In the bad old days, women had trouble getting doctors to do the medical procedures necessary to permanently prevent pregnancy. They had a mathematical formula they used to determine who was eligible for a procedure.
Let me repeat that: It was all based on math. It was a formula that used the mother’s age (a number) and how many children she had (another number.)
Then someone said, “Hey, being a mother isn’t about numbers. It’s about the desire to be a mother.”
A few years later, abortion was legalized and we heard, “Having an abortion isn’t based on anything except the desire not to be a mother.”
In other words, in the area of human reproduction, as it related to women, the only consideration was the woman’s desire, or lack thereof, to be a mother.
The reasoning in both of those medical issues was, “It’s her body, therefore nobody else gets to decide what she does with it regarding bearing, or not bearing, children.
Wow, how liberated! Women get to decide what to do with their own bodies. The only opinion I have on any of that is: “If you didn’t emerge from your mother’s uterus with your own uterus, ovaries, eggs, facile bones, and a potential abundance of natural estrogen, shut up.”
Now…………..
We have unending “news” reports about a mother of six who knowingly chose to bear eight babies at one time. And you think that’s something about which you have the god-given, constitutionally-guaranteed right to whine, bitch and moan?
We’ve gone, in about three to four decades, from demanding that women bear children they don’t want, to demonizing women who want to bear children.
If you genuinely believe that the government has the RIGHT to determine what you do with your body, then exactly how far are you willing to let that government go in controlling your body?
We are not addressing issues of taxes, overburdened Gaia, women’s rights or prurient interest in a stranger’s uterus. Let’s see if we can, just for a moment, put aside all our cherished prejudices, which the media loves to pander to so they can get the rating and hit counts that draw in advertisers.
Let’s see if we can be big boys and girls and stick to the subject. In case you missed it, the subject is how much control over YOUR body are you willing to give to the government?
Yes, we’re all a bit disquieted by Michelle Duggar’s overactive uterus, but we don’t get out in public and speculate over her sex life, to the point where we demand that the government step in and stop her. Well…most of us don’t.
If the unmarried mother of 14 children had gotten pregnant the old-fashioned way, we wouldn’t even know her name. If she’d been married and had gotten pregnant the new-fangled way, we still wouldn’t know her name. At 14 children, she couldn’t hope for any kind of public scrutiny could she?
The self-righteous hypocrisy of condemning a woman for having any number of children, for questioning her fitness to parent, based entirely on the number of children she has, with the excuse of “concern for the children,” is puritanical and prurient, with no basis in anyone’s personal moral beliefs.
Unless you’re willing to go the way of China and allow the government to have total control over your body, (including your sex life and its results,) you’d better come up with a better reason than “concern” for the children in demanding “action from the authorities.”
If you have strong opinions on this subject, you’ve been sucked in by the media again. Your emotions have been manipulated, and you’ve tossed your thinking skills to the wind. Again.
Who the hell do you think is going to be living in reproductive freedom when governments have the right to determine what you do with your body, and what you do with the issue of your body?
To suggest that these eight children *must* be torn from their mother’s control, and placed in the institutional setting recommended by Gloria Allred, is to suggest that you’d be quite happy to have that happen in your life too.
How much governmental control do you need over your life and your decisions? How much governmental control do you need over your childrens’ lives? How much governmental control do you need over your “family,” whatever that family may be.
Is there any point, short of being hooked up to Matrix-like machines, where you’d like to stop the governmental control and make your own decisions? If there is, stop giving away your individual, private, personal power to control your own life by demanding that the government control the life of someone else, no matter how much you disagree with their choices and decisions.
Just say no to the Kool-Aid, and mind your own business.
February 6, 2009
