This makes no damned sense.
No, I’m not talking about ACA/Obamacare criticism—there are legitimate political questions about the size and role of government in the provision of the general welfare—but the notion that maternity care only benefits fertile women:
A “single male, age 32, does not need maternity coverage,” [Representative Renee] Ellmers said. […]
[…] Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, a former Mitt Romney adviser, asserted: “Having children is more a choice than a random act of nature. People who drive a new Porsche pay more for car insurance than those who drive an old Chevy …. Why isn’t having children viewed in the same way?”
[…] “My [Nicole Hopkins, writing in the Wall Street Journal] asked ‘Do I need maternity care at 52?'”
No, men don’t get pregnant, yes, having children is a choice, and no, most 52-year-old women do not need maternity care.
That is all irrelevant, however.
Garance Franke-Ruta concentrates on the empirical realities facing mothers in the US in her analysis of the anti-maternity care argument, but even that analysis is beside the point.
What is the point? Every single goddamned person who is and was ever on the planet was born to a woman, and was cared for by someone else—almost always the woman who gave birth. It is a basic condition of our existence.
There is no human life, no society, no politics, no world, without children being born and raised.
We do not exist without care.
Which is precisely fucking why maternity care affects us all, and ought to matter to us all. Goddammit all.
