How NOT to wish someone Happy Mother’s Day…

Motherhood:  a great gift, a great responsibility.  The real “oldest profession,” an amazing, exhausting, unending, uplifting assignment which women have been bravely taking on for all of recorded time.

Nine months of miraculous but uncomfortable growth, a few hours of often agonizing pain, and a lifetime of caring, teaching, loving, worrying over and praying for the life one has brought into the world.

And yet, the National Organization of Women (NOW) thinks that it would be a good idea to thank the mothers among us who have stood up for legalized abortion. Somehow, making it optional to actually care, teach, love, worry and pray for a child one has conceived, is seen as noble and progressive?

Notice the banner down in the right-hand corner: …was marching for safe and legal abortion really the best thing that YOUR mother did for you?

Really?

Democrats accept gendercide

****We covered this a couple days ago, but this post highlights the vote (which sadly didn’t pass) and some additional info.****

A Heapin' Plate of Conservative Politics & Religion

By Tom Quiner

Is it acceptable for American’s to choose abortion based on gender, just as they do in China?

Republicans say no.

Democrats say yes.

The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2012 was just voted down in the House by Democrats that would have outlawed it.

Gendercide is a problem in America, just as it is in other countries with high abortion rates. Fetal-testing allows early detection of gender. When gender is determined, girls are more likely to be aborted than boys.

Even Planned Parenthood says they’re against gendercide, as stated in this press release:

“Gender bias is contrary to everything our organization works for … Planned Parenthood condemns sex selection motivated by gender bias.”

Good for them, except for one thing: they don’t mean it.

Live Action Films went undercover into Planned Parenthood to show that PP, in fact, DOES accept gendercide. Just watch the video above for the…

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No, I don’t “Like” this post at all…

The Heritage Foundation posted a graph on its Facebook site, showing purported growth in government spending on welfare between 1964 and 2011:

Predictably, the post has received 1,600+ “Likes” and 200 or so comments, most of them on the order of my “zoo” comments of Friday.  But while it’s easy to say that the poor are being given too much, I’ll admit it’s hard to pinpoint where or how to cut back without punishing the people who most deserve help:  the infants and children who cannot help themselves.

It’s interesting to read the talkback from liberals who say it’s “lunacy”  to try to compare 1964 spending to today.  ‘Our population is several times greater, cost of living is higher, average wage is higher, etc’…which is true, but beside the point.  The graph, if I understand it correctly, is an ironic picture of several generations’ worth of “war on welfare” intending to cut spending on benefits to the poor.  We can see how well that has worked out.  But I’m not so much concerned with the big picture from the last 50 years.  We can argue all day about “inflation-adjusted dollars” and what that really means.

No, the alarm bells went off for me when I went to the U.S. Government Spending website and found that spending on welfare to families and children (mainly nutrition supplements like food stamps, WIC and school lunch programs, as far as I can tell) has more than DOUBLED in the past four years, from $60.7 billion to 113.5 billion.   How is that possible?  Does that mean that the cost of food has doubled?  That the number of people receiving assistance has doubled? More likely, it’s safe to say that more people are needing help and food costs more…

Still, the mind boggles at the thought of further increases in welfare spending.  Looking at this chart, I wonder:  how many people begin to receive assistance and simply never stop?   And why is that?  Could it have anything to do with the fact that 41% of babies born in 2009 were to unmarried women?   How about this statistic:  “In 2010, 9.9 million single moms were living with kids under 18 in the United States, up from 3.4 million in 1970.”

I could rant predictably about the decline in morals, and the cultural climate which has made it normal to have a baby if you want to, regardless of whether there are two parents committed to raising it to adulthood.  But the fact is self-evident that while the population of our country has doubled since 1970, the number of single moms has tripled.  What once was embarrassing at best, severely stigmatized at worst, is now common and acceptable, and–more significantly–practical.  The government’s willingness to support single mothers and their children has made it possible for any woman who feels like it to have a baby and raise it without the necessity of a partner who supports or helps to support her.  Instead of rewarding stable family units who are self-sufficient, and who raise statistically healthier, happier and less troubled kids, it seems that the prize goes to the unambitious young high school drop-out who has learned to bilk the system and is content to live from hand to mouth indefinitely.

Of course we do not want to live in a society which does not show care and concern for innocent children.  And  since the moral pendulum has swung so wildly to the left…I fear it will require more that Solomon’s wisdom to find a solution to our skyrocketing welfare costs which rewards responsibility and hard work, without penalizing infants and children who had no say in the matter.

I don’t think I can criticize the failed welfare reforms unless I have a better idea of how to cut such spending without endangering children.  It seems to me that this is a matter for prayer.

