Wow. This is the most spectacular fail I have ever seen. Because it’s hardly worth the click, here’s the short version:
“State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas, [VA] says disabled children are God’s punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy.”
…disabled children are God’s punishment…
…disabled children are God’s punishment…
…DISABLED CHILDREN ARE GOD’S PUNISHMENT…
I can’t bring myself to read the comments because I have a rule against reading anything that has significant potential to induce a murderous rage. I try to remain as “lefty-I’m-ok-you’re-ok” about people’s personal morality and values around abortion because I know that people draw upon a multiplicity of faith and cultural traditions in determining their values. But, please, tell me which book of the Bible, exactly, says that any child is a punishment to its parent? Or that people with disabilities are less-than?
It seems that part of his argument against funding for Planned Parenthood is that Margaret Sanger was a racist/classist, which may be the truth, for all I know, but is not in any event sufficient to tar the organization a hundred years out. This argument has come on to my radar a few times recently, as some Georgia right-to-life group leans pretty hard on the idea that Black children are an “endangered species” because of abortion. Ergo abortion–and not the conditions of poverty that might drive women to abortion, or the lack of social support, or the racism that the kids will face, or the environmental policies that will leave them perennially exposed to toxins at much greater levels than their white peers–should be illegal. Like, it’s never occurred to anyone that without a prerequisite societal change these same women would continue to seek abortions if they were illegal, but would be much more likely to suffer morbidity or mortality from unsafe conditions than the middle-class white women those damned eugenicists at Planned Parenthood want to have populate the world. Wait, who gets to procreate when poor women and women of color die of sepsis from clandestine abortions? Oh…
So… the good people of Virginia should withdraw their support of Planned Parenthood because it failed to respect the value of a class of people? Pot, I have a kettle I’d like you to meet.
I wish I could move to Manassas just to vote against this guy.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
WOW I must be SERIOUSLY blessed then, or under the radar, because I’ve have two pregnancies terminated and then gone on to have two 100% healthy, beautiful children born.
ORRRR you just don’t know that they’re secretly cursed — I mean disabled!
That’s some seriously Pat Robertson-grade messed up shit.