Looking For A Mascot?

I see the surface threads on the Octomom topic running pretty much along the lines of: "She's insane", "She should not be allowed to raise those children", that sort of thing. People are at first stunned, and then alarmed. It's on the news, it's on Twitter, even the facebookers and bloggers are going apeshit over this woman's decision to keep having babies, the hard way, the expensive way.

I expect that reaction from people who see this as an exercise in the utterly bizarre. (Pun intended). For the record, I agree on that point.

What is NOT being heard is anything from those obnoxious Right To Lifers who want to take away a woman's right to privacy in her own medical care and treatment.

I do not hear them coming out in support of Octomom. From the extremes they have been willing to go to in the past; trying to force a comatose woman to sustain full-term pregnancy, even though it would kill her, over her husband and familie's objections; and trying to force another comatose woman to remain on life support despite the fact that there was no brain activity left for the previous year... why are they silent on Octomom? Should they not be celebrating her?

I would think they would want her as their MASCOT. She embodies everything they promote: She collects children without care as to what the quality of their lives are, and she is willing to go to any length to have as many children as possible. And to keep them all! She could have opted for selective reduction but chose not to. She represents everything they hold dear! Why are they silent? Is she not the hero they have been waiting for?

Faced with embracing her or denouncing her, they have come face-to-face with their own paradox, and they choose to ignore it. She is all their ideals and all that they detest in a dream come true and a walking, talking nightmare manifest, poised to represent all that is their territory.

Octomom brings them face-to-face with the ultimate end game of their ignorant and irrational theory of the ideal pro-life scenario. In her is the mirror into which they dare not look. Reflecting back at them, a series of details they dared never consider, that are now made real and present, for all to see, and for most to recoil therefrom.

The truth is, they dare not speak out in support of that mother, because she does embody their platform, and thereby reveals the gaps in the premise of their logic. They are, in her, faced with the fundamental hypocrisy of their uneven core foundation.

She is keeping her babies. All 14 of them. She is receiving welfare. They are opposed to 'welfare' for people. They are for 'tax breaks, grants' and other forms of corporate welfare, to the largest, most profitable among the giants in industry. But Octomom is on welfare, which they detest, and is keeping her children, which they promote.

They dare not stand on her side of this issue, lest they lose their standing on welfare. They dare not demand that she 'give them up for adoption' as that reveals them as believing only the wealthiest should be allowed to have children. They dare not question her decision to have more and more children.

The costs of maintaining this unemployed mother, her two already special needs children, the 8 new babies, several of whom are expected to also have special needs, is going to be astronomical.

I do not see them holding fund raisers for her. She literally would be the mascot for their ideals, but they do nothing for her? Which means, they would rather the State deal with their ultimate dream come true. Well, perhaps not quite 'ideal'. Maybe if she was comatose?

Why are there no major, Right Wing, Right-To-Lifers proclaiming "Octomom Day"?

One of the most prominent RTL's is the Governor of Alaska. Why has she not invited Octomom to move up there where she could be surrounded by people who think women are only valuable as breeders? She clearly, would be a coup! Imagine that float with Octomom, 14 children, eight of them in a bouquet, in the middle of a parade in downtown Wasilla. How happy that well-run, oil wealthy State would be to welcome her onto the welfare rolls!

She should be on the cover of every conservative rag out there. But they are strangely silent on this one. Dead silent. You get more of them talking about the dog show, than the dog and pony show that is Octomom.

She is the Paradox they cannot fathom. If they support her, they have to support what she is.

If they don't support Octomom, it means they are not supportive of children, or at least raises the question about how far they are willing to go to demand more births, when the mother is not comatose. They risk alienating and defeating their base if they support her or they denounce her. They risk their premise of being pro life, by pointing up that they are against support of those children they demand be born, and who are already here.

If they demand Octomom give up her offspring because she cannot support them, is unemployed, they reveal themselves to be draconian. That premise would have to stand the question: "Do we remove children from homes where people are unemployed?", which leaves millions of families now at risk of losing their children because they lost their jobs.

