PrintJanuary 11, 2007
Pelosi: God Bless the Child that's not at Home
The history-making first Madame of the House marketed her recent three day victory-dance as a celebration of children. As a teaser, the Wednesday morning Catholic Mass at Trinity University was prominently dedicated to the children of Darfur and Hurricane Katrina. Hours later, at a trendy afternoon tea with like-minded ladies, Pelosi reiterated her campaign promise that the 110th Congress would be "all about children." Finally, receiving the gavel the next day in the "spirit of partnership, not partisanship," she closed her acceptance speech with the words:
"May God bless our work, and may God bless America... for these children, our children, and for all of America's children, the House will come to order."
Wow! Quite a sale, indeed -- a genuine goose-bump raising, Katie Couric wide-eyed-smile moment. In a House chamber teeming with members' kids and grandkids, the onetime "stay at home" mom proclaimed her belief both in a divine being and the importance of the nation's children.
But just how does one of the most outspoken advocates for unrestricted abortion in Congress -- with a perfect 100% rating from the radical pro-abortion group NARAL, -- maintain a straight face when declaring a concern for children? How can you vote NO to making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime (Lacy and Conner's Law - H.R.1997) and pretend to care about infants? How does anyone who voted against restricting interstate transport of minors for the purpose of abortion (H.R 748) or outlawing the barbaric infanticide which is partial birth abortion (H.R 3660) seriously proclaim that anything she does is "about children," much less blessed by her God?
With practiced liberal sleight-of-hand and feminist misdirection, that's how.
Obstetrics and Other Obstinate Obstacles
At Wednesday's estrogen-charged celebratory soiree, milady bemoaned the awful impediments she was forced to overcome in achieving womankind's long overdue ascension. She even went so far as to suggest that a federal policy which failed to recognize a woman's need for child care represented yet another broken rung on a deserving lady's political ladder. As such, she assured her visibly sympathetic sisters, fewer women are likely to run, as their gender-stereotyped responsibility for child rearing is an encumbrance to meeting the demands of political office.
Perhaps a mandatory or federally funded daycare center in every darned office building in the nation would fairly gender-even the playing field. After all, the Speaker's home town has been playing with such bad utopian ideas for 20 years now. Indeed, way back in 1987, Time reported that:
San Francisco has adopted another innovative approach. It requires developers of major new commercial office and hotel space to include an on- site child-care center or pay $1 per sq. ft. of space to the city's child- care fund
And coincidentally (or not), last month saw a 10th anniversary reissuing of Hillary Rodham Clinton's unreadable It Takes a Village. It was within the pages of this frighteningly Huxleyesque tome that the would-be first Madame President also asked us all to:
Imagine a country in which nearly all children between the ages of three and five attend preschool in sparkling classrooms, with teachers recruited and trained as child care professionals. Imagine a country that conceives of child care as a program to welcome children into the larger community and awaken their potential for learning and growing.
While you're at it -- imagine a land of fairies and elves and state-spawned, stretch-mark sparing, multicultural, gender-neutral, ecochondriacal incubator babies. Can this really be the principal concern of current and aspiring maiden Madames?
Indeed, "Feminist" Democrats have been duly chided for their egalitarian plans to remove children from parents and place them in closely controlled and homogenized government care institutions. And yet, most criticism has targeted their packaged liberal attacks on the "traditional" family while overlooking the baser motives behind their proposed social-engineering experiments.
Prevention, Treatment and Care
Beneath the surface, the Femocrat's broader scheme genuinely is about the children, albeit hardly as advertised. Rather, it involves the little tykes' removal as obstacles to the empowerment of ambitious liberal-minded women. And free day care represents the final in a 3 act play to force taxpayers to address children much as they'll soon be expected to address illness.
Consider:
- Prevention. Medicaid provides well-child checkups and medical screenings to the "underprivileged" in an effort to prevent disease and foster healthier lifestyles. Similarly, through legislation such as Title X of the Public Health Service Act, the federal government "provide[s] access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons."
- Treatment. Medicare and Medicaid barely scratch the surface of the left's unworkable yet relentless goal of "free" medical care for all Americans, both legally resident and otherwise. And, as with any disease, when prevention of an "unviable tissue mass" proves unsuccessful, and a woman's "reproductive health" is thereby jeopardized, Feminists perceive an entitlement to treatment for the affliction. Toward that end, they work diligently to overturn the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which they feel unfairly limits federal public funding of abortions for these poor suffering souls. It is their contention that the cure of infanticide should be available free to any woman at any time during any period of the illness of gestation.
- Care & Support. Of course, if prevention and cure fail, then the patient is faced with care, both palliative and emotional. When the malady is childbirth, this includes Welfare, Medicaid and other "family" entitlement programs such as WIC and CHIP. If they can figure out how to get the chump taxpayers to also fund daycare, they will have covered all of the bad-decision bases, completely freeing women of any consequence for their "reproductive choices" and actions.
Make Womb for Mommy
In previous drives for such initiatives as "Universal" Health Care, Parental Leave, Family Medical Leave and Employment Protection laws, lefties have tossed their sheer lack of even basic business knowledge into the limelight. The current rush to increase the Federal Minimum Wage with no regard for its ultimate impact upon jobs, small businesses and the broader economy only serves to further sharpen the focus of that beam. It seems that most minimum wage earners are teen and college aged kids of working families. Subsequently, this red herring regressive wealth transfer accomplishes little but the subsidizing of middle class children on the backs of small businesses. This is, of course, typical welfare state thinking and the perfect opening salvo for a new House majority which apparently mistook America's distaste for war and scandal as a mandate for loony lefty legislation.
And yet the overall toll of such class envy exploitations pales in comparison to that potentially derivative of their shadier politics of the womb.
Consider again the mind-boggling insanity of this feminist dream sequence: If government sponsored Birth Control fails, then taxpayers must foot the bill for an abortion. Should neither proper use of Birth Control nor Abortion be her chosen path, it becomes the right of every woman to have the government care for the fruits of that indecision - either through a generous welfare program or, for the more industrious, subsidized daycare. Talk about having your Birthday Cake and eating it too!
And from the Only in America File -- on the day she was sworn in, Pelosi and family first attended St. Peter's Catholic Church near the Capitol. Making her way to the House festivities afterwards, she ignored a group of chanting anti-abortion protestors she passed just outside the DC house of worship. One pro-lifer carried a placard exclaiming "You can't be Catholic and pro-abortion." Apparently unmoved by these words which perfectly epitomized her hypocrisy, she later said in her acceptance speech:
"For our daughters and our granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling. For our daughters and our granddaughters now, the sky is the limit. Anything is possible for them."
Possible, perhaps -- but should the Femocrats have their way, a few somewhat important opportunities will certainly be less likely: Conception, birth and available nurturing parents.
As to you, Madame Speaker, it is not so much the unlimited prospects of children that you champion, but rather those of they who bear them. So please, spare us your counterfeit noble platitudes.
Marc Sheppard is a technology consultant, software engineer, writer, and political and systems analyst. He is a regular contributor to American Thinker. He welcomes your feedback.
