During the House’s debate, Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a Mulvane Republican who supports the bill, told [Bollier]: “We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”
Bollier asked him, “And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with a pregnancy?”
DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, “I have spare tire on my car.”
“I also have life insurance,” he added. “I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.”
I have a lot of thoughts on this that I'll soon be sharing, but I want to add this: I'm always dazzled by how little these middle-aged men who say these things know about women's lives, and how little empathy they have for women. I'm surprised because most of them are married fathers, and yet their understanding of what pregnancy is like rivals that of a 5-year-old who has never seen a pregnant woman but has been informed that babies come out of mommy's tummy. Their assumption that bearing and raising a child is roughly equivalent in difficulty to spending 45 minutes changing a tire suggests a remarkable disconnect from their own families. Their wives must go to great lengths to conceal how much of a pain in the ass pregnancy and child-rearing are, and to present them only with picture perfect images of their very own homes that make it seem like pregnancy is a breeze, childbirth is no harder than having a minor bout of gas, children never cry or have needs, and probably that houses clean themselves. These men probably think women don't pass fecal matter, as well.
I find this remarkable, because I doubt I could conceal this much of reality from a man I lived with, even if I wanted to. My god, I've been trying to handle what amounts, in the grand scheme of things, to a very minor set of cat health problems, and I've had my boyfriend's ear and support every step of the way, including having him hold my cat down so I could dose her with antibiotics. I can't even imagine what it must be like to go through kids while concealing this much of reality from your husband so that he bop along on his merry, patriarchal, oblivious way. I mean, a pet is like 5% hassle, 95% fun, and with kids, the ratio is more like 75-25, especially when they're little. But in order for these men to think the way they do, they must assume kids are a breeze! And it's because for them, kids really are easy. They come fully disciplined, washed, fed, and nurtured. If you believe children and pregnancy are about 5,000 times easier than they are, it must be very easy to convince yourself it's no thing to force it on women.
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have you ever noticed the annoying habit righties have of declaring some solution they think is obvious and “common-sense” but, if you actually considered it, was a really dumb idea… Creationists do it all the time. They come up with what they think is a clever argument (Bananas! Peanut Butter! Why are there still monkeys!?) and smirk as if to say “so there! Ha!), but they only end up looking amazingly clueless…