Costly Contradictions Over Breast-feeding -- A New Rightwing Low?
By Robert S. Becker
09 March, 2011
Countercurrents.org
Will the rabid right ever run out of sacred cows to gore? Or, for that matter, progressive Gores to cow? What's next for rightwing cheap shots after last week's bushwhacking of Michelle Obama's terribly radical support for -- believe it or not -- motherhood, breast-feeding, and improving mortality and infant health. Some folks missed out on the milk of human kindness.
That rightwingers dare attack breast milk education for young, needy, often minority mothers only reinforces my fear no subject is now taboo -- even motherhood is grist for the extremist mill. Is nothing beyond the pale? The take-no-prisoners Tea Party so distrusts government our infants are endangered by budget cuts that make no sense, morally or financially. Sick children are costly to everyone, not just rightwingers, whether they survive or die.
This assault against infant nurturing brings forward all the monumental, unfeeling contradictions that plague rightwing stances on life and death. All fetuses (who survive conception) must be born, saith the righteous, but expect no public support for the health or prosperity, even life of newborns. Let babies, in effect, eat cake if there’s no breast milk. Getting born is what God dictates, yet man is under no obligation to care for his own species? Must be one of those mysteries making sense only through a glass darkly.
Strange how anti-abortionists worship everyone’s unborn fetus (with the virulent approving murder of abortion doctors), but assume no responsibility for the inevitable living-breathing-hungry outcome. Life is apparently only holy until you actually start breathing, then it gets hard -- a dicey vale of tears, not an entitlement.
Baby "life panels," anyone?
And yet, pro-lifers who normally hate government intervention want laws banning abortion, thus awarding the hated government crushing power to thwart historic parental rights. Government overreach ain't bad when serving your ideology. Further, the same "pregnancy = birth" crowd unabashedly supports the conscious killing of adult prisoners -- called capital punishment. Plus, layering their contradictions, rightwingers love guns, not only for killing unarmed animals they don’t eat but inviting accidents by unmonitored children.
Finally, rare among pro-lifers are any doubts when our leaders concoct unwarranted wars against a variety of evil-doers, real or perceived. Where was the born-again outrage when nine innocent Afghan children were mistakenly killed a week ago by American drones fighting an endless, unwinnable war? What about accused adulterers stoned to death in countries flush with our own military?
When ideologues abandon even pretend solutions to anything real (where're the jobs, Speaker Boehner?), the fallback entails belligerent provocation, exaggerated contempt, indirection, and buffoonery. And so we come to shameless attacks on the First Lady's modest proposals to advance breast-feeding, granting babies immunity against childhood infections (now producing 900 avoidable infant deaths a year) plus obesity, diabetes, and food addictions.
So much for my withered fantasy about some political line in the sand -- beyond which the unhinged cannot go without sharp penalty. The last two years have killed a river of audacious administration hopes, so I accept this current, literal dis-illusion-ment. If the right escapes censure for impugning life-supporting breastfeeding, especially for poor and minority single mothers, what isn't vulnerable to their sneering assault? Not only was Ms. Obama attacked for "hectoring," but criticized for installing a new "nanny state" -- which only proves there are ninnies ignorant about nannies do, as in care-taking.
Macbeth's witch, Greymalkin, calls
Today's trio of witches (Palin, Bachmann, and Malkin) challenged the First Lady's indisputable, scientific evidence that children suffer when obese, prone to diabetes and food addictions plus humiliation. Minority children are especially at risk, yet nothing stops vicious Michelle Malkin: "we don't need the government to tell us how to nurture and raise our kids." This evil trio of witches knows nothing about hectoring or bullying, of course -- and if Palin's the measure, great mothers all.
On point, since obesity (per a Harvard Medical Study) costs us $117 billion each year -- plus $13 billion for preterm infant care that more breastfeeding would obviate -- this is no obscure family "nurture" issue. Other than heartless ideological purity, or contempt for the less fortunate, one struggles to understand anything the right gains by fighting education that reduces our high mortality, obesity, and disease rates? Fewer Democratic voters in 21 years?
"Something wicked this way comes'
By the way, the U.S. suffers the highest infant mortality rate among the 33 "advanced economies" by the International Monetary Fund. Before Reagan became president, we were #13th. Before W. we were 2nd. Great trend to the bottom. Oddly, the National Center for Health Statistics reported premature births FELL in 2008, representing the first two-year decline in the last 30 years. But that doesn't stop House fanatics from shredding all Planned Parenthood funding key to children's health and prosperity.
Three items summarize the shocking, unfeeling, unthinking GOP notion of "winning the future" by losing healthy infants:
>> $50 million less to the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant that "supports state-based prenatal care programs and services for children with special needs."
>> $1 billion less to National Institutes of Health that support "lifesaving biomedical research aimed at finding the causes and developing strategies for preventing preterm birth."
>> Nearly $1 billion less to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for preventive, preterm health programs.
Finally, for the incredibly fraudulent "America is broke" gang, premature birth issues cost us $26 billion a year, ten times more than these affordable pro-baby-life programs. Thus, bad math matches cruelty for, if the shrill GOP House rules, we stumble backwards into a very costly ditch in dollars and lives. And all to challenge Ms. Obama's "hectoring." Letting babies die is a disgraceful way to prove partisan purity -- and only solidifies our shameful, last place infant mortality status.
But who's worried -- doesn't American exceptionalism prove we're the best country that ever existed, unless you're poor, very young, and not very healthy?
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