My son is not the poster child for the Right to Life movement

[cali]

’ve been writing about my son Ronan, who died of Tay-Sachs disease in February 2013, since the day of his diagnosis. This has included a discussion of parenting strategies that must accommodate a child’s inevitable death. These have recently been determined by one writer speaking on behalf of the Right to Life organization as “inspirational.”

Although the writer qualifies the use of this sentimentally descriptive word, he goes on to explain that although he has no special-needs children of his own, he has much to say about how other people with terminally ill children should parent. I have an equally sentimental word for that which I will mention here without qualification: gross.

What he fails to mention at the beginning of this reprinted article, which itself was a response to an op-ed piece I wrote in 2011 that appeared in The New York Times, “Notes from a Dragon Mom,” is that my son is now dead.

Although I’m sure the writer would extend sympathy for my loss, that he should reprint this article almost eight months to the day when my child died seems like an opportunity to clear up my thoughts about this issue. I’ve been the poster child for the March of Dimes once in my life; I am not prepared to be so for the Right to Life movement. And I will not let the memory of the beloved child I will never see again be roped into this worldview as well.

<snip>

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/20/my_son_is_not_the_poster_child_for_the_right_to_life_movement/singleton/?google_editors_picks=true

[stevenleser]

1. Wow. Just wow. nt

[madaboutharry]

2. It is so wrong when

one person's grief and tragedy is used for another's agenda.

[SheilaT]

3. Thanks for posting.

I, who have never had a handicapped child, or faced any sort of serious illness in myself or anyone close to me, I know that I cannot know what it feels like to go through something like that.

I also know absolutely that certain decisions belong only to those who must make them, decisions like abortion, and I may have an opinion, but I am not entitled to inflict my opinion on anyone else, to require someone else do what I think I would do in such circumstances.

[northoftheborder]

7. Amen.

[dembotoz]

4. k and r

[ewagner]

5. Read this over the weekend

This lady writes about REALITY...not some abstract, quasi-religious, ideological, concept.

She takes on the right-to-life movement in a very real, very personal way. I'm glad I took the time to read the article.

[MADem]

6. This woman has a gift with words.....

To sentimentalize an experience that sent me, my family and many others over the edge of madness and then back again is to view children as conduits through which to “get spiritual,” a notion just as contrary to the true nature of parenting as asking them to be vehicles through which parents live out or attempt to fulfill their own failed dreams. Children do not exist to make their parents feel good about bringing them into the world no matter what their quality of life might be. The idea of this, or that anyone might think of it, prompts me again to use this word without equivocation: gross.

[TNNurse]

8. She proves a point.

Many people do not care how they use others. This use of her story without her permission is heartless, self serving and opportunistic. She deserves a heartfelt apology.

She also deserves a lot of us responding and supporting her.

[malaise]

9. Beautifully stated

although it is painful to read. People should 'get it' after reading this but I am way too hopeful.

[nolabear]

10. A brilliant comment by Keiranfree too.

"One of the original psychoanalysts after Freud once said something like, "Maturity comes when you realize that for your mother, mothering you was only a part-time job." What he (or maybe she) meant is the realization that your mother has, and always had, needs, wants and wishes completely separate from taking care of you.

The vast majority of us take a long time to accept that our mother has a "right to life," a right to have feelings other than their motherly feelings toward us. There are a lot of cultures where women are made to feel like their only true role and purpose is to be a mother. That was America as well in the 50s and early 60s. There are a lot of men who grew up, and still grow up, feeling like their mother is an appliance, a robot created to cook and clean for them, do their laundry, and make them feel good enough about themselves to succeed in the world (translation: make a lot of money by finding a position high enough in the system to dominate others).

This attitude extrapolates from mothers to black "mammies" and any poor people. Poor people are supposed to be "spiritual," to meekly and humbly accept God's will and God's plan and grow spiritually from it (and once in a while to succeed despite it, as "proof" that poor people are not oppressed and only have their own "laziness" to blame). They must accept God's authority and all authority, since God has endorsed the social structure.

A woman who gets an abortion is someone who defies God's authority and refuses to be a vessel. She refuses to sacrifice her personhood to the motherhood that she has brought upon herself through the act of sex and that God has given to her as a consequence. She thinks she's entitled to something more in life than her social station gives her, and a whole bunch of "liberals" have the nerve to tell her she's right.

That is why people in the so-called "right to life" movement are so enraged at her and want to stop her."

Right-freaking-ON.

(On edit: This sounds like more of an attack on men specifically than I, at least, intend. But men never have to look forward to being in just that position themselves, and it does, I think, make a difference.)

[Barack_America]

11. Absolutely worth reading.

It's hard to imagine disease worse than Tay Sachs and its relatives.