Sarah Watts Wisniewski

At the end of their piece in yesterday’s NYTimes Room for Debate feature on homebirth, Drs. Grunebaum and Chervenak make a particularly apt comparison:

We are now seeing the damage done to children from the propagation of junk science about vaccines. It is imperative we, as a society, do not make the same mistake when it comes to birth.

With the advent of the recent Disneyland measles outbreak, it has become painfully apparent that the anti-vax position is and has always been spectacularly wrong.

The Disneyland measles outbreak was not the first incidence of the resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases; multiple children (generally infants) have been sickened, hospitalized and have died since pertussis (whooping cough) has come roaring back. But for some indefinable reason, the Disneyland measles outbreak became the tipping point. Similarly, literally dozens of babies are dying preventable deaths at homebirth each year, but though we are approaching a tipping point (as indicated by the framing of the NYTimes’ question Is Homebirth Ever a Safe Choice?) we probably won’t reached it until a prominent celebrity’s baby dies at homebirth.

Homebirth and anti-vaccine advocacy are ideological twins.

Indeed, it is rather startling to consider what homebirth and anti-vaccine advocacy have in common:

1. Both are based on pseudoscience

Both homebirth and anti-vax advocacy rely on ignoring, twisting or confounding the existing science. Advocates present bibliography salads of cherry picked and misleading citations written by discredited authors or subsequently reversed or retracted.

2. Both ignore the consensus of experts

Vaccination is promoted by nearly all the immunologists, pediatricians and public health officials around the world, yet anti-vax activists imagine they know better than the experts. American hospital birth has been declared safest by obstetricians, neonatologists and pediatricians, but homebirth advocates imagine they know better than the experts.

3. Both are based on the belief that “if I haven’t seen it, it doesn’t exist”

Anti-vax advocates pretended to themselves and others that there was no reason to worry about vaccine preventable diseases since they were so rare, never acknowledging (or possibly even realizing) that they were rare BECAUSE OF vaccines, not in spite of them. Similarly, homebirth advocates pretend to themselves and others that childbirth complications are both rare and easily foreseen in time for hospital transfer, never acknowledging (or possibly even realizing) that they seem rare BECAUSE OF obstetricians and hospitals, not in spite of them.

4. Both are propagated through echo chamber websites that delete non-conforming scientific data and ban commentors with actual expertise

This is a hallmark of pseudoscience. For both anti-vax and homebirth advocacy, a truly educated consumer is their worst customer, so intense efforts are made to to delete scientific evidence and ban commentors who might raise suspicions about the validity of anti-vax and homebirth claims. Advocates are spoon fed what they are supposed to believe and they can’t be allowed to question what they’ve been fed.

5. Both rely heavily on conspiracy theories.

According to anti-vax advocates, we’re supposed to believe that vaccines are a massive world wide conspiracy involving nearly every immunologist, pediatrician and public health official. Indeed immunologists, pediatricians and public health officials are so devoted to maintaining the conspiracy that they actually give their own children vaccines despite the fact that they secretly know that vaccines are useless and dangerous. Similarly, according to homebirth advocates, we’re supposed to believe that modern obstetrics is nothing more than an economic conspiracy to deprive midwives of their livelihood, and to cause childbirth complications so that obstetricians can pretend to be heroes.

6. Both rely on magical thinking, the belief that thoughts can control events

No one conveys that reliance on magical thinking better than homebirth advocates who declare (with straight faces, no less) that the safest place to give birth is where the mother feels safest.

7.Both believe the mystical power of food to ward off disease and complications

Both actually believe, with absolutely no scientific evidence, that eating “right,” and taking supplements and herbs can ward off both vaccine preventable illnesses and childbirth complications. The highest mystical power, however, is reserved for breastmilk, which apparently can do everything from preventing pertussis and measles (it can’t) to treating eye and ear infections by squirting it into eyes and ears.

8.Both have a libertarian streak that invokes rights and ignores responsibilities

The battle cry of anti-vaxxers and homebirth advocates it, “I don’t want to and you can’t make me.” Preventing the illness and death of others is irrelevant in this libertarian conception of citizenship.

9. Both are about parental ego

Both anti-vax and homebirth are forms of parental tribalism where parents distinguish themselves from other parents whom they deride as “sheeple.” Both are concerned with parental “empowerment,” not science. Anti-vax is not about vaccines and not about children; it’s about the need for some parents to view themselves as special, smarter and savvier than all the rest. Homebirth is not about birth and certainly not about babies; it’s about the need for some mothers to view themselves as special, smarter and savvier than the all the rest.

10. Both harm or kill children, not the adults making the choice

Not coincidentally, the greatest risk of harm of these adult choices devolves on innocent children who probably would have made different choices (to preserve their own lives) had they been given the opportunity.

It took years, and dozens of preventable deaths, as well as hundreds preventable illnesses and hospitalizations to finally reach mainstream recognition that anti-vax advocacy is dangerous pseudoscience. How many years, and how many preventable deaths will it take for mainstream recognition that homebirth is the ideological twin of anti-vax, based on faulty science and every bit as deadly?

As is often the case on The Skeptical OB, a single post becomes a multi-day meditation on a topic. I started the week asking if natural childbirth and lactivism cause postpartum depression, progressed to discussing the lactivist War on Formula as a rather poorly disguised war on women, and then shared a new campaign to support mothers (#sogladtheytoldme) and my gratitude for the women in my life who supported me through motherhood.

And, as so often happens, a natural childbirth advocate or lactivist obligingly provides me with an outstanding example of what I have just been criticizing.

In this case, The Alpha Parent (Allison Dixley) has returned from a two month hiatus, just as hateful as ever, this time with bonus victim blaming.

Which raises the question: Why is The Alpha Parent happiest when kicking other women?

I understand why the lactivist industry grossly exaggerates the benefits of breastfeeding, and grossly inflates the purported “risks” of formula feeding. I understand why the lactivist industry attempts to shame and humiliate women who don’t breastfeed; they profit from monetizing that shame and guilt. But why would an individual woman spend so much time excoriating women who don’t breastfeed when the infant feeding decision is deeply personal and affects no one else? It’s the age old tactic of trying to feel better about yourself by tearing other people down.

The Alpha Parent wants you to know that she is better than you, hence her moniker and her blog. She likes to terrorize other women, finds shaming and humiliating other women to be deliciously satisfying, and merely uses breastfeeding as the rhetorical excuse to stomp on other women.

But The Alpha Parent has a problem. As campaigns like #sogladtheytoldme demonstrate, shaming other mothers is going out of style. The intended victims of the shaming are no longer passive. They point out the harms of idealized images of birth and breastfeeding; they support other women in their mothering journeys; and they take aim at the whole idea of attempting to induce guilt in other mothers.

What’s a woman who feels happiest when kicking other women to do?

Berate those women for their own guilt! How?

1. Women should be strong enough to take what ever Allison Dixley enjoys dishing out.

…“Stop being judgemental, I should not be made to feel guilty” is their mating call.

Yet contrary to what some mothers and stand-up comedians may claim, women are not fragile simpering wallflowers at the mercy of iron-tongued tormentors. They are not passive pawns pushed around by the force of others’ words. The image of the female as a boiling pot of feelings, a puppet to her emotions, easily triggered and unable to control herself is a misogynistic invention of a culture that’s still riding on patriarchal coattails. Sadly, many women continue to lap up this rhetoric, and when they become mothers, it becomes enshrined in their self-entitled, self-serving psyche…

2. It’s their own fault that they feel guilty, not Dixley’s fault for heaping abuse (complete with annoying GIFs) on them.

… By its very nature, guilt assumes a wrong doing that one has committed. So in order to feel guilt, two components must be present: 1. A wrongdoing. 2. Personal blame. Now let’s apply this to an obvious example: failure to breastfeed. If the mother believed that breast milk and formula were equivalent, #1 would be absent in her view. Thus, she wouldn’t feel guilty for not breastfeeding. If on the other hand, #1 is present but #2 is not, the result is merely shame not guilt.

3. They’re doing something wrong.

If you’re feeling guilty right now (heck, you’re a parent), look at your guilt with the idea that you are, or might be, responsible …

To that end, Dixley misinterprets a quote often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

The quote does NOT mean that if someone’s abuse makes you feel bad, it must be true. The quote stands for the proposition that you can and should fight against attempts to demean you.

When in 1939 African American contralto Marian Anderson, one of the most celebrated opera singers of her generation, was denied permission by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) to use its Constitution Hall for a concert, Mrs. Roosevelt did not tell Ms. Anderson that if she felt bad that the DAR viewed African American women as inferior, it was because she believed herself to be inferior. She did not say, “no one can make you feel ashamed of your race unless you really are ashamed of it.”

What did Roosevelt do?

First, she resigned from the DAR to signal her disgust with their behavior.

Second, she arranged for Marian Anderson to give an open air concert at the Lincoln Memorial, attended by 75,000 people.

When the DAR figuratively kicked Marian Anderson to the curb, Eleanor Roosevelt KICKED BACK.

As Eleanor Roosevelt showed us, when you encounter someone attempting to shame and humiliate another human being, you don’t laugh it off as harmless; you don’t blame the victim for being upset by abusive treatment; you don’t tolerate that behavior but instead condemn it in word and deed.

Which is what I am trying to do.

I don’t have the power to arrange a public tribute to bottle feeding mothers at a national monument, but I do have the power to publicly reassure them that Allison Dixley speaks from hate, not from science. And I have the power to express my personal disgust that for Allison Dixley, it isn’t enough to stomp on women when they are down; she has to crown her efforts by blaming women for her heel prints on their foreheads.

Allison Dixley’s behavior is nothing more than self-serving viciousness.

The anti-vax movement is the paradigmatic “alternative” health movement. It is one of the oldest, and largest; it seduced millions of parents, co-opted the mainstream media for a time, made fortunes for celebrity quacks, and … it was always utterly, totally, spectacularly wrong.

The lessons from this debacle go far beyond anti-vaccination advocacy and strike at the heart of the multi-million dollar industry of alternative health.

All of alternative health, from homeopathy to chiropractic, from reiki to cranio-sacral therapy, from homebirth to lotus birth, from GMO hysteria to essential oils, and all the myriad of other alternative “therapies” are all as intellectually bankrupt as anti-vaccine advocacy, and all for the same reasons.

Like anti-vax, they have nothing to do with science. They’re not based on science; they ignore existing scientific evidence, and they make up their own “evidence” that they disseminate through websites, books and message boards.

Like anti-vax, they are promoted by industry shills (the industry of alternative medicine) who profit by fooling average people into parting with their hard earned money.

Like anti-vax they appeal not to the intellect, but the ego, constantly praising and affirming the superiority of believers who are so much better than the “sheeple” who consult experts and follow their advice.

Like anti-vax, they appeal to the desire to defy authority. Oncologist says you need chemotherapy? Well, you’ll show him and use herbs and supplements instead! Obstetrician says that a C-section will decrease the risk that your baby will die during labor? Well, you’ll show her and have your breech baby at home attended by a pretend “midwife” and if that baby dies, it wasn’t meant to live. Pediatrician says that there is little you can do for your baby’s colic? Well, you’ll show him and get your baby “adjusted” by a cranio-sacral therapist to treat the infant’s traumatic birth “memories.”

Like anti-vax, alternative health is about denial. Sure, other people can get cancer, but not you. Other people could lose a baby during childbirth, but not you. Other people might die, but not you.

Like anti-vax, anyone can be an expert. No need to feel inferior to or intimidated by a doctor. You can boast that you are an expert in your own health.

Like anti-vax, alternative health privileges intuition over rationality. Okay, you may not have much of that “book learning” and you may not be able to construct a logical argument even if your life depended on it (and it might), but your intuition is just as good as anyone else’s, regardless of how much more education they have than you.

Ultimately, all of alternative health, like anti-vax advocacy, is a form of ego massage. It does nothing to improve your health, but does a lot to improve your sense of self-worth.

Unfortunately, though, all of alternative health will ultimately come up against reality:

Just as measles exists whether you acknowledge it or not, alternative health is quackery whether you recognize it or not.

Will alternative health believers learn anything from the measles epidemic that has shown them to be utterly, spectacularly wrong?

I doubt it. That would take insight, something that is in nearly as short supply among alternative health believers, as scientific education and understanding.

Natural childbirth advocates may be wrong about nearly all their empirical claims, but when it comes to marketing brilliance, they are second to none. Indeed, their marketing tactics are so seductive that many people who would have no trouble recognizing conventional marketing are chastened and distressed when they realize they’ve fallen for the marketing tropes deployed by natural childbirth organizations, celebrity natural childbirth advocates and by the legions of lay women who have been taught to proselytize the beliefs of the faithful.

However, knowledge is power, and you can protect yourself from even the most seductive marketing if you learn to recognize the tactics.

Here is a list of the top 5 marketing seductions that are the hallmark of contemporary natural childbirth advocacy.

1. Never forget that natural childbirth is an industry

This is the gateway seduction that many people, even sophisticated people, fail to recognize

Natural childbirth did not start as an industry. It started in the 1930′s and 1940′s as a way to control women (Lamaze originated with Russian adherents of Pavlov) and encourage more births (Grantly Dick-Read was a eugenicist who wanted white women of the “better classes” to have more children). The philosophy of natural childbirth crossed the Atlantic in the 1950′s, and, as with many imports, was adapted to the particular needs of American women.

Childbirth in the US in the 1950′s and 1960′s was, like most of contemporary medicine, afflicted with quite a few patriarchal practices that made things easier for doctors but were not beneficial, or perhaps even harmful, to women. These included assuming that women would rather be unconscious for their births, and banning fathers from the delivery room. It was natural childbirth advocacy that questioned those harmful practices and eventually ended them. The contemporary patient experience is far better than ever because of natural childbirth advocacy.

Natural childbirth advocates could have declared victory in the 1980′s and gone home; all their demands had been met. The moment that natural childbirth became an industry was the moment that they refused to declare victory and instead moved the goalposts. The original goalposts of the American natural childbirth movement were conscious deliveries, fathers in the delivery room, childbirth education, and research into and abolition of practices like perineal shaving and enemas that either had no benefit or were harmful. The new goalposts are no pain relief in childbirth, no C-sections, the promotion of midwifery, the promotion of doulas, the promotion of childbirth educators and the defiance of standard obstetric and public health recommendations. In other words, the promotion of itself and its continued existence.

