Well, that’s two days I don’t need to live through again anytime soon. Good news is that no surgical intervention is required! The doctors were able to get the prolapsed intestines back where they should be without surgery. As you can imagine, that’s somewhat painful a procedure, and my Dad doesn’t react well to opiates, so he opted to go it alone without any pain medication at all.
It’s such a strange sensation to see your parent in pain. Like the world has been turned inside out. But I’m glad I could be there, and we have all survived.
The GI unit where the procedure was carried out happens to be right next to the maternity ward. Despite having three children, I have never been in the maternity ward, as, like many affluent white ladies with excellent health care and resources and information, I opted for home births assisted by midwives for all of my children.
I am well aware that my class privilege is a huge part of why my pregnancies were extremely low-risk and therefore a home birth was a very suitable choice for me, and I was also old enough at the time I gave birth not to be terrified out of my mind. I suppose I inherited the “suck it up, cupcake” gene from my father, because I also decided to forego any pain management during labor and birth.
My lack of familiarity with a hospital birth environment plus my relative affluence made seeing all the pregnant teenagers rather a shock. I had no idea we had so many in this town. I did a little research, and it turns out that we do have an alarmingly high teen birth rate, but it’s confined to one particular racial group.
There is a free pre-natal healthcare unit attached to the maternity ward, so many of the girls were coming for check-ups. I did not see one single one with a young man. They were either alone or with friends or older relatives (one assumes?). There was no sense that the fathers of these children were in any way involved. Obviously, I’m speculating. Perhaps they were at work? Either way, the girls were attending appointments without male companions.
Not that long ago, New York city decided to try and tackle their teen pregnancy rate with posters that explained some of the consequences of deciding to have a baby during adolescence. For the most part, the campaign was targeted at women.
Predictably, the idea that young women should consider the consequences of their actions was met with scorn and derision from the feminist brigade. Outrageous! Slut-shaming! Callous! Mean!
http://jezebel.com/5988516/this-terrible-subway-ad-will-not-prevent-teen-pregnancy
The one that really caught my attention was this one:
In actual fact, teen birth rates have been declining, and that’s a very good thing. But it doesn’t change the fact that the broader culture continuously encourages young women to believe they have no real responsibility and that they can count on other people (taxpayers) to support whatever choice they wish to make.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/teenbrth.htm
Combine that with the fact that women, and only women, have the right to decide which children are born, and you have the conditions in place to make certain ad campaigns like the one in New York are completely ineffective.
Pregnant teenage girls don’t care. Why should they? They have all the power of reproductive choice and they can pass the financial responsibility for raising the resulting children on to others. What’s the incentive to care?
Ideally, the girls can pass at least part of the responsibility on to the fathers of their children, despite the fact that the fathers have absolutely zero say in whether they wish to be fathers or not.
“Don’t have sex if you don’t want children”, is the normal feminist response to men’s request for reproductive rights.
Indeed, on the issue of choice for men, staunch supporters of abortion rights can sound like an eerie echo of the other side: “They have a choice — use condoms, get sterilized or keep their pants on.” “They should think about the consequences before they have sex.” (The irony is not lost on men’s choice advocates or pro-lifers.) Yes, some admit, it’s unfair that women still have a choice after conception and men don’t, but biology isn’t fair. As a male friend of mine succinctly put it, “Them’s the breaks.”
http://www.salon.com/2000/10/19/mens_choice/
Of course, if you suggest to Sandra Fluke that the best birth control is keep her legs shut, you are obviously a troglodyte misogynist who wants to keep women bound and gagged in a cave somewhere.
So maybe the ads targeting boys are exactly the way to go. Maybe a campaign that makes it absolutely clear to boys that they have ZERO rights, but they WILL be held financially responsible is an excellent way to tackle teen pregnancy.
Oh, don’t worry, I’m on the pill. Boys need to know the consequences for believing that particular little chestnut.
Of course a campaign targeting men can be done very poorly. Look at this one:
He won’t stay with you. Way to promote that “dead-beat dad” stereotype.
