Barefoot and Pregnant

I have been thinking long and hard about this blog post. I want to talk about birth control or better yet why all women should have access to it for very cheap or even free. I have been a user of birth control for many years. I know lots of women who use birth control! I am currently using birth control in order to prevent myself from having any more children. I have three at this time and to have any more would put undue hardship on my family. We would love to be able to have an unlimited amount of kids. My husband and I adore children and not just ours. We volunteer in every one of our childrens sports and school activities and we even volunteer when our own children are not involved. We love kids. The number of children we would have if we had no restrictions is probably different between my husband and I but we would definitely have more.
There are all kinds of good reasons not to have children. My reason is simple and yet profound. I cannot knowingly bring another child into the world that I cannot give everything they want/need and then pay for college too. I want my kids to be happy kids and I want them to be involved in all sorts of things. I want them all to have a good education that I provide so that they are not in debt up to their ears like I am because we had to provide our own education. Our parents were, for various reasons, unable to help us with our collge costs. As it is, I will have a difficult time providing a good college education to my three children, but i will do everything I can to make it happen.
If I choose not to have any more children then that should be my choice. Why do some politicians want to limit my access to birth control? Like I said, there are lots of reasons not to have children. Women all over would feel the effects of birth control being limited. Right now politicians are just trying to limit our access to birth control by not making insurance companies pay for it. I'm sure insurance giants would love to have to pay for prenatal care and delivery. They would however make more money in the long term by being able to insure more people. I think that's why they aren't making a peep during all this. I think that eventually politicians will try to ban access to birth control. It was like that prior to the 1930's. Do we really want to move backwards 80 years? Last year in Mississippi there was a bill introduced Mississippi Amendment 26. I have copied and pasted off the website below:
Amendment 26 - The Mississippi Personhood Amendment-- is a citizens initiative to amend the Mississippi Constitution to define personhood as beginning at fertilization or "the functional equivalent thereof." Its purpose is to protect all life, regardless of age, health, function, physical or mental dependency, or method of reproduction.
It basically says that all hormonal forms of birth control, IUD's and the morning after pill would be murder. The IUD for instance, my own personal favorite form of birth control because it's cheap and lasts for 10 years with little maintenance, would be causing murder because it causes fertilized eggs not to be able to implant into the uterus. Our bodies frequently perform this action by itself, say when women are breastfeeding or the body knows it's not healthy enough to support a pregnancy. This amendment would make that illegal. It would also make in-vitro fertilization illegal. People can't be grown in test tubes after all. There were 60,000+ babies born via in-vitro in 2009. That, my friend, is a lot of happy mommies!! The amendment did not pass. As a matter of fact people were quite taken aback by it. I hope that says something. I know people want to stop abortions but is limiting our access to birth control really going to help that situation? Women are going to need birth control of you want to stop abortions from happening. I don't think anything we do will stop them altogether but the best way to combat it would be to offer anyone seeking it free birth control. Women have to be able to take control of their bodies and do what is right for them and their families. I am rambling a little bit here and I have a hard time with this subject because I am so emotionally involved with it. Planned Parenthood was founded in 1942 and they have helped countless women to stop pregnancies from happening that would hurt them for whatever reason. I cannot think of a good reason for all women to be "barefoot and pregnant" as they say. We have come a long way with women's rights and we need to continue to move in the right direction. I read an article today that says that in 40% of American households women are the breadwinners. I am the breadwinner in my house and I am proud of it. If I were to have another child there would be no way I could work and bring home the money my family so desperately needs to survive. Oh sure, I could go on welfare and let the system support me and my countless children but I'd really prefer to take care of myself as most people would. Don't take away the one thing that women need to keep ourselves propelling forward. We are proud of ourselves and we want to keep it that way! Trust me! We are good for more than just having babies and keeping house!

