamist camp is indefensible.   Texas officials have an obligation to protect any women and children they suspect were being abused. But more than 50,000 babies are born in Texas each year to teenage mothers who aren’t members of a polygamist cult. Where is the outrage for the harm done to those girls — and for the harm the young mothers inflict on the children they raise in squalid environments?

While we may find the polygamists’ practices disgusting, let’s not be hypocritical: Millions of American children live in circumstances just as bad — if not worse — and we not only tolerate it; we pay for it. Shame on any parent who visit such damage on their children. Shame on us when we foot the bill.