Consider an alternative: you have a baby with this man. Here are some ways to promote a stable, loving relationship that will last.
What?! Suggest to young women that whether they have a stable, meaningful, loving relationship with the father of their child has something to do with how they act and behave? When something is broken, you fix it? Well, that’s obviously misogyny.
Here’s another one done very, very wrong:
Yay! Let’s threaten the boys with jail! Close your legs, you little man-whore! Don’t have sex!
These ads are completely disgusting, in my mind, and they treat men like utter garbage. Which is a very foolish thing to do. Plenty of men have children they didn’t necessarily want, but whom they support and love nevertheless.
Factors considered in determining the amount of the child support award vary from state to state. In general, the obligor’s ability to pay and the cost of raising the child figure prominently in this determination. However, even though a teen father may be unemployed and enrolled in school full-time, support may be ordered to establish the principle of the parent’s obligation to provide monetary support to his child.3 More than half of all states have required some teen fathers under age sixteen to pay child support (Pirog-Good, 1992).
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.197.839&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
http://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/031912p24.shtml
This is what we need to make teenage boys aware of: the state will force you to drop out of school and pay child support, even if you are only sixteen years old, all the while paying for social programs to ensure that the mother of your child continues her education.
http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/publications-a-z/1332?task=view
Another series of ads that paint young men as gleefully vindictive assholes who won’t be lifting one finger to help out the precious, innocent flower they fucked and dumped.
Revolting.
If we really want to encourage teenage boys to understand the consequences of unintended pregnancy, we need a campaign that lays out the dire facts:
You have no reproductive rights
You will be held financially responsible for the girl’s decision FOR TWENTY YEARS or more
The state can jail you
The state can force you to work
The state will blame you
You will be given no social programs to help you meet your obligations
You will not be given custody
The mother of your child will receive benefits from the state and encouragement to continue her education
You will receive none of those things
Go ahead and fuck her.
But know this: if she ends up pregnant you’re the one who will be fucked.
Can you imagine THAT poster?
Now there’s a little taste of the truth that might cause a spike in condom sales. You want to see a decline in teenage birth rates? Tell boys the truth.
They’ll be double wrapping the whopper after that. Or deciding the Palm Sisters are a much safer bet.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
you would think this would be one area that people would actually accept the truth considering all the political lying and cover-up bullshit going on. who knows, maybe that would be what it takes to change the laws to ensure the father doesn’t get fucked over
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Protip for any young men: don’t actually double wrap. It increases the chances of the condom breaking because of the friction between the two condoms. More: http://contraception.about.com/od/malecondom/f/twocondoms.htm
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Speaking as a single Dad who brought my son up from 3 years old I endorse this message to the young men of the West :-). Only take it out of your pants to peruse Xhamster :-). Judgy, any thoughts about the nascent male pill. I took part in trials more than ten years ago and still nothing available? Didn’t want my son getting caught like I did by post 30 baby rabies.
If this ever comes to pass then the reproductive right of women will no longer be a force of society. I read a description of a biblical passage about women asking for a man’s name and that the women would provide their own food, clothes etc. I don’t know if the passage is real but the thought amused me. I can see this come to pass if the male pill becomes widely available.
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My guess is that, for the vast majority of teenage pregnancies, the child support is simply not enforceable. There is of course a sizable bunch of suckers who will be in the situation you describe, but we have to remember that, while it’s easy for a teenage girl to screw a guy over by having his kid and making him pay, it’s not like their situation will be great. It will be a huge social stigma, it will be hard, and it will drastically reduce their future romantic prospects. My feeling is that the women who consciously use babies and child support to fuck a man’s life are older, and have on the hook a guy with a good earning potential.
