Time for this REPOST on birth control and poverty: How the Christofacists are making us all poorer:

[Elspeth]

How the Christofacists are making us all poorer: the creation of a Permanent Under Class


Family planning is one of those issues that always gets seen as a "women's" issue, and men make the mistake thinking it doesn't affect them. But the Christofacist assault on family planning--birth control and abortion--as well as its insistence that women should be at hme, DOES affect men who marry or live with women.

Family planning allows women and the men they marry or live with to LIMIT the number of children they will have. This allows people in the working and middle classes to control at least some of their economic destiny. Family planning services allow couples to delay having children until they can afford them; it allows couples to decide on how many children they think they can afford. It allows couples not to spend their entire lives in debt paying for children they can't afford.

When choices about family size are taken out of the hands of couples and put into the hands of government, which at the moment seems inclined to deny this kind of control to couples, the working and middle classes are denied any control over their economic destiny. Unplanned pregnancies abound and poverty can be the end result for many working class people who cannot afford them.

In addition, the prejudice that women "should be in the home" affects how women are regarded in the workforce. If a company's personnel believe that a woman should not be working anyway, they don't have any qualms about paying her less or limiting her choices of profession in the workplace.

This is not just a woman's issue: If a man is married or in a committed relationship with a woman, his own lifestyle will be affected by his SO's lack of choices in the workplace. If there are children, the welfare of these children is at stake because of the prejudices against women.

In other words, guys, "women's" issues are your issues. It's about dollars coming out of your pocket. It is about having no control over your economic life as a couple. And, when "the rich get richer and the poor get children," children that they cannot afford to take care of, an increase of poverty, a permanent underclass with no control over its destiny, is the result.

[uppityperson]

1. k&r

Not being able to plan financially affects everyone in the family, affects all in society. Contraception isn't perfect, but being able to have some control over how many children you have is a good thing.

[RB TexLa]

2. Of course it's also a man's issue, I do not father children. My wife has no right to my fathering

children for her. She has no say in my decision to not father them. She has no right to know my medical conditions, decisions or medical procedures.

[kestrel91316]

4. You HAVE a wife?

Oy. Poor thing. How does she ever compete with that chip on your shoulder??

[RB TexLa]

6. Yes I have a wife. There isn't any reason for you to be condescending toward her.

If you found my post to be too "uppity," too bad.

[niyad]

8. she has no right to know your medical conditions? on what grounds do you

make such a ridiculous statement? do you also grant her the right to complete privacy about HER medical conditions, etc?

nobody can judge another relationship, but you sound very strange to be involved in a relationship.

[RB TexLa]

10. Of course she choses who she does and doesn't inform about her medical

conditions, she's an adult. I don't grant that to her, that's her right.

You think an adult having the right to chose if and to whom to they inform about their medical information is ridiculous?

[Dorian Gray]

27. So you guys

don't HAVE to inform one another about your medical conditions... but do you CHOOSE to inform one another about your medical conditions?

[RB TexLa]

28. I have no idea if she has informed me of all or of the severity of medical conditions

I would never press her on that.

I'm sure if I had something bad wrong with me, I'd consider not telling her so she wouldn't worry.

[Dorian Gray]

31. Really?

You wouldn't want to prepare her for something that might be a difficult time in your lives? Battling an illness or death is awful for someone to handle, and I would want my husband to let me know if he was suffering so that I could help him any way I could and we could prepare for the fight.

[RB TexLa]

32. That may fit your situation, but my wife has no training or knowledge in health care.

[Elspeth]

11. Thanks for misunderstanding the post

:)

[RaleighNCDUer]

13. So if you got AIDS, she has no right to know that?

Are you throwing that crap out just to play with the femenists, or are you really insane?

[RB TexLa]

14. Do feminists believe that people do not have a right to medical privacy?

Of course no one has a right to know if someone else has AIDS. If someone with AIDS is going to be in a position to possibly infect someone else with it through activity, yes they should inform the person.

My belief that someone can have a vasectomy or tubal ligation or any medical procedure they chose without having to have consent from a spouse or any requirement to inform a spouse or anyone else for that matter is something you find insane?

You do realize that is also the law, it's not insane. I know there are people who support spousal notification laws regarding abortion, but I seriously didn't think such intrusions into a person's medical privacy would find that much support here.

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. If your wife is wanting to get pregnant and you get a secret vasectomy,

that constitutes mental cruelty and I hope she takes you for everything you've got in the divorce.

[RB TexLa]

19. Neither of us wishes to have children. I think you are confusing what is someone's rights

with morals. I'm not advocating deception, marriages and relationships should be open, but everyone does have the absolute right to control and regulate their own bodies. Spousal notification and consent are infringements on those rights. Every marriage and relationship is not perfect, mine has good open communication, but there are many that don't and sometimes there is a true need for medical privacy.

As far as any divorce that would be handled under our pre-marital agreement so your hopes are wasted on that, although IMHO they are wasted on anything involving a divorce between us.

[RaleighNCDUer]

20. So, IOW, you are making broad general statements based on

your own particular experience.

Everyone does have the right to control their own bodies. And when their personal decisions impact on their partner, they have the balancing obligation to inform that partner so that they can remain equal partners in the relationship. All rights are balanced by obligation - otherwise they are not rights, but license.

I'm glad for you that you believe your marriage is safe - but does you wife know that you believe that you can make decisions for the both of you without telling her about them?

