Republicans Don't Care About Your Family

 

Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg had sharp words for the Republicans opposing a bill codifying the right to same-sex marriages, urging them to support the legislation's passage in the Senate after it won bipartisan House approval. https://t.co/mBKJi45Egb

— ABC News (@ABC) July 24, 2022

Republicans demonstrated with their vote in the House against supporting same-sex or interracial marriages that they don't care about all of our American families. After all, House Republicans also failed to support access to contraception.  They don't care if lack of access to abortion means that a pregnant person dies, or that pregnant people can't move freely across the country to access their right to bodily autonomy according to their own conscience. 

It has to be finally admitted--they don't care about your family. Republicans chatted quite comfortably with a gay man and then right afterwards told him his family did not matter to them. They don't care about his family, and his young children. They don't care about his parental rights and those of his spouse. 

They would not care about your family, that you made via IVF, because it offends the anti-abortion people. I want you to know that. 

If you are Jewish or gay, they would probably prefer you not adopt because you aren't the right sort of people to raise kids. Marjorie Taylor Greene considers adoptive parents "fake" and thinks they are a danger to children. 

Do They Want to Adopt Your Baby?

 

A photo has been going around the Twitter of a smiling couple with a sign: "We will adopt your baby." These people seem sketchy as hell. There may be perfectly lovely people out there willing to adopt "unwanted" children, but so much of this kind of signifying suggests that the only reason for terminating a pregnancy is that one doesn't want a baby. Sometimes pregnancies are terminated because someone did want a child--but this pregnancy is fatally flawed, or the baby will have disabilities incompatible with life. Sometimes, in the case of a minor or a rape victim, the pregnancy itself is a burden.

The smiling couple imply one of the other fears a person might have--that selfish, cultish, unsuitable people will adopt their child and give it a terrible life. There's a sense deep down that it might be better not to be, than to be unloved or abused. 

And then there's people who will smile at a camera and say of course they love babies.  And they would adopt yours, but, really, more as a "for instance". 

It's just more...theoretical, you know, in the abstract. It's complicated, you know? 

Sure. Pregnant people understand all kinds of things are complicated. That's why they deserve a choice.

The Children

 

The word 'children' was painted in large Russian script on the ground outside the Mariupol Drama Theatre, Maxar satellite images collected on March 14 showed. Ukraine accused Russia of bombing the theater on Wednesday. Russia denies the attack https://t.co/JtB56K8eCz pic.twitter.com/iV13h0dBXm

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 16, 2022

What can you say about the rules of engagement of a force where painting the word "children" next to a building in the hopes that a bombing would be passed over makes that building a target? Because I have no doubt in the world this is what happened. 

I compare this to the Russian lies about the maternity hospital they shelled and the woman that they tried to portray as a crisis actor. In my heart of hearts. I will never forget that knowing she was losing her child, with a shattered pelvis, she begged to be put out of her misery and the cosmos in its accidental mercy responded. On what moral plane do such things happen? 

There isn't any morality here. This is total war, Vernichtungskreig. This is scorched earth thinking. When Putin started to talk about his paranoid fear about Ukraine and his border, it seemed to me he was talking about Lebensraum. He wanted a place for Russian people, and Ukraine as a state was in his way. When there is talk of even logging the Ukraine forest to pay for his war, I am hearing echoes of Operation Barbarossa.

For the Benefit of Ross Douthat--

Regarding some apparent confusion regarding reproductive issues that I noticed in the most recent column--

Please note that regardless of what you may have previously understood on this matter, women's uteruses are not cabbage patches and fetuses are not cabbages. Also, applying "supply and demand" logic to human beings is....a bit creepy.

Hope this helps!