But for teenage girls, that’s not the case (unless you’re having the baby of a celebrity, then the money flows but the scorn stays), and if they have access to birth control, they’ll use it. As you remarked, the segment of the population where teenage pregnancy is very high is poor, so birth control and especially abortions are just not within reach. Who do these girls have sex with though? The hardworking guy who will find a job? Nope. They’ll have sex with the bad boy thugs, and if there is a class of people in this picture who don’t care, it’s them. And for good reason, how can they force you to pay child support if you don’t have a job and don’t pay taxes? They can’t garnish wages, there aren’t any. They can’t come to your house if they don’t know where you live. And the threat of jail time? These guys most likely have seen more than one prison cell, for offenses ranging from theft to drug trafficking, if not assault and murder. They’ll react to these posters the same way an professional rally driver will react to you insisting he put his seatbelt on to drive to the grocery store.
The only way to reduce teenage pregnancy is to stop subsidizing it. Make so obvious that it’s almost the end of the world, make people really afraid of it, and you may see it go away. Take all the money used in programs that help single moms and pour it into subsidies for birth control, and the choice will be simple: be careful or your life is over.
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Bravissima. I agree JB.
Sex ed used to be a lot more like driver’s ed (“don’t be an idiot”, “look at the scene of this wreck and know what happens when you are an idiot”). From Christmases past:
Zykos, I have to disagree with one point….No one gets pregnant because they don’t have access to birth control. There isn’t a time in the history of humanity when it has been easier for a teen to get birth control.
The last place I lived, the highschool was top in the nation for teen pregnancies and the school clinic practically threw free condoms at all the students. There was a generous public health clinic where birth control was also free for the indigent and all teens. Couldn’t compete with free childcare. Hey, have a kid and get a government paycheck while keeping your social life intact. One senior had already had three children with different teen fathers, and still went to school while the state paid to have her children watched for her.
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It’s a damn shame that most men aren’t willing to be as cruel and thoughtless to society as society is to them.
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Interesting the “I Don’t care if she’s pregnant” ad does make a couple of your points, but agreed that the frame is all wrong – you PUA asshole! – rather than “the state CAN jail you AND make you work.”
And the Jezebel shaming goes off the rails again: don’t shame teen moms! Many of them are “wonderful”! Don’t they feel bad enough already? (Like the subway ad is their biggest hesdache, not the screaming infant on their lap). Yeah, sure, tell me that’s the role model I want for my kid becuase they’re so wonderful: The casts of Teen Mom 1 & 2! “Forget my court date which will put me in jail and leave my baby abandoned – I got Nicki Minaj tickets and no way am I missing that!”
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Here’s the problem with it, IMO. Once you distill these programmes and boil off the politically correct dross…it is nothing more than finger wagging from a bunch of sanctimonious assholes.
The kids will look at us and see that at least one in three of us is divorced. Who are divorced people to give advice on life decisions? Like they are holier than thou? Consider the social engineers: they are busy mainstreaming homosexuality and gay marriage…what would THEY know of ethics and morals and responsibility? Hell, they want to let teens go for abortions without parental knowledge or consent! And what are the kids to make of morality in a society where the same people behind homosexuality are starting to push for polygamy and pedophilia?
We can do more for our kids by looking after their sex education ourselves. When you consider that our public educators are graduating kids that can’t read or handle basic numeracy…you can also bet they are doing a similar shoddy job of coaching our kids in basic life skills.
Makine sanctimonious posters is affirmative action and job creation for feminists and other tleftwing urdies.
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That’s a great poster idea JB. And probably an effective one. But you and I both know it will never, ever see the light of day. Feminists simply can’t let those truths get out, and they will do everything in their power to stop them from getting out. Because if posters like that were wide spread, while boys’ and mens’ first reaction would probably be, “whoa, I’m gonna be real careful with that condom!” their subsequent reaction would be “Hold on a second, how come I don’t have any rights? When did that happen?” And then the cat’s out of the bag. But that is a talk that every father or uncle or older brother must have with a pubescent teenage boy. Unless they just don’t care…
It’s also why @Oscar Calme the male pill isn’t likely to see the light of day for precisely the reason you mention: women’s reproductive rights will no longer be a force in society. Feminists will never give up that kind of control over men. After all, how is a woman going to be able to trap a man with a “oops” pregnancy or convince her husband that the baby isreally his when he’s on the pill?
