Sunday is Mother's Day, and what odd timing for the New York
Times to run an article by Natalie Angier about how animals are
not necessarily maternal. In her article this week, Ms.Angier
gives numerous macabre examples of how the female of the species
mistreats her offspring.Whether it's cannibalism or neglect,
we're supposed to cringe in horror at the shocking assault on
helpless animal babies. I can't help but wonder if Ms. Angier is
sending us a subtle message that such behavior is instinctively
natural for the survival of any species - including our own.
She writes, "Among several mammals, including lions, mice
and monkeys, females will either spontaneously abort their
fetuses or abandon their newborns when times prove rocky or a new
male swaggers into town." Gee, sounds familiar, doesn't it?
The names Amy Richards and Susan Smith come to mind. I was under
the impression that the human race was a cut above the animal
kingdom, but I guess not.
Last year,the New YorkTimes thought it worth noting that Ms.
Richards aborted two of her triplets so she wouldn't have to move
from Manhattan to Staten Island and be forced to shop at Costco.
Oddly enough, Ms. Richards received support from like-minded
feminists who regarded the culling as mere expediency.Smith, on
the other hand, strapped her two toddlers into their car seats
and let her car roll into a lake so she could get on with her
life with her new lover.That was a no-no, and the South Carolina
woman is cooling her heels in prison.
Perhaps the greatest evidence that, in the minds of some women,
Darwin's theory outweighs any semblance of a moral code was the
sympathy given to Andrea Yates. The Houston mother murdered her
five young children in 2001 by drowning them in a tub.
Celebrities rose to her defense, citing postpartum depression,
medication, and marital dysfunction to explain what I considered
an absolutely horrific crime against innocence.
Anna Quidlen wrote an essay in Newsweek in which she expressed an
understanding of the demons that possessed Yates, because the
columnist also had rough days with her three children. Katie
Couric and Rosie O'Donnell mounted a defense fund for Yates, and
I dashed off my opinion for 38 1316 137 1327
www.rightgrrl.comfrom the opposite end of the aisle.
Because at one point I had five children under the age of 6, I
also knew how difficult the job of motherhood could be. I wrote
that the normal inclination would have been for the overburdened
mother to run away - not to systematically take each child and
hold their struggling bodies underwater in the bathtub till they
were dead. To me, that act spoke more of Medea-like anger than
depression. I also suggested that perhaps Ms. Quidlen and the
others were sympathetic toward her because she had given up her
career as a nurse to stay home with her children. Ms. Quidlen
wrote, "Women not working outside their homes feel compelled
to make their job inside it seem both weighty and joyful."
Funny how prochoice women always hold women who choose this path
in disdain.
Apparently, I was the only female columnist who took that tack,
and I received a request from Rick Folbaum to appear on Fox News.
I reluctantly agreed, and before the interview he took me into
the makeup room and simply told the staff I would be speaking on
the Yates issue. Not knowing that I was unsympathetic to the
homicidal mother, the two cosmetologists immediately launched
into their own piteous tales of PMS. I shut my mouth and murmured
noncommittally because they were preparing me for the television
audience. Since I ended up looking so awful that I've sworn off
television appearances forever, I suspect that they guessed that
I was not allied with the Yates tea-and-sympathy crowd.
This has become an anti-child culture and crimes against the very
young are becoming a daily event.Child pornography is a booming
business, and children have become the objects of sexual
exploitation. The term "retroactive abortion" is used
frequently by stand-up comics but its taken seriously by
burned-out mothers. Women's rights may now rank higher than
concerns about our young, but have they created better mothers? I
think not.
Twenty-seven years ago, on the day before Mother's Day, my own
mother died. The following day I sat in church, grief stricken,
listening to the priest give a homily about mothers. I was the
12th child she bore and only the sixth who survived.
I am forever grateful that she felt humans are higher than the
animals, and that she nurtured me in spite of dire poverty and
ill health.