I'm really not trying to get personal, here, but pointing out that theory has personal ramifications. You are making blanket statements that might fit for you in your situation, but will not fit for a great many others.

[RB TexLa]

21. Of course there moral ramifications of certian excerizes of rights. Which do not diminish the

rights themselves.


My wife and I both consider the other to be adults, free to make whatever medical decisions she or I wish. That's part of being an adult and a human being.

[Ellen Forradalom]

3. Amen. It's sexist that reproductive issues are relegated to the women's ghetto

It cuts men off from realizing how these issues impact them, which does them a huge disservice.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. True, but OTOH women have first say in the matter as it is they

who get pregnant, bear and raise the children (of couse, men share in the raising, ideally). Men should never have first or last say about family planning issues.

[RB TexLa]

7. In consensual sex the man has the first say in preventing pregnancy

And if a man does not wish to father children he has the only say in that, as he controls if the woman can have the required item for fertilization, if he does not allow her to have such either by surgical procedure or refusing sex without protection, she has no say.

[Elspeth]

12. Has there been such a mad rush on your sperm that you seem obsessed with keeping it safe?

:evilgrin:

[RB TexLa]

15. People don't have to have had a mad rush on their sperm, womb or medical privacy to

express a desire to keep them safe.

[Elspeth]

22. You're one of the few I've seen so worried.

That's why I asked.

There is a talk show host in LA (Larry Elder)--a libertarian sort, usually-- who divorced his first wife because she tried to get him to father a child with her. Before their marriage they had agreed to no children, but she had changed her mind. I think she had stopped taking the pill and was trying to get pregnant with him. He eventually filed for divorce. And I think he is still unmarried.

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. No, the man and woman have EQUAL say -

and if he doesn't want children but she does, they should both be fucking other people. Such decisions can only be made with full disclosure on both sides. If she say, "I want children" you would be obligate to say "I've had a vasectory". Anything else would be a lie of omission (or emission, as you will).

[niyad]

9. k & r

[alfredo]

18. Read Matt Taibbi's article in the newest Rolling Stone.

[Elspeth]

23. Link?

Thanks. :)

[alfredo]

24. It's been posted. "Jesus Made Me Puke" Matt Taibbi

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20278737/jesus_made_me_puke

[Elspeth]

25. Thanks!

I haven't been on DU a lot lately and mostly come in for spot checks.

:)

[alfredo]

26. You haven't missed much. Changing the world takes a long time.

[Elspeth]

29. Read the article..AMAZING!

This just blew my mind:

"Here I have a confession to make. It's not something that's easy to explain, but here goes. After two days of nearly constant religious instruction, songs, worship and praise — two days that for me meant an unending regimen of forced and fake responses — a funny thing started to happen to my head. There is a transformational quality in these external demonstrations of faith and belief. The more you shout out praising the Lord, singing along to those awful acoustic tunes, telling people how blessed you feel and so on, the more a sort of mechanical Christian skin starts to grow all over your real self. Even if you're a degenerate Rolling Stone reporter inwardly chuckling and busting on the whole scene — even if you're intellectually enraged by the ignorance and arrogant prejudice flowing from the mouth of a terminal-ambition case like Phil Fortenberry — outwardly you're swaying to the gospel and singing and praising and acting the part, and those outward ministrations assume a kind of sincerity in themselves. And at the same time, that "inner you" begins to get tired of the whole spectacle and sometimes forgets to protest — in my case checking out into baseball reveries and other daydreams while the outer me did the "work" of singing and praising. At any given moment, which one is the real you?

You may think you know the answer, but by my third day I began to notice how effortlessly my soft-spoken Matt-mannequin was going through his robotic motions of praise, and I was shocked. For a brief, fleeting moment I could see how under different circumstances it would be easy enough to bury your "sinful" self far under the skin of your outer Christian and to just travel through life this way. So long as you go through all the motions, no one will care who you really are underneath. And besides, so long as you are going through all the motions, never breaking the facade, who are you really? It was an incomplete thought, but it was a scary one; it was the very first time I worried that the experience of entering this world might prove to be anything more than an unusually tiring assignment. I feared for my normal.

[alfredo]

30. The Children of God and other such cults subject you to an intense

"boot camp" of indoctrination. They don't care if you really believe, just as long as you do and say as they want. That's not too distant from what we are doing in Gitmo and other torture chambers.

[Elspeth]

33. It seems to be all about breaking down the personality

and inserting a lot of garbage. It really is like the creation of a pod person.

[alfredo]

34. Brain washing, shock therapy, torture, all the same thing.

[Elspeth]

35. But this seems largely voluntary on the part of people who are already desperate

Somewhere, Jesus is weeping.

[alfredo]

36. Where does peer pressure cross over into coercion? I didn't go to

church because I wanted to. I didn't pitch a fit out of fear of a beating. In basic training I didn't want to go to chapel on Sunday. I spent the time instead crawling on my belly over gravel and concrete until my knees and elbows bled through my fatigues.

[Elspeth]

37. Hmm. That is a really good question

The fact that a lot of these born again types are recovering addicts or depressed soccer moms makes me think that personal desperation plays a huge part. But peer pressure can certainly add to it.

[alfredo]

38. maybe they should move to Pennsylvania, nobody is bitter there.

[Elspeth]

39. Now, now

...

[alfredo]

40. I'm 63 years old. I can say anything and nobody notices. It's liberating.

[Elspeth]

41. Ah... I gotta wait awhile for that. :)

So you say it for me.

[alfredo]

42. No hurry. Enjoy the trip.