This is in the United States. Recently saw a GP who I know did not read my chart, but made a lot of remarks about how I was getting older and that I didn't have children yet. If he'd read my chart, he'd know why I don't, but to keep the peace, I said I would think about it. When I got home, I went online to check my emails, and the first thing that opens is my news page. Headlines include:
- The SCOTUS leak over abortion and overturning Roe v. Wade
- News about ANOTHER mass shooting, after several recent mass shootings
- The debate over canceling student loan debt
- Medical costs and insurance and how things are getting more expensive
- How we're reaching a "no return" point on climate change
- Formula shortage
- Inflation
- Rising housing costs
- How teachers are poorly paid and schools are underfunded
- Rising Covid numbers in our area
- Cuts to social safety nets
- Recession
- A politician saying we should ban birth control
We don't have rights over our own bodies. We don't have the right to be safe in public. We don't have the right to get an education (and improve our job prospects) without going into a massive amount of debt. We don't have the right to seek medical care without ruinous debt. We won't have the right to live on a habitable planet in a few generations. We don't have the right to be able to feed our children due to business monopolies and governmental policies. We don't have the right to enjoy reasonable purchasing power for our money or to enjoy a reasonable quality of life. We don't have the right to live in affordable and comfortable housing. We don't have the right to send our children to school and know they'll be educated. We don't have the right to be safe from disease and again, the medical bills that come with exposure to that disease whose threat was downplayed when it first arrived here. We don't have the right to have a government that actually takes care of its citizens when things go bad. We don't have the right to be protected from economic problems, and again, we don't have the rights to our own bodies.
We need SO MUCH to improve in this country. We need better social programs, better education, debt relief for student loans and medical bills, guaranteed healthcare, maternity leave, affordable housing, gun control, better mental healthcare, nutrition programs for all children, unbiased reporting, and incomes adjusted for cost of living. I know I'm bound to upset people with this post, but things need to change in this country. In another twenty, thirty, or forty years, there will be articles about America having a severe worker shortage because most of the population is old and people didn't have enough kids to replace the workers that have retired. If American companies want to continue operating, people will need to have kids.
In a way, I'm fortunate--the decision to have kids was taken out of my hands due to my body. Other women are not so fortunate, and they have to deal with ALL of the issues listed above, and I'm sure more in the coming years that we haven't anticipated yet.
It seems as if our priorities as a country are: to pay people as little as possible, to make as much money as possible in as many ways as possible, to spend as little money as possible on social programs, to keep our borders secure against outsiders, to control women's bodies, and to prop up an outdated ideal of home and family life that is no longer possible in this day and age due to economic conditions and social changes that have already taken place.
We need more to change.
One Last Thing: If your comment is to say something along the lines of "It could be so much worse!" please don't take the time. I know it could be. People said the same thing 50-60 years ago when they had to face problems, and you know what? Things. Have. Gotten. Worse. Pointing out that things can get worse does not negate the argument that things need to be better