Pro-life blog buzz 2-15-13
by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli
We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.
- Abstinence Clearinghouse links to a Centers for Disease Control article that shows 20% of teenage girls binge drink (4+ drinks, at least 3 times weekly), which “can lead to serious health risks including… sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancy.”
- At Ethika Politika, Dr. Jacqueline Harvey wonders whether pro-choice opposition to accurate abortion data is indicative of “arrogance, apathy, or fear.” She notes the need for published abortion statistics to be accurate in order to form evidence-based conclusions (as opposed to agenda-driven ones) about the effectiveness of contraception and sex education.
- Americans United for Life posts a chart (pictured left; click to enlarge) showing the death rate of women undergoing late-term abortions and the need for new legal protection.
- Kansans for Life points out that when it comes to banning sex-selective abortion, pro-choice feminist organizations seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place:
Abortion labeled as gender discrimination undermines their argument that the so-called “reproductive rights” movement exists to prevent discrimination against women. - Bound4Life observes Black History Month by featuring a guest post from pro-life African-American speaker and writer LaSondra Spears:
We live in a time where more African American men are in prison than were slaves in 1850. For the male children who do survive abortion, who’s teaching them to be men so the cycle of abortion doesn’t continue? Who’s telling us this history? - Clinic Quotes talks about abortion proponents’ use of euphemism to mask the true nature of abortion.
- American Life League’s Judie Brown believes Catholic leadership needs to rebuke politicians who claim to be Catholic yet defy Church teachings.
- Accepting Abundance shares a controversial video linking contraception to other societal issues:
Feb.15, 2013 4:00 pm |
Blogs |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Binge drinking!
Absolutely contributes to high risk behavior in teens!
More studies on that please.
One of the reasons the First Wave Feminist Movement was allied with the temperance movement was that drinking alcohol connects with many problems for people and is also strongly linked with problems specific to women. Of course, they also believed that the emancipation of women would rid the world of abortion!
I’ve read that as many as 50% of rapes might be committed by men who are legally drunk.
Drinking makes people of both genders more likely to be sexually irresponsible which is especially important to females since we’re the ones who get pregnant.
Don’t booze it up!
Maury has often had a married lady named Sholanda on his show seeking the biological father of a daughter. The little girl has a “social father” in Sholanda’s husband but they would like to know her genetic heritage. Including Sholanda’s husband, 18 men were DNA tested but none turned out to be the father. Much of the reason is that Sholanda got drunk at a party. : (
Carla, you may be shocked to find yourself in agreement with me a second time but I have long believed drunkenness is at the root of many evils.
Large families aren’t really advisable in our present, modern society. One reason there was such an outpouring of sympathy for child-murderer Andrea Yates (a sympathy both sexist and class-biased) was that, as a National Review writer astutely noted, many women had a dark and painful sense that “there but for the grace of day care, abortion, and secular humanism go I.” My own mother, an extremely conservative anti-feminist fundamentalist Christian, was sympathetic to Yates, remarking, “She had her hands full.”
In past times, large families were the rule. But that didn’t mean Mom was stuck caring for all her children. Both sets of grandparents might be in the home. Spinster aunts and bachelor uncles might be around. Societies were largely agricultural which is more friendly toward bigger families.
The truth is that not everyone is suited to raise children. My handicap rules out even babysitting as I might not be able to react properly in an emergency. In addition, a child could pick up on my nervousness and be harmed by sensing this level of fear.
Other people might be unsuited to raising children for other reasons.
The many people who ARE suited to being Moms and Dads might be unable to adequately parent if they have large families.
The truth is that some women just should not get pregnant. Many should only get pregnant once or twice or thrice.
My own mother, an extremely conservative anti-feminist fundamentalist Christian, was sympathetic to Yates, remarking, “She had her hands full.”
Yeah, because “having our hands full” is totally a great reason to drown our kids. Mental illness is what killed those children, not the fact that there were several of them.
In past times, large families were the rule. But that didn’t mean Mom was stuck caring for all her children. Both sets of grandparents might be in the home. Spinster aunts and bachelor uncles might be around. Societies were largely agricultural which is more friendly toward bigger families.
My great-grandmother raised 10 children, just she and her husband. She lived to be 83. They were not agricultural, and they lived through the Great Depression… amazing, isn’t it? And they didn’t even have to drown anybody in a bathtub!!