Happy Mother’s Day

It is truly an upside-down world, when groups such as Planned Parenthood celebrate Mother’s Day asking people for donations to prevent women from becoming mothers, or in other words, by asking for abortion funding.  

For that reason, I am especially grateful for this advertisement from Publix Supermarkets. This is as Pro-Life an ad as you’ll see today, and they deserve some serious credit for it.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone.

Regarding “Respect”…

All right.  I have come late to this discussion, and hope I may be forgiven if I’ve missed something.  I won’t take time here to defend myself as a stay-at-home mom (who has also been self-employed as a piano teacher, childcare provider, editor, theater director, etc.–though none of those things probably count) for over 20 years.  Not surprisingly, I completely agree with my younger brother about the fantastic mother we had.   She would be quite astonished to find that what she did for 30 years wasn’t considered “work”…

What I’m puzzled about is Hillary Rosen’s defensive statements in response to the backlash she received on her first statement.:

” I said that I thought it was wrong for Mitt Romney to be using his wife as his guide to women’s economic struggles when she ‘had never worked a day in her life.’ …

‘My wife has the occasion, as you know, to campaign on her own and also with me,’ Romney told newspaper editors, ‘and she reports to me regularly that the issue women care about most is the economy.’

So it begs the question, is Ann Romney Mitt’s touchstone for women who are struggling economically or not? Nothing in Ann Romney’s history as we have heard it — hardworking mom she may have been — leads me to believe that Mitt has chosen the right expert to get feedback on this problem he professes to be so concerned about. “

I’m puzzled for at least two reasons:  First of all, whether or not Mr. Romney expressed himself clearly in response to a reporter’s questions, it seems presumptuous for Ms. Rosen to assume that Ann Romney is incapable of speaking to women who are struggling financially and accurately reporting what they are saying.   And what does Mrs. Romney’s employment status have to do with the women she speaks to on the campaign trail?  Does being a stay-at-home mom make her hard of hearing?

Beyond this,  implying  that only women who are in the work force should be spokespeople for those who are “struggling economically” is short-sighted and illogical at best.  Why shouldn’t stay-at-home moms be just as economically aware as women who work? (And what makes Rosen think none of them are struggling?) Does Ms. Rosen imagine that those of us who raise children rather than spending 40 hours away from home each week, are somehow sequestered from the real world? Do full-time mothers not put gas in their own cars? If they do, are they not capable of noticing that prices have gone up? Do we not often pay all the bills, balance the checkbook, and know full well when the prices of natural gas, electricity or city water have risen or fallen? Are wives and mothers oblivious to the rising cost of groceries, clothing, cleaning supplies? Whether we’re “struggling” or relatively comfortable, if women are saying that the economy is a major concern for them, why should this be a reason to criticize Romney or his wife?

If Ms. Rosen wants to address the so-called “gender gap”, by which I assume she means equal pay for equal work, isn’t this much more a white-collar than a blue-collar problem?  And isn’t it therefore disingenuous to imply that Ms. Romney, as a stay-at-home mother, is in some privileged, pampered class who can’t relate to the needs of a struggling, working (executive) woman?

Until Ms. Rosen, Mr. Romney, and politicians in general, are willing to say what they mean, and face issues head on–rather than equivocating with warm fuzzies or diverting arguments into finger-pointing vitriol–they can expect little respect from the general public, but lots of tweets, blogs and other backlash against the inanity of their “phony war.”

If we’re going to spend all this time and energy, wouldn’t it be nice to do so over a substantive topic, for once?  Or is that too much to ask in campaign season?

Oh, that’s MUCH clearer now…

They just can’t help themselves.

Via HOTAIR.com, National Organization of Women President Terry O’Neill tried to turn Hilary Rosen’s ridiculous inflammatory statement from Wednesday night into a positive by, basically, …..repeating it.

The money quote:

TERRY O’NEILL: What would we be saying if Hillary Clinton had said this: that Ann Romney has never, has not worked for pay outside the home a day in her life? That’s my understanding that’s an accurate statement, and that raises the exact issue that Hilary Rosen was trying to get to, which is do Mr. & Mrs. Romney have the kind of life experience and if not, the imagination, to really understand what most American families are going through right now? I think that that was what Hilary was getting out, and so she left out the words “for pay outside the home.”

Ed Morrissey actually echoes in his post today what I was saying yesterday:

Once again, we get to see the professional Left’s utter disdain for women who chose to stay home with their children rather than work in the workplace. Do they also lack “life experience” and “imagination”? Are their political and economic views also irrelevant? Is a woman’s worth entirely measured by her salary? Is that the official position of NOW? If so, then perhaps they may want to think about an official name change.

My only advice to these folks?

Keep digging, guys. Keep digging….