(Crossposted from OurWord.com)
For several years, I was a Volunteer Facilitator for a Parents Anonymous group in a major metro area. (This is group for parents ar risk of abusing their children.) Most of the clients in my group were poor young mothers who had been court ordered to attend, most were the outcome of generations of poverty, most were untreated victims of sexual/physicial abuse, many did not have very high intellectual capacity, many were addicted, and nearly all were male-dependent on unstable, addicted, abusive men. Child care was provided, so we got to see the kids too.
Week after week we saw physical evidence of ongoing abuse on the kids, and the Moms; we heard verbal reports from them in group, of ongoing abuse inflicted on them and their kids, and ongoing reports of how they themselves were unable to stop abusing or neglecting their own kids.
Week after week, as a mandated reporters, we made calls to Child Protective services, and week after week we was asked if there were signs of bleeding, broken bones or malnutrution, and if there weren’t, well, they were just too backed up and backlogged with the more “serious” cases they was nothing they could do. These caseworkers were not uncaring state clones, either, they saw the same horrors we saw, and suffered like we did because we live in a society that just doesn’t give a damned about these disadvantaged, impaired poor mothers and kids…who haven’t had any real chance to be any different than they are.
This IS the reality for many of our poorest women and kids under todays society values, and the Repugs vaulted “CULTURE OF LIFE”.
If justice really existed, every one of those
chest-beatng Culture of Life bastards who want to take away services, birth control and abortion from these women and kids would have to live a week…just one single week, in the shoes of a young, addiction/abuse impaired young mother who thinks being battered and beaten by her man is a sign she is loved, and who has little to no ability to care for or protect her own child, who will grow up with the same life lessons she has.
But no. Those in power don’t see anything they do not wish to see. They pretend reality is whatever fits their current political agenda.
That is it woman and kids who pay the biggest price for this, is of no concern to them.
Sometimes, when I look at what is actually happening to the most vulnerable of mothers and children among us,, and what is happening to the most vulnerable elderly and disabled, (again, mostly women) the phrase “genocide” comes into my mind no matter how I try to not allow it in.
Socially sanctioned, highly civilized and suble, extremely effective genocide. Let the weakest among us die, so there is more for the rest of us?
Radical words? You bet they are.
A typical emotional “over reaction” on the part of another rabid feminist?
No goddamned way.
