'Bearing' Repetition

It was intended to begin a new blog, on a new theme.  This is the first non monthly post since last year.

I was a 13 year old churchgoing virgin grandpa's granddaughter when Roe v. Wade was passed.  If it was ever mentioned by a then pastor, I wasn't listening, didn't know what the word 'abortion' meant, or both.  I'd actually been permitted to the pulpit earlier, quoting scripture about how men should treat their wives, at about age ten.

The laughter was with me more than against me, and I wasn't much off the mark.  If only I could have remembered, or taken my own advice later in life.  That wasn't the Plan.

Below is an essay sent to The New York Times for Op-Ed consideration.  As I know how what does and doesn't make press works, I'm not offended.  Experiences that took place between the above innocent time and now facilitated the following:


Too often lately, I'm confronted with a confounding question to which my answer either isn't heard, or I'm cut off before being able to answer at all.  

We have become so divided we are only one side or the other, and 'the other side' is also certain I represent 'the enemy', before I can even finish a sentence.  

So certain of 'who they are', many who pose the qualifying question seem as certain of who I am, before a single concept can be explained.  It's draining, yet I can't stop.  The stakes are too high.  It feels like trying to stop sheep being led off a cliff.

PRO LIFE & PRO CHOICE are not 'either or'.  

Pro life is respect for all life, that includes minor to elderly females having a choice to say 'no', to coercion of any kind, forced or unprotected sex, and ultimatums to abort a child, without premature death or losing a place to live.  

Reproductive rights includes being able to have or keep a child.  It does not necessarily mean 'abortion now, reproduce later' (or not), and those who exercise this view are few in contrast to when abortion is not the female's decision: the decision was made for her, before she went forward, alone, blamed, afraid for her life otherwise. 

What so many face post abortion is the same captivity, compounded by depression, potential substance abuse, and suicide.  We are failing to connect the dots, hacking at branches without acknowledging the roots.

As an aside, I happen to be vegan.  I could call anyone who eats meat a hypocrite for saying they're 'pro-life'.  As concepts that are connected must be 'spoon fed' it seems, I don't attempt to present overlapping issues if solid basic ones aren't being grasped.  

There are good people whose worlds have not collided with the realities of living in fear long term, when tunnel vision is a result of complex trauma and panic, and getting through the day is an accomplishment of itself.  This also happens behind the closed doors of the wealthy. Those who label don't realize how lucky they are, or maybe they wouldn't be so quick to point fingers.

Having a choice means being able to have a baby, with a place to go (& medical care), without fear of being killed, raped again, starving in the street, or actually being able to keep a baby with community supports.

Having a choice means a fair wage and enough to support a child alone without having to depend on another male, who makes more for the exact same job.  

Having a choice means your baby will not be snatched from the hospital nursery by CPS and trafficked for profit. 

Having a choice means having a baby might be an option if a loving adoptive home was waiting via means other than unregulated agencies that abuse tax dollars.  

Having a choice means knowing a rapist can be held accountable and not get custody or kill your child during court ordered unsupervised visits funded by taxpayer allocated untracked "fatherhood initiatives".

Having a choice means knowing where to go where protection actually exists, when going to authorities can or likely will result in your baby being taken by the very person you sought protection for your baby from, now with a small army of 'assistants' using unregulated tax dollars at your family's expense: you and your family paying for an abuser's defense, via tax proceeds. 

Having a choice means being able to have a baby safely, without additional fear, struggle, victimization, blame, shame, depression, misunderstanding, or lack. 

Having a choice means hope that's real, not desperation with no solution in sight. 

In the practice of law, constitutionally, there are no individual rights. The E.R.A. was introduced decades before Eisenhower, a Republican, took office.  That he supported it obviously wasn't enough.  

In 1848, the lesser known Declaration of Sentiments, written in a style to reflect the Declaration of Independence, was signed in addition to its female creators by over 30 male notables of the day, including Frederick Douglass.  Decades before women could vote, it illustrated how women were 'politely a notch above slaves'.  It's chilling how much hasn't changed from when it was created.

The legal definition of 'person' in the Constitution, presently, is 'household', meaning anyone other than 'head of household' is property in the application and practice of law.  I would find this difficult to fathom as reality, had I not witnessed first hand how this plays out with children and women systemically for nearly two decades after becoming a paralegal (2003). 

