In Defense of a Woman
by Jorge Vargas
There is a woman in the U.S. state of California who has just gone into hiding with her children because she has been receiving constant death threats from people to her left and right.
And now, major U.S. news agencies are reporting on her story and calling her an idiot; an imbecile; an irresponsible woman; a sinner; and half a dozen other wonderful adjectives. They are fermenting further resentment against her because, apparently, U.S. taxpayers will have to provide for her welfare costs.
She has fourteen children. She is single and unemployed. Her name is... never mind her name. You probably already know her story. No need to further tarnish a woman who needs no further stones thrown at her but rather a shred of human decency.
Is she an imbecile? Is she irresponsible?
Yes.
Were her actions criminal?
Not according to the laws of California or of the United States, unless we are to suddenly stretch thin child endangerment laws.
People throughout the U.S., and around the world, are accusing her of being an unethical person. This may be true. Certainly, in my code of ethics, her actions have been unethical.
But she has also brought fourteen human lives into this world, and it is difficult to call the creation of human life unethical.
Of course, here one could argue that their lives will lack dignity.
Whoever is arguing that has never been to the slums of our Earth where children look through dust for a bit of food. Where is that arguer then?
It is the duty of the government to work for and, when necessary, protect the citizenry.
The citizenry pays for this protection by way of taxes.
It may seem unfair to pay for her fourteen children but then, the odds that a given individual taxpayer will directly fund her family are slim to none - given the fact that there are millions of taxpayers and hundreds of ways for the U.S. government to generate revenue.
And, more importantly, it's the law.
If the taxpayers resent this woman so much, if those cowardly journalists - who apparently have nothing better to report than the public vilification of this woman - feel so much outrage toward her actions, then why are they attacking her?
Let us accept that she is an idiot. But her ignorance is no doubt a product of a nation with an educational system so weak that 40 percent of the populace believes evolution is a theory and not a thousand-time-over proven fact and yet the military is so well-funded that it can wage two distant wars at once. Fine. Not difficult to accept.
But what about her doctors who were so proud of their achievement? Why is no one criticizing them?
And what about the laws that do not denote her as a criminal? Why is no one asking to review the laws, to make parenting something more than an "experience?" Why not create laws that make parenting what it really is: the most important responsibility that any human being can undertake?
In the meantime, let's leave the poor woman alone. She made an error in judgment. Who has not done the same? Who among you has not sinned?
Who among you will throw the first stone?
But the critic would say: she is ruining fourteen lives.
The critic probably lives in a house that consumes more electricity in one week than half a dozen villages in Africa in one year. The critic, if he is a citizen of the U.S., has likely contributed more pollution in his life than an entire, extended Bolivian family can contribute in their own lives.
So, again: who among you has not sinned? Who among you will throw the first stone?
Criticize the doctors who should have known better, who took oaths to improve the quality of life around them, who broke their oaths.
Criticize the laws that do not consider her actions criminal.
Criticize the government that has allowed this animosity to come about because of its weak educational system, which really has no excuse to exist.
But do not criticize the imbecile who is little more than a product of a society that so proudly considers itself superior to the rest of the Earth, and which too often confuses ethics with law and morality with governance.
The children are born now. There's nothing that can be done to change that.
The United States can move to either assist those children or let their lives be wasted.
Everything else in this case is little more than nonsense and a complete waste of time.
