Forced Childbirth To Blame For Illegal Abortion Clinics and Our “Sex-Negative” Culture

Jacqueline S. Homan, author: Classism For Dimwits and Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie

The “pro-life” anti-abortion/anti-contraception misogynist backlash against women’s hard-won right to bodily autonomy accorded by Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut was launched by various wealthy conservative Congressmen and male dominated Christian organizations the moment women were recognized as being entitled to the fundamental human right to have some minimal say over our own bodies.

The backlash began with the punitive Hyde Amendment which targeted poor women for conscription into childbirth chattel slavery under false pretenses of “morality” by blocking Medicaid funding for abortion, even in the case of rape or danger to the mother’s health and life.

Poor women were deemed exceptionally promiscuous and “animalistic”, thus sub-human and in need of punishment for having sex outside of the auspices of patriarchy’s stranglehold. Reticence to fight Hyde head on and failure to repeal Hyde allowed misogyny, cruelty, enslavement, and sexual/reproductive torture against women and girls to remain normalized.

Normalizing abuse and deprivation of human rights for half of the human race was accepted because of the Hyde Amendment, and because of humanitarian pro-choice groups’ collective failure to press the case of Roe v. Wade as a non-discriminatory natural human right — not just a constitutionally framed privacy right.

The Hyde Amendment was introduced in 1973 immediately on the heels of the US Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade. Hyde passed in 1978, sending the message and reaffirming the patriarchal notion that any woman engaging in sex for pleasure without the intent of procreation is an immoral slut. It also sent the message that the fundamental human right to bodily autonomy is a social class privilege reserved for the discreet enjoyment of rich women, but a basic human right for ALL men. This classist, sexist, misogynist message was reaffirmed in 1980 by the US Supreme Court in its ruling on the Harris v. McRae case.

Abortion was castigated as “immoral” and the taxpayers should not be obligated to subsidize something morally repulsive. Prior to Roe and Griswold v. Connecticut, women had two choices: risk death from dangerous childbirth or risk death from botched illegal abortions performed by black market back alley butchers. For poor women across the US today, the situation remains the same.

Since Hyde was passed, Medicaid has not paid for a single abortion for poor women impregnated by rape, incest, or in situations where continuing the pregnancy seriously compromised the woman’s health or threatened her life. Consequently, untold numbers of low-income women were forced to endure a health and life risk imposed on them. Rape victims were thus violated twice: first by their rapists, second by being forced to suffer dangerous unwanted pregnancies and excruciatingly painful childbirths that permanently changed their bodies and lives against their will — leaving their bodies and psyches (often permanently) damaged.

The “Moral Majority” justified this legalized torture, chattel enslavement, and abuse of women and girls under the false pretense of a “pro-life” position. But their claim of a moral high ground fails miserably. In all of their rhetoric about the “sanctity of life”, the life, health, liberty, and wellbeing of women — whose wombs they’ve held hostage and whose pussies they’ve deliberately injured by force of law — has been completely disregarded. This just goes to show that they really don’t give a crap about life. They’ve written off the already-born, living, feeling, breathing, thinking woman who is demonstrably more of a person than any potential contents her uterus may (or may not) warehouse.

The reason they devalue women as people and refuse to acknowledge that women are human enough for harm to matter is because they truly hate women. Women’s genitalia are “nasty” and “evil” to them, so forcing women to suffer permanent injury or maiming to their genitals from childbirth fulfills a deep seeded desire to destroy and inflict torture and trauma on women’s very sensitive sexual organs suits them just fine.

Institutionalized misogyny with horrific consequences for women began with Bronze Age superstitions promulgated by some desert nomads’ vindictive deity — as told in the Biblical myth of the “original sin.”

Misogyny and a strong irrational desire to inflict trauma and death on women is the underpinning of western civilization. Patriarchal Neolithic scribes supplanted a powerful preceding tradition of matriarchy, fertility, and wisdom. The ancient feminine-centered superstitions frequently depicted snakes as a symbol of wisdom and as women’s companions. Early fertility statues of fecund goddesses with voluptuous breasts and hips, often ripe with pregnancy, were replaced by a sadistic male god — the authors of Genesis wanted to supplant a pagan tradition that disgusted them. The sensual, fertile goddess was transformed into the instrument of death, shame, and “sin.” They punished her sexuality with pain and oppression.

