Good morning, y’all. Well I was thinking today would be a better day than yesterday. Turns out, I am saddened again today, and birth control plays a part into today’s madness as well as it did yesterday. Let me clarify, mental health, the abundance of military weapons in our society, and boatloads of misinformation were the primary factors of today’s tragedy. Birth control is just the running theme to yesterday’s blowup at Number Thirty Nine and today’s blowup in Colorado.
In case you’ve been living in a cave, or Alabama, and haven’t heard the news, another nut job opened fire on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing three. Now, first curious piece of business for me is, Colorado? Again? Colorado? Is there an underground newspaper I am unaware of that advertises to the mentally unstable? Is the magazine called “Go Nuts In Colorado”? Do they run ads that say, “Visit Colorado”, “Shoot Anything You Want As Often As You Want”, “First Thousand Bullets Are Free”?
I mean, Jesus H. Christ, what’s the attraction to the unstable with military weapons and Colorado? The most recent shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, was from Western North Carolina. It’s a stretch, but, I could have thrown a rock from my house and hit his house. Of course if I did, he would have opened up with an AK47. Maybe not, he might have had to throw me in the trunk of his car and drive me to Colorado before sending me to my final reward. It’s like an X-Files. There’s some sort of manic magnetism that pulls these folks to the Rockies to take out their lunacy on the innocent.
It seems that the authorities have been able to glean from Mr. Dear that he shot up the facility because of, “baby parts”. We can only assume that Mr. Dear is referencing the video being shown by the Repubs to overstate their case for the abolishment of abortion. While the validity of the film is very much in doubt, and the Repubs are doing nothing to provide information as to when, where and why it was made, the candidates are using the film to base their platform promises on.
Even Carly Fiorina has gone on several maniacal rants about Planned Parenthood. If a woman doesn’t understand the importance of a woman maintaining control of her reproductive rights, who do you trust those rights to? I guess just any nut with a gun gets to decide whether millions of women can decide if and when they will take on the hardest job in life, mother.
Who is Planned Parenthood, what is their mission and why do they rouse such ire in some folks? Wikipedia sheds this little bit of light on the topic. “In 2013, PPFA reported seeing 2.7 million patients in 4.6 million clinical visits. Roughly 16% of its clients are teenagers under the age of 20. According to PPFA, in 2013 the organization provided 3.6 million contraceptive services, 4.5 million sexually transmitted disease services, about 1 million cancer related services, over 1 million pregnancy tests and prenatal services, over 325,000 abortion services, and over 100,000 other services, for a total of 10.6 million discrete services. PPFA is well known for providing services to minorities and the poor; according to PPFA, 75% of their clients have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level.”
Two things that jump out to me:
1. Less than eight percent of their services are abortions.
2. That seventy five percent of their clients are the poorest of the poor.
Why are the richest of the rich consumed with the reproductive processes of the poor? The rich are not consumed by the prospect of the poor overpopulating, they’re consumed with the aspect that the poor won’t reproduce. The Repubs are obsessed with the poor reproducing even to the point of denying abortions to women who have been raped or are victims of incest.
Forcing children on people who can’t afford them, or more importantly, don’t want them is evil. In fact the book that the Repubs claim to guide their every movement on has addressed the exact situation. Proverbs 14:31 “Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.”
Maybe the Repubs should change the tone and content of their message to ensure that the people who are on the fringes of mental health and in possession of weapons don’t act on the Repubs propaganda. It would be the responsible thing to do, it would be the Christian thing to do.