I honestly don’t know what to make of the Trump administration. Some of the stuff he does seems fine to me, but then other things just leave me scratching my head, like, why?
The latest thing is his Health and Human Services Secretary, R.F.K. Jr. (I think that’s his title), saying there’s some link between taking Tylenol during pregnancy and kids having autism. Oh, and if you have a boy and he’s circumcised, that could somehow be connected to autism, too. Where do they even come up with this stuff? I just don’t get it. R.F.K. says these things, Trump seems to go along with it, and they make a big deal out of it. I don’t understand why.
What’s wild is thinking about what the rest of the Kennedy family must think about all this. I can imagine John, Bobby, and Teddy rolling in their graves. This feels so opposite to their way of thinking, their philosophies. A Kennedy working in a Republican administration? It just feels unnatural, somehow going against common sense. How does this even happen?
And then, why is this whole Tylenol/circumcision/autism thing such a big deal to them? Are they trying to take down Tylenol or something? I have no idea. It’s just one of those things about this administration that I can’t wrap my head around.
That said, there are some things I do agree with. For example, bringing abortion laws back to the states and letting them decide whether to allow it or not. It’s legal in democratic states and illegal in republican ones. Along the same lines, I’m all for defunding Planned Parenthood because I think abortion is wrong and the government should not be funding it. I know all those pro-choice people are claiming Planned Parenthood does so much more than performing abortions, and I am sure they do, but it shouldn’t be funded by people who disagree with their practices. I don’t have any control over where my tax dollars go, so I shouldn’t be forced to support things I feel are wrong.
What about abortions that are medically necessary to save the mother’s life? Are we just supposed to let the mother die? Surely you can think that’s okay? No, I don’t, but if that is truly the case, then a decision will be made, and they would be legal (I believe they already are). Let’s look at the numbers and see just how many of these types of abortions there are.
According to the CDC in 2021, there were 625,978 abortions in the United States. This was for 2021. The Guttmacher Institute says there were 916,420 in 2019. So let’s split the difference and say there were 772,699. How many of these are because of a risk to the mother’s life? Unfortunately, only a few states require abortion providers to report the reasons they have performed them, so we can’t get an accurate number, but a guess is 1 to 3% of all abortions. While that number is large, it’s a lot less than 72 thousand. Only five percent of abortions are for reasons such as medically necessary, incest or rape, or an abnormality in the baby. This means we killed 686,564 innocent lives for no valid reason. Here is a news flash: we don’t have to have sex unless we choose to have kids. That’s the choice.
People always talk about pro-choice and pro-life, and obviously, I’m pro-life. But here’s my question for the pro-choice side: what about the baby? What about the unborn child? How do we know they don’t want to live? I guess their choice doesn’t matter. But that’s a whole other topic for another time.
For now, I’ll stay confused. Dazed and confused, I guess. I mean, I am a child of the 70s, after all.
If you liked this post, or even if you didn’t, please feel free to share.
