This past week, within hours of each other, the Supreme Court made it easier to carry a gun and it eliminated protections for abortion.
Their underwear is showing. If they really cared about the lives of children (or potential children) they would not enable more guns. Gun-related incidents are now the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in this country. So why are living, breathing children inside a classroom less important than an embryo inside someone’s body?
Obviously, it’s not about the children. It’s about power. It’s about control. It’s about men, not women, being in charge. It’s (mostly older) White men flailing about trying to do anything to keep authority out of the hands of women, Black people, and anyone else they might consider a threat to their 400 hundred year hegemony over our United States.
A woman who is forced to birth a child that she is unwilling or unable to care for is a woman who is deprived of her voice and her agency. Even with hard work and moral courage, that woman is now strapped down to a caretaking role that most likely rules out her running for office or speaking out against power-hungry, selfish men. And with the U.S. being the worst in child care options, how can she work to support, say, an education for herself? Or her child? Or even a decent standard of living?
And why does the guy who got her pregnant generally get off scot free?
Maybe “let’s keep our women barefoot and pregnant”: is not spoken out loud much anymore, but it’s clearly still alive and well. If “those people” actually care about fetuses, they will work towards improved health care (including maternity), housing, child care, and better, SAFER, schools.