Why do even sophisticated people fail to recognize that natural childbirth is an industry? Probably because they equate “industry” with massive amounts of money. True, individual professionals natural childbirth advocates don’t make a lot of money, but for most, it represents 100% of their income. That’s why they have a tremendous financial incentive to convince you to buy their products and services.

2. The primary product being sold by the natural childbirth industry is distrust of obstetricians

Read any natural childbirth book, website or message board and you will see that obstetricians are denigrated in the most scurrilous terms. Obstetricians supposedly don’t follow the scientific evidence. They aren’t up to date on best practices. They just want to get to their golf games. They will ignore or dismiss your most important desires. The derogation of modern obstetrics is absolutely critical to promoting the natural childbirth industry. They have chosen to set themselves up in opposition to obstetricians and have created a zero-sum calculus whereby natural childbirth advocacy can only “win” when standard obstetric preventive care “loses.”

This tactic isn’t merely grossly unprofessional; it is startlingly unethical. Most women, by inclination or through emergency need, will have to interact with obstetricians, so to deliberately encourage suspicion, derision and hostility does women no service; it only benefits the natural childbirth industry.

Run, don’t walk, far from anyone who sets out to destroy your relationship with the care providers whom you almost certainly will have to employ.

3. Natural childbirth advocacy seeks to create personal conflict and hostility between women and their obstetricians

The surest way to encourage distrust of obstetricians is to create conflict between patients and their providers. Natural childbirth advocacy creates that conflict by making false empirical claims about childbirth and obstetrics. They say that childbirth is inherently safe, but that’s a bald faced lie. They say that obstetricians don’t follow the scientific evidence, when it is natural childbirth advocates themselves who wouldn’t know the scientific evidence if they fell over it. Most pernicious, and most outrageous, in my view, is that natural childbirth advocates insinuate or proclaim that obstetricians don’t care about you or your baby and will actively work to harm your baby unless you aggressively resist that harm.

Consider the birth plan. It is now, through the influence of natural childbirth advocates, consider di rigueur for every birth, despite the fact that it has NEVER been shown to affect outcomes in the slightest and its only measurable effect is to decrease satisfaction among women who create one. The primary purpose of a birth plan, in my view, it to create conflict between a women and her obstetrician by encouraging a confrontational attitude, including demands that are outdated (no perineal shaving) or nonsensical (no vitamin K). Natural childbirth advocates tell you to create a birth plan and then demand that your doctor follow it; of course they warn you in advance that your doctor will become wary of you and react unfavorably to your plan (not surprisingly since it is filled with irrelevant, nonsensical and even harmful demands), and then when your doctor does react unfavorably, they claim that that means he or she cares less about you and your baby than they do.

4. Natural childbirth advocacy seeks to divert attention from having a healthy baby to having a natural childbirth experience.

Presumably you got pregnant because you wanted a baby and you fervently hope, and will do nearly anything to ensure, that your baby is healthy. But focusing on a healthy baby diverts attention from what natural childbirth advocacy offers, a preapproved scripted “experience.” Hence you will find natural childbirth advocates telling you that a healthy baby is guaranteed (false), a health baby is not enough (false for most women) or that anyone who doesn’t give priority to your experience is providing substandard care.

5. Natural childbirth uses flattery to disarm opposition.

In ordinary circumstances most of us recognize marketing tactics. We understand that those trying to sell us something have a vested interest in the sale, denigrate the competition in order to elevate themselves by comparison, and most of us would never fall for elevating the experience of a product over its safety. So why are so many women hoodwinked by the same marketing tactics when deployed by the natural childbirth industry? The reason is flattery. The natural childbirth industry flatters you into believing that you know as much (or more!) than your obstetrician, that you are so powerful that your very thoughts can ensure the perfect birth, and that by entering the fellowship of natural childbirth advocates you demonstrate that you are “educated,” strong enough to defy authority, an authentic woman, and, most important, that you are superior to other mothers. Who wouldn’t want to believe all that?

So how do you protect yourself? You recognize that you are being subjected to marketing; you recognize that you are being manipulated into distrusting your obstetrician; you refuse to engage in the confrontational behavior recommended by natural childbirth advocacy; you recognize that a healthy baby is not in any way guaranteed and that you may have to compromise your desires for a specific experience to ensure that your baby is healthy; and you recognize phony attempts at flattery for what they are.

The bottom line is this: a group of lay people who profit only when you choose the products and services of the natural childbirth industry are trying to convince you that they, the lay people, know more about pregnancy and childbirth than the women and men who have devoted 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, 4 years of internship and residency, and many years of experience to protecting the health of mothers and babies. And though these lay people of the natural childbirth industry refuse to take ANY responsibility for your health or the health of your baby when you follow their advice, they are trying to convince you that they care more about the outcome than the doctors who take full legal and ethical responsibility for your health and the health of your baby.

The only remaining question is whether you are capable of seeing through the marketing rhetoric to the truth.

Warning! Warning! Warning! Personal opinion ahead!

Every breastfeeding post I write leads to multiple comments about the physical and mental gymnastics some new mothers put themselves through in order to breastfeed. I hear about women who breastfeed every two hours PLUS use a SNS breastfeeding assist system PLUS pump their breasts afterward to further stimulate milk production, typically on the advice of a lactation consultant who found breastfeeding relatively easy.

Have lactation consultants lost their minds? Their “advice” is barbaric, cruel and not in any way justified by scientific evidence.

Let’s start with the baseline reality:

IN FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES, BREASTFEEDING IS SIMPLY NOT THAT IMPORTANT!

There. I said it. The claims about the benefits of breastfeeding are NOT supported by the scientific evidence, which is weak, conflicting and riddled with confounding variables. All things being equal, breastfeeding is best, but then all things being equal naturally occurring 20/20 vision is best, too.

But in real life, what’s best isn’t necessarily what happens. Eyes may be perfectly designed to see 20/20, but fully 30% of Americans are nearsighted. That’s why we have glasses and contacts. They are not ideal when compared to naturally occurring 20/20 vision, but they are close enough that it really doesn’t matter.

Similarly, in real life, breasts may be perfectly designed to provide adequate breastmilk, but 5% or more of women don’t make adequate milk. That’s why we have formula. Though formula is not ideal when compared to natural occurring exclusive breastfeeding, it is close enough that IT REALLY DOESN’T MATTER!

I realize that the income of lactation consultants depends on pretending that breastfeeding is vitally important, but it isn’t. Lactation consultants appear to have become every bit as unscrupulous as the formula companies they claim to despise. They promote their product far beyond what any scientific evidence shows, without regard for the impact of that advice on either babies or mothers.

Let’s add in another baseline reality:

BEING A NEW MOTHER IS HARD!

It is a tremendous physical and emotional adjustment, compounded by hormonal changes that can lead to the “baby blues” or true depression.

If we want to SUPPORT new mothers, and we claim that we do, we should be supporting their physical recovery and emotional adjustment. That means ensuring that they get enough sleep to fully heal, enough support with ALL aspects of mothering to feel competent, and enough reassurance that the most important each baby needs is maternal love, NOT breastmilk, and not a perfect mother.

Really supporting new mothers would ensure that they get enough sleep to function, that their babies are fed to satiety, and that they enjoy the time they spend interacting with their babies.

You will notice that breastfeeding is not among those vital needs. So will someone please explain to me how people and programs that claim to support new mothers, from lactation consultants to the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, IGNORE women’s most vital needs?

The reality is that they do, and they should be ashamed of themselves because they do.

The sad fact is that these people and programs are NOT supporting new mothers, they are supporting the breastfeeding industry, with its consultants, and equipment, and supplements and aids. And in their near religious devotion to the idea of breastfeeding, they are so cruel as to be barbaric.

All newborns must room in in order to support breastfeeding? How can a new mother get desperately needed sleep if she isn’t allowed to hand her baby off to professionals for a few hours? She can’t and that’s cruel.

Formula must be locked up in hospitals? How can a mother soothe a baby screaming from hunger before he or she learns to nurse effectively without formula? In many cases she can’t, and she becomes frantic with anxiety even before she leaves the hospital. That’s cruel.

Every woman must visited by a lactation consultant? Why? Did her right to control her own body come out with the placenta? It’s no one’s business whether a woman breastfeeds except her own. Anything else is profoundly antifeminist.

Every woman must exclusively feed breastmilk, and must engage in an endless cycle of feeding, supplementing with SNS and pumping? Are you people insane? It places the value of breastmilk above a woman’s emotional and physical health, and her ability to bond with her baby. That is barbaric!

There are so many people to blame for this barbarism, that’s it’s difficult to know where to begin. Obviously lactation consultants and lactivists organizations like the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (talk about an oxymoron!) bear the brunt of the blame. It’s business for them, and they put the health of their business ahead of the health of their patients, both babies and mothers.

But there’s plenty of blame to go around. Many physicians have elevated breastfeeding to the “holy grail” of mothering going far, far beyond what the scientific evidence shows. Many research scientists start their research papers with the conclusion that breastfeeding must be encouraged and that women should receive more breastfeeding support (in other words, more business for the lactivist industry) and simply ignore the actual findings that show that while breastfeeding has beneficial effects, in industrialized countries, those benefits are trivial. Public health officials have gotten far out in front of the scientific evidence, grossly exaggerating the benefits and importance of breastfeeding, and using weak, contradictory data riddled with confounding variables to do so.

Let’s finish with what I consider the most important baseline reality:

THE KEY TO A HEALTHY, HAPPY, THRIVING INFANT IS A PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY MOTHER. That means a mother who is getting enough rest, whose mental health needs are being addressed, and who is able to enjoy substantial amounts of time happily bonding with her child.

Breastmilk is NOT necessary, NOT necessarily best for every mother-infant dyad, and the effort to produce it is positively harmful in some situations.

Do we care about mothers and babies or do we just care about breastmilk?

I care about mothers and babies, and that’s why I’m not afraid to proclaim that telling a new mother that she must breastfeed and use a supplementary feeding system and then pump is cruel, barbaric and not justified by science … not matter how beneficial it is for the lactivism industry.

Hi, folks! It’s Lucy Lactivist here. I’m a certified lactation consultant, though I prefer to think of myself as “The Breast Whisperer.” I am so skilled I can help any woman to breastfeed … or at least make her feel like its her fault if she can’t. That’s why I’m president of FFFL (Formula Feeding’s For Losers).

I’m branching out these days, and adding certified vision consultant to my list of skills. After all, vision is every bit as natural as breastfeeding, and works right nearly all the time.

Here’s a scary statistic for you: Approximately 30% of Americans are diagnosed as nearsighted and end up wearing glasses or contacts!

Are we really supposed to believe that 1/3 of all people can’t adequately see without vision correction? They didn’t have glasses in nature, folks, and we’re still here, aren’t we? The human race would have died out long ago if that many people really needed glasses.

Think about it: the human eye is perfectly designed to see, just like the human breast is perfectly designed to feed babies. Just as breastmilk is always available in the perfect amount, always at the perfect temperature and always really easy for the baby to get out of the breast, human vision is always available in just the right amount, is always focused in the perfect direction, and never requires squinting.

Some people say that vision corrected by glasses or contacts is just as good as natural vision, but that is absolutely, positively not true. Natural vision contains components that can’t be duplicated in glasses or contacts, which are only artificial attempts to mimic natural vision. Not only that, but glasses and contacts are made of chemicals!!!

Not just chemicals, but toxic chemicals. Did you know that glasses cause obesity, diabetes and cancer? Yes, they do.

For example, the graph below covers the years 1500-2000.

You can see that as the rate of glasses wearing increased dramatically (blue bars), the rate of obesity (blue line) increased dramatically, too. You could draw similar graphs for the relationship between glasses and diabetes and glasses and cancer (except you’d have to make them difference colors). What more proof do you need?

If only people got more support with their vision they wouldn’t need to give up and resort to glasses. Sigh, if only optometrists were more educated about vision. No sooner does a woman complain that she is having difficulty seeing things, then the optometrist immediately gives her a vision test and recommends glasses if the test is abnormal … as if that’s the answer to her problem.

A certified vision consultant such as myself would initially ignore anything a woman has to say about her vision. I never believe women when they claim to assess the functions of their own bodies. Everyone knows that they cannot be trusted to tell the truth; they’re just lazy and prefer to take the easy way out. They don’t realize the extent to which they have been brainwashed by Big Lens.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a radical. I recognize that some women truly have vision problems. For example, if a woman pokes her eye out with a stick I immediately refer her to a hospital that is usually less than 10 minutes a way.

Here’s the way that I recommend that vision complaints be handled:

1. Providers should deny that the woman has any problems with vision. You should encourage her to believe that she could see perfectly if she just tried harder.

2. If a woman insists on an eye chart test and can’t see even the big “E” at the top, you should tell her it’s just a variation of normal.

3. Encourage the woman to work harder at seeing.

4. Before even mentioning the option of vision correction, you should have the woman read and sign a statement acknowledging that natural vision is the gold standard and that glasses or contacts are an inferior method of seeing.

5. Under no circumstances should you ever give a woman glasses or contacts to take home. If they’re in the house, they’ll destroy a woman’s resolve to rely exclusively on natural vision.

6. When women are admitted to the hospital, you should hide their glasses or contacts and make them beg for them before you give them back. Sometimes women just need tough love to rely on natural vision.

7. It’s okay to sell reading glasses in drugstores, but they should be locked up behind the counter and women who want them should be stigmatized by being forced to wait in a separate check-out line.

Let’s face it. Every woman could have perfect vision if she just put the time and effort into it. Eyes are perfectly designed to see and they rarely, if ever, fail to function at the 20/20 level. We could dramatically increase reliance on normal vision if we gave women more support, encouraged them to believe that they can see perfectly even when they can barely see it all, reassure them that we wouldn’t be here if 1/3 of people in nature actually needed vision correction, and make it really difficult and embarrassing for them to use glasses or contacts.

Oh, and everyone should wear T-shirts like the one I’m wearing today. Look, it says, “My eyes can see; what’s your superpower?”

What do you mean you can’t see the writing? Stop squinting and just try harder!

