War, natural disaster, environmental crisis. No matter the threat to their children, mothers fight back.
Having an abortion to prevent a child from being born with Down syndrome or another disability can be a positive moral choice. Okay, now let’s go on (assuming you’re not already plotting my demise).
What if all the grassroots groups who work with the families who are consistently pushed to the margins and thrown under the bus talked about their causes as if they were all connected? What if we worked as if we were facing the same stigma and hate? What if I, in my parenting, felt connected to immigrant mamas fighting to reclaim their community? What if I, in my resistance, understood deeply my relationship to mothers who lose their children to juvenile justice, foster care systems, and/or incarceration?
If you happen to be a woman of color, you simply don’t have any business that is your own, as far as society is concerned. The Jezebel and Welfare Queen stereotypes shape the responses you receive from others when you have a belly full of baby. So, the next time someone asks me how many more babies I’m going to have, I will have to respond with a “Girllllll, stay out my bedroom.”
Sometimes I want to be “that mom.” Not the mom that wakes up and first thing disconnects a tube from her son’s belly that just administered medication. Sometimes I want to be the other mom, whose kid grows out of their shoes so fast she hears the cash register at Foot Locker ringing in her sleep.
Let’s recognize that the way to honor motherhood is to respect and support a woman’s decision about whether she is ready to be a parent. That means making sure that every pregnant woman, regardless of her ability to pay, has health care insurance coverage for all of her medical needs, including abortion.
When I think about Mother’s Day, I usually picture a Dad in plaid pajama pants destroying the kitchen with his kids in a clumsy effort to make his wife breakfast in bed. Mother’s Day looks a little different in our house.
The past week had a lot of conservative posturing about the importance of motherhood. But if you look at their policy ideas — especially around reproductive rights — you’ll realize they don’t think much of motherhood after all.
Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar of TLC’s “19 & Counting” fame announced on TODAY they are expecting baby #20 – due in April 2012. The flip side of the Quiverfull ideal of “trusting the Lord with our family planning” which Jim Bob Michelle embrace and promote through their TV Reality show, website, and is that Michelle also accepts the possibility of her own or her baby’s deaths, should such tragedy occur, as God’s will.
Trigger Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of infant and child abuse.
The death toll from parents following Michael and Debi Pearl’s teachings continues to mount. Another child is has been “biblically chastened” to death via corporal punishment, and Michael Pearl is defending his teachings in the mainstream media while promoting his new book.