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Birth control out of reach? How fucking broke do you have to be to not afford free condoms?
They are widely available even in upscale suburban neighborhood sand theprojects alike. Quit blaming poverty for ignorance
.it doesn’t take money to not be stupid. If we all took a little more responsiblity for ourselves and blamed external bullshit a little less we’d all have less BS to hide behind when we did something stupid.
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I was with you until you went off the rails and got all bigoted and then put the cherry on top by comparing the actions of two consenting adults to child rape.
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A girl’s self-esteem is far more important that the fact of teen motherhood or the welfare of the baby. No girl can be allowed to feel bad about any of her decisions because, though she is an independent–well, except for that baby–woman with agency, none of it is her fault; there’s always someone else to blame, usually a man.
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The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that the male pill has been available for years.
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I think I need to clarify my point. I don’t blame teenage pregnancy among the poor entirely on the lack of birth control, and I’m not even sure I want it to be subsidized. I was just remarking that if ending all teenage pregnancy was your ultimate goal, the best way to achieve it was to provide all the preventive measures, and none of the after-the-fact, band-aid programs (the preventative measures are there to further remove excuses and “accidents”). Your example sounds a lot like what happens in Britain, where if you are a teenage mom, the government subsidizes a flat for you. And they wonder why they have one of the highest incidence of teenage pregnancy!
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Nice article, JB. This stuff is the reason I’m going to war.
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Like Goober I was with you until you started mixing gay marriage with polygamy and pedophilia. I fail to see how gay monogamy sends a anti-family message. If anything gay marriage might make getting married chic again. I’m just waiting for all the heterosexual couples to start wanting fabulous weddings like all their gay friends. But I digress.
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It’s so easy to be seduced by the idea of victimhood when a young woman is just entering her sexually active years. Heaven forbid she has to be responsible for her choice to have sex. That’s the boy’s fault- always.
There really, really needs to be a male birth control pill.
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Thanks for the reply. My thoughts almost exactly. I f there were a male pill there would be no social onus on the man to inform his wife or girlfriend in exactly the same way that there is no onus on women to inform. It’s enough to make the SMP an even more protracted guerrilla war.
Just for S&G can you imagine the husband surreptitiously on the male pill with a wife wanting to become pregnant. We must try harder Dear 🙂
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Both you and Lost Sailor may be interested in this video re: male pill
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It’s surprising to me the number of times that feminists tell me women are fragile flowers while also stating the superiority of their gender. Which is it? Are you too fragile to handle criticism or are you as strong and as capable as a man? Make up your mind.
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This!
It drives me nuts!
Women deserve paid leave on medical grounds for being completely insane, irrational monsters when they have raging PMS.
Hey you fuckers! Stop calling us crazy!
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In the poster that lists “You have a legal responsibility to pay child support, even if:”, they apparently forgot to add:
– you were raped (even if you were a minor).
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Best thing you can do is having a vasectomy and keeping 10 “samples” of sperm in the freege. Just in case. Bau not the freege of your house because a girl can know it and steal one of the samples and fuck your life.
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I doubt about the so called “maternal instict”. I suspect (conspiranoic I am, maybe), that for women, having children, is just a great business. They way they use that fact as a wheapon is to think about whwt it si the “maternal instinct”.
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I don’t consider my kids to be great business. I gave up a lot to have them. I think most parents do. And speaking as a mother, I do believe in the maternal instinct. That doesn’t mean everyone has it, some don’t. But there’s something deeply wrong with women who don’t.
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I’ve never been able to take the pill (tried every type, they all turn me into a fat nutcase), and would love it if there was a male birth control pill. My IUD has been embedded in my cervix for about two years now and has to be surgically removed…haven’t done it because I’d rather deal with pain than have another pregnancy. But I’ve heard horror stories about the thing wearing through and getting into the intestines or liver…
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I have a gay daughter and you can’t sell me that BS or make me drink the Koolaid. Anybody that thinks homosexuality is beautiful and wonderful is in no position to counsel children. And they know it, too.
