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{"id":385,"date":"2014-07-10T13:24:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T13:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/07\/a-tragedy-in-chicago-and-another-one.html"},"modified":"2014-07-10T13:24:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T13:24:00","slug":"a-tragedy-in-chicago-and-another-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/07\/a-tragedy-in-chicago-and-another-one.html","title":{"rendered":"A tragedy in Chicago – and another one"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

On the front page of the Tribune today: \u00a0\u201cDan Ryan victim mourned slain friend weeks earlier: \u2018Put the guns down<\/a>\u2018\u201d \u2014 a somewhat cryptic online headline for a story which is, in the print version, titled, \u201c\u2018I got to bury another child?\u2019 Pregnant mom of 5 is gunned down on Dan Ryan; her brother was slain nearby a year ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article features this particular Chicago South Side victim of gun violence because, by coincidence, a Tribune reporter had interviewed her in May at a memorial for a friend who was killed. \u00a0She listed the relatives and friends who had been killed, and, although she acknowledged that (according to the excerpts) at least some of them belonged to gangs, she said, \u201c\u201cDon\u2019t nobody deserve to lose a loved one and \u2026mourn them throughout their life,\u201d she said. \u201c\u2026Stop the violence. Put the guns down and fight like the old days. (If) you can\u2019t fight it out, go sit in the house and think about it.\u201d \u00a0Hence, the quote featured in the headline.<\/p>\n

But consider this mom of 5, ages 1 to 9, pregnant with a 6th: \u00a0how old would you expect her to be, having had that many children?<\/p>\n

She was 24.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the father or fathers were nowhere in the picture. \u00a0Not interviewed by the Tribune. \u00a0Not mentioned as a mourner. \u00a0And the children themselves were to be split up, with the boys to be cared for by her father, and the girls by her mother. \u00a0Who was caring for them when she was out with friends at 4 AM? <\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m not going to start in on \u201clook at these irresponsible welfare queens,\u201d let alone anything harsher than that. \u00a0This post isn\u2019t about trashing anyone (and I\u2019m not giving her name because I don\u2019t want this post to show up as a hit for anyone who searches for her). \u00a0But wow \u2014 it\u2019s hard to even fathom the degree of dysfunction in these sorts of Chicago neighborhoods, with the combination of gang violence and children born in such conditions as to make \u201cunmarried parenting\u201d sound too sterile a descriptor.<\/p>\n

The report says she was just about to start a \u201csecond job\u201d as a cashier at a department store. \u00a0No further details \u2014 and, of course, you can\u2019t reasonably expect the Tribune to start spelling out all the details (were these two part-time minimum wage jobs? \u00a0Did she have any particular job skills or training? \u00a0Did she have a consistent or spotty job history? \u00a0Who cared for the children? \u00a0Was she able to support her family or was she dependent on food stamps, other welfare benefits, and family help?) in an article such as this. <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s still hard to read an article like this without asking: \u00a0why six children?<\/i>\u00a0 \u00a0 Sure, I get that young poor women want to have kids to provide them some happiness (see Promises I Can Keep, my summary here<\/a>), but six<\/i>? \u00a0It\u2019s hard to believe that she truly couldn\u2019t access or afford contraception \u2014 even if she didn\u2019t qualify for Medicaid, there are other programs out there giving it away, and even condoms, while less effective, would have been effective enough that, even accounting for failures, she wouldn\u2019t have had that many kids in such a short time.<\/p>\n

So for all the talk about the Hobby Lobby decision and about whether this deprives women of contraception, when we think about the background for the HHS determination that all insurance cover all prescription contraception without copay \u2014 this<\/b> is the context, and the motivator for their decision, the large number of women with unplanned, unwanted, or, let\u2019s face it, simply socially-undesirable pregnancies, not the progressive poster child Sandra Fluke. \u00a0(See my prior post<\/a> from last week with comments on the original source document.) \u00a0But is a no-out-of-pocket-cost contraception mandate really going to make a difference?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"