The E.R.A. becoming law would indicate women could say 'no', with protection rights, to forced abortion or sex, get an equal wage to support themselves and their families, be able to protect their children, pregnancies, and elderly in the home.  'Stranger crimes' and "domestic crimes" would require being prosecuted equally, unlike now.  

Laws 'on the books', passed by legislation, can have little or no meaning in political courts: 'mere' workplaces that see the same attorneys and judges daily, where new or 'good' laws are ignored, if known at all, and 'precedent', especially bad precedent, seems to be preferred to favor the defendant with the most resources, personally, or via state funds, such as those tapped into as "fatherhood initiatives".  

Many have referred to 'legal' environments as 'marketplaces' or "auctions", where children go to 'the higher bidder', and decisions or orders are spun to fit 'funding criteria'.   "It's not about the truth", as an attorney, who became a judge, related.

Passing of the E.R.A. will mean fewer abortions and murders of children and women (not more).  It's not a female or child's choice to be captive, told to 'have an abortion or don't come back', with death, homelessness, and being trafficked very real possibilities if they refuse.  

The E.R.A. could also mandate community supports so that anyone who can escape or wants to have their baby or keep their children actually has somewhere to go. Some of the most vulnerable would be provided means of access to help that could mean actual safety, not further compounded systemic victimization, or death. 

Reaching out for 'legal help' as a final resort, if possible at all, might no longer serve to make things times worse, in unthinkable unforeseen ways, with individual rights, as opposed to 'household rights', upheld, in this country.

With the E.R.A. in place, 'Roe v Wade' could become insignificant or moot.  This is good news for those who want it overturned, with a perplexing twist: 'it's the Equal Rights Amendment.  Doesn't that mean women will have even more choices?' The benefits far outweigh where we are now: women are largely the protectors of children, babies, and the elderly.  Their numbers far exceed the 'killers'.  Simply put, women having individual rights means less death.  

Those who wish to continue in many forms of veiled legal genocide don't want the privileges they have rampantly exercised reined in, and are adept at countless smoke & mirror tactics developed over decades.  Their favorite sympathizers are the well meaning, who haven't witnessed the dark realities that careers are built upon, a trail of dead children in their wake, with far too few held accountable.

What most don't realize is the disparity of data, now in scattered compilation, of how not having individual rights has served to decimate the unborn, babies, children, women, seniors, and families in a household, none of whom have separate personhood, which the ERA would provide.  It's well past time to lift the veil.  The bride has left the building.  She's not coming back.

Independence Day, 2065

It is the year 2065; I am the granddaughter of one of many who fought in the last century for the personhood of women and children in the United States. This was a difficult and complicated war for my grandmother, because it involved exposing so many practices that went on behind closed doors the public was deliberately made unaware of, or laws were passed in the wake of tragedies that lawmakers of the time failed to recognize were taking away what Constitutional rights existed before and during the early days of the millennium.

What didn’t exist in the previous century was the enforcement of individual rights for women and children. In the Constitution, the word ’person’ means and had been acted out in the practice of law and government as ’household’. This meant most women and children had no individual rights when actual protection was needed under law. Because so many people were not aware of this or didn’t go through something knowingly where their personal rights or survival were at stake, only those who sought protection as a last resort for their safety or the safety of their children found out at the worst possible time that the result they expected from what they knew as law often rendered an opposite result. It was Alice in Wonderland or the Twilight Zone, only real, and unimaginable to anyone who had not gone through it themselves.

The mentality of the public, shaped by media, government, and organizations who stood to continue gaining from keeping the public thinking differently tried to make my grandmother and her contemporaries look like they were only acting for themselves. In the public eye, according to the media, what happened to them must have been from something they did wrong or was a ‘mistake’ that didn’t happen very often. To make things worse, when my grandmother was my age, the United States remained the only other country besides Somalia (which had no government) not to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The practices that affected my grandmother and the children of those like her did go on in other countries, though in others, they didn’t.

Then after the events of September 11, 2001, The Patriot Act practically took away all Constitutional rights, allowing those in power to control the lives of people in the country more than ever. The president at the time had been quoted as wishing he could be a dictator; this was as close as he could get to accomplishing that, and the damages from the act and other practices affected anyone who wasn’t wealthy for generations. Many children, women, and others who were struggling without help died from negligence or abuse, while the root causes for the deaths were covered up and those responsible were not made accountable.

