Let me put your mind at ease to reiterate that if your daughter needs to get to CA for any type of reproductive health issue, I have room for you both here. I can help with transportation, with getting her to an appropriate clinic or hospital, and dealing with whatever program the state will have in place to secure both her personal and financial safety. I know she's in TX, but that's not so far from AZ, which is down the road from me. Both are a short plane ride (as you know flying here is probably a safer bet - many checkpoints between San Diego and Phoenix).
Don't worry, I got your backs.
In the meantime - tell her to get TSA Pre - those of us with that just go through regular metal detectors, not the image scanner. Takes a long time to process the application, so better to do it sooner rather than later.
MAGA Mothers against Greg Abbott will this resonate with voters?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sm-77iXC3k
Regards to all
Great ad, but at this point Texas may be a lost cause.
Here is the latest from the Women Hating Party in North Carolina:
NC Bill 158 would make it legal to murder a pregnant woman who intends to get an abortion if you are “defending the life of a baby”
This is beyond absurd. The fetus would also die, no? So then in that state wouldn't you be convicted of TWO murders??
@mistysue41 I want to point out that the mindset is more generalized. After my second child was born and things were relatively healthy, I knew that whatever happened, I could for sure take care of two kids. Now I was in my mid 20's by this point, so that's when I asked to get a vasectomy.
I had to argue to get it - not my GP but the person doing the procedure. I can be stubborn once I have made a decision, but I always wondered if people are talked out of it, and the consequences.
@April, funny that on pressure on kids. I made a point of celebrating the day my daughter was the same age as I was when she was born and did it again when she was the age I was when her brother was born. Basically, she knows there is 0 pressure on her from me to have children, but I do try to influence her in another way. I have brought her up that whatever rights she has, she has to use them fully because women in other parts of the world don't have them, yet need to be able to see them to know what is being kept from them. I phrase it much better with her, but I hope you get my point.
@unk-p the bill linked in that Twitter feed was from February 2021. It has already been put into committee death (they send bills like this to committee and they rarely come back out). If this were to have been taken up, it would have had to been done in the 2021 session.
I can relate. I have one brother (2 yrs younger) and both of us had endured an abusive father (manic bi-polar without medication). He didn't beat us but his temper tantrums and yelling and screaming almost every day left us less than desiring to have children, so neither of us ever did. That being said, I baby sat for others because I liked children. I loved kids and took jobs early on as teachers assistants, day camp counselors etc.
When my husband and I decided not to have children, (which we did not decide right away, it took us a couple years of being married to figure it out) everyone gave us the same lines that were mentioned in this post. I hated hearing how much I "would regret it". I didn't regret it, and it also doesn't mean I don't like children (which so many people assumed).
One of the reasons I jumped ship early on infertility treatments is that I share an abusive background with so many of you. My mother was unmedicated, bi-polar, borderline with narcissistic traits. I suffer from PTSD and depression. I didn't want to pass on those genetic predispositions.
My full brother, 2 years younger than me, and I used to joke that we did our best to raise her right, since she was never an "adult" when we were kids. This made both of us skeptical about having kids. We both never wanted more than 1. He went on to have 1 bio son, and I have my 1 adopted daughter (who also struggles with anxiety and depression, not ironically, but that's another story).
Fast forward to the last decade, and I have a half brother who is a kind soul. He married a woman who struggles with intractable depression, very much like my stepmother. Early on, they had said no kids for them, and I thought *whew* - good, now they won't pass that on. Then they decided to have just one kid, they had a son. They rehomed their cat "because having a kid is too much work we can't handle the cat anymore."A couple of years ago they decided to have a second child and had a daughter. (And I thought - wait, the cat was too much extra work but another kid isn't?). It's been a nightmare for my sister in law (and brother too). She really can't cope, and my brother has done his best but it's a lot to deal with. When the second child was born I went to their house to help out - I knew her postpartum was going to kick in strong like it did the first time. It did, and long story short, after a couple of weeks of living in that household I was so triggered that my hair was falling out, I got acne, I was retaining water, and I was getting (more) depressed.
When I see the kids, I can kind of see the roots of mental illness starting to grow in them, and intuitively I feel they will also struggle. Not that their parents are abusive or unkind, just that it is a tense household despite being loving, and the kids have to do the balancing act I am so familiar with in terms of having a mentally ill parent. And there's that strong genetic component and also financial worries. It breaks my heart.
So to me, their decision to have a second child in particular was a bit selfish, and frankly I'm not sure the marriage will survive long term. I opted to not have a bio child at one point after our daughter arrived (it was an early miscarriage, nevertheless I had to get a D&C, and then I made my husband get a vasectomy and got my tubes tied) - I knew I wouldn't be able to keep it together mentally.
But at least we all had choices.