Yesterday, a good friend of mine, “B”, basically “had it” after she read an article about the contraception debate, which featured a photo of the panel… all men, in which three are priests. So, “B” ranted on Facebook. I thought it was a great rant, so wanted to share it with everyone. Here we go!
.
(( rant on ))
All the Tea-publican noise about the exact moment of personhood, birth control and abortion has got me thinking. In addition to women not having the vote on birth control, here are a few other “oldies but goodies” the Tea-publicans might want to propose in their efforts to bring back the good ole days.
Let’s see, 100 years ago many people died before their 40th birthday – worn out from manual labor, and no antibiotics for pneumonia, tuberculosis, and childbirth infections. Did I mention that there were no vaccines for childhood diseases like measles, mumps, whooping cough and German measles? Forget about a flu vaccine – between 50 and 100 million people died world-wide from the “Spanish” Flu Pandemic of 1918-1920. 27% of the world’s population was infected – that’s 500 MILLION People! (Now do you get why the CDC is terrified of a re-occurrence?)
People died of yellow fever, spread by mosquitoes, even in Northern cities. Cholera had been controlled by the development of clean water and sewer systems in the major cities. Birth control was illegal, and abortions were back alley at best. Most women married right out of high school, if they had the opportunity to go that far. I suppose a very short life, and limited opportunities, by modern standards, is one form of population control.
80 years ago, many, many people lost their life savings in the 1929 crash and Great Depression that followed. People who were too old to reenter the workforce were starving. Perhaps the Tea-publicans would like to use that as a form of natural selection? They keep threatening to kill social security.
60 years ago, we had Jim Crow laws and segregated schools. Now, some families are home schooling. If for-profit charter schools become the norm, perhaps John Birch and Southern Conservatives will rejoice. Oh, there was also a polio epidemic, and no vaccine.
50 years ago, the Civil Rights Act came into being to enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States of America to provide relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes. You bet the Tea-publicans want to roll this back. There was the thalidomide disaster; children whose mothers took the drug during early pregnancy were born with severe birth defects. The Tea-publicans don’t seem to understand the need for the FDA; too much government interference and all that.
I could go on, but you probably get the drift. Just how regressive and backward, how 19th century do the Tea-publicans want the USA to become? We were the shining hope; what are we to become in the 21st century? The laughingstock of the world?
So just how much worse does it have to get before people turn off their 60-inch flat screen TVs, PCs, iPods, iPhones, and Androids AND VOTE?
Just curious.
(( rant off ))
Shortly thereafter, “B” added the following two comments:
At 50 years ago, 1972, I forgot to add that the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment became a national scandal. After 1947, penicillin was shown to be an effective treatment for syphilis, yet the men received no treatment.
The revelations by a whistle blower of study failures and lack of treatment for the disease led to major changes in U.S. law and regulation on the protection of participants in clinical studies.
Still think we don’t need the FDA and National Institutes of Health?
Excuse my language, but I am so fucking fed up with the lies, distortions, misdirections, birthers, truthers, conspiracy theorists, and males who want to control women’s uteri, that I have finally had it.
Pop! An essay.
You GO “B”! You tell ’em!!!!
Motley News 
Leave a reply to Barbara in the Woods Cancel reply