The “original sin” was used by early church “doctors” as a vehicle for expressing their revulsion and disgust for women’s bodies. Saint Augustine wrote in the early 4th century regarding women, “What is the difference whether it is in a wife or in a mother; it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any other woman.”

Men like Augustine, Pope Innocent VIII, Martin Luther, John Calvin hated women and projected all guilt upon women, branding women as lustful weak-willed evil-doers who seduce men away from a divine male god — leading them astray from a virtuous path to salvation and immortality. The “original sin” enshrines the myth of feminine evil as justification for torturing, maiming, oppressing, and killing women.

The history of men’s attitudes towards women is a legacy of deep loathing with horrific consequences. The famous work, Malleus Maleficarum, was concocted by two neurotic celibate Dominican monks who were dispatched by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 to investigate and purge all “witchcraft.” The Malleus Maleficarum states that “all witchcraft comes from the carnal lust, which is, in women, insatiable.” An entire chapter on how female sexuality destroys male sexuality is titled, “How, As It Were, They Deprive Man of His Virile Member.”

Medieval women were tortured and killed on charges of witchcraft for using herbs to mitigate excruciating labor pain, risk of death from hemorrhaging, and to treat painful destructive injuries to women’s genitals from childbirth.

The Church held that inordinate suffering (and even death) in childbirth was God’s punishment for Eve’s original sin. In the 19th century, clergymen influenced the law to criminalize the use of chloroform when it was introduced to ease women’s suffering during childbirth — on the grounds that providing any pain relief to birthing women was immoral and contradicted God’s word. This attitude remains prevalent across the US today — normalized with the excuse that pain relief for birthing mothers are bad for their babies.

Men’s seething hatred for women’s bodies extended far beyond a desire to inflict torture and cruelty on women during childbirth. It led to the criminalizing of contraceptives and abortion. Any expression of sexual desire by women was considered depraved, filthy, and corrupt. It pegged women as whores — the daughters of Eve.

Middle and upper class Victorian Age men used prostitutes (poor women without means of economic support) to satisfy their most debased sexual appetites while demanding purity of their wives. Middle and upper class women and girls who defied convention by daring to express their sexuality were diagnosed as “morally insane” and committed to barbaric mental institutions. Others were “cured” through FGM —clitoridectomy — by physicians. These same doctors held the view that menstruation was “dirty”, “dangerous” and a “curse inflicted because of Eve’s sin.”

When obstetrics and gynecology became formalized medical disciplines, medical doctors denounced women’s bodies and minds as defective. They used “scientific studies” to justify excluding women from higher education, political participation, and economic opportunity. The underlying woman-hating motif of the “original sin” is deeply interwoven throughout western society. It permeates our language, laws, medical practice, psychology, art, and literature.

In the English language, there are over 220 derogatory words for a sexually promiscuous female and only 20 (mostly complimentary) for a sexually promiscuous male. Our language promotes and reaffirms bias against women.

A “master” is a man with authority while a “mistress” is the kept woman (subject to her male lord). The word “sir” is a title denoting respect while “madam” refers to someone who runs a whorehouse. Even the word “woman” can be used as a pejorative to insult men. The words frequently used to describe female genitalia — “cunt”, “slit”, “crack”, “hole” — reflect centuries of sadistic male contempt for women’s bodies.

Even modern obstetrics treats women’s genitals with callous disregard and a seemingly brutal desire to inflict pain and injury on women. Women across North America are robbed of their dignity and need for autonomy and privacy during childbirth. They’re subjected to “routine procedures” against their will that are questionable, humiliating, and painful.

A birthing woman faces cold, sharp metal instruments being rudely shoved carelessly into her vagina by inconsiderate doctors. She is forced to endure unnecessary and painful episiotomies — her vulva is cut to speed delivery after which she is sutured up again, often with a “husband’s stitch” to make her “tight as a virgin” for her husband’s future sexual pleasure. Meanwhile her own is often severely damaged, or at least diminished by the pregnancy/childbirth experience.