Kel says:
February 18, 2013 at 9:39 am
My own mother, an extremely conservative anti-feminist fundamentalist Christian, was sympathetic to Yates, remarking, “She had her hands full.”Yeah, because “having our hands full” is totally a great reason to drown our kids. Mental illness is what killed those children, not the fact that there were several of them
(Denise) Mass murderers, even mentally ill mass murderers, don’t usually receive the sympathy she did. That sympathy was, in large part, based on the sense that having to care for 5 kids drove her into mental illness. A woman who drowned her only child or her 2 children wouldn’t have gotten the sympathy that a woman like Yates did. There was a feeling that “accepting abundance” drove her crazy and led to the tragedies.
“Mass murderers, even mentally ill mass murderers, don’t usually receive the sympathy she did. That sympathy was, in large part, based on the sense that having to care for 5 kids drove her into mental illness. A woman who drowned her only child or her 2 children wouldn’t have gotten the sympathy that a woman like Yates did. There was a feeling that “accepting abundance” drove her crazy and led to the tragedies”
I don’t think it was the large family thing that got her the sympathy, Denise. Like Kel said, it was mental illness that killed her, and mental illness that was ignored like hers that led to a terrible tragedy is what people are reacting to. I seriously think that a woman with two children, who was left alone with her kids by her husband after he had been repeatedly warned that she was dangerous to the children, who had several different suicide attempts and a lot of documented homicidal ideation, had been institutionalized but was let out even when she was still a danger to others and herself, would be given the same sympathy that Yates was. And most people don’t focus on the kids driving her into mental illness, they more focus on her documented Post Partum Psychosis, which was present even with her first child and wasn’t treated properly or taken as seriously as it should have been.
It’s also due to women being excused and sympathized with when they are violent in a way that men are not. I think a male Andrea Yates would have gotten much less support and sympathy than she did, even everything else being equal (obviously, he wouldn’t have Post Partum Psychosis, but a man with another mental illness like schizophrenia wouldn’t be given a pass like Yates was, no matter how many kids he was caring for).
@ JackBorsch:
How Sexism and Class Bias Distorted Perceptions of the Yates Case
By
Denise Noe
With Andrea Yates’ re-trial coming up, this is a good time to review the way sex and class biases distorted perceptions of this case. In the immediate aftermath of the crime, singer Marie Osmond wrote about her own struggles with postpartum depression, an illness from which Yates was said to suffer. The chapter of the National Organization for Women in Yates’ area rallied to her side. Anna Quindlen wrote a column about the nerve-wracking and exhausting demands placed by youngsters, aptly describing the confusion of a day for a mother of tots: “. . . milk spilled phone rang one cried another hit a fever rose the medicine gone the car sputtered another cried the cable quit ‘Sesame Street’ gone all cried stomach upset full diaper no more diapers Mommy I want water Mommy my throat hurts Mommy I don’t feel good.”
A Newsweek cover story about Andrea Yates described the mass child-killer in gentle tones. It told the reader that the compassionate Yates “apparently cared too much” and attempted to “be too good a mother.” Her husband, Russell Yates, was labeled “demanding.” The essay noted that she acted as caregiver to her late father when he suffered from Alzheimer’s and worried that, “Between caring for her father and her children, it is hard to think that Andrea ever had time for herself.” A letter to Newsweek seconded those sentiments, saying she “deserves nothing but the most tender care.”
The yard of the Yates home filled with gifts and condolences. A sign said, “I am a ‘stay at home’ mother of 3 . . . I pray for strength for you and your wife and family.”
The sympathy directed toward Yates led me to wonder: Would a man who murdered his five children receive such sympathetic understanding? Male family slaughterers are often traditionally masculine counterparts to Yates’s traditionally feminine full-time homemaker. Sober, faithful husbands, they pride themselves on being providers for their wives and children. When such men suffer sudden financial reversals, through the loss of a job for example, they can decide that their families would be better off dead rather than dependent on an inadequate provider. This is similar to the warped thinking that apparently motivated Yates when, believing that her children had been irreparably harmed by her maternal inadequacy, she held their heads under the water of a bathtub.
However, when such a distraught man kills his kids, he is supported by no long line of men regaling the public with the horrors of unemployment, the frustration of futilely looking for a job, and the devastating depression that can result. Few commentators suggest that he killed, even in part, because of a “demanding” wife. Articles do not appear suggesting that mass murder is the end result of the sometimes overwhelmingly stressful demands of being a family breadwinner.
Let’s suppose a scenario even closer to the Yates case were to occur with genders reversed. A stay-at-home-Dad killed his several small children. We would be deluged with essays advocating that we reconsider whether men are appropriate full-time caregivers for youngsters. Other SAHDs would rush to distance themselves from the killer rather than express sympathy for him. It is unlikely magazines would publish letters urging “tender care” for a mass killing Dad whether breadwinner or fulltime caregiver.