Behold, the face of evil:

I’m sure you’ve seen this young woman’s photos plastered all over Facebook.

Her name is Kendall Jones. She’s a cheerleader, hunter, and, according to the internet, a vile scumbag who deserves to die a slow and painful death.

You see, Ms. Jones goes on trips to Africa where she hunts big game, like elephants and lions. Sometimes she tranquilizes them for the sake of scientific research, or to treat injuries on the animal , and sometimes she kills them. Kendall defends herself by saying that the hunts serve two purposes: 1) feeding hungry villagers, and 2) conservation.

I also think they make for some pretty cool Facebook photos, but that’s just me. At least, I prefer these over the pornographic garbage that clutters half of my newsfeed on a daily basis.

It’s funny that, of all the filth and depravity online, it takes an image of a dead zebra to really rile people up.

Even more peculiar: a million babies are killed every year in this country, yet that has never sparked this level of popular outrage. There are petitions circulating to have Kendall banned from both Facebook and the entire continent of Africa. The condemnation is near-universal, and the anger directed at her is unlike anything I’ve seen in a very long time.

Herein lies my struggle, America. This is why I’m such a cynic. I just can’t take your outrage seriously. We’re surrounded by death and evil, but we don’t complain until someone shoots a cheetah? That seems a bit arbitrary, if you ask me.

Many of the liberal blogs having a meltdown over Kendall Jones are the same ones that spent a week hailing Emily Letts, who filmed her own abortion. ‘What kind of monster smiles after killing something?’ they say about the woman posing with a tranquilized rhino, but not about the woman giggling while an abortionist executes her baby.

The whole dynamic is just deranged. Has the world ever known a culture as delusional as ours? Has a society ever been so confused?  I’m no anthropologist, but I have a hard time believing that any previous civilization could have developed such a perverse mix of hedonism and puritanism.  We’re told we shouldn’t bat an eye when a network sitcom centers an entire episode around teenage gay sex, but at the same time, we should be thin skinned and innocent to the point where news channels have to deliver disclaimers before airing the word ‘redskins.’

It’s utterly bizarre. If I was a space alien I’d be so completely confounded by it all that I’d probably cancel my plans to enslave the human race, thinking that something in Earth’s water supply must be driving its lifeforms insane.

Because that’s what this is: insanity. It’s not even that our morality is inverted or reversed – even that would be too logical. What we are experiencing is nothing short of moral anarchy. Now that we’ve made a mockery of virtue and a religion of death, we are left with nothing to be truly outraged about. So we become the violent answer to the man who gets home and releases his pent up anger by kicking his dog; we get home and release our pent up righteous indignation by killing the man who kicked his dog.

Personally, I don’t care about Kendall’s hobby either way. I don’t hunt myself, but I’m not opposed to it. I probably wouldn’t shoot a lion (except in self defense, should that occasion ever arise), but her actions are legal and helpful to both the townspeople she feeds and the local economy she stimulates. She says she doesn’t kill young animals or mothers with babies, and she claims that her actions help preserve the balance in the African wildlife population.

Fine. I don’t know enough about the issue to call her bluff or verify her claims. Yes, she could be full of it, for all I know. I’m sure she’s not the devil incarnate, and I’m sure she’s doing more productive things with her free time than 90 percent of her college peers, but that doesn’t mean she’s right. And if you’re pro-life — as in pro-human life — and you also oppose Kendall Jones, but you spend much more time protesting the mass killing of babies than you do the hunting of African mammals, then I respect your opinion and your consistency. Carry on. Godspeed.

I suspect, however, that only a very small percentage of the anti-Kendall Jones mob falls into this category.

The rest, by any reasonable estimation, are either in favor of, or largely indifferent to, the murder of babies. They see the killing of ‘endangered species’ as the greatest act of evil, second only to verbally opposing gay marriage, and perhaps now third to calling an overbearing female “bossy.”

It’s not that they value animal life over human life, necessarily. They are humans themselves, and I’m sure, given the choice, they’d gladly choose their own existence over even the most endangered of sea turtles. They also generally recognize the Holocaust or 9-11 to be tragedies far more serious than a wildfire that wipes out half of a forest’s native squirrel population.

They might pretend to be in touch with nature, but most of them aren’t quite keeping it real like this:

I’m not saying that they don’t sincerely love animals, I’m just saying that it’s easier to love animals. It’s easy to be pro-animal rights, which is why so many people are. It’s difficult to stand for human life. That’s really the only rhyme or reason to what is rejected and embraced in our culture. We take the easy route.  No matter what. Convenience is the key — convenient values, convenient virtues.

I can sit here all day and write poems about the beloved walrus or the hallowed dolphin, but my pro-animal stance will likely never require anything of me. I don’t have to do anything. I’ll never be forced to sacrifice for the spotted owl or the gray wolf. A humpback whale will never show up at my door and ask me to take care of it for the next 18 years. A Siberian tiger probably won’t come to my house one day and demand that I change my entire life to accommodate it. I might go out and adopt a pet, but that is always a deliberate act. Babies, on the other hand, happen when we have sex. But sex is fun, and babies are hard work. Babies intrude on our fun. They ruin it. This, and only this, is the reason why we defend the slaughter of children while weeping over the remains of a murdered leopard.

The leopard never caused us any trouble, but the babies were downright cumbersome. Indeed, we value human life, just not human life that needs to be protected and preserved at any great cost to our comfortable lifestyle.

As a eugenic society, we teeter always on the edge of psychopathy. Our acceptance of infanticide eats away at us, under the surface, inside our souls. We fear the loss of our own humanity, so we lash out every once in a while, and pour out all of our tempered moral outrage onto someone — anyone — who can give us a nice, safe outlet. Whether it’s a hunter, or a supposedly ‘homophobic’ reality TV star, or an actually racist NBA owner, we unload our vast reserves of righteous fury, reveling in the opportunity to prove to the world and to ourselves that we still have standards. We still care. We still feel.

It’s all a charade, of course. And the Indignity DuJour will soon be replaced by something else, as we flutter quickly from one puffed up atrocity to the other, never stopping long enough to ask any serious questions about it. Never letting the noise die down quietly enough to have a real conversation about anything.

I wish for once that we would stop, just for a moment, and contemplate a few things.

We are very sad that a woman killed a lion — why?

Because the lion is endangered?

Because it’s ‘majestic’ and ‘beautiful’?

OK, why does that matter? There are other beautiful things, there are other animals. We do we need these? Who cares if they are exterminated from the face of the Earth?

Because it will upset the ecosystem? OK, but who cares about the ecosystem? Why does the ecosystem matter?

Because all living organisms depend upon it? OK, but now we’re back at the original question — who cares about the living organisms?

And why do we instinctively place some organisms over others? Why aren’t you upset when I kill cockroaches, but you would be if I killed a bald eagle?

What is life, anyway? Why does it matter? What makes it valuable? What makes some life more valuable? Why is your neighbor more significant than the tree in his front yard?

Why do we weep when a life is taken? Why do we usually celebrate when a life is born? Why are you here? Why was the lion here? Why should the lion be treated with dignity? Why should you be treated with dignity?

If you answer these questions, you can only come to one of two conclusions: it’s all meaningless and nothing matters, or life is inherently sacred, especially human life.

Confront these mysteries and you will either end up a suicidal nihilist or a pro-life zealot.

There’s really no room in between, despite our fevered desire to find one.

So I’m not telling you what to think about these things, I’m only telling you that you need to think about them.

And, once you do, maybe your priorities will change a little bit.

************************

Come to my live show.

Find me on Facebook.

The post Just pretend this dead lion is a human baby, and then you won’t be so upset appeared first on The Matt Walsh Blog.

They’ve existed since before the advent of recorded human history.

They rely on ancient women’s wisdom and herbal preparations.

If they weren’t safe, the human species would no longer exist.

They provide a service that many women want.

Women know their own bodies. If women feel they are safe, then they are safe.

Am I talking about homebirth midwives or back alley abortionists? Can’t tell the difference, can you?

If we are licensing homebirth midwives (CPMs, LMs), why shouldn’t we license back alley abortionists, too? After all, it takes less education and training to end a pregnancy than to bring it to a successful conclusion.

Many women want the service that back alley abortionists provide. Moreover, it is dogma in the world of homebirth that if women feel safe, they are safe. Does that make back alley abortionists safe?

Of course not!

We know that back alley abortionists are deadly. Before the advent of safe surgical abortions, women died in droves attempting to end unwanted pregnancies. Even today, when women don’t have access to safe surgical abortion, they continue to die in droves. The reliance on ancient women’s wisdom and herbal preparations leads to serious illness and death. Even so, the deadly results at the hands of back alley abortionists have had no impact on whether our species exists; a tremendous number of women can die before population growth slows or stops.

So why shouldn’t we license back alley abortionists? Try to think of a reason that doesn’t apply equally to American homebirth midwives. You’ll be hard pressed to do so.

American homebirth advocacy is all about mistruths, half truths and outright lies. That’s pretty obvious when it comes to the blatant lie that homebirth is as safe as hospital birth, the blatant lie that childbirth interventions kill women and babies, and the blatant lie that obstetricians don’t follow scientific evidence. Therefore, homebirth advocates are increasingly applying their mistruths, half truths and outright lies to claims about women’s reproductive freedom.

Consider the following quote from Gina Crosley-Corcoran, The Feminist Breeder:

Anyone reading it might think that women are prevented from giving birth where they want and attended by whom they want. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are no restrictions, have never been any restrictions, nor will there ever be any restrictions on women choosing to give birth at home. Want to risk your baby’s life at homebirth? Go right ahead; no one will stop you. The restrictions that exist apply only to who can call herself a midwife, what training a midwife might need, and who can charge for providing midwifery services. But when you are trying to scare women, a lie is ever so much better than the truth.

And when it comes to lies, there’s none much bigger than this whopper, also courtesy of Gina.

While I appreciate the implicit acknowledgement that homebirth is far more dangerous than hospital birth, I find the underlying premise to be moronic. Just because a woman thinks something is safe does not make it safe. This is a classic example of the magical thinking that animates the “reasoning” of so many homebirth advocates. Magical thinking does not refer to magic; rather it refers to the belief that one’s thoughts have the power to change reality. For example, a small child may imagine that the reason his sister fell down and hurt herself is because he was angry at her and wished that something bad would happen.

You might think that the adults in the homebirth movement would have matured beyond magical thinking, but you would be wrong. Magical thinking (in the form of beliefs and birth affirmations) rests on the premise that grown women can change reality with their thoughts. Hence Gina’s extraordinarily inane claim that “the safest choice for any women is what SHE feels is right for her body.”

Really?

If a woman believes that smoking is the safest choice for her, does that make it safe? No.

If a woman believes that not using a seatbelt is the safest choice for her, does that make it safe? Of course not.

If a woman believes that a back alley abortionist is a safe healthcare provider, does that make back alley abortion safe. Obviously not.

I bet you can see where this is going:

If a woman believes that a homebirth midwife is a safe healthcare provider, does that make homebirth safe? Only a fool would think it does.

The idea that the choice to have homebirth is an issue of reproductive freedom makes as much sense as claiming that the choice to have a back alley abortion is an issue of reproductive freedom, in other words, no sense at all.

But as the evidence mounts that American homebirth midwives have an extraordinarily high rate of deadly outcomes, the reproductive freedom argument is looking like a much better bet than the safety argument.

What’s the difference between an American homebirth midwife and a back alley abortionist?

Absolutely nothing.

The story was horrifying even before we knew the details.

Maternal deaths in the hospital are unusual; perinatal deaths are 100 times more common. There are so few maternal deaths in the developed world that they are measured per 100,000 and most of the women who die have serious medical complications like cardiac disease or pre-existing medical conditions. Death from a routine childbirth complication like bleeding is almost unheard of in an age of blood transfusions and surgical repair … but not in an age of homebirth.

Caroline Lovell was an Australian homebirth activist.

She wrote the following in response to midwifery legislation under consideration:

On a personal note, I am quite shocked and ashamed that homebirth will no longer be a woman’s free choice in low-risk pregnancies… I feel the decision to outlaw homebirth’s is contrary to women’s rights … Please find a solution for women and babies who homebirth after this date as their lives will be in threat without proper midwifery assisstance. And as a homebirthing mother I will have no choice but to have an unassisted birth at home as this is the place I want to birth my children.

Yours sincerely,
Caroline Flammea, Nick Lovell and daughter Lulu Lovell.

She never acted on her dare, but perhaps she would be alive if she did. According to a tribute published at the time:

Caroline Emily (Flammea) Lovell

LOVELL (nee Flammea). – Caroline Emily 15.07.1975 – 24.01.2012 Passed away suddenly after giving birth to a beautiful baby girl. Beloved daughter of Jadzia (Jade), loving wife of Nick and exceptional mother of Lulu and Zahra. You taught us how to love Always in our hearts

Instead, Lovell told her midwives that she was dying, and they, with stupidity that borders on the criminal, never even examined her.

“A mother told her midwives she was dying and needed to go to hospital in the moments after she gave birth to her second daughter in her Melbourne home, the Victorian Coroners Court was told on Tuesday…

But just over an hour after the “overjoyed” couple greeted their daughter in their Watsonia home, the court heard Ms Lovell told her midwives she needed to go to hospital. Ms Lovell, 36, died later that night in the Austin Hospital.

And so Caroline Lovell bled to death … slowly, preventably … because the midwives she depended on were too ignorant, or too ideologically brainwashed, to perform even the most basic midwifery tasks. Instead, as reported by midwife Melody Bourne:

Just over an hour after Zahra was born in a birth pool, Ms Bourne said Ms Lovell was light-headed and hyperventilating, telling her midwives she was dying and needed to go to hospital.

“Gaye [Demanuele, the second midwife] then questioned Caroline as to what she was feeling, in this conversation Caroline did not identify any physical symptoms,” Ms Bourne said.

“Gaye and I also made efforts to calm and reassure Caroline.”

Five minutes later, Ms Lovell became pale, cold and unresponsive and an ambulance was called. Examination by hospital clinicians revealed Ms Lovell had suffered two tears and a blood clot.

Any real healthcare provider will tell you that the most chilling words you can hear from a patient are: “I think I’m dying.” That’s because they probably are dying and it is up to you as the provider to undertake whatever examinations and tests are necessary to prove that they are not.