It was mostly men in power and women who were uninformed or supportive of those men without their own knowledge or who thought they were benefiting from such support (unknowingly or otherwise at their expense) that carried out the damages without a second thought or conscience for the consequences of their actions. They remained unexposed until my grandmother with others like her came together after their children had lost their childhoods to these practices for so many years of ’legal’ manipulation at what was called a ’tipping point’. Families and those who could reach those in government and the media who had integrity and a conscience began to listen, and investigate just how many people had actually gone through the same thing. It was too many to ignore. Children had died or been abused in many ways for so many years it threatened the stability of the country to continue to turn a blind eye to what had been happening. There were people who went to prison for knowingly allowing the practices to continue or assisting in the continuation of how things had been because money had been involved as an incentive for so many, when children and their mothers were regarded as property under the practice of law (not to be confused with written law itself, which mothers thought when they needed protection would be followed).

It was at about the same time that women who wanted to be with women and men who wanted to be with men were given the right to marry each other, as well as a half century of resolution toward women being compensated for the same work the same amount of pay for their own living and the lives of their children that were given to men for many decades. This also affected their ability in how much they could provide for their children if they chose not to be married or seek the support of someone else in the home. The family composition at this time had permanently changed; married couples with children were no longer the rule, yet those in power acted as if anyone who did not embrace or aspire to the former ’ideal’ were not worthy in general.

Today, because of my grandmother and those like her who came together at a critical part in history, I can get an education, earn a living, be with who I want or not, and have a child if I want without being afraid that someone will take them for no reason and write things that aren’t true in a ’legal’ document so they may profit from ’selling’ children as property at women’s expense to wherever the money is coming from. My father was one of the children who were silenced until they were of ‘legal’ age to tell others in their own voices.

My grandmother always said she had learned her values from her grandfather, a Native American, who respected the rights of others regardless of whether they were rich or poor, and was honored in his community for the achievements of his life. Women who did the same weren’t given recognition because of the ’patriarchal’ society that rare men like my great great grandfather were able to do some good in. My grandmother never forgot the example of her grandfather, and I will not forget hers. She didn’t know she could not enjoy with her child, my father, the rights I now have because of their sacrifices until she needed help under ‘law‘. She spent the rest of her life so that my father and our children would not suffer further. The world still isn’t perfect. Because of people like my ancestors, more of us may survive in peace as well as prosper much earlier in life, and the damages to the planet from previous generations will continue to be reversed as my generation makes it their priority.

Apologies for the unplanned hiatus, the family saga will continue as promised during the next post. Happy 4th.

Testimony

Testimony for Hearing 1/09:

Today we must mention again that 30% of survivors and families who make it into shelter are able to find housing. It’s another issue as to why they don’t make it and the subsequent deaths that are unverifiable as directly connected remains a serious concern.

Where the remaining 70% go has also been unverified, though it is known that many are faced with the unavoidable choice of returning to abusive households, to either become homeless again, or worse. This is a well known fact in the advocacy community.

What these realities do to mothers and their children is devastating in and of itself, if they are able to escape safely even once, let alone multiple times.

Widely available statistics conclude that 75% of most incidents occur while women and their children are attempting to escape, or thereafter, which either leads to homelessness, loss of support, return to the abuser, or more homicides.

We encourage you to consult on how children and women become legitimately disabled as a result of ongoing domestic turmoil over years of exposure to physical, emotional, and mental abuse, the most ‘minimal’ condition being ‘Complex PTSD’, which often goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.

Your research would not be complete without looking to Lundybancroft.com, and Legalabusesyndrome.org, where findings have shown after in-depth research that ‘conditions’ are natural responses to violence and abusive, biased litigation in both women and children that follow them through the rest of their lives, with profound long-term effects impacting the gamut from health factors to functionality and ability to seek or find living standards where a productive and improving quality of life can exist and thrive.

To make things worse, obtaining a ‘diagnosis’ or labels have proved to harm women in litigation for custody of their children, though their states were natural to the traumas they continue to endure. Mr. Bancroft goes on to say that the most expedient remedy for the conditions incurred by mothers and children is simply reunification, so they may heal and be given the opportunity of a life free from abuse by both batterers and the system.

A case last year involved a mother who had been put in a wheelchair by an abuser who went on to use her ‘disability’ against her as a form of unfitness as a parent to their children in a matrimonial custody dispute. These practices and others have been far from uncommon.

With these considerations strongly in mind, we are requesting another or improved, expanded category in housing developments, so that these families, who are most always women and children, may have more opportunities for lives free from abuse and to remain safe.