Yesterday I ran into a woman who was an old friend. Talk turned to politics, and she said:
"I would rather let children just die than give their parents my tax money."
Once I put my lower jaw back where it belonged, I turned on my heel and walked away. I called over my shoulder, "I guess you can't say you're pro-life anymore."
I happen to know this person is also pro-birth. She certainly can't be "pro-life," not if that is her attitude. How in the world can there be any morality in forcing a woman to have a child only to watch the child die because you don't want your tax dollars to support it?
At least if you're going to force women to have babies, have the decency to cough up the money to support the poor unfortunate (and unwanted) kid.
If this is your morality, as far as I'm concerned, you are a fascist waging class warfare on people you are condemning for ... whatever reason. Maybe you think you work harder or something. I don't know. It's not something I can get my mind around because I don't think like that.
Actually this is not thinking. I don't know what it is, but it certainly is not any kind of rationalization that I or any other person of morals can condone. If you do condone it, I suggest you go take a good long look at yourself. Put the fascist label over the mirror while you're there so you'll know what one looks like when you see your reflection.
Where is the humanity - the Christianity - the morality - in that kind of brain?
What have we come to?
Is this how it is, your dollar bills are more important than a human life? It is more important that you keep it all in your pocket than ensure that your neighbor does not die? Is that what you think, really? Hooray for me and f*ck you? Is that how you want to live your life?
Have we all become fools over money? Is not that really the god we're worshipping here? Are we not all bowing down before the golden calf?
If that is what we have become, a nation of money-grubbing, backstabbing, self-centered and selfish footlickers who can't come up with a decent thought that isn't hypocritical, injudicious and ludicrous, then we are doomed.
God help me, this is not the kind of world I want to live in. It's not what I grew up in and it's not what I was expecting. This rancid turn of attitude is going to be the end of us all.
Amen, and a rant is always the best way to express yourself. I don't disagree with most of your comments.
ReplyDeleteWell said! Of course, this woman probably thinks she is a very moral woman. You need a solid foundation of some brand of "morality" to justify such views to yourself. She's probably a good churchgoer too, and quite possibly her church won't disagree with her. Share your prejudice with a whole community and you know it has to be right! And she probably thinks anyone who thinks differently is an evil, godless commie. Well, you must be to think that people shouldn't stand on their own two feet, take their own decisions, and pay the consequences. If a woman couldn't afford children, she shouldn't have them. If she goes ahead, on her head be it. The fact that it is the children who will suffer won't bother your old friend. Such people always think the "collateral damage" is a price worth paying to enforce their brand of virtue. And in that style of thinking, what you have earned with your own labour (never mind that other people's labour also made it possible to earn anything at all, there being such a thing as society, really) should be all yours for you to enjoy and trying to give some of it to help starving children is just downright immoral, fostering a weak, dependent, unfit society which will drag down America. There's a lot of that talk around, in conservative circles (sometimes in supposedly liberal circles too). It's the right wing reaction to the values of the Rooseveldt social contract, now being torn apart piece by piece. There aren't many people with the courage to stand up and oppose the dominant consensus in a society (which this currently is). Bravo!
ReplyDeleteStill picking my jaw up off the ground too at her comment. Time for that 'old friend' to be crossed off the list, Anita... good grief.
ReplyDelete"At least if you're going to force women to have babies, have the decency to cough up the money to support the poor unfortunate (and unwanted) kid."
ReplyDeleteExcellent rant, Anita. This has long been my opinion as well. If you are going to deny poor women access to affordable birth control and then force them to have children they cannot afford, then you had best be willing to pay for that child's upkeep for the next 18 years.
I'm 100% with you on this, Anita. Very gutsy of you to express your view in print!
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