I last posted on this website about five days ago. I posted two comments regarding the "pregnant" teen who "miscarried" due to police pepper spray (or 1 or 2 hits to the stomach). Those comments were HRed in overkill fashion. Today, I want to discuss those comments in a little more depth, after which I will probably be leaving this community. I do not wish to be a part of a community that mocks my humanitarian work or my higher education, or just calls me a heartless piece of shit or a monster, etc...
Here's the first comment I wrote in reference to just learning of the "miscarriage:"
Better for her anyway...
I hope she uses this blessing to gain the skills necessary to be financially successful in the future - like a college education. Go ahead. HR.
But nobody at 19 needs to be having a child in this country. I'm dead serious.
This woman doesn't understand that the world we are moving into is not one in which you can earn enough resources to raise a family off a basic high school education. Particularly when you handicap yourself so early in life by having a child. Having a child at 19 is a stupid decision. It's a financial death sentence. And it's stupid decisions like this that cause the wealthy to restrict the amount of money they pay in taxes to support the poorer people.
If you want to get a higher education, I think we can ask our wealthy to pay more to make that affordable. If you want to have a baby at 19, you are on your fucking own. It is not the responsibility of society to support you. It's like if I smash my elbow with a hammer, it is not society's responsibility to pay for my medical treatment.
Yeah, yeah. I know people here tend to fall on the collectivism side of the collectivism/individualism scale, but seriously, can't we all agree that society isn't responsible for some stupid decisions that individuals make? And can't we agree that having a child at 19 is one of those stupid decisions?
I know I'm not going to receive any awards for most sympathetic person with this comment, but at the same time, let's talk about teen pregnancy. There are two reasons I think teens shouldn't be having babies. Generally, they're not wealthy enough to give the baby the upbringing it needs to be successful, and generally, they're not mature enough to give the baby the upbringing it needs to be successful. I'm estimating that about the top 10% of families can help support the baby of a pregnant teen. I also estimate that about 1 in 50 teens is mature enough to raise a baby. So, assuming no correlation (which is doubtful), that puts Jennifer Fox at about a 0.2% chance of being able to care for and raise her baby. Furthermore, that she's attending an OWS event further reduces this probability in my eyes because she's even less likely to be able to afford the baby and less likely to be mature enough to care for it (it's not very mature to be breaking laws while protesting when police have been removing people by force all around the country for what you're doing).
So, I felt pretty confident in my statement that losing the baby would be better for her, and that she could use this loss of the baby as a way to improve her lot in life. What I don't understand is that I thought this community was more-or-less against teens having babies. I thought it was a liberal viewpoint that said teens should be allowed abortions because babies fuck up the lives of teens. I don't understand how this community was able to shift frames so quickly to think it was the worst thing in the world for this "pregnant" teen to lose her fetus. I also don't understand why this community thinks it's perfectly okay to force society (rich people who pay most of the taxes) to take care of the babies of teen mothers. I just fundamentally do not understand that viewpoint. To clarify, I'm not saying teens shouldn't be entitled to have babies, or that the government should get to decide who can reproduce and who can't. I'm saying if people reproduce in circumstances that are obviously fatally flawed, it is the parent's (or parents') responsibility to take care of that baby.
You just can't ask society to take care of those kids because if you do, you open up the potential for a viscious cycle in society. Poor immature teens have babies. Those babies don't get raised properly. Those babies grow up to be poor immature teens. Those teens make the same mistakes their parents did and have more babies they can't take care of.
In a more abstract sense, I think this is the fundamental point I disagree with this community on. How do you help the poor and sick without just making more poor and sick people and effectively growing the problem? Here, the answer is that it doesn't matter, and that you just continue to help all you can. I disagree. I think help should be focused on breaking the cycle and should be conditional on people actually using the help to make their long-term situation better.
My second comment:
Yeah, because Seattle city resources definitely
need to go to a 19 year old who was going to have a baby wayyy to early in life rather than schools or roads or any of the other shit the taxpayers actually wanted...
Look, when someone breaks the law, the police have a right to stop that action. When hundreds of people are intentionally breaking the law or refusing lawful police orders, the police have a right to enforce those laws with force. If a pregnant person puts themself in a situation in which police force is justified (or even if it's borderline justified), the taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pay seven figures or more to that person instead of building the roads and tunnels and bridges the taxpayers wanted to fund. In a way, I don't care what the damages are. The damages to the city's infrastructure will be worse. It wasn't my fault Jennifer Fox "miscarried" anymore than it was her fault (I would argue that it was even more her fault). So why should I be forced to forgo the repair of that nasty pothole on 3rd Ave between Battery and Bell so she can get a million dollars? Why should we price more kids who are on the cusp of success out of a college education because a pregnant teen put herself in a bad situation and lost her fetus. That just does not make sense to me.
And lastly, since I haven't seen it mentioned yet on this website (which is no shock due to the self-censoring that goes on in this bastion of group think). The evidence is starting to look like Jennifer Fox wasn't the type of person who should be having a baby, and worse, that she was lying about being pregnant in the first place. KIRO first reported
A woman who told police she was three months pregnant when she was pepper sprayed at an Occupy Seattle march this month, also told police she was three months pregnant in September when facing arrest, according to a police report.
Oops. I hope you weren't basing too much of your view of the police on this incident. If so, it might be time to change your opinion.
Wasn't there something about Jennifer Fox saying that her family was going to help her raise the baby? Let's go to her family for comment:
Fox's former foster mother, Lark Stebbins, said Fox called her from Harborview after one recent protest but did not mention she was pregnant.
Stebbins said Fox, whom she parented for 10 years, has a pattern of exaggeration. "My daughter is a compulsive liar," Stebbins said. "She's a wannabe drama queen."
Stebbins also did not know Fox was pregnant. And then there's this:
97.3 KIRO FM has learned that Fox was once suspected of trying to lure two young children away from their mother. In a police report dated August 3, 2011, a mother stated a young woman had approached her daughters at Seattle's Pritchard Beach Park during a swimming lesson. Police sources confirm that woman was Fox.
So, wow. You've got some winners in that OWS crowd. If Jennifer Fox is indicative of the OWS crowd as a whole, I think I now understand why you can't hold down jobs, and honestly, I'm not sure what the government or really anyone can do to help you. If she's not indicative of the broader OWS crowd, you need to pick your media personalities better (maybe a little planning is in order) and renounce this kind of shit. Loudly.