Ahhh, we're finally getting closer to the real reasons underlying the Republican assault on women's rights and contraception: it's that abortion prevents the birth of cheap labor!
But that's not all! By not having babies, we women are causing the decline and fall of western civilization!
More on the flip...
On a day when the U.S. announces that it's going to
drop an extra large serving of bombs on the cradle of civilization, and
raise the debt ceiling even further, I didn't think I could be driven to further depths of despair.
But there it is: a couple of weeks ago, Nancy Schaefer, a state senator from Georgia, said in a public forum that
due to the 50 million abortions which have been performed in our country, we have a dearth of cheap labor, which leads, get this!, to illegal immigration.
Quite a twofer, insulting women who've had abortions (as people who would have given birth to less intelligent persons only capable of menial jobs), and degrading immigrants by accusing them of having few skills and low intelligence.
But wait, there's more! It gets worse. Much, much worse.
Apparently, women who control their fertility with chemical or barrier contraception are the root cause of the decline and fall of western civilization.
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., agrees with conservative columnist Mark Steyn in his proposition that the west is in danger of extinction because the Islamic population is growing at a more rapid rate than the western population.
In other words, we need to have more babies or the scary Islamists are going to take over the world on sheer numbers alone. Our Western values of freedom and capitalism will be supplanted by the radical rule of Muslim imams. And to stop that, we need to increase our population. No more abortion, of course, but also, no room for contraception.
That's right. Have the babies, ladies, regardless of whether you have the physical capacity, the financial wherewithal, or the emotional maturity and strength. Have the babies, or just don't have any sex at all.
Forced childbirth is what the wingnut anti-choicers are after. Forced childbirth, people! That MUST be the frame we use on this issue in the run-up to the elections.
I really hope the Democratic Party is seeing this movement for what it really is, and has the guts to call them on it. One of the most frightfully wingnutty statements about abortion in the past two weeks was that of South Dakota State Senator Bill Napoli, who said, in response to the question "Under what circumstances would you say a woman could be granted an exception to the law against having an abortion?":
A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
So, unless your situation falls under the "sodomized religious virgin exception," you're not entitled to make a choice about carrying a child to term. Your fertility could be at risk--too bad for you. You might be on the brink of suicide, because the three children you already have are taking every ounce of strength you possess--sorry, you shouldn't have had sex with your husband without charting your temperatures and determining your fertility first.
I'm a mother. I've been married over a decade, and I only have one child. It's not the plan I made for myself, it's just the way things have turned out. We wanted more children, but weren't willing to invest our financial futures in fertility treatments or expensive adoptions. And this was OUR CHOICE based on what was right for US--obviously, I'm not making judgments on what might be right for other people.
I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't had access to contraception early in my marriage. Early marriage followed by early childbirth is a huge predictor of divorce. While I didn't marry extremely young, I certainly wasn't ready to become a parent until many years into our marriage. Having a child, even an "easy child" like our kid, has been an incredible stressor on our lives, careers (my career has been sacrificed completely), and marriage. My physical well-being has suffered significantly, even though my pregnancy and delivery were routine and attended by high quality medical care.
In other words, I had the best possible circumstance in which to have a child--supportive and loving spouse, financial security, maturity, quality medical care--and it STILL was the toughest thing I've ever done.
And now, the wingnuts want to make me do it again, and again, and again, or else give up sex almost entirely?
No.
HELL to the No.
Crossposted on Mother Talkers