Today is Bloggers Unite for Human Rights Day, so I wanted to write an article about human rights. What, bikinis don't count? Crap.
I have been fascinated with the story coming out of Texas involving the FLDS children and what is happening to them. I planned on writing about fundamentalist Mormons, polygamy, sister wives, child brides, and how egregious this practice is. How these women are basically raised, from the time they are babies, in complete seclusion from the real world, without any free choice, any ability to live their lives as complete human beings. How many 14-year-olds do you know that wants to marry lame-ass 45 year-old religion guys? Yeah, me neither.
I have no first-hand experience, the closest I've ever been to the FLDS was being married to a garden-variety Mormon who never went to church at all. I didn't even ever get to see the inside of a Temple, bummer. Living in Arizona I would see them around town though, wearing a Utah burkha: floor-length dress with long sleeves, no makeup, hair in a Little House On The Prairie do, holding and carrying small children.
(Completely off-topic, did you know Blogger spell check doesn't recognize the word burkha? Can also be spelled burqa, burka according to Wiki, but it doesn't like any of them. Maybe some sort of bizarre optimism on Blogger's part? If we ignore them, it will go away?)
I had pretty much made up my mind that it was for the best that the authorities had come in and taken these children in Texas. For the most part I still believe this, at least in the short-term, while they sort out who the parents are and whether abuse has occurred.
But upon researching this issue I came across something that has ripped into my heart a bit, something I wasn't aware of. According to this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, children under the age of 2, still breastfeeding, basically BABIES, were going to be torn from their mothers' breasts.
This brings tears to my eyes. Talk about hitting home. You see, I am breastfeeding my own baby right now. It is one of the most intense, sometimes painful, time-consuming adventures a woman will ever experience. Some of the most beautiful moments of my baby's life, pieces I will carry in my heart until I take my last breath, involve me staring down at her little face as she nurses, her silhouette so angelic I can hardly stand it. If someone tried to take this peanut away from me, it would involve a long bloody battle and my cold, dead body.
All this has of course raised hell with the lactation community, who have arguably the hottest moniker: LACTIVISTS. God I love saying that. Don't you want to be a lactivist and wear your lactivist tee-shirt to the lactivist meetings and have a lactivist bumper sticker? You don't want to mess with the lactivists. Well, you probably do but get your mind out of the gutter for a second.
Anyway, this kind of behavior, the cleaving of mommies and babies, is completely outrageous and of course a blog was created on the spot, thanks Blogger!
To have Judge Barbara Walther say, and I'm paraphrasing folks: 'every day working women go back to work after 6 weeks of maternity leave, so stop sniveling and suck it up' was completely insane. First of all, lots of working mothers CONTINUE TO BREASTFEED you old cow. Dragging a pump to work, trying to find someplace private to pump, hoping nobody drinks their milk when they put it in the office fridge. They go to great lengths to keep breastfeeding so don't make sweeping assumptions lady! Second, most, if not all, working mothers get to, gee, I don't know, COME HOME TO THEIR BABIES AT NIGHT. Lets compare apples and bullshit shall we? Yeah, working a 9 to 5 is just like having my infant ripped out of my arms and put in foster care while you sort out who the baby daddy is.
These mothers were probably married at 14, maybe some of them are even still children themselves. Isn't that just piling more child abuse on the worst case the state of Texas has ever seen?
Probably sensing that hormonally-charged nursing women all over the country would rise up and beat them to death, the powers that be have tentatively allowed the mothers and babies to stay together. I hope Judge Walther does the right thing in this instance and makes a final decision that would protect these infants from further trauma. I, for one, will stay abreast of this issue for sure.
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