Sheesh. Our shipper receiver is gay. She had a couple boys in her younger years, ‘discovered’ that she was gay, divorced and set up camp with a new ‘life partner’. It turned out that ‘life’ means something else to gays; she gave hers the boot and got another one. Now the kids have another ‘guardian’.
Her 16 year old disappeared shortly afterward. Mom is in tears because one son left, the other won’t talk to her, and everyone is a hatey-hate filled bigot! The fact that she is fat, bitchy and ugly homosexual has nothing to do with it!!!
How many times do people have to see stuff like this until they face reality?
Whatever. Yes. I am a bigot. That’s it. It’s all my fault.
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You and maybe a dozen other women are offended by this. All the other women heart having a socially acceptable excuse for deplorable and irresponsible behavior.
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Go ahead and fuck her.
But know this: if she ends up pregnant you’re the one who will be fucked.
PERFECT. I’d actually consider paying money out of pocket to print a few hundred of these up and plaster them all over town.
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If th[e maie pill] ever comes to pass then the reproductive right of women will no longer be a force of society.
That’s why we haven’t seen it yet. The feministas are not about to be denied the power of reproduction over men and have ensured that the mangina puppets that comprise government all over the Western world do their bidding by making sure that the “man pill” never sees the light of day.
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Change “a damn shame” to “truly amazing,” and you another addition to the 1000 Greatest Quotable Quotes Of All Time.
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Best thing you can do is having a vasectomy and keeping 10 “samples” of sperm in the freege
Because this is the only sensible thing for any male human to do in this day and age, such an act is all but impossible for a young single male to legally do in most parts of the world. Once again, the feministas and their gelded mangina sock puppets who front the government recognize this as a pre-emptive assault on female reproductive power and have made it illegal.
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Should add I’m refering to the maternal instinct in women WITH children, not women without. Maternal instinct is the maternal bond with one’s children, not the desire to have them.
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@Oscar Calme
It wasn’t Justicia gendarussa, right?
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You don’t live in Washington State, do you.
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If you are a mentally healthy mother, of course you do not consider your children a business. A lot of women do, anyway. But even mentally healthy mothers, in case of divorce, take the child support and half of the goods of ex hubby. By law. It is just like that. Having children, for men, makes no sense at all. Especially considering that men we do not have a biological wish of having children like women. We can live without that experience.
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JB, you challenged us to “imagine that as a poster.” I bet dozens of people have already turned it into a poster. Great idea, and I’m equally sure you know graphic designers who can do it far more justice than I did, here: http://www.backlash.com/images/pregnantpause.jpg
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That isn’t an usual situation you’re describing – a divorced mother alienated from her teenaged kids and unable to accept that it’s due to her actions in moving them from home to home, as she goes through several ‘life partners’. Can’t see how her sexuality has the slightest bearing on her lack of fidelty/consistency.
Homosexuality is no more beautiful or wonderful than heterosexuality. Anyone who sees one as EITHER better or worse than the other is in no position to counsel children. Impartiality is important in such matters.
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That’s great! Love it!
🙂
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I agree with Nicky. There are probably more straight people who have equally screwed up lives and family relations. There are many more straight people who divorce and go through serial relationships.
I know and have known many gay men and women who are leading happy, content lives. My cousin is one such example. He was married in Massachusetts when same-sex marriage was legalized, and was divorced several years later not because he wanted a new partner, but because his partner couldn’t deal with the stress of his being the sole care provider for my elderly and on- and off-again mentally ill aunt. The same story could be told by thousands of straight people. I know same-sex couples that are quite successfully raising children.
Straight people don’t have a lock on happiness, and gay people don’t have a lock on misery.
Happiness is a choice.
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Hey boys! Wear a condom! Every single time!
End of story.
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Because condoms never break, right?
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The male pill. We need it now!
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Amen to that! The reason that abandonment laws came about was because mothers kept murdering their babies. Despite having access to the overwhelming majority of contraceptive methods, and the ability to adopt, or abort them. So the government gave them yet another way out. Just drop off your child at your local fire station, police station, or hospital and you can unilaterally terminate your parental responsibilities. As they say: “No names, no shame, no blame.”
