Quote of the Day

"The greatest commonly shared story in this country is economic insecurity. If you think poor people don't deserve to have children, the problem is not SNAP or the people that rely on it to survive. The problem is you."—Mijin Cha. [Content Note for disablist language at link. Via Imani.]

Once more, I will observe that the Social Darwinist heapshits who believe that people aren't entitled to food and say things like "People who are poor do not deserve to have children" are the same assholes who seek to curb access to affordable contraception and abortion. Which is deeply relevant, given that, according to this Guttmacher study (pdf), "Can't afford a baby now" was cited by 73% of women who terminated pregnancies as a reason for seeking an abortion.

In the qualitative sample, of women who stated that they could not afford to have a child now, the majority had children already. Financial difficulties included the absence of support from the father of either the current pregnancy or the woman's other children, anticipating not being able to continue working or to find work while pregnant or caring for a newborn, not having the resources to support a child whose conception was not planned and lacking health insurance.

And that study was done in 2004, several years before the beginning of the Great Recession.

So, on the one hand, they're yelling at poor people women to not have children, and, on the other, they're yelling at poor women who want to have abortions that they'd better have those goddamn babies.

Pushed to justify these totally incoherent positions, they will inevitably argue that poor people women shouldn't even be having sex if they don't want to pregnant and can't afford to have a child.

But, of course, these are the also the same lot who most passionately defend a patriarchal system that primarily defines women as a sex class in which an individual women's value is largely if not exclusively determined by her sexual deference to straight cisgender men. A system in which a women who refuses such deference may be at real risk of harm, a risk that increases exponentially with her every axis of marginalization—including (and perhaps especially) by lower class status.

So the conservative solution is basically this: Poor women should agree with them that poor women's lives are worthless. And all the rest of us should agree with that, too.

I do not agree with that. I never will.