It would have been laughably simple for the midwives to have assessed Lovell BEFORE they reassured her. Her life threatening blood loss would have been easily diagnosed by taking her blood pressure or checking her pulse. Nothing sophisticated was required, merely the most basic of clinical skills.

Instead:

Under questioning by Tania Cristiano, the counsel assisting coroner Peter White, Ms Bourne said this could have been identified if the midwives had examined Ms Lovell.

“There were more pressing events and there didn’t appear to be any excessive blood loss,” Ms Bourne said,

More pressing events? What could me more pressing than checking blood pressure and pulse to see if their patient was dying?

And that wasn’t the only basic task the midwives ignored. They never checked her past obstetrical history to learn that Lovell was at increased risk of bleeding to death:

Ms Bourne, who said she has since “distanced” herself from midwifery, said she was not aware of Ms Lovell suffering a postpartum haemorrhage in the hospital birth of her first daughter, Lulu.

Ms. Lovell had been warned:

Ms Lovell saw three general practitioners from the same clinic during her pregnancy, where she was warned about the risks of home births on four occasions and underwent blood tests, which revealed she was anaemic.

Dr Daniel Bevz had told the court earlier Ms Lovell was steadfast in her decision to have a “natural” birth.

“She indicated she had discussed that with previous doctors at length and did not want to enter into further discussions,” Dr Bevz said.

Had Ms. Lovell given birth unassisted, she might be alive today. When she told her husband she was dying, he may have called an ambulance to summon real medical professionals.

Instead, Ms. Lovell trusted homebirth midwives and they “reassured” her she was fine even as her life ebbed away.

Ms. Lovell trusted birth and birth killed her.

A fitting memorial to Ms. Lovell would be very strict regulation of Australian homebirth midwifery, so that no other woman or baby dies while ignorant, brain washed, negligent midwives stand by and watch.

But I predict that Australian midwives will fight that tooth and nail. Indeed, I can’t wait to see how midwifery spokesperson Hannah Dahlen tries to spin a mother’s easily preventable death at the hands of homebirth midwives who couldn’t even be bothered to check a pulse.

Whenever homebirth advocates get around to acknowledging the increased death rate at homebirth, they invariably characterize it as “tiny.” They typically say things like: The risk of neonatal death in the hospital is tiny, so even if they homebirth death rate is several multiples higher, several times tiny is still tiny.

To put that “tiny” death rate in perspective, it might be useful to do a thought experiment: what if formula killed as many babies as homebirth?

I’ve chosen to use formula as an example, because homebirth advocates are almost always lactivists as well, fanatically in favor of breastfeeding and remarkably intolerant of women who choose to bottle feed. Indeed, they have pushed governments of first world countries like the US to spend millions of dollars on public health campaigns to convince women to breastfeeding, when there are only soft benefits (fewer colds) and most of those soft benefits aren’t even proven.

Can you imagine the field day they would have if they could actually point to deaths directly attributable to formula?

Let’s suppose that formula feeding had an excess death rate over breastfeeding similar to Oregon’s excess death rate at homebirth. I’ve chosen Oregon’s data because they are the most comprehensive statistics currently available. In Oregon, hospital birth for low risk women has a neonatal death rate of 0.6/1000 (“tiny”) and a neonatal death rate at homebirth with a licensed midwife of 5.6/1000 (9X “tiny”) for an excess death rate of 5/1000.

There are 4 million babies born in the US each year. It’s not a stretch to assume that 3 million receive formula at some point during their first year. A death rate of 5/1000 translates to 15,000/3,000,000. Spread over a year, that rate would lead to the death of 41 babies who died unexpectedly each and every day simply because their mothers chose bottle feeding over breastfeeding.

Homebirth advocates/lactivists would go nuts. They would push for even greater government spending on breastfeeding promotion and support. They would decry women who found bottle feeding more convenient and in better keeping with working outside the home. They would undoubtedly taunt mothers for literally risking their babies’ lives for no better reason than the mothers’ “experience.”

It would not end there, though. The FDA would be investigating formula manufacturers, pulling products from the market and funding research to make safer formula. There would be extensive evaluation to determine if some formulas were safer than others. If it were found that the excess death rate was due to improper manufacture or testing of formula, fines would be levied and formula executives might even go to jail. Factories that had the highest death rates would almost certainly be closed. Parents would be suing those formula manufacturers and they would be winning large judgments. In short, a “tiny” excess death rate would trigger a massive reaction, because such a death rate would be viewed as appalling and utterly unacceptable.

So here’s my question to homebirth advocates:

What would you think of mothers who chose formula feeding over breastfeeding, knowing that 41 babies would unexpectedly die each and every day for no other reason than their mothers’ refusal to breastfeed?

More importantly:

Why shouldn’t women who choose hospital birth think the same thing about you?

Dear Judgey McJudgerson,

This is the picture you shared on Facebook today. You were shocked. Aghast. Horrified. Can you believe it? There are some parents (lazy jerks, I bet) who actually use these things to get their child to use the potty. I mean, just look at this thing. What’s next? Those levitating chairs from Wall-E?! It’s sick, I tell you. SICK.

Your judgey friends chimed in as well:

“That’s so disturbing.” 

“This is only for lazy parents. I would sit next to the potty and read my daughter BOOKS when we were potty-training!” 

“Wow…really? Ever heard of INTERACTING with your child instead of plopping him down in front of a SCREEN?!” 

“Whatever happened to small treats, like a sticker or a cookie? I guess I’m just old-fashioned that way!” 

“What has our society BECOME??!” 

Judgey, let me introduce you to my son.

Henry has Spina bifida. In about a year, we will begin something called a bowel program for him. Henry has no bowel control. I know, I know what you’re thinking: What baby does have bowel control? That’s what I thought for a long time, anyway.

You know when babies crawl around on the floor, and then they stop what they’re doing, their faces turn red, and they strain VERY OBVIOUSLY to push something out? And that “something” turns out to be poop? Those babies can control their bowels.

For Henry, he poops (and pees) pretty much all day long. It just comes right out. No straining, no pushing. No notice at all, actually, and we’re not sure how much he’s even able to feel down there. Regardless, he can’t control his bowel movements. Poop just pops out of him randomly. (Which, let me tell you, makes me feel like a super shitty parent, no pun intended. People have been known to pick up Henry, wrinkle their noses, and hand him back to me — oops, a poopy diaper! Mommy must not have realized! What they don’t know is that I just got done changing a poopy diaper five minutes ago. And ten minutes before that. And thirty minutes before that. Kids with Spina bifida tend to have lots of really bad diaper rash — is it any surprise?)

So. My point. In a year or so, we’ll have to start a bowel program for this guy, in order to keep him “socially continent.” This means that we’ll perform something called an enema, either once a day or every 48 hours or so, that completely flushes out his bowels so he won’t poop at all during the day. This will allow him to be around other kids and other parents without being the “stinky one.” Great, right?

Here’s what you don’t know about enemas: Kids who get enemas — which is most of the kids who have spina bifida or any kind of spinal cord damage — have to sit on the potty for a long, long time. Much longer, in fact, than a child with typical bowel control. Enemas flush out a lot of poop, so they take a while to work. Kids who use enemas for their bowel program can sit on the potty for forty-five, sixty, or sometimes even upwards of ninety minutes.

Judgey, when was the last time you had to get your toddler to do anything for upwards of ninety minutes? 

Will we purchase this iPad toilet? That remains to be seen.

But, Judgey, you better believe that if this thing gets my son to sit on the toilet for ninety minutes, I’m going to purchase the hell out of it. And I won’t be one bit sorry.

Know what I think? This thing is freaking great. It’s a masterpiece. Potty training is hard, with a bowel program or without, and whatever keeps your kid socially continent and potty-trained before they go to kindergarten, I’m all for.

And you know what else? I’m just gonna say it. All types of parents buy these kinds of things for their kid. Maybe they have a child who is fully potty-trained EXCEPT for poop, and getting her to sit still and poop in the toilet for more than thirty seconds is an impossibility without some screen time (I have one of those children). Maybe they have a kid with really bad sensory issues, and they need some hardcore distraction because poop just feels weird. Or maybe their kid just won’t sit still and kindergarten is fast approaching and they’ll try anything because they’re desperate.

My point, Judgey, is that there are millions of different kinds of people, and there are millions of different ways of parenting. You’ve appointed yourself the Official Worrier of Other People’s Children and Society In General, and you’ve decreed it a crime against humanity to use one of these things to toilet train, because technology will rot their brains!. And relationships will suffer. And WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!. But if you step outside of your self-righteous little bubble, maybe you could learn to appreciate a parent whose kid hasn’t potty-trained as easily as yours. And maybe instead of judgment, you can offer compassion. Or understanding.

Or maybe just mind your own freaking business.

 

 

No love,

Wifeytini

Six months into our pregnancy with Henry, after our bombshell diagnosis, Lou and I would make regular treks up to Park Ridge to see the Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist, who kept us abreast on how the baby was doing in-utero. Since I’m ridiculously extroverted and I adore small talk, I started chatting up the receptionist as we were filling out some paperwork, post-appointment (Lou, his usual introvert self, was probably silently willing me to stop talking). At this point, we had already been told by two separate doctors that Henry would be totally paralyzed from the waist down.

We started talking about her kids — three girls! — and I asked her if she preferred girls, or if she might try for a boy. We both quickly agreed that the baby’s sex wasn’t really that important — boy or girl, they were blessings.

“Oh, I like girls, but it doesn’t matter to me!” she exclaimed. “You know, as long as they’re healthy and running around!”

 

I felt it and Lou felt it, simultaneously — that hot knife of grief in the belly. I think he actually winced. I laughed, bewildered, and said something like, “LOL I KNOW RIGHT? HAHAHA OTHERWISE IT WOULD BE AWFUL, WOULDN’T IT, IF THEY COULDN’T WALK???” and then slumped back to the waiting room with my paperwork.

Later, on the ride home, Lou bristled. “She works for a maternal-fetal specialist,” he grumbled. “What was she thinking? Healthy and running around? What the hell?”

That phrase has haunted me, ever since we found out that our child would be born with a birth defect. As long as it’s healthy! People chirp at you, when you talk about finding out the gender. Boy? Doesn’t matter! Girl? Who gives a shit! Nothing else matters but perfect health! And once you discover that your kid isn’t healthy, it almost feels like a threat.

Because what if it’s not healthy?

What then?

That phrase terrifies me. Because we’re talking about our children — an arrangement that’s supposed to be unconditional — and as long as they’re healthy! is alarmingly conditional. Everyone’s happy for a new baby and congratulations are in order — but only under certain criteria. Right? And if baby doesn’t meet that criteria, well, all bets are off. All the congratulations vanish. Your support system bottoms out from under you. People start whispering. Doctors start talking about going in another direction. Changing the course of the pregnancy. Disrupting the pregnancy. Termination. Because, clearly, if your child isn’t picture-perfect, a SWIFT DEATH is preferable.

 

It’s not wrong to want a healthy baby, make no mistake. Nobody prefers a medically fragile baby. Nobody wants to see her child suffer. So we wish for health. We make ominous, defensive, vague statements. Everything will be okay — unless it’s not! 

Let’s retire that phrase. Shall we?

It’s time to stop putting health on a pedestal.

Is health important? Uh, yeah, duh. Is it the summit of our human experience? Is it the sole quality off of which we should determine the worth of our children? No.

We need to move past this fatalistic attitude we have that says a life with a disability is tragic and hopeless. We need to get over the idea that a handicapped baby is better off dead. We’ve had handicapped presidents, for God’s sake. We’ve had handicapped olympic medalists. One of the most sought-after motivational speakers on the planet has neither arms nor legs, and I’ll bet you a hundred bucks he’s smarter and more physically active than I am. For the love of God, one of the most poetic and well-written books in existence was written by a man who could only blink his left eye.

And when we say as long as it’s healthy!, we’re negating all the unlimited potential we have as human beings. We don’t need to be “healthy” to be heroic. And we shouldn’t need to be able-bodied to be considered human beings.

And when we say as long as it’s healthy!, we’re telling parents that our support as a society is conditional. Have a healthy baby, and you’re golden. Come back from your ultrasound with a special needs diagnosis, and we’ll need to start discussing your options.

 

Come on, society. We’re better than that.

The following is a guest post from Martin of Studenomics, where he’s all about helping you reach financial freedom before you hit 30 so that your life doesn’t suck.

The one thing that has allowed me to travel whenever I feel like it, save up more money, and create a flexible lifestyle has been freelancing. I’m not saying that freelancing will solve all of your problems, but imagine what you could do with the extra money or the freedom?

We could all use an extra $100 or $500 per month. This could help you plan a trip, pay off your debt, or just have more savings.

There’s just one problem. How do you get you started? I’m sure that you read the income updates from Alexa (they’re awesome!) and get excited. The only issue is that you might not know what to do next. Your motivation fades and you just wish that you could get into freelancing.

How do you find multiple freelancing clients?

You find one client.

Okay, I’m sorry! I realize how obnoxious that sounds. Allow me to explain myself please…

How do you land that first client?

This is the trickiest part of all. Getting started is always very intimidating. You don’t know if you should start a blog, go on Twitter, or read another eBook.

Here’s the thing: you need to do whatever it takes to land that first client. This varies on what field you want to get into. Some fields are all about networking, while others are about the final product and nothing else.

What are my best tips for landing that first client?

• Facebook ads/a page. Everyone is on Facebook! It’s actually annoying. My brother and a few friends use Facebook to promote their service. My brother cuts hair. So he posts pictures of haircuts to a page and word has spread over time. Facebook isn’t just for creeping your ex-girlfriend.
• Kijiji. My friend posts his guitar-teaching ads on here and he usually finds clients. All you have to do is copy the best ads on there.
• Job boards. The Internet is filled with job boards. What are you waiting for?

I know that these aren’t exactly groundbreaking tips, but sometimes you have to cover the basics and be reminded of them as well.

The point is that you need to hustle to land that first client. From there you can work on building your freelancing portfolio.

What if you can’t find a freelancing client?

This is the worst part. You feel like nobody cares about you and you want to give up. Well, I don’t want you to give up or we’re going to have problems.