Class bias as well as gender prejudice may play a role in public reaction to Andrea Yates. Prior to perpetrating this horror, she appeared a wholesome “soccer mom,” a suburban middle-class stay-at-home mother with a breadwinning husband. Would a mass murdering welfare mother, prostitute, or other woman at society’s margins occasion this outpouring of sympathy? I believe not. If Yates were a man or a poor woman, our sympathies would completely flow where they ought to in this case, to the true victims – the brutally killed children.
That sympathy was, in large part, based on the sense that having to care for 5 kids drove her into mental illness.
And if people had that sense, they were wrong. WRONG. I know plenty of people with that many kids or more and they’re totally fine. It’s not the number of children – it was the (unaddressed, as Jack mentioned) mental illness of the mother that killed those kids. Someone could have one child and have the same mental illness. It’s shocking to people today to see a family with more than 4 children. They can’t, in this day and age of contraception, imagine anyone *wanting* that many kids. Yet, many families do. To blame the number of children on causing Yates’ issues is completely wrong-headed.
Denise, I agree with you 6:37 post. I think that class and gender bias had a lot to do with the sympathy Yates got, but I do think that her mental illness was also a big factor that caused people to frame her as a victim instead of a perpetrator. Which I don’t totally disagree with, if people in her life and taken her illness and threats a bit more seriously, those children might still be alive and Yates might have received treatment and become more mentally stable.
What I don’t agree with is your assertion that it was her family size that gained her the most sympathy. I think she could have had only one or two children and people would have excused her just as much. You see it when young mothers smother, shake, or strangle their infants or toddlers, even if that’s their only child.
“And if people had that sense, they were wrong. WRONG. I know plenty of people with that many kids or more and they’re totally fine. It’s not the number of children – it was the (unaddressed, as Jack mentioned) mental illness of the mother that killed those kids. Someone could have one child and have the same mental illness. It’s shocking to people today to see a family with more than 4 children. They can’t, in this day and age of contraception, imagine anyone *wanting* that many kids. Yet, many families do. To blame the number of children on causing Yates’ issues is completely wrong-headed.”
I think people like to blame the family size rather than looking at the dynamics of the family. It takes some pretty intense selection bias to act like larger families have inherently more abuse issues than smaller ones. Most families are small now, and we still have ridiculously terrible levels of child abuse and other issues. Reducing family size hasn’t made a dent, because people are ignoring the actual issues in the family that have nothing to do with number of children.
Jayne Mansfield had 5 kids. They appear to have turned out OK and Mariska Hargitay is a star as Olivia Benson on “Law & Order: SVU.”
The fact is that energy, time, and emotional resources don’t infinitely stretch. A mom can feel she is just stretched too thin if she has to take care of more than a certain number of children. Also, the demands of several children can lead to an atmosphere of confusion. Yes, the family size contributed to the sympathy Yates received. Many women believed that having to meet so many demands might have driven her (literally) crazy.
When I was a teenager, my mother came to me in TERROR — absolute TERROR. There were 3 kids in our family. She feared she was pregnant again. She didn’t believe she could do right by a 4th child.
Luckily, what she was certain was pregnancy turned out to be gas pains.
It is also true that a wonderful song was made paying tribute to a mother of a large family. “Son of Hickory Hollow’s Tramp” is about a mother who “promised 14 children” they would “never see a hungry day.” 14 roses on a grave for “the greatest Mom on earth.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UodaOuoMHXs
@ Kel: Anna Quindlen wrote a column sympathetic to Yates. I focused on the multiple demands made by several children with the clear implication that having to take care of so many children at the same time drove Yates bonkers.
Back to the binge drinking: Drunkenness has a STRONG relationship with sexual irresponsibility. Drinking frequently leads to pregnancies under less-than-optimal circumstances — and to STDs. There are many other bitter fruits of drinking. As I pointed out, the First Wave Feminists were allied with the temperance movement partly because of these things.
What can be done to discourage alcohol abuse?
1.) Denise comes from a line of less-than-stable individuals.
2.) Anna Quindlen is accustomed to rationalizing a great deal of child-killing.
3.) I’m the oldest of 6 children. We raised our own vegetables every year, and kept chickens and pigs. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible.
4.) Mom didn’t do it on her own. I had pampered my fair share of buns before I went away to college.
xalisae says:
February 20, 2013 at 9:44 am
1.) Denise comes from a line of less-than-stable individual
(Denise) This isn’t true. There’s no extensive history of mental illness on either side of my family. I have asked about this.
Maybe not formally-diagnosed.