Forced Motherhood and Automated Phone Calls

My mother-in-law got a phone call yesterday. She said that the right-wing nut jobs had called her with one of those automated recordings, begging her to send them money to support the passing of the Right to Life Act. Like that will be a cold day in hell. These people have decided that life begins at conception, and they want the government to force it on the rest of us. I really do wonder if they realize just how much this whole thing cheapens and makes a mockery of their religion.

I tell you what. You want to live in a country where birth control and abortion are illegal? Try Iran or Saudi Arabia. Well, actually even as backwards as they are, a woman can still have an abortion if she would die if she carried the child to term. And that brings me to another point. Before abortion was legal in this country, rich people would do one of two things. They would either pay their family doctor off and get him to say the mother's life was in danger and have him do it, or they would travel to Europe and have it done there. So, it being illegal is no problem for those who have the means to pay off the doctor, or to travel to another country.

However, if you're poor and don't have the money, guess what? You get to be a mother, like it or not, and now you have a(nother) mouth to feed. But don't expect any help from the State. These are the same idiots who want to do away with welfare, food stamps and WIC, because the dirty poor people are taking all their tax dollars. They only care about fetuses. I know they don't give a damn about women either, most of them are misogynist women haters. They're old white men, and if there's any women tagging along, I swear they have Stockholm Syndrome. They also don't give a damn about the children who are already here, the ones who don't have enough to eat and are living in abject poverty. There are 42 MILLION children in this country who live in families that do not make enough to meet their basic needs. The federal poverty level is already grossly low. You can't survive on that kind of income as a single adult, much less if you have other mouths to feed. So what I want to know, is where the hell are these people when it comes to the children who are already here? Oh wait, I know. Children starving to death doesn't win elections. Rhetoric and divisive issues do.

To go back to the argument of when life does indeed begin, the supreme court ruled in the decision of Roe v. Wade, that they weren't able to figure that one out. If these morons think that the congress can figure that one out, seriously, they have another thing coming. This is a philosophical question that has been argued for centuries, maybe even millenia, and we are no closer to knowing the exact moment life begins than we were when the conversation started. It almost seems as if the Christians are arguing that we are nothing more than our physical bodies, the sperm and egg coming together, making a zygote, and that's all. Hmm. That sounds exactly like what atheists believe. *blink blink* Yeah. I never did quite understand why they had a problem with abortion. It would seem to me, that from their religious beliefs, they would believe that if someone did have an abortion, the fetus would go and be in heaven with Jesus. Just one more contradiction from the unthinking Religious Right.

In fact, if these Christians are going to use their Bible as a guide, it repeatedly says that life doesn't begin until the baby draws it's first breath. It says that in multiple places. It also says that the penatly for causing a woman to miscarry is a fine paid to the woman and her family. If they had believed that the fetus was a "life" the penalty would have been death, as it was a "life for a life". But the Christians who comprise the Religious Right (if you can even call them Christians), are the biggest bunch of hypocrites I've ever met.

I don't want children. I came from abject poverty. I have seen it with my own eyes. I shouldn't have to have children if I don't want them and neither should any other woman. On top of that, I shouldn't be forced to by a government puppeted by a bunch of totalitarian theocratic religious fanatics. Jeez, is it possible that I could go one post without mentioning the Nazis? I'll leave that one alone. If you've studied history, you'll know what I'm talking about.