Children are being born every few minutes. Many to loving homes. Many to families that cannot support them. Some to families that neglect or abuse them. Too many with disabilities and too few with support for those disabilities. Many who are already and who will be abandoned.

Right to lifers demand that all conceptions be carried to term, regardless of rape, incest, or the age of the mother, whether she is 9 years old or in her late 40's or how many children she already has. Right to lifers fight to make contraception inaccessible, and drive up the rates of unwanted pregnancies. The extremists bomb clinics and the 'moderates' do not condemn them, secretly supporting the death and destruction, or possibly afraid to anger the extremists who dictate their policies and beliefs.

We live in a time that has, over time, eroded the support systems for families. Funding cut off, at every turn. Yet, it is the very 'Pro Family' politicians that cut the economic throats of struggling families.

In Octomom, we are presented the ultimate symbol of all that is wrong: Too many children, not enough space, no means of support, and maybe she is a touch more psycho than anyone wants to realize.

In her care 14 children. In our nation, hundreds of thousands, unnoticed, under the radar, almost surfacing in the realization that tens of thousands of families live under these same conditions or worse. Just that their births were not record breaking, and went unheralded by the media.

More and more are here because contraception is too expensive, inaccessible. Rape and incest laws do not protect the mother nor the child in more and more states. The Right to Lifers are getting what they want. Now what?

Octomom gives us 14. We can guess that she may lose custody of all of them as more and more scrutiny yields more aspects about her behaviors that are not in the best interests of the children. Where do we put, what do we do, with all her children? Or, for that matter, any of the children who are here without support or protection?

Where do we put them all? Who ultimately, is responsible for them? Open-ended questions become glaringly apparent. Silence from the extreme Right, lest those questions rear their many ugly heads in the nation's awareness. Silence, the only option, lest their emperor shiver in the cold, and his new clothes of fine invisible threads, and we notice his shriveled shortcomings.

Let's say the extreme Right Wing got their way, and welfare is eliminated, and abortion is illegal, everywhere, regardless of circumstance. We have then, families where a mother is incapacitated or deceased because of a life-threatening, or health impairing pregnancy. Children will be born that have multiple handicaps, and perhaps no mother, and perhaps no father. Older children will suddenly have no mother, and no support from the government because 'welfare' is a bad word.

Now, what do we do with all these children? Many of whom are beyond the age of cute where they are easier to adopt, some of whom have disabilities, all of whom are traumatized by the death of a parent, and of being pushed around in a system that is only a couple of steps away from being a criminal organization (neglect of children, placement in abusive homes, placement with molesters).

Remember: There are tens of thousands of children who spend their entire childhood in orphanages or in Foster Care, because there are no homes for them. No support for them after they turn 18, where many end up on the streets. Many if not most, who have been abused.

Octomom presents us with 14 children who require public assistance. It seems like a lot. It is but a grain of sand. In her situation, perhaps because it is extreme and creates media buzz, we see the plight of single parenting, children in poverty, the need for welfare and child support. Also made visible is the ultimate end game of the extreme belief that the more children a woman has, the better.

Conversly, if government can tell a woman she must go through with an unwanted pregnancy, does it also have control over how many children she is allowed to have? If you control one, you control the other. How do you bring about reconciling that little conundrum without allowing birth control and abortion to be the jurisdiction of the mother and her doctor? Do you march in, by law, and limit how many children people in certain income levels can have? How do you do that?

If government dictates they cannot be contracepted, must be born, is government then responsible for the care of those who cannot be cared for by their parents alone?

In Octomom is the mirror of Right Wing fallacies, magnified, personified, and brought to life for all of us to see.

She epitomizes the hypocrisy of the Extreme Right Wing. If they embrace her, they have to agree that welfare is necessary. If they demand she give her children up because she is unable to care for them without welfare, they reveal the foundation of their movement is to support only the wealthy who can afford to have and keep children. The poor would be relegated to breeding for the infertile/unable wealthy who desire children, but can have none on their own.