Men have inherited centuries of fear, loathing, and ignorance of women’s sexuality and they feel justified in blaming women for male violence and injustice. Rape is still the only crime where the victim becomes the criminal. Conventional wisdom contends that female sexuality makes men lose self-control, abrogating men of any responsibility for their actions. Male dominated courts and legislatures feel justified in passing punitive laws denying women equal rights and most importantly, the right to have control and ownership of their own bodies.

Men are entitled to enjoy all the sex they want, women are not. Although pregnancy and childbirth pose serious risks of permanent damage to women’s health, wellbeing, bodies, and lives, the denial of a woman’s fundamental right to sexual expression without compulsory maternity is couched in the term “you should have kept your legs shut.”

Male responsibility for preventing dangerous and unwanted pregnancy is rarely, if ever, acknowledged or accepted in the US — the same country that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the west, and in which a woman is raped every 3 minutes and battered by an intimate partner every 18 seconds.

Psychoanalysts suggest that the male ego is extremely fragile due to a fragile male gender identity. They say this is because little boys don’t identify with their mothers the way little girls do. As boys grow up, they’re taught to set women apart as “the Other” by resisting intimacy with women and treating women with contempt and violence. This is how men assert their own independent and fragile masculinity. But in distancing themselves from women over the sands of time by setting themselves up as superior, it must be humiliating and confusing to need and desire women so much. This leads one to conclude that heterosexual male desire is tormented and rife with conflict.

Making love to women can be both empowering and wonderful for a man while also making them uncomfortably vulnerable. During love-making, a woman can “bring out the soft, wild, naked baby in him.” [1]

This places men at risk of discovering the awesome power of feminine sexuality which contradicts and undermines their own social, political, economic, and physical power. Female nurturing has been promoted as the solution to male violence, but women have been the under-valued nurturers that society has taken for granted all along. It hasn’t stopped misogyny and male violence towards women. Germaine Greer once said that “women have very little idea of how much men hate them.”

Centuries of violent, sadistic, suppression of female sexuality by cruel and spiteful clergymen in league with ruthless elites give a good indication of the depth and degree of that hatred. Misogyny is a putrid boil on the face of humanity that has festered for centuries to the point where the deliberate infliction of torture and abuse aimed specifically at women has been normalized for a very long time.

It’s not a coincidence that this specious “pro-life” movement with its nefarious agenda of destroying women is 77% male, 100% of whom will never have to endure pregnancy and childbirth at peril to their own health, wellbeing, and lives. The only “life” they care about is the potential male fetus’s life. Girls don’t count, they’re disposable vaginal respirators. Women’s lives be damned. If women don’t like it, they should “keep their legs shut.”

In the wake of “Conscience Clause” laws and “fetal personhood” laws which have placed access to sterilization, reliable contraception, and abortion in the event of contraceptive failure out of reach for many American women, childbearing-aged women (from ages 10 – 55) get 2 choices: live in terror of unwanted pregnancies without any remedy, or be deprived of a healthy adult relationship and sexual intimacy. 80% of American women have no access to reliable contraception, including the option of sterilization or access to safe, legal early term abortion in the event of contraceptive failure.

Germaine Greer was right: the western manufactured re-packaged feminine sexuality is demeaning and contemptuous of women. It robs women of their natural rights and political autonomy. It inculcates a sense of shame and self-hatred in women about their own bodies. The result is powerlessness, imposing childbirth chattel slavery on women against their will, isolation, a diminished (or non-existent) sexuality, and often a complete deprivation of any joy that makes life worth living.

Nothing is more hateful and callous; nothing says “you’re of no consequence” more than forcing women into childbirth against their will, and then torturing them and degrading them during the birth process.

Being denied autonomy, privacy, respect, food, adequate pain relief, while being yelled at for being “weak” (and even slapped) for screaming from the flesh-ripping bloody agony that birth entails is all part and parcel for the childbirth experience in most US medical facilities.

Being humiliated by having to give birth without privacy, flat on your back, your legs spread-eagled degradingly on the delivery table with your business exposed for everybody to stare at (or even film) while heaping their personal value judgments on you like movie critics; having the most sensitive part of your womanhood probed, prodded and roughly pried open by impatient hands that are all too eager to pry/cut/tear the most sensitive part of your genitalia in a rush to greedily wrest the “prize” from your pain-wracked, bleeding, exhausted and battered body is proof of just how much women really are despised.

