Like many holidays, I find it to be bittersweet and a bit hypocritical. I've always felt that mothers deserved to be honored every day and not just one arbitrarily set date. And those feelings have only grown stronger since I lost my mother nearly 14 years ago.
And this year, in Fitzwalkerstan, never has Mother's Day been any more ironic or bittersweet.
Even has Scott Walker's campaign sent out no less than two email blasts praising
Tonette and his mother and how wonderful all mothers are, Walker and his Republican cronies in the legislature has been actively attacking mothers.
Walker and company, in their rush to take control of whether and when a woman can start a family, also removed funding for them to have life-saving screenings.
They have also kept up their pro-rape attitude, more than willing to blame the victims, and force them to have the child, whether the woman wants it or not.
To add to the outrage, if a woman is single and has a child, she is labeled as a child abuser. They even went so far as to say women need men in their lives so much that they should stay in an abusive relationship, y'know, for the sake of the child. I'm still waiting for someone to arrest Don Pridemore for saying that. That is nothing more than enabling child abuse.
Not satisfied that they added enough injury to insult, they are now proposing cutting funding to impoverished pregnant women and new mothers:
The governor's budget bill contains a provision that would end BadgerCare coverage of pregnant women with incomes over 133% of the federal poverty level - which for an individual is as little as $15,000 a year and for a two-person household is about $20,000 a year. Let's celebrate this Mother's Day and National Women's Health Week by removing this unintended, ill-considered change from the budget.
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As currently written, the governor's budget bill would make these pregnant women making as little as $15,000 a year only eligible for a limited benefit plan called BadgerCare + Prenatal (BC+ Prenatal). Unfortunately, this BC+ Prenatal program relies on fee-for-service care, which is generally more expensive for the state, and women in some areas of Wisconsin would have trouble finding an obstetrician who will take new Medicaid patients under this plan.
BC+ Prenatal has several other shortcomings. It has a slower eligibility determination process, which could prevent women from receiving timely prenatal care. It also causes problems with continuous eligibility since BC+ Prenatal coverage can end any time a woman's circumstances change, leaving her without health insurance during a portion of her pregnancy. Alternatively, under BadgerCare Plus, a woman is covered throughout her entire pregnancy. The list of shortcoming with BC+ Prenatal goes on and the costs go up - both in health outcomes and associated pregnancy-related medical costs.
The prenatal care a woman receives is one of the most important factors in the health of her child. We should be thinking of ways for more pregnant women to gain access to health care services, not creating barriers that will result in fewer women seeing a doctor during pregnancy.
And then to top it all off, once the mother has her child(ren), whether they were planned or not, and if they make it through with or without health care coverage, Walker and fiends make sure it's impossible to for the mother to earn enough money to support her family.
And don't even think that they would allow the woman a paid day off to tend to her sick child. That is strictly verboten too!
I don't even think that they are capable of the irony when they call themselves pro-life.
It's not only our mothers, our wives, our sisters, our daughters or the other women in our lives that are being maltreated by Walker and fiends.
The grandest mother of them all, Mother Nature, is also being repeatedly victimized by them.
The Republicans have opened the door for irresponsible mining, uncontrolled polluting, destruction of wetlands, putting more of her creatures in the hunters' scope, and squandering her resources. That is no way to treat one's mother. And the Republicans have apparently forgotten that Mother Nature, unlike their own forbearing mothers, is not a tolerant lady and will make us pay for our poor treatment of her.
What I find the hardest to believe is that utter their misogynistic comments and vote for these laws are actually using the same mouths that they kiss their mothers with.
The Kochs do support mothers. But those mothers are not female. Unless they are Republican legislators or elected state officials.
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