Death and Taxes

A friend of mine once told me how much she paid in taxes and she let me know that she'd be willing to pay more. I am not sure how much money this friend makes but I can hazard a guess that she makes roughly what my family brings in. The reason that she'd be willing to pay more taxes, she tells me, is that she has a police force to protect her, roads to drive on, firefighters to put out her house should it catch on fire, schools for her child to learn in, and so on and so forth. I too would be more than willing to share a bit more of my income to the government to obtain all the great services that I take advantage of on a daily basis. Why then do two middle class people feel that way when people who makes millions, or billions of dollars are not willing to share one more penny? Some would say that that's how they got rich in the first place, by holding on to every penny they made. They call it wealth redistribution, or class warfare. I call bullshit on the whole issue. When times are tough we help each other out more by putting a little more money in the big pot we call government so that we can hold on to the way of living that we have established. It would hurt my family a little to pay more taxes. I may have to cut back on a few things. I would have to cook at home more nights a week, or forgo a date night with my husband. Nobody would go hungry mind you but we would have to make some small sacrifices. What I am having trouble understanding is that if you have, say a billion dollars in the bank and the goverment asks for $100,000 more dollars from you a year, what would you have to give up? Can your children still eat? Can you still buy your wife a new Bentley for Christmas? I would guess the answer to be yes. It may hurt you in some way that I do not understand, but I'd like to know why so many of my middle class friends don't gripe when our taxes go up but you, upper class, do. Taxes are a way of life. There is not any place that you can go where there is any type of government and not have to pay taxes. Like they say, "The only thing certain in life is death and taxes.". As the cost of things rise our taxes must go up. Our wages should go up as well but that's a whole other post altogether. The rich can call it whatever they like, but I call it fairness. We should be willing to help our fellow man. There are a lot of people in our country that are down right now. They need our help and the tax revenue we raise to get through this hard time. A hard time that has been brought on by the greed of the wealthy. When will we see the error of our ways? I can only hope that it's soon becuase if it's not we will die as a country. Other places are already wondering if we are losing our place as a "world superpower" and I think that we are certainly headed that way if we don't fix this, and soon.

Yertle the Turtle? Who knew?

I've been turning the thought of starting a political blog over in my mind for many months. I don't know if I have enough knowledge to share with the masses. I know that I have a hell of a lot of opinions which, I personally, think are great! There are two reasons I have decided to jump in head first to this thing. Well, there are a lot of reasons but the two main reasons are, 1. My daughter, the genius, upon hearing that there were lots of jobs created in the past few years jumped up and down and screamed at me, "I have a future!" and 2. I was reading Yertle the Turtle to my son tonight and I thought it sounded like a damn good thing to blog about. I'll get around to that in a minute! So my daughter is typically the driving force in my life. She is the reason for everything. I know, sounds dramatic but it's so true. I want her to have a future. Will blogging help her to have a future? Short answer is no, but I believe that if I can change even a few minds about some political views she may have a slightly better future then she would have if I did nothing. I will send her to this blog and hope that she knows that I love her and that I have strong opinions and that it's okay for her to have strong opinions too. She is so much smarter than I was at that age so maybe she will change the world if I teach her that it's okay to. Now for my second reason. Dr. Suess, you are one smart bastard!
Here are a few passages that really struck a cord with me:
On the far-away Island of Sala-ma-Sond,
Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond.
A nice little pond. It was clean. It was neat.
The water was warm. There was plenty to eat.
The turtles had everything turtles might need.
And they were all happy. Quite happy indeed.
There were....until Yertle, the king of them all,
Decided the kingdom he ruled was too small.

It goes on to say that Yertle stacked all the turtles of the pond up on top of each other until he could see everything for miles. He was happy until the moon came up and then he wanted to be higher than the moon. A little turtle named Mack was at the bottom of the stack and he was very obviously not happy. The king was upset at the little turtle and tells him:
"You hush up your mouth!" You've no right to talk to the world's highest turtle. I rule the clouds! Over land! Over sea! There's nothing, no NOTHING, that's higher than me!"

The turtle king tries to stack more turtles, but alas, Mack the plain little turtle at the bottom of the stack burps and sends the king flying to the bottom of the pond. Dr. Suess finishes the story with this:
And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he,
Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see.
And the turtles, of course...all the turtles are free
As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.

You may be asking yourself right now why in the hell you are reading a political blog that quotes Dr. Suess! I am here to tell you, this story signifies, to me, the 1% (Yertle) and the 99% (Mack and all the other little turtles). You see, the 1% is up there telling us to shut up and sit down. Do your work and we won't crush you and we are going about like little ants trying to make it even under great hardship. We can fight back, the smallest of us. It only takes a small thing to upset the whole system. We all do deserve to be free! Dr. Suess says it better than anyone I have heard talk about this subject in a long time. Please fight back. We have to do more than burp but not much more. Go and vote. Join the Occupy movement or any other movement out there that will get the word out about what we need to do to free ourselves of this plutarchy that we currently live under. If you don't know what plutarchy is, please, Google it! You will very plainly see that is what we have in America, not a democracy as we were supposed to have. I can't say that the fix is an easy one or one that will happen quickly but I can say that anyone reading this can make a difference. Even just by spreading the word. There is a lot of false information out there and I hope to be able to address some of that in my coming blog posts! I hope you enjoy this blog! Thank you for reading!