Reply #58: Besides which... [View All]

[kdmorris]

I've always wondered... WHO decides if you can afford them? Do you need to have their college tuition already paid for? Must you have a certain amount of money in the bank? What EXACTLY is meant by "when you can afford them"? Should you have already bought a house or can you have them when you are renting an apartment? If one parent has a steady job, working for $15 a hour (in 1987), is that enough? Should you have health insurance that will pay for the whole pregnancy, labor and delivery, or is health insurance that will pay 80% of it OK?

WHO gets to decide whether you can afford your children? Where do you apply for reproductive rights? And what happens if, at the moment of conception, you COULD afford to have them, and then, during the pregnancy, your husband loses his job and you are on bed rest? Are you then morally obligated to have an abortion? Or should you, a la "The Handmaid's Tale", do the right thing and give your baby up for adoption when she is born?

This whole "people who can't afford to have children shouldn't" started under the Reagan administration and continued under the nasty Republican congress under Clinton. I won't engage the person you responded to, but this sort of thinking is just another way of punishing the poor. And it's distressing to me to see this on DU, to see even a couple of our members spouting RW catch phrases and then, turning it around on you if you protest.