Unless of course you’re a man. In which case those laws don’t apply to you, and if you try to do the same thing you’ll have an amber alert put out on you. As well as getting thrown in prison for kidnapping.
Maybe significant numbers of men should follow the female model of murdering children that they don’t want, but are forced to take legal responsibility for. Perhaps by stabbing the pregnant mother in the stomach. Then maybe they’d get some legal protection as well. Of course that’s not the moral course of action. But it seems to get shit done.
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Yeah what goober said.
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“set up camp with a new ‘life partner’. It turned out that ‘life’ means something else to gays; she gave hers the boot and got another one.”
Yeah because straight people never get divorced and remarried multiple times. *cough* Newt Gingrich *cough*.
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“Yes, some admit, it’s unfair that women still have a choice after conception and men don’t, but biology isn’t fair.”
What really pisses me off about this article is that child support has nothing to do with biology. It’s not like money magically disappears from some guys check every month because he has different downstairs plumbing.
The reason he has 23% of his pretax income seized every month, and given to the mother with no accountability regarding how it is spent; is because of a legal system that takes it from him every month. Backed up by armed government enforcers that are willing and able to use their monopoly on legal violence to force him to comply.
What about abandonment laws? Here a woman is legally able to unilaterally terminate her parental rights just by dropping the baby off at a fire station. A man is not. None of that has anything to do with biology. The woman is no longer carrying the baby. Laws don’t get any more blatantly sexist then that.
When fighting for the right of women to serve in combat positions feminists constantly reminded us that differences in biology do not mean that people shouldn’t receive equal treatment under the law. I’d like to see feminists live up to their high flying rhetoric of legal equality. But I’m not holding my breath.
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A civilization can’t survive without normal sex. It can get along just fine without any homosex at all. So no, they’re not the same or equal in any way.
Normal sex is better. Normal sex is good for your health (anal sex is particularly unhealthy, and semen has well-documented health benefits for women). Normal sex sustains the species. Homosex does not.
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Yet due to the nature of things, we kinda need homosexual couples to take care of the kids in orphanges or foster care if you believe that something like tht can affect the nature of a person
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Feminists don’t believe in equality. Feminists believe in any immediate course of action that will either improve women’s social status or reduce women’s accountability for their own actions.
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Since homosexuals are in reality a fairly small percentage of the overall population, I think the species will be just fine even if some people are having the gay sex. A bigger threat to sustainable reproduction, at least in the West, are feminists.
So, if you’re proclivities are for straight sex, by all mean, have at it. You can safely stop worrying about other people’s sexual choices. If you don’t like gay sex, then simply don’t engage in it…
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Well put (as usual). I’ve known happy families with gay and hetero parents– and vice versa. As you said before, gay people are such a statistically small portion of our society (with an admittedly disproportionately large voice) that the issue doesn’t rank high enough on my list of things to freak out over.
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My husband went ahead and got snipped after we were done having kids. I would have had my tubes tied rather than stay on the pill. The only reason my husband opted for the surgery was because I’d already been through two c-sections (but I *would* have done it to avoid the synthetic hormones).
That makes me wonder what a male pill would do to the men who them? Would it suppress their testosterone and leave us with even more betas in the general population? That would be a huge case of “be careful of what you ask for.”
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Well the basic idea for the male pill was for it to contain testosterone and probably some sort of nor-testosterone (more effective in suppressing sperm production). The problem is that it’s very unreliable (5% failure rate), and testosterone is not really bioavailable when taken orally. It replaces the body’s natural testosterone production, which will cause the brain to stop releasing hormones that stimulate sperm production.
A better method would be RISUG. It’s a small, surgical procedure and completely reversible.
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These days teenage pregnancy’s have reduced considerably.
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I don’t get the need for a “pill”, either for men or women, when condoms have been around for a couple hundred years now and there are no unhealthy side effects.
There are female condoms now too.
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