So what’s one to do?

You have to do work for free and use this as your portfolio/testimonials.

I didn’t realize how powerful this was until it worked on me. A young lady contacted me about writing. I said no. She offered to work for free on the basis that I would consider hiring her in the future and that she could use me as a referral. Guess what? I hired her and I was used a testimonial.

Free doesn’t sound sexy, but you have to prove yourself somewhere. I’ve recently started pro wrestling and I have been told not to expect payment until many shows in. Four shows in and not a dollar made yet. That’s not going to stop me.

What happens when you land your first client (paid or unpaid)?

This is where you have concrete evidence that you’re on to something. Someone actually wants your help or your service. This is where you start building momentum. This is where things start looking up.

One client will always lead to others. So if you want multiple freelancing clients, all you need to do is land your first client and then over-deliver. You need to hustle. You need to ensure that you do the best job possible so that this person recommends you. Or else, why bother?

If you want to read more, you need to check out my book on Amazon on how you can start freelancing.

Good luck and I’m here to help you get started!

The post How to Find Multiple Freelancing Clients to Make Money appeared first on Single Moms Income.

Gina Phillips, the homebirth midwife who was supposed to be at the labor of baby James‘ mother, but was home “resting” instead, will be the subject of a homebirth midwifery peer review next week.

It’s difficult to learn the details, because this process, which is supposed to be a form of accountability and a way to improve safety, is shrouded in secrecy by Texas homebirth midwives. But I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction. Despite alleged grievous negligence:

• she reportedly left a VBAC patient who had been labor more than 24 hours under the care of her student while she went home;
• the patient’s excessive bleeding was allegedly reported to her by phone, but she told her student it was normal;
• the patient allegedly experienced an abruption;
• transfer was delayed so long that the baby allegedly suffered a catastrophic brain injury and subsequently died;

I predict that the peer review will be a thorough whitewash, with minimal if any consequences for Phillips, and no new standards that will bind other homebirth midwives.

What is supposed to happen during clinical peer review?

According to Wikipedia:

… The primary purpose of peer review is to improve the quality and safety of care. Secondarily, it serves to reduce the organization’s vicarious malpractice liability and meet regulatory requirements… Peer review also supports the other processes that healthcare organizations have in place to assure that physicians are competent and practice within the boundaries of professionally-accepted norms.

Peer review is not a morbidity and mortality conference where anyone present can contribute to analysis of the case. Peer review is a formal process in which reviewers are carefully selected, documents and information are introduced and the person who is the subject of the review can explain why he or she chose a specific treatment course.

I have been told that the plan for the peer review of Gina Phillips is that she will be reviewed by other midwives who are there to have their own cases reviewed. If true, that would be horrifying. As mentioned above, I would like to obtain definitive, official information about the way that this review will be conducted, but there is no official information. The process appears to be entirely informal, random, and obviously biased.

It is, of course, rather difficult to hold a homebirth midwife to specific safety standards when their national organization, the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), rejects ANY safety standards, preferring to leave the determination of safety up to each individual midwife. Presumably that means that if a homebirth midwife thinks abandoning a VBAC patient during a prolonged labor to go home and “rest” is safe, then it is safe.

These stories of egregious practice by homebirth midwives are replayed again and again, and babies die as a result. Homebirth advocates like to pretend that such midwives are outliers and every profession has “bad apples.” I predict that this peer review is likely to reveal that there is no such thing as a “bad apple” in homebirth midwifery, that the real purpose of homebirth midwifery peer review is to exonerate the midwife in question, and that dead babies are merely excusable collateral damage.

If a homebirth midwife faces no consequences or minimal consequences for literally abandoning a high risk patient in labor, then there are no standards in homebirth midwifery at all.

Let me speak directly to those in charge of the Texas homebirth midwifery peer review, whomever they may be:

We will be watching the outcome of this peer review. I hope that you will prove me wrong and recommend major curtailment of practice or even surrender of license in this case. We want James to be #notburiedtwice, first by his parents, and then by the homebirth community, which typically acts as if dead babies are just an unavoidable cost of doing business and require no response beyond a slap on the homebirth midwife’s wrist, leaving her to go forth and preside over other homebirth disasters and deaths.

Don’t whitewash the death of baby James.

Several weeks ago I wrote about the one size fits all approach of homebirth midwives. No matter the question, the answer is always homebirth.

Natural childbirth advocates have a one size fits all approach, too:

Personal characteristics are irrelevant. Advanced maternal age, maternal obesity, pre-existing maternal disease? It doesn’t matter because the counseling and treatment plan are always the same: you can and should have an unmedicated vaginal birth.

Medical history is irrelevant. Had a previous shoulder dystocia, C-section, postpartum hemorrhage? Who care? You can and should have an unmedicated vaginal birth.

Complications are irrelevant. Baby is breech, have gestational diabetes, colonized by group B strep? Who cares? You can and should have an unmedicated vaginal birth.

Labor complications are irrelevant. Dysfunctional labor, prolonged rupture of membranes, pushing for 4 hours? Who cares? You should still stay home because you can and should have an unmedicated vaginal birth.

In my piece about homebirth midwives, I ascribed this one size fits all approach to ignorance and dogma, and that goes for natural childbirth advocates as well. Ignorance refers not only to obstetrics, but also to basic statistics. One facet of this ignorance is the mistaken belief that statistics for a group as a whole apply equally to each individual.

Take the case of VBAC (vaginal birth after Cesarean). The overall success rate for attempted VBAC is nearly 76%. Natural childbirth advocates think that means that each individual woman’s chance of a successful VBAC is also nearly 76%. Nothing could be further from the truth. Both the chance of having a successful VBAC and the chance of a uterine rupture are modified by past medical history and factors in the current pregnancy. That was the take home message of the lecture on VBAC that I attended at the recent Harvard Medical School Review of Obstetrics .

For example:

History of a previous vaginal birth impacts the chances of successful VBAC Women who have had a previous vaginal delivery (VD) have an 86% chance of successful VBAC, and women who have had a successful VBAC in a previous pregnancy have a nearly 90% chance of having another. But for women who have never had a VD, the chance of successful VBAC is only 61%.

The reason for a previous C-section also impacts the success rate of attempted VBAC If the previous C-section was done for a non-recurring condition like breech, the chances of successful VBAC are higher than for women whose previous C-section was performed for dystocia.

The larger the baby, the lower the chance of successful VBAC Although macrosomia (baby larger than 4000 gm) in the absence of other risk factors is not an indication for repeat C-section, the size of the baby definitely affects the chance of success. For example, while a woman who had a previous C-section and no vaginal deliveries has an overall chance of successful VBAC in the range of 60+%, the chance of success drops to 38% if the baby is over 4500 gm. And if the previous C-section was done because the baby didn’t fit, the chance of a successful VBAC with a baby over 4500 gm is only 29%.

Other factors also have a large impact on success For example, if the baby’s head has not descended into the pelvis at the start of labor, the chance of successful VBAC drops to only 10%.

Maternal factors affect success The chance of successful VBAC drops as maternal age increases, and as maternal BMI (body mass index) increases. Women over age 35 and women with a BMI greater than 30 have a lower chance of successful VBAC.

The most dreaded complication of attempting a VBAC is rupture of the uterus, leading to massive hemorrhage, death of the baby and possible death of the mother. The risk of rupture also depends on the circumstances surrounding the previous C-section and characteristics of mother and baby in the current pregnancy.

Overall, elective repeat C-section is safer for the baby, and vaginal delivery is safer for the mother But those risks are not equal. The risk of death of the baby in attempted VBAC is 10X than the risk of death of the mother from a repeat C-section.

The worst situation for both mother and baby is a failed attempt at VBAC. While the overall risk of uterine rupture is 7/1000, that jumps to 23/1000 in a failed attempt. Therefore, the risk of rupture is directly dependent on the chance of success.

Other factors also affect the risk of rupture These include the type of incision on the uterus (transverse is safer than vertical), the length of time since the last pregnancy (an inter-pregnancy interval of less than 6 months triples the risk of rupture), and the timing of the previous C-section (a preterm C-section has a higher risk of rupture in a subsequent pregnancy than a term C-section).

The bottom line is that an individual woman’s chance for a successful VBAC and risk of a uterine rupture depend on her specific circumstances.

Should a woman try for a VBAC?

Natural childbirth advocates, who take a one size fits all approach to everything, will counsel every woman to attempt a VBAC and quote an overall risk of success that may not actually apply to that woman.

In contrast, obstetricians, who provide care customized to the individual woman, can offer her a realistic assessment of her chances of a successful VBAC, and a realistic assessment of the risk of a uterine rupture. Ultimately, of course, each woman has to decide for herself which risks she is willing to take, but she can only make an informed decision if she has all the information. The one size fits all approach does not allow her to make an informed decision.

Only a personalized risk assessment, based on HER history, HER medical conditions, and the size and position of HER baby will allow her to make an informed choice for VBAC or elective repeat C-section.

Sometimes I really fear for the future of midwifery.

It has gone from being a noble profession, saving countless lives and always struggling to save more, to a bunch of clowns drumming up business and always struggling to drum up more.

The amount of stupidity and wishful thinking spewed by these fools is epic. Case in point: a post from the hilariously misnamed blog Midwife Thinking entitled The Curse of Meconium Stained Liquor.

Now you or I might think that the curse is that when excrement is inhaled into a baby’s lungs, it can result in severe respiratory illness and death. But for this midwifery clown, the “curse” is the potential loss of business. But never fear; the all purpose tool wielded by people who profit from homebirth is always available: it’s just a variation of normal!

Letting me repeat that: rather than lose business, Rachel Reed, Midwife (Not) Thinking, simply announces that breathing in excrement is just another variation of normal.

The motivation of the midwife is apparent from the very first paragraph:

Dear unborn baby,

Please consider holding your poo in until after you are born. The big people on the outside get very stressed about your poo and will want to change the way you are birthed if they find any evidence that you have failed to keep it in. Your mother will be told that you are in danger, and will be strapped to a CTG monitor. This will: reduce her ability to help you through her pelvis by moving; prevent her from using water to relax; and increase your chance of being born by c-section. Your mother will also have her time limits for labour tightened up. This may lead to labour being induced or augmented which will put both of you at risk of further interventions. You will be expected to get through your mother’s vagina quickly and if you take too long you will be pulled out with medical instruments…

Imagine that, those evil obstetricians will compromise the birth process for no better reason than to maximize the birth outcome: a healthy, live baby.

But Rachel Reed knows better. She has her priorities in order: it’s more important to have an intervention free labor than for a baby to be able to breathe or even survive.

Rachel is all over this:

MAS is the major concern when meconium is floating about in the amniotic fluid. It is an extremely rare complication – around 2-5% of the 15-20% of babies with meconium stained liquor will develop MAS (Unsworth & Vause 2010). Of the 2-5% of the 15-20%, 3-5% of babies will die. OK enough %s of %s – basically it is very rare but can be fatal.

Apparently both math and logical thinking are hard for Rachel, so let me make it easy for her. One in 5 babies will have meconium in the amniotic fluid. Of those 1 in 20 will become seriously ill (respiratory distress, mechanical ventilation, prolonged NICU stay, risk of death). Of those, nearly 1 in 20 will die. In other words, 1% of babies will have end up with a life threatening illness. That’s not rare. And that illness will kill 5% of those ill babies. That’s not rare, either.

Or, put another way, once a mother learns there is meconium in her baby’s amniotic fluid, there is a 1 in 20 chance of serious complications. And if her baby does experience severe complications, there’s a very real chance that he or she will die. In the US, that means that there are 25,000-35,000 cases of meconium aspiration syndrome (MAS) per year, and approximately 1500 deaths.

I would have thought that anyone with more than two functioning brain cells would recognize that excrement in the lungs is a bad thing, but not Rachel Reed. As far as she’s concerned, it’s not a big deal because:

Meconium is a mixture of mostly water (70-80%) and a number of other interesting ingredients (amniotic fluid, intestinal epithelial cells, lanugo, etc.).

You know what else is 70% water? Battery acid, and I suspect that even Rachel Reed would recognize that battery acid is very harmful.

It’s the other stuff in meconium (intestinal cells, hair, etc.) that makes it dangerous when it ends up in the lungs. What does it do?

This lecture for medical students explains how meconium damages a baby’s lungs:

Decreased alveolar ventilation related to lung injury, ventilation-perfusion mismatch and air-trapping.
• Pneumothorax or pneumomediastinum in 15-30% of cases
• Persistent pulmonary hypertension (PPHN) in severe MAS(increased pulmonary vascular resistance with right-to-left shunting)
• Fetal acidemia
• Chemical pneumonitis
• Surfactant inactivation caused by meconium’s disruption of surface tension

So meconium makes it much for difficult for a baby to expand his lungs, to absorb oxygen and can even lead to a hole in the lung causing it to collapse.

But meconium is not merely an irritant, it is a symptom of another serious problem, lack of oxygen getting to the baby during labor. The baby responds to the severe stress of lack of oxygen with a response similar to “fight or flight”: it defecates.

So there are two reasons to deliver a baby expeditiously once it has defecated in the amniotic fluid. First, the meconium itself is harmful to the baby’s lungs and the more meconium is sucked into the lungs, the worse the harm is likely to be. Second, a baby who has passed meconium is often a baby in distress, and the longer that oxygen deprivation lasts, the more severe the consequences are likely to be. Hence the desire to use whatever interventions are necessary to deliver the baby expeditiously.

This is not rocket science, but apparently it is too hard for Rachel to understand. She offers her bizarre take on meconium aspiration:

So you would think that the sensible thing to do if a baby has passed meconium (for whatever reason) is to create conditions that are least likely to result in hypoxia and MAS. This is where I get confused because common practice is to do things that are known to cause hypoxia, for example:

Inducing labour if the waters have broken (with meconium present) and there are no contractions or if labour is ‘slow’ in an attempt to get the baby out of the uterus quickly.
Performing an ARM (breaking the waters) to see if there is meconium in the waters when there are concerns about the fetal heart rate.
Creating concern and stress in the mother which can reduce the blood flow to the placenta.
Directed pushing to speed up the birth.
Having extra people in the room (paediatricians), bright lights and medical resus equipment which may stress the mother and reduce oxytocin release.
Cutting the umbilical cord before the placenta has finished supporting the transition to breathing in order to hand the baby to the paediatrician.”

