If I couldn't afford kids, I wouldn't have them - it's as simple as that.
And not having a uterus, that's a foregone conclusion.
I refuse to concede that kids just happen - hell that's one of the reasons I support abortion rights, that you should only have kids when you chose to.
No, they happen when people have sex, and what business is it of yours who and how other people fuck?
If we lived in a perfect world, with perfect sex education, and free, 100% effective, safe, passive contraception and free abortions if that failed, you might have a point. But I have known otherwise very intellegent and responsible people who have found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, or unexpected child. Shit happens. Maybe they were able to afford it when the woman got pregnant, but weren't 9 months later. Maybe Baby's Daddy lost his job, or up an ran off. Maybe, for health reasons, this may be the only chance the woman might have to have a kid. And while you might think it best for them to give the child up if they aren't sure they can afford it, that's a pretty difficult thing, especially if the kid isn't newborn, healthy and white (read: adoptable).
Quite honestly, nobody I know could actually afford a baby when they had it, since fetility and wealth run on very different curves. If you wait until you're financially secure, all the baby-fixins'll go bad.
But what it comes down to, Jose, is that you are moralizing. You are saying, essentially, that since these people made mistakes, they DESERVE to suffer. This is the same mentality that leads Christians to oppose condoms because they believe sex is WRONG, and so people who do it DESERVE to get pregnant or AIDS, or that opposes harm-reduction measures because DRUGS ARE BAD. My mother smoked for 40 years, knowing full well for most of them that it was very bad for her. It was a mistake. Does that mean she DESERVES to have emphysema? Should she be denied health care because she didn't plan ahead for some potential cancer?
Maybe gramps did squander his money on that fancy Buick instead of saving it for a rainy day. Maybe he did have 8 kids because, growing up on a farm, he'd always assumed more kids meant more workers. Maybe he did live paycheck-to-paycheck to keep them in good clothes because he thought it would help them get a leg up. Maybe he didn't save up enough to cover mamaw's breast cancer, or the awful years he spent watching her disappear from Alzheimers. Yeah, maybe gramps dropped the bucket, but I can't accept that means he deserves to live like a pauper.
(How's that for an appeal to emotion? I swear, if I wasn't a foul-mouthed atheist mental patient, I really would run for office...)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2004-11-08 06:31 am (UTC)And not having a uterus, that's a foregone conclusion.
I refuse to concede that kids just happen - hell that's one of the reasons I support abortion rights, that you should only have kids when you chose to.
No, they happen when people have sex, and what business is it of yours who and how other people fuck?
If we lived in a perfect world, with perfect sex education, and free, 100% effective, safe, passive contraception and free abortions if that failed, you might have a point. But I have known otherwise very intellegent and responsible people who have found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, or unexpected child. Shit happens. Maybe they were able to afford it when the woman got pregnant, but weren't 9 months later. Maybe Baby's Daddy lost his job, or up an ran off. Maybe, for health reasons, this may be the only chance the woman might have to have a kid. And while you might think it best for them to give the child up if they aren't sure they can afford it, that's a pretty difficult thing, especially if the kid isn't newborn, healthy and white (read: adoptable).
Quite honestly, nobody I know could actually afford a baby when they had it, since fetility and wealth run on very different curves. If you wait until you're financially secure, all the baby-fixins'll go bad.
But what it comes down to, Jose, is that you are moralizing. You are saying, essentially, that since these people made mistakes, they DESERVE to suffer. This is the same mentality that leads Christians to oppose condoms because they believe sex is WRONG, and so people who do it DESERVE to get pregnant or AIDS, or that opposes harm-reduction measures because DRUGS ARE BAD. My mother smoked for 40 years, knowing full well for most of them that it was very bad for her. It was a mistake. Does that mean she DESERVES to have emphysema? Should she be denied health care because she didn't plan ahead for some potential cancer?
Maybe gramps did squander his money on that fancy Buick instead of saving it for a rainy day. Maybe he did have 8 kids because, growing up on a farm, he'd always assumed more kids meant more workers. Maybe he did live paycheck-to-paycheck to keep them in good clothes because he thought it would help them get a leg up. Maybe he didn't save up enough to cover mamaw's breast cancer, or the awful years he spent watching her disappear from Alzheimers. Yeah, maybe gramps dropped the bucket, but I can't accept that means he deserves to live like a pauper.
(How's that for an appeal to emotion? I swear, if I wasn't a foul-mouthed atheist mental patient, I really would run for office...)