None dare call it fuckery.
In which America once again gaslights itself.
I am not a parent. There are various reasons why I am not a parent, and some of them include never, ever, ever wanting to deal with the unbelievably toxic ways in which the paramount role of parenting is treated in America.
Parents, thank you, seriously. Thank you for providing the future of our species; thank you for making sure there will be people around to be doctors and fix broken appliances if I am so fortunate as to make it to age 90; thank you for the endless sacrifices you make and the absolute lack of support you get from our society.
You will never hear this childless person complain about paying taxes for schools. In fact, I’d cheerfully pay taxes for parental leave, for birth-to-five programs, and for new parents to be supplied with a box of necessities for their newborns.
We’ve made it so hard to be a parent in America that more and more people are opting out of it or are just not even able to contemplate having kids. And I find it incredibly curious and illogical that the end of the political spectrum that tends towards white supremacy, Great Replacement Theory, and anti-immigrant sentiment are the same people who are opposed to any kind of social programs that would support more people having babies.
Towns need young people in them to stay alive. Those people need to come from immigration, or birth, or (gasp) both.
Meanwhile, Alito wants to send American women to the breeding sheds “to ensure a domestic supply of infants for adoption,” because we certainly can’t have white people who can afford to adopt from abroad adopting brown babies and possibly deciding that people of color are actually equal human beings after all. Or something.
Of course, it is poor people of color who will disproportionately bear the social and economic burden of limiting access to abortion and birth control. And that means… wait for it… more people of color being born. Which is fine by me, though I’d like to see those babies provided with a lot more social supports than they are currently.
I don’t think the folks using anti-abortion rhetoric to secure the Evangelical vote and Great Replacement rhetoric to secure the bigot vote really thought this one through until the last couple of weeks, however, because now they seem to be panicking just a little.
I just want to live in a world where parents and children get support, and people are able to have as many or as few children as they desire, and everybody understands that society is interdependent and people can only function successfully in community with one another. This all makes me very, very tired.