The stupid, it burns. It’s the equivalent of approaching the situation of a child drowning in a lake by claiming that the best response is to avoid interventions like rescuing the child and, instead, wait patiently for its body to float to shore. It’s the equivalent of claiming that the “stress” of a frantic rescue with bright lights (oh, the horror!) is more damaging than the lack of oxygen in the child’s lungs.

Rachel’s entire piece is a monument to the stupidity and venality of homebirth midwives, but some parts are more idiotic than others. My personal favorite:

Avoid an ARM during labour so that any meconium present is not known about until the membranes rupture spontaneously …

That statement is a perfect illustration for a new motto for homebirth midwives:

Ignorance is power!

If that’s the case then midwife Rachel Reed is very powerful indeed.

In the ongoing discussion about my tone, no one has picked up on what seems most noticeable to me, the dramatic difference between the way that laypeople talk about me and the way that professional homebirth advocates talk about me. Rarely does a week go by that some lay homebirth advocate does not refer to me as mean and explain why no one should listen to me.

What do professional homebirth advocates do? They don’t talk about me at all … which is pretty remarkable if you think about it. They fell all over the Wax study and will tell you in great detail what is wrong with it, but they don’t mention my posts because they CAN’T rebut them. There is nothing factually wrong with what I write and they know it. They don’t dare mention me because they know how very persuasive the truth can be.

Not a single one will publicly debate me because they know they will be eviscerated in short order. They ban me and delete me and they ban and delete anyone who has learned the truth from me, regardless of how nicely those other people tell the truth.

This, to me, is the ethical scandal at the heart of professional homebirth advocacy. Sure there are some professional homebirth advocates who are buffoons, like Jennifer Margulies or Judy Slome Cohain. They don’t understand science and they have toddler level reasoning abilities: if something makes them happy, they believe it. But people like Melissa Cheyney, Wendy Gordon, and Aviva Romm, KNOW that they are hiding hideous homebirth death rates and they simply don’t care. If they put half the energy they use to hide the truth into improving homebirth safety, there would be no need for this blog in the first place.

Professional homebirth advocacy has no safety standards of any kind, because it is not about caring for babies. It is about improving the employment opportunities and reimbursement rates for high school graduates who want to “play” midwife but find it too hard to get a real midwifery degree.

Am I “meen”? I wouldn’t call it that. I would say that I am very, very angry… and I let it show. I feel I have a responsibility to speak out against what I see as the moral corruption at the heart of homebirth advocacy, the willingness to bury dead babies twice. First to put them in little coffins in the ground because homebirth “midwives” can’t be bothered to care as much about safety as about reimbursement. Second, to bury them from the public conscience so as not to affect the economic bottom line of homebirth midwives.

That’s why I came down so hard on Aviva Romm. I deliberately maneuvered her into a position where she had to choose between lying or running away. She chose to run away, and leave those little dead bodies scattered wherever they may fall. It is more important for her to preserve her credibility within the crunchy community, and keep selling quack books about quack subjects, than to speak the truth. Frankly, that willingness to place profits over truth makes me nauseated.

I started this blog because I couldn’t abide the lies from homebirth and natural childbirth advocates, but I keep at it, because I feel I have a responsibility to babies and mothers. Who will speak for babies like Wren Jones, who died of group B strep sepsis on the day he was born, because his parents would hoodwinked by a “midwife” who told them to treat a dangerous bacterium with cloves of garlic in the vagina? Who will speak for Magnus Snyder, who died after a protracted struggle to live because the “midwives” who cared for his mother relished the thought of delivering a breech baby for the first time and were more concerned with their “opportunity” than a baby’s life. Who will speak for Abel Andrews, who cannot speak for himself because the “midwives” who cared for him didn’t know how to perform a resuscitation and left him with a severe brain injury?

I can tell you damn straight who won’t speak for them. Melissa Cheyney won’t speak for them. Wendy Gordon won’t speak for them. Aviva Romm won’t speak for them.

So I ask you, who will speak for Wren, Magnus, Abel and hundreds of others if I don’t? Who will open everyone’s eyes to the suffering and deaths of babies at homebirth if I can’t? Who will rhetorically grab everyone around the throat and force them to look at what they would prefer to ignore if not me?

Am I “meen”? Maybe, but if that’s what it takes to get mothers, homebirth advocates and legislators to look at the truth, I’m proud of it.

It’s no secret that I am strenuously working for the abolition of the CPM (certified professional midwife credential). And it’s no secret that I am confident that the bogus “credential” will be abolished eventually. The only outstanding question is how many babies will die at their hands before they are put out of business.

Why should the CPM credential be abolished?

I have given many reasons in the past including the fact that CPMs have less education and training than ANY other midwives in the first world and the fact that they would be ineligible for licensure in the Netherlands, the UK, Canada, Australia or any other industrialized country. In fact, if you’d like to know all of the many reasons, you can watch the video in the sidebar of this blog.

Today, though, I want to give the simplest possible answer, one that legislators, doctors, public health officials and even homebirth advocates can understand:

CPMs don’t have any safety standards of any kind.

• The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have published 152 Clinical Bulletins to establish parameters for safe practice for all obstetricians.
• The American College of Nurse Midwives has published 11 Clinical Practice Bulletins to establish parameters for safe practice for all real midwives.
• The Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) has published ZERO bulletins to establish any parameters, safe or otherwise.

Can you think of any other group of professionals that has never published a single guideline for safe practice? I can’t.

MANA is not a professional organization. It is a special interest lobby and special interest lobbies don’t concern themselves with safety.

It would be bad enough if MANA and CPMs ignored safety, but the truly chilling fact is that MANA and CPMs actually OPPOSE parameters for safe practice.

Consider the recent paper published by MANA executives, Outcomes of Care for 16,924 Planned Home Births in the United States: The Midwives Alliance of North America Statistics Project, 2004 to 2009. Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that the authors lied about the fact that their data show that homebirth increases the risk of perinatal death by at least 450% and probably a whole lot more.

Let’s look at the appalling death rates that the authors didn’t lie about.

For example:

Of 222 babies presenting in breech position, 5 died either during labor or the neonatal period.

So the homebirth death rate for breech was 20/1000 compared to approximately 0.8/1000 in the hospital. That’s a breech death rate 25X higher (2400%) than the hospital.

MANA has known about this astronomical death rate for 5 years. What have they done to mitigate it? NOTHING!

At no point during those 5 years did the executives at MANA let women know about the extreme risk posed by breech homebirth.

At no point during those 5 years did MANA publish a clinical practice bulletin to inform their own members about the extreme risk posed by breech homebirth.

In fact, homebirth midwives continued to lobby to extend scope of practice to INCREASE breech homebirths.

And even today, in the face of publication of the exact magnitude of the extreme risk posed by breech homebirth, homebirth midwives and their allies are CONTINUING to lobby against an efforts to restrict breech homebirth.

Typical of these efforts in this Change.org petition:

The Arizona State Legislature is considering adopting a new bill that would make it illegal for home birth midwives to attend breech, VBAC, and multiple births (SB1157)…

A recent study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health shows that current science supports home birth for breech and VBAC patients.

I don’t know if the author of the petition is a liar or a fool, but the study showed that science (current or otherwise) does NOT support breech homebirth because the death rate is an appaling 20/1000.

Where is MANA and its executives in this attempt to void any safety regulations in Arizona? They are nowhere to be found. Even though MANA knows that its OWN DATA shows breech homebirth has a hideous mortality rate, they are silent.

The CPM should be abolished because CPMs are not health professionals; they are business women who don’t give a damn about safety and care only about their bottom line. They have literally NO standards for safe clinical practice, which is unfathomable for a purported health care organization, but entirely predictable in an economic lobbying organization.

The CPM credential is a public relations ploy designed to trick legislators and laypeople into believing that homebirth midwifery a profession. It’s not and the sooner the CPM is abolished, the sooner the deaths at their hands will end.

“I think it’s safe to say that the entire abortion industry is based on a lie…”

That’s a quote from Norma McCorvey, AKA Jane Roe, the woman whose Supreme Court case resulted in the legalization of abortion in the United States.

The abortion industry is based on a lie. The abortion industry thrives on lies. The abortion industry depends on lies. The abortion industry is an Empire of Death, built upon a foundation of lies.

So is it any wonder that America’s new Abortion Mascot, Wendy Davis, has turned out to be — get ready for this — a liar?

When politicians lie, we will often very politely refer to it as a “mischaracterization” or a “misrepresentation” or a “misstatement,” but I think “lie” is a much simpler way of putting it. Wendy Davis isn’t a micharacterizer; she’s a liar. What else could we expect? The woman catapulted herself to national stardom by delivering an epic pro-abortion screed for over ten hours. She used late term abortion as the fuel to rocket herself into the spotlight. She delivered her Death Manifesto – her Mein Kampf – and it made her a mainstream sensation. Lies? Evil cannot be communicated in any other way.

If lies did not exist, there would be no Hell and there would be no abortion.

She painted a picture of herself as a woman who’d overcome great obstacles to eventually achieve the distinction of being the 90 millionth liberal feminist to exploit the death of children for her own personal gain. You know, just your classic American Success Story.

Unfortunately, some of the facts here are “blurry.”  She claimed to be a divorced teen mother who lived in a trailer and eventually paid her way through college.

In reality, she was never a divorced teen mother. She divorced at 21, lived in a trailer for only a few months, moved to an apartment, and eventually married a lawyer. Her second husband paid for her last two years at college and for her time in law school. Here’s a fun morsel she seems to have omitted from her autobiography: she divorced him the day after he made the final school payment. The initial divorce filings cite Wendy’s adultery as one of the reasons for the split. The courts awarded custody of her two daughters to her husband. She then ran for Fort Worth city council.

Finally, after such a harrowing journey, she stood up in pink tennis shoes and spent half a day explaining why babies should still be executed after 20 weeks.

Inspiring, isn’t it?

Davis, of course, deflected criticisms over her lies and omissions, saying, “my story is the story of millions of Texas women.”

Wendy Davis’ story is the story of millions of Texas women? Really? I certainly hope not.

Millions of Texas women get their law degrees paid for by their rich lawyer husbands, who they then divorce before becoming an extremist shill for Planned Parenthood? Millions? For God’s sake, what has Texas become? New York?

In some ways, though, Wendy’s tale is very much par-for-the-course. It isn’t the story of Texas women, but it is the story of the abortion business. They both lie to get what they want. They both paint false narratives because the real narrative isn’t quite so palatable.

Take Planned Parenthood, for example. Planned Parenthood lies as a matter of policy. If you put a Planned Parenthood executive in a lie detector, the thing would probably explode. In fact, it would be much easier to list the few times a PP official has told the truth about something. That list would likely begin with the PP lobbyist who openly endorsed infanticide during a Florida legislative committee hearing, saying the decision to kill a baby who survives an abortion should be left to the doctor and the “patient.” Patient, in this case, refers not to the dying baby, but the mother.

(Side note: Planned Parenthood responded to the controversy this sparked by dismissing the whole discussion as “speculation about a vague set of extremely unlikely and highly unusual medical circumstances.” Do you notice the irony? Pro-abortion advocates often attempt to corner pro-lifers by bringing up “life of the mother” scenarios, where an abortion would be required to save a woman from certain death. THAT is “speculation” about “unlikely and unusual medical circumstances.” The pro-aborts are the ones who argue abortion almost exclusively by tossing around the hard and rare cases. The hypocrisy never ends with these people.)

Honesty from Planned Parenthood is like a New York Jets Super Bowl appearance – it only happens once every 50 or 60 years. That’s why we’d have to go back to the mid-20th century for another example: A 1950′s Planned Parenthood brochure admitted, in an attempt to differentiate the procedure from other birth control methods, that abortion “kills the life of a baby.”

Well, on that we agree, Planned Parenthood.

And that’s it. That’s all I have in the “truthful” column.

On the other hand, If we wish to discuss PP lies and deceptions, we could break it down on a minute-by-minute basis. We could talk about the lies by omission. We could talk about their refusal to empower women with all available information before taking their money and their child’s life.

We could talk about their reckless protests against laws that would merely require them to offer an ultrasound to a woman before performing an abortion. These are rules that would only hold Planned Parenthood to the exact same standards already imposed on every other part of the medical field.

We could talk about the case in Illinois where they built the largest abortion mill in the nation, under false pretenses.

We could talk about the undercover video that shows a Planned Parenthood manager advising a pimp on how to best procure “services” for his underage prostitutes.

We could talk about Planned Parenthood’s claim that Kermit Gosnell was a rogue outlier; an aberration who only existed because pro-life activists forced desperate women to seek out his services. We could dismantle that notion by pointing to the Planned Parenthood facility in Delaware that was put under investigation after two nurses resigned, citing “ridiculously unsafe” conditions and “a meat market style of assembly line abortions.” In the span of a few months, five women were sent to the hospital as a result of botched abortions at the clinic. Meanwhile, there’s the kindergarten teacher who was killed by an abortion performed by Dr. Carhart in Maryland. In the same state, two other abortionists had their licenses suspended for killing another woman through a bungled abortion. Also last year, a woman at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Austin became the eighth patient to require emergency medical attention after an abortion at the facility. In Austin in the same year, three former workers at Aaron Women’s Clinic in Houston went public with evidence of horrific illegal abortions and infanticide by Dr. Douglas Karpen.

Read about many more cases, all similar to Gosnell, here.

We could talk about Planned Parenthood’s penchant for fraud. Fraud, like the Medicaid scam that that ended with Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast paying a 1.4 million dollar settlement.

We could talk about Planned Parenthood’s habit of not reporting rape to authorities. A habit that got them into significant trouble in Louisiana, where the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals cited three different clinics for failure to report child rape. At least one of the guilty establishments has since closed down, which will tragically hinder some women’s ability to be severely injured in an unsafe procedure conducted by quacks who only got into the abortion business because they couldn’t hack it in real medicine.

We could talk about these things, and so much more, but I’m already pushing 1300 words and I haven’t even gotten to the point. So here it is:

Out of all the lies that stream like rivers of blood and sewage from corporate Planned Parenthood, the worst, most brazen, most obvious, and most influential has been this one: “Only three percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortion.”

