The party that built its brand on “family values” is wringing its hands over falling birth rates, particularly among teens. They are now outraged that our babies are not having children.
Fox News is sending out a new order to their brainwashed compromised followers. They want you to forget the message they pushed for decades, bemoaning the cost to society of teen mothers. Subsidies, except those extended to the rich, will be cut to varying degrees after the November election. Low- (and no-) income people are losing their safety net.
It’s for the best… Desperate women are more compliant.
You have been told that your problems stem from your tax dollars supporting ‘welfare moms.’ Trump has succeeded in cutting healthcare, food assistance, and public education funding. Any action that might have broken the cycle of hardship will be stopped for the sake of the deficit. Except the deficit will spike because the rich (and Trump’s family) are stuffing their pockets with our tax dollars.
Procreate because we need soldiers. Who will fight wars for Crazy Diaper Don and Bebe if not the babies of children? Who will work for poverty wages that enrich billionaires if not the teens who couldn’t get an education because raising babies is time-consuming?
Our national debt isn’t a mystery. It’s the predictable result of decades of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporate subsidies that dwarf what those same interests contribute in revenue. Before a single dollar is cut from Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, or children’s programs, every tax break and government appropriation benefiting billionaires and the major corporations they own must be eliminated.
War is pointless and expensive. There are three people who want the U.S. to be at war with Iran. Netanyahu wants all of the Middle East for Israel. Putin is happy to have war crimes against Iran distract the world from his war crimes against Ukraine. And Trump … well, he is the Epstein files, and they are far darker than any sane person could have imagined.
None of the people killed matter to those three. Neither does the money that could have improved lives here rather than ending them there. We could have universal healthcare like every other industrialized country does.
Last week, Trump pardoned 77 individuals who had stolen from Medicare. He doesn’t care about your healthcare. I believe Trump is selling pardons, which alone is sufficient grounds to imprison him.
Determining his supporter count is impossible because, as testified by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former ‘fixer,’ they rig the polls. Whether rich or poor, Trump supporters share his mental illness. Still, their numbers continue to fall. Suspecting this, the felon in chief and his allies have ramped up their attempts to sabotage the November election. Millions of voter registrations in Democratic counties have been purged across jurisdictions controlled by Republicans.
Under the pretense of resolving a problem that doesn’t exist, “widespread voter fraud,” they want to require identification that most voters don’t have. How many times have they whispered, “If everyone votes, we can’t win. Confirm your registration at vote.org. Do it often. Be prepared to bring a file cabinet full of documentation proving you are the person on your birth certificate.
I’ll answer the question I posed in the title: Girls aren’t having babies, and I’ll extend my response to all women, for many reasons:
- The U.S. has become a dangerous place to give birth, with a maternal mortality rate that far exceeds peer nations.
- We are the only industrialized country without universal healthcare.
- Despite “our” wealth, most people struggle, living paycheck to paycheck.
- There is no guaranteed paid parental leave.
- Reproductive autonomy can disappear at a state line.
In that context, choosing not to risk one’s body and future is rational. That old guy on Fox needs to stay in his lane.