Broken

[mamagotcha]

In the "duh" department: Cesareans can harm lung growth

But this won't affect THAT many moms... only 30.1% of US women will have c-sections.

And obviously the "Just Say No" abstinence campaign of the current administration is working beautifully. Right up there with those Purity Pledges (88% of the Pledged Pure had sex before marriage; increased oral/anal activity; pledges waited an average of 18 months more than unpledged kids to engage in sexual behavior).

And when Mom has to go back to work, at least she can use artifical hands to cuddle her baby. This product makes me sick to my stomach!

On the home front, the same right-wing Xian fanatics that launched a grand jury attack on magazines and dildos have started the same process to harass Planned Parenthood.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, between the 1950s and the mid-1990s, the overall death rate for children in the US declined... yet during that same period, the violent death rates more than tripled: "...the United States has the highest rates of childhood homicide, suicide, and firearm-related death among industrialized countries."

Parents represent the greatest risk of violent death to US children: "Among children under age 5 years in the United States who were murdered in the last quarter of the 20th century, 61% were killed by their own parents: 30% were killed by their mothers, and 31% by their fathers."

Missouri and Kansas rate fifth and sixth worst among the 50 states regarding child well-being. More children are abused, beaten, starved, raped and murdered here than in most other states (only Connecticut, Arizona, Nebraska and DC did worse).

That's why I wanted to work on that parenting magazine. I wanted to support families who choose to conscientiously birth and raise their children in a way that gives them a secure and safe start to their lives. I think that we're too scared of treading on tender sensibilities and hurting peoples' feelings when, instead of being all PC, we should be outraged that it's OK in our national culture to do so much damage to our kids. Worse than OK... it's encouraged, and if you go against the prevailing attitude, you're considered an oddity.

There is something badly broken here in America. Living in the Midwest has only brought it into sharper focus for me. I only hope that I can contribute to the healing, or at the very least, slowing down the rate of injury.

I think this is one of the biggest reasons I cannot tolerate living here much longer.

Comments

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

Isn't being "among" the families being "among" them, regardless of one's position in them, though? *shrug* That's the problem I had with the statement to begin with.

[genderfur.livejournal.com]

Your facts are true enough, but the writing is not clear, and that gets in the way. This isn't taking any issue with what you say, just giving you some writing-advice to help with clarity. I do this for a living you see (write stuff, and edit other peoples' stuff), and I find that clear writing helps lead to clear thinking.

One change would make a large difference. In your post, you say "They might have" and the last actual noun used was the babies in question. Pronouns always refer back to the last noun used, you see. But if you change "They" to "Those families", all become very clear.

Here, this is what I mean:
Perhaps not, but they might be the children of such families. Those families might have, at one point, been lumped in ...

Do you see what I mean? It makes it clearer who's under discussion - which is really the parents of the children, for the rest of your comment.