You’ve heard that one a time or two, haven’t you? I bet, regardless of how thoroughly I debunk such silliness right now, several people will still reiterate the statistic in the comments below. That’s because the line is just that — a line. It’s something they say, and it gives abortion proponents something to repeat. They put it on the music sheet and their chorus sings right along. How many of them have taken the time to verify the claim? Not many. Probably less than three percent.

Planned Parenthood arrives at the “three percent” figure by employing a little bit of blatant misdirection. First, they “unbundle” their services. This means that a woman can go in and get an STD test, a pregnancy test, and some birth control, and Planned Parenthood will count this as three “services” performed. Next, they give all of their services the same weight. So if a young lady gets an abortion and then, on the way out the door, grabs a free condom, Planned Parenthood will say that she received two services, granting equal status to both. This would be like a car dealership selling 7 vehicles, as well as 7 sodas from the vending machine out front, and vaguely chalking it all up to “14 items sold” for the day. Then imagine them stating that selling cars only accounts for “50 percent” of their business, while the other half constitutes Diet Coke distribution.

The next step in the “3 percent” deception is just plain ol’ pants-on-fire-lyin’. Planned Parenthood brings in about a billion dollars a year. Half of that is from taxpayers, leaving around 500 million non-tax revenue. From that half, they make at least 150 million dollars a year by aborting around 330 thousand babies. That means abortions account for about 1/3 of their revenue, aside from the money given to them by Daddy Government. Abortions aren’t anywhere close to 3 percent of their business. Only in Abortion Candy Land (the worst board game concept ever) could you get away with saying that a third of your revenue amounts to 3 percent of your business.

But there are other things that come closer to that 3 percent figure. Adoption referrals, for instance. In its most recent report, Planned Parenthood boasts around 2 thousand adoption referrals, against 327 thousand abortions. That’s 1 adoption for every 149 abortions.

When someone says “abortion is only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s business,” what they’re actually saying is, well, nothing. That statement has no meaning and no basis in reality. If you were a business manager for a private company and you used the same sort of math, you’d be fired within hours. Unless you’re a business manager for Planned Parenthood, in which case you’ll be the national director by next month.

So, Wendy Davis lied? Yes, of course she did. She lied about a lot more than her divorce and her stint in a trailer park. She lied the moment she stood up and positioned herself as a champion for women. In reality, she isn’t championing anyone but herself, and she’s stepping on the carcasses of dead infants in the process.

Planned Parenthood has been doing that for decades.

Wendy Davis, you learned from the best.

*****

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@MattWalshRadio

When signs of cyanosis first appear, such as on the lips or fingers, intervention should be made within 3–5 minutes because a severe hypoxia or severe circulatory failure may have induced the cyanosis.

 

-From the Wikipedia entry for “Cyanosis,” the condition of bluish coloration on the skin or mucus membranes indicating low oxygen saturation of these membranes-essentially, suffocation.

 

I had originally intended to write this blog on Monday, January 13^th but was sidelined, perhaps ironically, by developing pneumonia. On that day, former Fullerton Police officer Manuel Ramos and former Fullerton Corporal Jay Cicinelli were acquitted of all charges (second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter/excessive use of force, respectively) by an Orange County jury in the death of Kelly Thomas.

 

Originally, I added “a 37 year old homeless schizophrenic man” but then deleted it. Although true, that addendum to Kelly’s name has become an unintentional “caveat” for his death. It is the only reason I can think of as to why a twelve people could not even convict Ramos and Cicinelli for clear use of excessive force.

 

No, his name was Kelly Thomas. Nothing else matters except his life was ended by a pile of Fullerton Police officers.

 

It is probably a good thing I couldn’t write this blog right away. My first version, I am sure, would have spewed rage at both the officers who took his life, fellow Fullerton officers who defended their actions, and the jury. I could not fathom the jury’s decision, since the entire incident was recorded on video and by the officer’s audio recorders. There was no guess work here, no interpretation needed. Originally, I felt that the only way a jury could find Ramos and Cicinelli not guilty of excessive force was if they felt Kelly “got what was coming to him.” In other words, they must have felt Kelly’s actions justified what happened to him.

 

But that’s not what I am going to do. Instead, I am going to compare Kelly’s actions through out the video with the actions of my schizophrenic daughter, Jani, currently 11 years old. It is my hope that members of the jury and police officers everywhere will read this. Not because I want you to feel guilt or because I am angry with what you did. I just need you to understand what happened the night of July 5^th, 2011, through the eyes of a parent with a schizophrenic child.

 

First, you must watch the video. Many people cannot get through the whole thing. But you have to. You have to watch it, not for the shock of seeing a man beaten to death but to understand how all of Kelly’s actions can be explained by his schizophrenia.

 

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00:25: Officer Ramos is casually swinging his baton. It should not be out unless Ramos believes he is under threat. Based on his swinging of the baton, he does not appear in a defensive stance or ready to use the weapon.

 

Although the audio is broken, Ramos states “….trying door handles on cars,” apparently accusing Kelly of doing this. Kelly responds, repeatedly “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

 

Let’s stop right there. Police officers are trained to investigate and so, by nature of their training, they assume every person they question who does not provide an immediate answer to be lying. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” sounds like a lie. Except listen to Kelly’s tone. It is the same tone you would use if I asked you to explain Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

 

I will often ask Jani questions about things that happened hours ago, like “What did you do in school today?” or “Who did you play with at recess?” She cannot immediately answer. Typically, most questions directed at Jani must be asked multiple times to elicit a response. This is because schizophrenia is a thought disorder that interferes with the ability to think clearly. Jani’s mind neither stores information like the rest of us nor can she access it as quickly as the rest of us. Some questions she can answer immediately if she is thinking about it but most require repetition and even then there is no guarantee we will get an answer.

 

But how do police react to someone who cannot immediately answer a question?

 

Either they are lying or they are on narcotics.

 

The more officers have to ask the question, the more annoyed they get and they take this as resistance from the person. Those with mentally ill children know that most questions must be asked multiple times.

 

Kelly is not resistant because he hands over his backpack to be searched.

 

In the next minute, Ramos mocks Kelly by asking him what language he wants him to speak in. We don’t know what Kelly said but it might have been something like “I don’t understand what you are saying.” Police officers assume their questions are clear. When Jani is asked multiple questions, she shuts down. She can only handle one question and one answer at a time. After the response, she needs time to process whether her answer was “correct.” If it was, she draws satisfaction from that and takes several moments before she is ready to move on. Rapid fire questions to someone with schizophrenia will draw a frustrated response as new questions come before the previous one can be processed. Want to know what this like? Find someone who speaks a language you are not conversational in and ask them to talk you at natural speed in their native tongue, all while you try to translate in your head. I can read Spanish and I can understand but if the Spanish speaker doesn’t give me time to translate in my head, I rapidly fall behind. It becomes so hopeless I give up and stop attempting to understand.

 

This is what happens to people with schizophrenia every day and what happened to Kelly.

 

Kelly keeps asking Ramos what he wants to know and Ramos has changed his question from trying the door handles on cars to mockingly asking him what language Kelly wants him to speak in. Kelly begins to take him literally. By 1:09, Kelly thinks he is in a conversation about languages he speaks, like you would have a conversation over coffee, while Ramos is getting increasingly sarcastic. Kelly does realize Ramos is being sarcastic or hostile.

 

At 1:24, Ramos points to Officer Wolfe and says “My partner speaks ten different languages.” I assume thinks he is being funny because he still thinks he is dealing with a man who is lying to him. Kelly turns around and says, “I don’t see him.” Wolfe responds, “Right here,” but Kelly does not turn to Wolfe.

 

This is common in both autism and schizophrenia. Kelly wasn’t lying. He literally didn’t see Wolfe and even once Wolfe acknowledged himself, Kelly did not acknowledge him. This is the hyper-focus on what is in front. Both those with autism and those with schizophrenia struggle to talk to two people at once. Jani cannot have a back and forth conversation.

 

It is also possible Kelly literally couldn’t see Wolfe due to hallucinations. When you experience hallucinations, it is hard to discern who is real and who is not. It is entirely likely, since Ramos was the one engaging with Kelly, that Wolfe, if Kelly saw him at all, might have been dismissed as a hallucination. We’ll never know.

 

Ramos then returns to asking about the car doors and Kelly keeps responding “I don’t know what you are talking about.” Ramos is frustrated by a lack of a “yes” or “no” answer but again, this is common for those with schizophrenia. They don’t necessarily see “yes or no” questions as “yes or no.” Kelly can’t answer what he doesn’t know so he repeats “I don’t know what you are talking about.” With Jani, the questions must be specific and repeated and I don’t get a “yes or no.” She doesn’t say “I don’t know what you are talking about,” but she does say, “I don’t know.” Not defiant. Just fact. When most of us don’t have an answer, we default to “no,” as in “No, I didn’t try to break into cars. Jani does not. Partially, this is because she can’t be entirely sure what she did. She has to think about it. When you don’t have a strong grasp on reality, it is hard to answer.

 

Here, try something.

 

How many times did you try to break into a car today?

 

Easy, right?

Now, how many times have you been to the bathroom today?

 

Can you answer that? It gets harder, doesn’t it? Three? Four?

 

How many times did you cross your living room today? How many times have you passed your dog or cat today? How many times have your children asked you a question? What were you doing at exactly 10:49 this morning?

 

The fact is that you can’t remember these things because they weren’t significant to you at the time. You could not answer with a “yes or no” because you don’t know. For those with schizophrenia, almost every moment is like trying to remember the mundane. Most moments in the past are foggy. If you are neurotypical and a cop asks you a question, you will rip your brain open to remember. But a cop has no significance to someone with schizophrenia. Jani meets cops all the time but never remembers because they don’t mean anything to her. The badge, the gun. These mean nothing. If you don’t talk to her about what she wants to talk about or play with her, you don’t exist.

 

Cops are trained to be distant… which is exactly what puts them into conflict with the mentally ill. If you want to be remembered, you have to engage the person in their world. Coming in with a gun and a badge and a taser and a baton means nothing. Those with schizophrenia require you to earn authority through trust and familiarity. Cops, unfortunately, just assume authority because the law gives it.

At around 4:00, Kelly won’t give his first name, saying “I don’t know. I gave up on it.”

Imagine what Jani would do if the police asked her, “Is your name ‘January?'”

How would Ramos have responded to an adult Jani?

We’ll put aside Ramos’s statement “…fucking take him for 496” even though Wolfe, the lead officer, says “Let’s see if [the owner of the mail in Kelly’s backpack] is the victim of theft,” apparently wanting to dispense with due process investigation, followed by the infamous, “See these fists? They’re about to fuck you up,” despite the fact that Kelly is in no way threatening in his behavior.

 

The conflict starts because Ramos wants Kelly to stick his legs out in front of him and place his hands on his knees. Kelly is unable to comply. This is taken as resistance by Ramos. Unfortunately, this is where thought disorder comes in again. If Jani stubs her toe, she will literally believe she cannot walk. Individuals with schizophrenia do not have the same ability to follow physical directions as their mind dictates what they can do, not their body. Jani will sometimes believe she cannot climb a flight of stairs even though there is nothing physically wrong with her. At 14:45, Ramos begins ordering Kelly to stick his feet out in front of him. The speech is hostile and rapid. It takes Kelly, who had been in his own world for the last several minutes, a few seconds to comply. He does but by 15:38 he is frustrated by what he perceives as Ramos’s changing orders. At 15:39, Ramos, clearly angry, is the first to make contact, placing his hand on Kelly’s shoulder before withdrawing it. Ramos grabs him again at 15:41 and Kelly rises, angry.

 

Basic rule of dealing with someone in a psychotic state. Do not touch them unless they invite you to. For Kelly, “fight or flight” is beginning to kick in. At 15:45, Wolfe comes around the patrol car with his baton out. Kelly puts up his hands in a surrender motion while backing away. Despite this, Wolfe strikes him in the back of the knees with his baton.

 

Kelly never struck either officer. Ramos grabbed him twice and Wolfe hit him with the baton even though Kelly was not threatening either officer.

 

Now begins the most difficult part of the video. Kelly apologizes profusely but the officers won’t relent because he will not go face down. He is tasered five times. He starts calling out to his father.

 

At 19:30, Cicinelli can be seen repeatedly beating at Kelly’s head with the butt of his taser. At 19:40, Cicinelli says, “He’s on something,” an assertion he will make several more times, including the paramedics.

 

No, he wasn’t, Mr. Cicinelli. First, cops are trained to get suspects face down even though any one trained in therapeutic restraints knows you don’t do that. You stay off the chest.

 

Kelly thinks his legs are broken. Remember what I said about Jani thinking her foot is broken? Even if you put aside the severe beating he has gotten, his mind is telling him he has a serious injury and cannot move.

 

Through minutes 21 and 22, Kelly’s speech becomes slower and more muffled. An officer comments “He is going to sleep.”

 

No, he was dying. By the 22^nd minute, he was repeating only, “Help me.” At 22:46 he mumbles “Help me.”

 

They are the last words he will ever utter. In the minute following, it is sickly comical that the officers are trying to figure out how to keep restraining Kelly when he has already lost consciousness.

 

Cicinelli comments, “The problem is he is gonna fight so we gotta get him, really, really good.”

 

No, I think you’ve already done that.

 

In minute 24, they notice that Kelly is bleeding a lot. Apparently, after they notice the blood all over themselves. Then they are not sure if he is still breathing.

 

Now the level of injury becomes apparent. “They hit him in the head. Side of his head.” Cicinelli offers his first defense, saying, “I think it’s him because, I, I, I ran out…we ran out… we ran out of options  so I got the end of my taser and I probably…. I just start smashing his face to hell.”

 

According to the Fullerton Police Department, this is apparently within training. Ramos and Cicinelli’s defense attorney, after their acquittal, said that they were “peace officers” doing what they were trained to do.

 

“Smashing” someone’s “face to hell” is part of standard police training? This was the police “doing their jobs?”

 

That’s a scary thought. This is where respect for law enforcement crosses to fear. How can you respect those who are trained to smash your face to hell? Fear them, sure? But trust them?

