{"id":1690,"date":"2007-11-26T05:11:19","date_gmt":"2007-11-26T10:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1690"},"modified":"2007-11-26T05:11:19","modified_gmt":"2007-11-26T10:11:19","slug":"one-way-of-ensuring-conservative-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1690","title":{"rendered":"One Way Of Ensuring Conservative Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Convince the lefties that reproduction is bad for the planet.<\/p>\n

We’ve got a start right her<\/a>e:<\/p>\n

At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to “protect the planet”.<\/p>\n

Incredibly, instead of mourning the loss of a family that never was, her boyfriend (now husband) presented her with a congratulations card.<\/p>\n

While some might think it strange to celebrate the reversal of nature and denial of motherhood, Toni relishes her decision with an almost religious zeal.<\/p>\n

“Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,” says Toni, 35.<\/p>\n

“Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.”<\/p>\n

While most parents view their children as the ultimate miracle of nature, Toni seems to see them as a sinister threat to the future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, but hostility to children is an aberration.<\/p>\n

Right?<\/p>\n

Well – it depends<\/a>, says this Bay Area mom…:<\/p>\n

I often am seen in the company of three children who call me “Mom.” These traits have led people to freely let me know that they think I’m overpopulating the world. Probably the strangest experience I’ve had is being pregnant in the Bay Area. During my other pregnancies, I lived in Sacramento and was used to people smiling when they saw a pregnant woman. Here, no smiles — mostly scowls.<\/p>\n

My favorite story is this one: When I was getting physical therapy when I was six months pregnant (after falling and breaking my wrist), the therapist asked me whether I was pregnant with my first child (she had already told me that she had one child and planned to have only one). When I said, no, this was actually my third child, she immediately asked me whether I was going to have my tubes tied after the birth.<\/p>\n

After my baby was born, the hostile looks and mutterings continued. While I was waiting in line for coffee one day with the kids in tow, one woman offered to me that she thought three children constituted a big family. When I told her it really isn’t considered a large family in many other parts of the country, including the Midwest town I had recently moved from, she asked me with disdain, “Where was that, a religious community?” Then there was the woman who said to me as she pushed by my stroller, “Three? Don’t you think you have enough?” It’s not like I was asking her to contribute to their college fund! I was just taking my kids to the bathroom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve noticed a thin film of “child-free” people on the periphery of my circle of acquaintances, in the past few years.\u00a0 Not “don’t have kids yet”, not “don’t really want a family”, not “I’d rather have all my own money and free time for myself”\u00a0 or “I think I’d bew a lousy parent, and I haven’t been to Nepal yet” – although I know all of them. No, I mean “child-free”, in the sense of “Smoke-Free” or “Chemical-free” – as if one is ridding ones’ life and the world of some noxious pollutant.<\/p>\n

Which is bad news for the future of liberalism, presuming they don’t get into power before the last one dies off and enforce a nationwide spay\/neuter law…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Convince the lefties that reproduction is bad for the planet. We’ve got a start right here: At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to “protect the planet”. Incredibly, instead of mourning the loss of a family that never was, her boyfriend (now husband) presented her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}