Once delivered, being left exposed without dignity, your legs still in stirrups, lying weak, exhausted and helpless in a pool of blood, feces, urine, vernix, meconium, and amniotic fluid — forgotten while everyone’s concern is solely for the fruit of your womb and not you — nothing says “you’re of no value” louder than that.

[1] “The Mermaid and the Minotaur”, Dorothy Dinnerstein (Harper and Row 1977)

Unholy Trinity: The Iron Triangle of Big Religion, Big Business, and Government

The Past 30 Year History of the War on Poor Single Mothers:

Poor women/single mothers are poor and downtrodden because of a legacy of ongoing discrimination in a patriarchal capitalist system. Long before this “second Great Depression” was even acknowledged, the middle class was on perilous ground.

It began with the multi-pronged attack on women’s most basic human and civil and Constitutional right to have control over their own bodies with birth control and abortion (which in many cases, saved women’s health and lives — something “pro-life” males care nothing about since women are nothing but breeder chattel solely for male exploitation in their patriarchal worldview) and Big Business support of Reagan undermining workers’ living standards — beginning with Reagan firing the air traffic controllers.

It was barely a decade after women FINALLY won the right to advanced educations and career opportunities as lawyers, doctors, professors, etc., after the Roman Catholic Church and The Moral Majority-influenced patriarchal assault on women’s most basic human rights began in earnest — starting with the Hyde Amendment.

Today, even access to affordable contraception and voluntary sterilization and early term abortion are largely unavailable for women in most rural/semi-rural communities across the US.

Another prong attacking the poor and working class was what Mimi Abramovitz calls the “Feminization of the Underclass”, which drew on the stereotype and gender-oppressive ideological notions of women’s “proper roles” narrowly defined as wives and mothers only. These gender-discriminatory stereotypical ideas fueled theories on poverty that demonized women and popularized the idea of an underclass as “less than”, as undeserving of the same rights as rich or middle class white Christian males in our capitalist society which is inherently patriarchal — justified, normalized and legitimized by the Bible and the Roman Catholic Church’s prolific political influence.

By treating women punitively, especially poor women, according to their value based solely on their sex appeal to alpha males (who have all the money and liberties they frequently seek to deprive others of) which determines their abilities to conform to the terms of “the family ethic”, welfare safety net programs have always been able to regulate women’s lives in ways that support the dynamics of capitalism and patriarchy.

"Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie", by Jacqueline S. Homan

The “family ethic” says that women belong in the home, married, economically dependent on and subordinate to the male breadwinner. Noncompliance (for whatever reason, whether or not within the locus of any given woman’s control) meant penalties for stepping out of role.

But this “family ethic” failed to account for the realities faced by battered wives, poor white unmarried women (whose opportunities to marry middle/upper class men were zilch because of classism), immigrant women, and poor women of color whose life circumstances prevented them from being able to comply with patriarchal religion-justified terms and definitions of women’s “proper places and roles.” The “family ethic” is one defined by, and viewed through the lens of, middle/upper class white Christian male privilege. It failed to remotely consider the needs of poor women. White Christian male dominated society — rife with the political and wealth influence of the Roman Catholic Church — not only refused to recognize the needs and rights of poor women (especially poor women of color), but in accomplishing its own greed-driven imperialistic ends, routinely politically assaulted the families of the poor, of poor women of ALL races.

The general premises of the “family ethic” are deeply ingrained in social welfare programs. Welfare programs defined white married women with disabled husbands or white widows as more “deserving” of aid than poor single mothers, abandoned wives with children, and women whose male breadwinner failed to provide steady secure support.

Welfare, as meager of an entitlement as it was prior to Slick Willie’s evisceration of it in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, was not only a vital component ensuring that poor women and children could survive; it also served to buttress the wages and living standard of the middle class.

With assaults on women’s human rights to have control over their own bodies regarding abortion and contraception access, the war on poor welfare mothers was simultaneously racheted up throughout the Reagan, Bush, Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr years. This jihad against women was really a jihad against the middle class and the poor whose tactical primary targets were (and are) women.

