Could someone please explain to me just why in all the sane realms of existence a woman who

*  abandoned a home and filed for bankruptcy within the past year,

*  and already has SIX small children,

*  and lives with her mother,

*  and apparently has no partner,

should be allowed to undergo FERTILITY TREATMENTS and give birth to nearly a baseball team's worth of children doomed from the start to poverty and potential lifelong health problems?  Who the fuck financed this?

With all of the medical professionals who have such profound "conscience" issues when it comes to women curtailing their fertility, you'd think there might be some out there who'd have issues with the reverse.  I am fiercely pro-choice; and that includes upholding all choices a woman might make, including that of having a large family.  But this situation is an incredible trainwreck.  For all those who bleat "but think of the children"--well, in this situation, who did?  Who thought of the half-dozen young hostages to fortune this woman had already produced?  Who thought of the fate of the EIGHT newcomers?  She had the option of culling some of the implanted embryos, and refused to do so; it wasn't specified, but most likely because of a religious conviction.  What boggles my mind to the point of implosion is wondering why she would even want or NEED to undergo fertility treatments when she already has SIX children and no apparent means of supporting them. 

I'd like to take every single person who has ever, or will ever, dismissed a person who has chosen to remain childless, or to limit their family to a small number even when they might like to have had more, as being selfish, and beat them over the head with this case.  This woman's face ought to show up in the dictionary as the very definition of selfish. 

EPIC FAIL.  And a real tragedy for those fourteen children.

Today marks the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.  I have lived all of my life so far in a country where women are free to make their own reproductive judgments; it is my hope that, with the election of President Obama, that will continue to be the case.

As always, Amanda has an insightful and instructive post up at Pandagon.  It's worth reading.

Former President George W. Bush.

I like how that sounds.  I like looking over at the counter in the sidebar and seeing it set to zeroes all across; the symbolism is succinct and sublime.

I like our new president.  I like that he has qualities that one might naturally associate with the presidency, the highest office of the land: he is intelligent, dignified, poised, well-spoken.  Eight years of being quite certain that I--hell, that my cat--was smarter than the leader of my country was disconcerting to say the least.  I want my elected officials to be smarter, wiser, better-educated than I am: that's why they're the leaders!  It appears that we have that again, now.  The bus is no longer careening madly down the road, slamming into things while the ostensible driver sits panic-stricken in his seat, the steering wheel detached and clutched in his hands, a look of baffled horror on his face.  Someone else has put the wheel back in place and will attempt to get the bus back under control before too many more things get run over.  The passengers, hostages to fortune all, can breathe a bit easier now.

President Barack H. Obama.

I like how that sounds even better.

As I write this, the Bush countdown meter in the left sidebar is at 0 days, 10 hours, 16 minutes, and assorted seconds.  Isn't it beautiful?  Certainly the clean-up will be ghastly and long, but it's enough for now just to know that a dark and damaging era is finally coming to an end.

Auf wiedersehen, Goodbye...

Barring those with suicidal ideation as a feature of a mental illness, why would anyone think that?

The neighborhood Southern Baptist Church has a lighted electronic marquee sign, and they change the message on it daily.  This morning’s genuinely brought me up short.  It read:

My life will be so much better…after I die.

Cast me as intolerant, but that seems so incredibly wrongheaded as to border on pathological.  Or, as I yelped in my early-morning brainfog, “That’s just crazy-talk!”  The illogic is stunning in its own right, but it goes deeper than that.  Of course your life won’t improve upon death, because you’ll no longer have a life.  You may or may not have an afterlife, but lacking any empirical evidence one way or the other I wouldn’t go putting all my eggs in that potentially nonexistent basket, either. 

Mulder:  Do you believe in an afterlife, Scully?
Scully:  I’d settle for a life in this one.

          (Excelsius Dei, episode 2:11)

I freely admit that I have no concept of the kind of worldview that advocates such a total denigration of human existence, while on the other hand allegedly championing the value of “life.”  It looks, to this outsider at least, as though the only “life” to be valued is that which remains in a foetal state, or that which is dependent on machinery to keep it going; the healthy, independent human organism should be dead to the world, so to speak, and longing only for the next world–which one fervently hopes will be a pleasant place, but may not be.  My brain hurts just trying to wrap around this.

All right, yes, I know; I’m a big ol’ heathen and just don’t get it.  If I had a dime for every time someone, pagan or otherwise, had told me I didn’t get something I’d have no worries for this life or any potential others.  Maybe I get it and don’t want it.  The life I’m living now–this one, right here, on planet Earth in the 21st century–is the only life I’m absolutely assured of having.  Everything else is just conjecture.  I’m not enough of a gambler to risk the bird in the hand for the (theoretical) one in the (also theoretical) bush. 

My life will be so much better…when I start to fully live it.

I've been spending most of my time at LiveJournal lately; visit me there if you like.

Also, a message to rethuglicans and christofascist conservative types:  PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA FTW.  That is all.

(Yes, I'll be back to proper blogging here eventually.  Promise.)

The season of the witch is upon us!