 

And that is the problem. How do we trust the police anymore? The weekend before Ramos and Cicinelli were acquitted, an 18 year old boy in North Carolina was shot to death by an officer who allegedly stated “We don’t have time for this.”

 

Cicinelli continues to tell anyone who will listen in the video that Kelly had to have been “on something” as it took three of them. It actually took six officers to hold him down.

 

Let’s talk about Bodhi. Bodhi is 45 pounds. When Bodhi goes into self harm, it takes at least three to four full size adults to restrain him. His behaviorists have had to undergo a specific class formed just for those BT’s who work with Bodhi on specifically HOW to restrain Bodhi without hurting him and without letting him hurt himself. One of his respite care workers, a full grown former basketball player told me that Bodhi is harder to restrain than the 24 year autistic adults he works with. The difficultly comes in trying to restrain without harm.

 

In a psychotic or autistic rage, those that suffer can exhibit superhuman strength.

 

Because they are fighting for their lives from something inside of them.

 

If you watch to the end of the video, after the paramedics arrive, you will see why I opened with the mention of cyanosis.

 

Every action of Kelly was consistent with a person suffering from schizophrenia. He never initiated the violence. He tried to run and he could not physically comply with officers although he was not aggressive or violent. And he died for it.

 

Ramos and Cicinelli were acquitted. Susan thought people might riot. I didn’t think so. Modern Americans only riot if their team wins a championship.

 

I stated on the JF Facebook page immediately after the verdict that the police could not be trusted anymore. I took some flack for this, mostly from wives of law enforcement. I get it. You don’t want your husband lumped in with two thugs.

 

But trust is earned, not given. For too long, police have assumed that they should be respected simply because of their job. Part of it born out of 9/11 and the first responders who died. Part of it is we think we need the police to protect us.

 

But who protects the mentally ill from the police?

 

The answer is all of us.

 

I don’t hate cops. But enough of them have told me that they assume every one they come into contact with is on drugs. Because so many of them are. Drug addiction and mental illness get conflated. But even a drug addict doesn’t deserve to be beaten to death.

 

I cannot say Ramos and Cicinelli were “just a few bad apples” so many want me to. Because the problem isn’t Ramos and Cicinelli. It’s the Fullerton officers who defended them. The officers who refuse to speak up about abuse are no better than the officers who perpetrate it. If police officers and departments want the people to trust them, they have to stand up and say, “This kind of excessive force will not be tolerated.” They have to stand up and say, “We do not defend these officers or their actions. They are a blight upon our profession. They represent the antithesis of who we are and what we do.” In short, I am asking law enforcement to stop standing up for the brotherhood and stand up for what is right. Stand up for the people you swore to defend with your life. Ramos should have been reported years before for his use of language. Officers must not protect other officers who do not uphold everything that is noble about being a police officer.

 

Until that time, it is up to us, the people, to watch the police and to let them know we are watching. Yours is a position of trust.

 

Earn it back.

 

Right now, I tell my son and daughter to listen to you because I fear what you will do to them. I cannot tell them to trust you.

 

And that breaks my heart.

 

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Just a few hours ago, I unwrapped my new Moto X phone from Republic wireless. It’s the dazzlingly fancy new device that many current and potential Republic customers have been waiting for, so I figured this event warrants an early review.

If you read my original post about this wireless company from May 2013, you know that I’m already a fan. Back then, they were offering a basic smartphone with a $19/month unlimited-everything service plan.

The response was mixed: quite a few of us signed up, and I received mostly positive reviews from those who reported back. Republic’s sole phone at the time – the Motorola Defy XT – was definitely a step back in time, but somehow I managed to lead a happy and productive life with it for over 5 months. Call quality was usually fine, and email and text messages were pretty good too. I didn’t love that gadget, but I also didn’t hate it like Jim Collins did.

I took it to Canada for the summer and was pleased to note that calling and texts remained free for me even during that time. Took it to Ecuador and was able to keep in touch over Wi-fi as well as using it as a hiking navigator by caching a satellite map of the Otovalo area in Google Maps. Used it as a speedometer, altimeter, and E-book listener, and tuned it to Pandora’s Medeski Martin and Wood station one summer night and plugged it into an amplifier, where it rocked a party (pulling music out of thin air with the unlimited 3G data connection) without complaint. The user interface was definitely choppy and slow to the touch, and it didn’t take good pictures. The upside is that I spent far less time looking at my phone. “It’s the phone that gives you your life back!”, is the humorous marketing slogan a friend came up with.

But temptation called, and I was given the chance to evaluate the opposite end of the spectrum: A Samsung Galaxy S4 superphone (retail price about $600) running on a Ting Wireless plan – a direct competitor of Republic wireless. I accepted this challenge to make sure I wasn’t just becoming a complacent Republic spokesman, while not knowing what else was out there.

Going from the little Defy to the gigantic Galaxy was like stepping centuries into the future. Holy Shit, is that ever a nice phone. Every feature is incomparably better than the equivalent on any other device I’ve ever seen. The screen is astonishingly big, bright and clear. The camera takes images that look like you cut them out of Real Life and pasted them to your retinae. The sound and video recording, call quality, and smooth, fluid motion were other-worldly. I became addicted to telephone use again, and my wife and son were not pleased.

The neat thing about Ting is that they have a unique pricing model: you can bring your own Sprint-network phone (some people pick them up on eBay), or buy one directly from them. Then you use talk, text, and data as you see fit and they automatically adjust your plan based on a bucket system with six sizes: Small through XXL. You can add additional phones at $6 per month each and share the same pools.

I ran mine at full-bore for a month and came up halfway through the “Medium” bucket with a bill of $33. So theoretically Mrs. MM could add a line and share the bucket, and our joint family bill would be $39 per month. A big bonus for travelers is that this plan includes Wi-fi tethering, which is hard to come by without ridiculous fees.

All this Ting stuff is important, because Republic has now released a phone that beats the iPhone 5 and rivals the Galaxy S4 in most important usefulness measurements, while running on an ultra-competitive rate plan system.

The New Republic Plans:

• For five bucks a month ($5!?), you can use this phone in WiFi-only mode. Everything still works whenever you get wifi reception, you just can’t make calls from the middle of nowhere.
• 10 Bucks gets you the same WiFi access, plus unlimited talk and text nationwide. This is probably the most useful ultra-frugal plan I’ve ever seen.
• The $25 plan duplicates what the $19 plan offered before: unlimited everything, including 3G data. They had to raise the price slightly because they know that when your phone is awesome instead of crappy, you will naturally tend to use it more.
• The $40 plan adds up to 5GB of 4G data. This would be the road warrior fancypants plan. Since any internet access at all on a telephone is still thrilling to me, and my town doesn’t even have 4G towers, I would personally find this to be overkill. But for those using phones for work, it is still a mighty low price for what they are offering.
• All of this is based primarily on the Sprint network, but Republic phones will automatically roam (free of charge) to Verizon towers for both voice and data if you ever find yourself outside of Sprint’s coverage

And as if that wasn’t enough flexibility, you can also jump between any of these plans freely, up to twice each month. And by “jump”, I mean swipe down on your screen and select a new option, not make an arduous call to a telephone service representative. So you might stay on the frugal plan most of the time, and boost it to 4G mode for business or road trips.

It’s almost too cheap – I hope that the company can continue turn a profit while making service this affordable and subsidizing the phone. But from conversations with the management, it seems they are approaching things from the position of  strength – put out a really good offering which depends in part on customers not abusing it, and hope that the resulting strong demand and customer loyalty counteracts the risk.

Both of these companies represent an amazing step forward for the typical US mobile phone customer. This week a reader and I had an amusing conversation with Verizon on Twitter. Verizon was trying valiantly to keep his business, but when I looked at their rate plans, I could see it was hopeless. To review the competitive landscape in three points for a hypothetical household of two:

• They could share an already-plentiful 500 minutes, 1000 texts, and 500MB of data on Ting for $39/month
• Or they could each have unlimited everything on Republic for a combined total of $50/month
• Or they could share unlimited talk and text and 1GB of data on Verizon for … $130/month!?

The battle between these new carriers and the old ones is so far from competitive that it is ridiculous.

 The Phone

This is the part we were all waiting to find out: Does the Motorola X live up to its promise of being one of the most advanced smartphones in production? And can it finally make calls over Wi-Fi that are reliable and clear every time? So far, I believe the answer might be yes.

We’ll start with the price: Republic is selling the phone at $299, which means they are subsidizing a good chunk of the purchase price, despite the fact that they have a no-contract service model. It’s still a lot of money, so if you’re using a Defy and it works well for you, keep up the good work. A better phone will not give you a happier life, but in my line of work, I do benefit from certain features – especially a better camera.

I rounded up the four phones that are currently residing in my house*: iPhone 4, Motorola Defy, Samsung Galaxy S4, and Motorola X. To keep the comparison brief, I took the same picture with all four phones: a low-light interior shot (with no flash) of my messy breakfast bar. This allows you to get a rough idea of phone size, camera quality and lens angle, screen size, and screen quality all in one shot.

Although it’s just one picture, this general theme sums up the capabilities of the four phones in all areas. The iPhone pretty much nailed the user experience back at version 4, and since then things have just been getting bigger and shinier. You can generally gauge a phone’s raw power and fanicness in all areas, simply by noting how huge it is.

For example, my experience over the past month with the Galaxy S4 has been pleasant, and it is a great device for taking pictures, sound recordings, and reading emails and even whole books. But it’s so big, I have to take it out of my pocket when squatting down to work on something for an extended period. It is also delicate: the phone developed a frequent-rebooting problem within two weeks of ownership. Later, I accidentally dropped it from chair height onto my driveway, and the entire glass sheet cracked to shards. So much for “Gorilla Glass” (note to self: better put a beefy rubber case on this new Motorola X before the next accident happens).

The Moto X has most of the advantages of the Galaxy, but with a less slippery exterior, and slightly more compact dimensions that fit better in a pocket. It feels more like a good phone, and less like a tablet. It still has a very large, incredibly bright and clear screen with pixels too fine for the eye to discern. The menus and motions and swiping and 3-D gaming graphics are fluid, like something from an amazing science fiction movie rather than something you and I actually get to own.

It runs a clean and up-to-date version of Android, which means it is easy to use and easily customizable: I’ve already updated its stock keyboard, camera, image viewer, sounds and ringtones, voice recorder app, calculator, wallpaper, notification tray, and added a one-touch flashlight widget, for example. I also prefer its wider-angle lens: in the picture above, you can see how much more of the room it captures when compared to the Galaxy. Note that in my photo, the Moto X screen appears a bit blurry and overexposed but this is just a byproduct my attempt to capture all four phones in the SLR I used to take that picture – in real life, color realism and clarity was very close to the Galaxy.

If you’re curious about where it lies in the phone landscape, our mutual friend Johnny Moneyseed put together this table of stats:

When it comes right down to it, the choice of smartphone depends heavily on personal taste. Because mine gets used almost entirely for blog-related stuff, my own preferences are good camera first, fast interface for reading emails second, big clear screen third, sound recording fourth, and then internet access, some other stuff, and phone calls somewhere near the bottom. But a plumber or salesman or software engineer might put things in a completely different order.

The bottom line for the purpose of this article, however, is that the Moto X is near the top of the pack in all of those areas, and when combined with Republic’s $5/10/25/40 rate plan, makes them almost unbeatable.

On the other hand, if the Ting plans line up better with your needs, you might want this link**.

Final Note: Republic and Ting represent only my own two favorites out of a growing range of options. Collectively, your fellow readers know far more than I do in this field and they have already started sharing their own tips in the comments section below. Let us know your own ultimate frugal mobile phone solution, or if there is anything I need to add to this post about Republic to make it more accurate and complete. 

* Four phones!? You can blame this on the blog. People send me free ones these days, and I dutifully engage my old gadget addiction so you can benefit from my cluttered house.

** Both of these companies offer affiliate links, so I have provided those in this article. So if you use ‘em, they benefit this blog – and thanks!
But if you are already a member, you might want to generate your own referral codes and share them with your friends privately – this will give you additional months of free phone service. Enjoy!

by Samantha Mee

I recently turned 30, got my first full-time job, and found out I have over $45,000 saved for my retirement.

I knew I had some money put aside. Since 1992, Australia has had compulsory superannuation (AKA “super”), which is somewhat comparable to a 401(k) in the United States. Currently employers in Australia have to pay 9 percent of worker’s wages (this is not taken from your wages, this is on top of your wages) into a nominated super fund. Soon this amount will rise to 9.25 percent and over the next seven years head on up to 12 percent. There are some exceptions to this compulsory payment—if the employee is under 18 years old, over 70 years old, or earning less than $450.00 per month.

I didn’t know I had so much in my super until recently, because it was spread over about five separate accounts. But when I got my fancy new full-time job, I decided to wind it back to just two accounts, and the combined totals from my various jobs started to look like real money.

I’ve had a little help from the government in building my retirement savings; there have been times when I have made a non-compulsory contribution to my own super and the government has made a co-contribution. There was a time when the government noticed I was very poor, and kindly made a contribution to help out. This all seems very generous and lovely but the government has a very good reason to do this. We are all getting old. We are all getting old, and if we are all poor when we retire we’ll all need a government pension. If they help people out building savings now then that will be less people to help down the track when a big section of the population will be retiring at the same time.

With a full-time job, superannuation is even more exciting! My employer already contributes the standard 9 percent, and then I contribute 5 percent from my pre-tax income, then my employer says, “Ok, here is some more money for your super because you did good, kid.” Or something like that…

Superannuation is complicated—this is just how it goes for me, everyone is different and it changes all the time. One of my friends has a salary package and that affects things again in ways I do not comprehend. Also, depending on who wins the next federal election here in September, it seems government co-contributions for low-income earners could disappear and the planned increase could be delayed.

Importantly, in regard to super being there for its intended use, super savings are deliberately hard, but not impossible, to access before you retire. There are ways people can, and do, access their money. I just don’t even want to know about these ways. I don’t want to be poor, old, and lonely when I retire. I’d much rather be financially comfortable, spritely, and hanging with my wrinkled buddies while sipping Mai Thais. And I plan to. Thanks, Australia.

 

Samantha Mee lives in Australia.

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