In garnering voter support for eliminating welfare (as miserly of a benefit as it was even in its heyday); the rich — backed by the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian organizations — stigmatized poor women on welfare as “bad mothers” unable to raise their children properly. In reality, poor single mothers on welfare should have been valued (and paid adequate compensation!) if not praised for protecting their children from unlicensed childcare workers, the absence of medical coverage, abusive fathers and pedophile priests.

The Weaponized Language in the Marriage of Misogyny to Classism:

"Classism For Dimwits" by Jacqueline S. Homan

Poor families on welfare were defined as disorganized by virtue of the absence of a male breadwinner. The truth: poor families suffer disorganizing impact of endless poverty fueled by racial, gender, and class discrimination in a shrinking pool of middle class jobs in our Serengeti economy.

The uncertainty that accompanies irregular poverty-wage employment, the risk of losing badly needed Medicaid and food stamps disproportionate to any paltry earnings, and the threat of utility shut-offs and homelessness — what could possibly be more disruptive to organized family life than constantly worrying if you will have enough money to feed, clothe, and house your family?

In the mad rush to vilify welfare female-headed households (and poor unmarried women without kids who were “taking away men’s jobs” in order to be able to live) for their lack of a “good” husband; the majority of American voters forgot that as a social institution, the “traditional” family was also very problem-ridden, frequently violent, and historically structured on the subordination of women as second-class citizens with NO rights outside of their role as breeder livestock property owned by men.

The “traditional” family notion is centered on the Iron Age Roman pater familia system, which was (unsurprisingly) incorporated into the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings which promotes the subordination and oppression of women. Catholicism’s bastard progeny — Protestantism, Evangelical Christianity, and Fundamentalism — are also joined at the hip with Roman Catholicism’s treatment of women.

Poor women on welfare have always been regarded as “lazy” and “irresponsible” and unmotivated to work. They’re regarded as “free-loaders” without any work ethic who “only got pregnant for the money” so they can “live high on the hog” off the taxpayer’s backs  — rather than suffering from job discrimination, poor education, abusive economic policies, and limited opportunities.

Middle class married women who have additional children and get generous EITC payments are never accused of “only getting pregnant for the money” so they can “live high on the hog.”

Middle class men who get vasectomies reversed, or who routinely use Viagra and impregnate a woman are never castigated as being “irresponsible.”

Middle and upper class women who need to take longer work leaves than normal to heal and recover completely from pregnancy and giving birth are not accused of being “lazy” and “lacking work ethic.”

Calling welfare mothers “lazy” and pushing Workfare (more appropriately called “Slavefare”) requiring welfare mothers to work outside the home at ANY minimum wage job implied that women at home are NOT working.

But they were/are working: without ANY pay, they produce enormous benefits for their families and for the rest of society — especially for men.

They are enduring pregnancy and childbirth — at great personal sacrifice to their own bodies and health, suffering excruciating pain, even dying or almost dying — bearing children (rather than getting abortions “for convenience”) whom they raise. They are feeding, clothing, cleaning up after, sheltering and taking care of family members; keeping them fit for another day of productive labor. They are providing care for those who are unable to work due to age, illness, disability, or lack of a job.

All of these tasks are critical to the smooth functioning of the patriarchal capitalist society that has been our legacy, and vital to the smooth running of our economy. But these tasks are only counted as “work” and renumerated when they’re performed outside the home — and even then, as “women’s jobs”, they command very paltry wages.

Welfare mothers have been demonized for being dependent on the state, which sharply contradicts societal directives to other women to be economically dependent on men  — even though lots of men were/are selfish in keeping all their money from their “breadwinner’s jobs” for themselves instead of supporting women and children because in our patriarchal Christian-dominated, capitalist society, everything is always all about them and to hell with poor women and children.

Poor women and children go without health and dental care, nutritious food, proper clothing, and homes while middle class and rich men had plenty of money to blow in stripper joints, bars, and on expensive toys. Poor men who have been left out economically frequently end up in prison. (But ex-felons get more economic support and help with job placement in living wage jobs than poor women with clean records and educations). That’s where the Ponzi scheme of Biblical-influenced patriarchy, “traditional family values”, and capitalism gets us: fucked without kissed.

