Living women and children matter too

The Oklahoma personhood bill currently sitting on Republican governor Mary Fallin's desk has wording that states embryos/zygotes/fetuses have all the same rights and privileges of other citizens from the "moment of conception until birth."

After birth, of course, the black ones, the female ones, the Jewish ones, the Muslim ones, the gay ones, the Hispanic ones, the poor ones... they no longer have quite the same rights.

According to the Children's Defense Fund, the rate of child poverty increased 28% between 2000 and 2009. 15.5 million children lived in poverty in 2009, an increase of nearly 4 million from 2000. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports an average of 800,000 abortions in the US per year. Multiply 800,000 by the 9 year period from 2000 to 2009, and you get 7.2 million additional births.

Now many of these babies may not have survived on their own, due to illness, genetic disease, etc., and many may have been accepted, adopted and loved, but assuming just half of them ended up as live births living in poverty, you add an additional 3.6 million children starving and going without adequate shelter, clothes and education. That almost doubles the increase in the poverty rate.

Are those really the rights we want to support? The right to be forgotten about and trampled on by a government that thinks women are livestock and born children are invisible? The right to be oppressed, treated like second class citizens, denied education about and access to contraception, and then be punished for being herded like cattle onto the only path the Republicans made available?

The Republicans are no longer conservative or 'small government' in any way, shape or form. They are a religious party carrying out a dangerous Crusade against the American public. We have to keep fighting...