Their silence on this matter reveals much. They are unable to reconcile a single mom, unemployed, 14 children, welfare, special needs, disability with their rosy, absolute rhetoric. I think that if they want to walk the talk they should, all of them, tithe to the support of all those children and keep her as their mascot. They are silent on her as they are on all the children who need help, support and compassion. It is only noticeable on her because she is so visable, and her case so extreme.

If they think that her unregulated breeding is wrong, they should step up and say so. But they can't. They have painted themselves into a corner, and Octomom and her litter of 8 plus the previous 6, have them surrounded and paralyzed by their own paradox when the moment is upon them.

Their unwillingness to step in and support her, financially or politically, tells me they are the hypocrites I always thought they were. Just more cowardly than I thought they could be.

How ironic that the one mother that would embody their core beliefs so well, is a woman who may be mentally unstable. Just what the doctor ordered.

Single, maternally inclined, without income, sucking on the tit of the State for support, She is everything they demand and despise, all rolled into one.

Let the Right Wing Extremists run for cover on their hypocrisy. That's them in the corner, with the blanket pulled up over their heads, thinking we can't see them if they ignore this.

I think we can see them revealed more clearly by their silence on this event, compared to their noise on comatose women, into whose lives they forced themselves and whose families they dragged through courts, draining them of finances, and energy at crucial times of crisis, simply for the sake of political exercise. Now is their time, and they cower out of sightline of mainstream media.

The OTHER Question

From my point of view, the other question that needs to be asked is this: "Where did she get the funds to have these procedures?" I know people who have undergone in-vitro methods. $12-25K on up for each pregnancy. She has had 7 pregnancies that we know of.

With no income except for food stamps and disability checks for two of her kids, where did she get the money? If she took it from the support for her children, she broke the law. If she had other income, such as disability, and used that for this, she broke the law. If she had other income that has not been reported, she broke the law.

There are a lot of issues and a lot of noise surrounding Octomom. What's important here is more urgent than the noise: There are 14 children living in substandard conditions, possibly in the care of a mentally ill woman. Their safety and well-being needs to be investigated before we do anything else.

And while we are at it, remember this: Millions of former foster children, unadopted, abused, are currently on the streets and in our prisons. What are we doing to to break that vicious cycle and relieve the strain on our economy, and on our sense of security?

If we are going to have more children out there, perhaps we should consider having more funding and protection for single parents and parents of the disabled, so that we can, with our compassion, have the next generation that can take care of themselves, and us, rather than the other way around.

We are struck by Octomom's irresponsibility. Shouldn't we take a closer look at the effects of our society shirking it's responsibilities and realize that despite being costly in the early years, yields over the long run, a greater savings in money, and in the dignity of our lives.

She is a record-breaking aberation, for sure. She is selfish and immature. She thinks only of what she wants and what her needs are. But she is also the symbol for all that is wrong in how we view our responsibility to children in our society. She is the mirror of that process and reflects to where it all leads, if we don't change how we view our responsiblity to one another.

Is our silence on the issue of children living in poverty a lack of concern for them? How long can we ignore it before another symbol, something even more extreme, presents us to ourselves again?

Children are the future. We are putting them through hell and storing them in prisons. If the future is not worth fighting for, what is?

We may not like the mothers who bring the future into this world, but they are here now and the more we try to ignore them, the more we pay in the long run.

Octomom brings the ludicrous to light. I sense our outrage and concern is for the well-being of her children. Shouldn't it be for all the children?

The next time issues of funding come up as relates to poverty, children, families... take a second look. The next time the RTLs stomp and spit and try to take away a woman's right to choose, just remember who, ultimately, will be responsible for that child's raising, well-being and perhaps warehousing in some prison.

Remember that when it was just one mom, 14 children, they did nothing. Expect the same when it is others and more.

Maybe it would be better to allow women to choose their own medical procedures, for their own reasons, without the irresponsible loudmouth right wing hypocrites interfering in something they really don't care about. Remember that when that time came for them to put up, they just chose to shut up.

If they really cared, if they really believed, they would have a parade in her honor and shower her with their gold. She is, afterall, exactly what they thought they wanted.