The Carrot-and-Stick Dominance of Double-speak:

While welfare mothers are subjected to routine social abuse and personal value judgments for relying on the crumbs of what remains of the tattered and torn welfare safety net, the media celebrates well-off professional women who “give it all up” and return to home and husband — implying that this is where they really belong and it’s about time they realized it.

While media and many church-supported campaigns funded media’s and government’s assault on poor women, over-privileged Ivy League scholars formulated the “dependency argument” of welfare being the cause for family break-ups, illegitimate births, teen pregnancy, crime, and inter-generational reliance on welfare as a way of life.

The idea that welfare is a “free ride” which produces character flaws and poor personal habits that are transmitted from mothers to children — perpetuating dysfunctionality —  had been challenged long ago (and many times since) by the findings of a massive longitudinal study undertaken by Greg J. Duncan, Martha S. Hall, and Saul Hoffman and published in 1988. ["Welfare Dependence With and Across Generations", Science 239 (January 29, 1988) pp. 467, 469]

This study examined the economic status of poor families over the span of 19 years. It found that the majority of daughters raised by poor welfare mothers never applied for welfare at all. It also showed that daughters from middle/upper class families were least likely to need financial assistance as adults. The results also suggested that the few cases of inter-generational welfare dependency related directly to the difficulty of escaping poverty due to systemic classism,  and also because of discrimination, lack of enough jobs for everyone who needs one, and lack of access to education and other social resources — not the welfare program itself per se.

Life During the Better Times Wasn’t Good For Poor Women:

Even before the massive American jobs exodus due to “free market” deregulation free-for-alls, NAFTA, GATT, and globalization, the job market was very hostile towards poor women — especially poor single mothers. Lack of childcare, lack of accommodating employers, and lack of equal pay for equal work (or even an equal opportunity for a good paying “man’s job”) was the norm for poor women.

Another problem unmarried women (whether they’re mothers or not) face is a lack of the safety net of a spouse’s employer-provided health insurance and the safety net of a spousal income in the event the woman loses her job and suffers prolonged unemployment.

Single mothers are also faced with having to do the work of TWO adults. Raising and taking care of children plus financially supporting them are two demanding jobs that even many married mothers have difficulty pulling off.

Even though many married mothers work out of economic necessity (especially if hubby lost his job), most are employed only part time so they get to spend more time with their kids than single mothers forced to work two minimum wage jobs and spend two to four hours each day commuting by buses since many can’t afford a reliable car. They also have a spouse who is occasionally willing to help pitch in with housekeeping and childcare — a benefit single mothers don’t have.

The Feminization of Poverty:

By linking poverty to the rise of female-headed households suggests that a person’s gender and marital status makes them poor.

Being female does not cause poverty; discrimination against women does. Facing job discrimination, education discrimination (especially in the “hard sciences”), low-wages, higher health insurance premiums than men get charged, lack of access to contraception and abortion, plus having full responsibility for children DOES make one poor.

These are economic and social problems that disproportionately harm women because of our patriarchal capitalist social arrangements centered on a Christian/Biblical patriarchal system, flavored with traditions from ancient Roman paternalism.

Reserve Army of Labor:

The threadbare rug of meager welfare support as an entitlement was pulled out from under poor women’s feet. The women thrown off of welfare after exhausting their 5 year lifetime limits have not been absorbed and welcomed into the middle class job market. In fact, many have been denied even the low-paying dead-end menial jobs, too — because of lack of reliable childcare and transportation.

But the rich, who own the means of production, orchestrated (with the backing and complicity of the Church) attacks on women’s right to birth control and abortion — while simultaneously dismantling of the meager welfare safety net — grew poverty by creating a larger pool of desperate workers. And the pro-forced birth policies will only exacerbate this.

Between that and a steadily shrinking pie of good paying jobs because of “free trade” agreements and globalization, the ground on which the middle class once stood eroded.

