VivirLatino

A friend sent me the news that a Louisiana state Representative (John LaBruzzo) wants to “pay poor women $1000 to have their tubes tide” while at the same time give “tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children.”

Of course, Mr. LaBruzzo has emphasized that his little idea has nothing to do with race, and it is actually the moral alternative to paying women to have abortions:

LaBruzzo said he opposes abortion and paying people to have abortions. He described a sterilization program as providing poor people with better opportunities to avoid welfare, because they would have fewer children to feed and clothe.

Because, you know, god forbid any politician demand that the minimum wage be increased or fund scholarship programs so that women can go to college and enter into the upper-income strata. I mean, why couldn’t he have said, I will pay any woman who enters into a college degree driven program a thousand dollars? Why is that not considered a viable ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of poor people having kids?

I think that if he did something like that, he (along with the rest of the ‘capitalism rawks’ cronies) would have to admit that it’s not the individual that has a problem and it’s not the reproductive capabilities of poor/women of color that is the problem–it’s the system. It’d be admitting that sometimes, the system sucks so desperatly that whole swaths of people need more than just a bootstrap, but actual *help* to succeed in it.

La Macha has spoken.