Human Rights: Children

La Casa de Los Gatos generally skirts children's issues because they're so upsetting. We do not believe reproduction is a right. It is, or ought to be, a privilege. Because if you do not want children with all your body, heart, and mind, you really shouldn't have them.

As we said recently, our Mummy's popped her clogs, which means we're free to state a few things that we couldn't risk saying while she was alive. For what it's worth, she had a terrible relationship with all her children, two of whom haven't spoken to her in decades. She had children because "that's what you do when you're married." Surely, condoms and birth control, even of a rudimentary sort, were available even back in the dark ages when she was born. She liked babies in the simpering way that some women affect. Babies, after all, are like flesh-and-blood dolls, to be dressed and cooed at. They're not ambulatory so you can dump them when they bore you. If you have enough money you can hire other people to deal with their screams and tears.

Of course, when you're getting paid to look after someone else's child, you are under no obligation (except a general, moral one) to treat it well. Basically, you can get away with pretty much anything, and no matter what people say only their own children are attractive, everyone else's children are a royal pain in the arse. So it comes as no surprise that people, whether biologically related to a child or not, often abuse children. They're a lot of work, kids. From the day they're born till the day they leave home, they require cleaning, feeding, amusing, managing. You have to plan their activities for them, take them to school or to the doctor or to camp or daycare. You have to make sure they're clean, fed, and healthy regardless of your own condition.

And they're yours for life. If your 50-year-old kid has to move home because they've lost their job and their home, well, what do you do? You take them in, of course. So, if you're not ready to devote a substantial part of your life to putting someone else first, for mercy's sake, get your reproductive bits snipped or removed. Because from the day your sprog is conceived to the day it dies, that sprog must come first. Sure, once it's an adult, you get part of your life back. But that takes at least two decades of love and dedication. It's a tremendous sacrifice.

The downside is, if you fuck up the job of raising your kids, you're not the only person affected. Your kid gets their hands on your gun collection and goes all Columbine on their high school; or grows up to be Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, and countless other people and their families and the taxpayer as well gets stuck with the cost of your kid's mental and emotional health, or lack thereof.

Today's collection of stories for your edification about raising your kids right should suffice to make you sufficiently gloomy about the whole business. Maybe you'll even decide to send money to Planned Parenthood or NARAL or any of the fine organizations that deal with health issues for women. Yes, the consequences of reproduction can be pretty bad. It should be a privilege that you have to get licensed for, or work towards, or something. For your delectation:

• When your kid prefers prison to home or school, we gotta wonder what the hell kinda useless parents and teachers/administrators they had;
  
  
• How on earth do you justify locking your kid up and starving them to death without a drink of water?
  
  
• This is a big reason why children should not have children. Not that age improves things.
  
  
• Nixzmary Brown — the poster child for horrendous child abuse cases. Prosecutors are adding a charge to the long list her mother will face, in the hope that it will increase their chances of a conviction.
  
  
• Who the hell raised these creatures to believe you can force love with a gun?
  
  
• The parents of this princess should have been spayed
  
  
• Negligent parenting can have fatal consequences
  
  
• Your children are your responsibility and yours alone. You can't hand them off to your druggie sister or anyone else just because you need a break.

So, why are we raising this issue today? Because the Bushies have just launched a sneak attack on women's reproductive freedom — and men's as well. Pertinent snippet:

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a new rule that would force hospitals and clinics to hire people who refuse to provide the full range of reproductive options to women, denying women important health care information and access to basic forms of contraception.

Bush's new rule would deny federal funding to health care institutions that refuse to follow the new rule, limiting health care access when more Americans are struggling with rising health care costs. Further, this rule could allow health care providers, driven by their own personal ideology, to deny emergency contraception to sexual assault victims.

By redefining abortion to include the most common and effective methods of birth control, including oral contraceptives and emergency contraception, the Bush Administration is attempting to deprive basic contraceptive services to women around the country.

Unwanted children are at a much greater risk of abuse. This increases if the mother has a difficult pregnancy or delivery, or if the child has physical or developmental disabilities. Additional risk factors include poverty, premature delivery, lack of societal support, mental health problems in either parent, domestic violence, a history of child abuse for either parent, and poor coping skills.

Given that middle-class and upper-class women tend to be (a) educated; (b) able to procure contraception or abortion; (c) not at risk of poverty, lack of societal support, or poor coping skills, it is not unreasonable to assume that the impact of Emperor Jor Jee's law will fall on the already burdened working class and lower-middle-class women. So, if you have a shred of human decency or feeling, consider the plight of all those unwanted children Emperor Jor Jee is about to create for his puppet masters; and consider the plight of the women who will have to bear the consequences of caring, or failing to care, for such children. And do something.

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