Employers began requiring Bachelor degrees for lower-middle class (and often dead-end) entry-level jobs that only required a high school diploma 30 years ago. At the same time college degrees were increasingly required by employers, need-based student aid was slashed by the Gramm-Rudman Bill under the watch of Bush, Sr. while college tuition soared and outpaced inflation. Grad school, med school, law school, etc., was put totally out of reach for those in poverty and the lower-middle class. Student loans used to be dischargeable under personal bankruptcy. Not anymore. That changed in the 1990′s.

And the dismantling of further protection under the bankruptcy laws has caused more middle class people to fall into poverty and destitution (mostly from medical bills). The 2005 amended bankruptcy law is for the middle class what welfare reform is for poor women (particularly poor single mothers). And it was the same bunch in Congress who passed both.

Simply put, the rich got richer by taking from the middle class and the poor by attacking and undermining the few hard-won rights and gains women finally managed to get only one generation ago — after centuries of oppression, abuse, enslavement, and discrimination promoted by the Roman Catholic Church and its spin-off denominations, justified and legitimized by the Bible.

All of this has led to the impoverishment of the majority of Americans of both genders, all races, and all ages. Our power of the vote has been dwarfed by the most recent anti-American SCOTUS fig-newton folly of granting corporations full citizenship status so they can use the 1st Amendment right of “free speech” through use of their wealth and lobbyists to determine America’s geopolitical landscape in terms that favor them, which necessarily and patently disenfranchise the rest of us. Things are only going to get worse for everyone not in the top 1% club — the super rich elite.

As of 2004, a US Dept. of Labor report stated that for every job opening, there were 100 jobless applicants looking for work. If we only include full-time jobs that pay a living wage with health and pension benefits, that ratio is very similar to that recently seen in Massilon, OH (one hour’s drive from where I live) where 700 desperate job-seekers applied for ONE job opening — a janitorial job with the Massilon School District.

For the one applicant who got lucky and got the job which pays a living wage and health benefits plus pension, 699 job-seekers got sent home poor and empty-handed.

Due to the collapse in the housing and financial markets, the fate of America’s poor and jobless got a hell of a lot worse. The economic top 1% of the population now owns 70% of all financial assets — an all-time record. To be clear, 400 people have more wealth than 155 million people combined.

2009 was a stellar year for Wall Street executives’ bonuses as firms gave $150 billion to their executives — 100% of which are directly from our tax dollars.

Rich men at the helm of corrupt, ruthless corporations, insurance giants, and banks got generous welfare benefits — money that dwarfs the paltry TANF welfare benefits doled out begrudgingly to all the poor single mothers in the US.

If that welfare for America’s rich on Wall Street had instead been used to create jobs rather than for the unjust enrichment of a handful of executives, we could have paid an annual salary of $30,000 to 5 million jobless poor who certainly need the money more than Wall Street’s economic cannibal class — who have produced nothing except corporate bankruptcies, corruption, and consumer and taxpayer fraud.

Not one penny of the welfare given to the rich has gone to create a single living wage job for a poor jobless person — 6 million who have NO income at all and are only getting food stamps.

This should make every last over-privileged  welfare mother mugger too ashamed to live with themselves. Poor women and children have suffered first and foremost from the collective rejection of social and federal responsibility for the downtrodden.

Mean-spirited welfare cuts and reforms and attacks on abortion and contraception — women’s right to have control over their own bodies — over the last 30 years are neither innocent nor unrelated. It was deliberate: Poverty by design to create a Reserve Army of Labor to suppress wages and make workers too desperate and fearful to demand better pay and conditions because there’s a line of desperate poor people waiting to take your job.

Are Women Citizens or Walking Incubators With Less Rights Than Livestock?

In this Rachel Maddow episode, Oklahoma’s new law that targets women and abortion providers for harassment and violence. No other similar laws are being passed that target men’s reproductive issues. No other laws are being passed that compromise men’s private and personal medical information.

Birthers, Baggers, and Blowhards

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

SC Lt. Gov. Bauer: Free School Lunches Encourage \'Stray Animals\' to \'Breed\'

South Carolina's "pro-life" Republican Lt. Governor Andre Bauer

This “pro-life” religitard doesn’t connect unborn “babies” with eventual children that he does not want to feed…since the poor are like stray animals, according to him.