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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>A break from my book – sensitive subject matter<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>The Fatalists<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>777 words<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>As a single mother of two blond blue-eyed girls in their teens, I wasn’t naïve about their emerging sexuality. Having forsaken my own virginity at age 16, I knew the allure of a boy’s kisses. Fortunately, back in the 1970s, I was able to obtain the birth control pill without my parents’ consent. In the 1980s, following a sexual assault, I chose to have an abortion at a compassionate Planned Parenthood clinic. Ultimately, I postponed motherhood until my late 30s. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>Still, motherhood wasn’t easy. After my divorce, I struggled without child support to pay for my girls’ back-to-school clothes, orthodontia, and special needs. In the 1990s, being proactive, I took my adolescent daughters to the doctor for advice on birth control before it was too late to consider. I feared the burdens an unplanned pregnancy could create for not only them, but me. In my 50s at that time, I had no desire to raise my grandchildren.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>Despite my cautions and precautions, my older daughter conceived her first child out of wedlock, nearly a child herself, I thought, at age 20. She claimed only one or two missed pills had resulted in her pregnancy. Her university plans were derailed. Her boyfriend deserted. Her frantic mother encouraged abortion; not for the first time, my advice was ignored. I believe it is a woman’s right to choose, and the choice was my daughter’s that time, not mind. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>Do I regret my advice? It’s complicated. Today, my 10-year-old grandson is one of the singular lights in my life. I am his Nana, not Mom, and his mother is a Super Mom. That’s not to say that my daughter hasn’t struggled financially, physically, and emotionally; raising a child while trying to advance her career, sacrificing her social life, and finding precious time to take care of herself. She is exhausted, lives pay check to pay check, and neglects her own mental and physical well-being.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>Meanwhile, I steered my younger daughter, attention deficit, away from the birth control pill - lest she forget to take one or two like her sister. Instead, we opted for the depo shot and implants which protected her for months, even years, at a time. She was “free” to explore her relationships without the risk of conception. However…her first boyfriend, a dad himself as a teen, left her with the lifetime legacy of herpes. Her second beau kicked her out of his trailer, literally, in below-freezing temperatures one December night. Her third boyfriend struggled with insecurity and anxiety. My daughter wore the pants in their relationship. When it crumbled, she withdrew from the world of heterosexual romance and found love online with another woman who, like her, was coping with the ravages of an STD and prior abusive relationships. They are happy and compatible. If destiny provides an opportunity, they hope to be parents one day. Despite their nurturing desires, I worry they will struggle as mothers often do. Coping with a global pandemic, inflationary prices, and a warming world on the brink of WWIII, they often depend on me to help cover the rising cost of groceries, transportation, and extraordinary medical expenses. Nearing 70, my resources are fixed and dwindling. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>Regardless of my well-intended attempts to protect my daughters, The Fates played a more powerful role. For centuries, three ancient goddesses known as The Fates have been credited (or blamed) for weaving the threads of destiny. Clotho, the spinner; Lachesis, the allotter; and Atropos who cuts the threads, were believed to influence birth and death – not mothers or birth control devices, not doctors or courts or Congress.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>Today, a woman’s right to manage contraception and reproduction is manipulated by three old men I call The Fatalists – Trump, the liar; McConnell, the minimizer; and Alito, the dismantler. Other like fatalists in the not-so-distant past denied a woman’s right to vote, own property, or seek a divorce, even under circumstances of domestic abuse. The fate of women and children in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century has never been more uncertain.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>If The Fatalists can criminalize birth control and abortion, they should also submit deadbeat Dads to castration. If women are forced to carry every pregnancy to term, they shouldn’t be marginalized, stigmatized, or driven into unemployment and poverty as a result; nor should children suffer from neglect, abandonment, hunger, or homelessness. It is estimated that more than 1.6 million children in America are homeless today. Nearly half of those children are under age six. Perhaps The Fatalists who claim to cherish women and children should be taxed at a higher rate to provide impacted families with food, shelter, and clothing, along with access to health care, day care, and education.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'># # # <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>