The Passion of Bubbe Irene

Sometimes I think that the reason my grandmother is still alive is pure stubbornness. She refuses to die with Republicans in charge of both her state and her country. And boy! Is she ever steamed at the Missouri lege for removing birth control from the services available to the poor through the county health departments of the state.

She treated me to a twenty minute tirade a couple of days ago when I called her to inquire how she was doing. You haven’t heard anything until you have heard my grandmother get going, to the point she is sprinkling Yiddish and Czech into her speech without realizing it. She is 93 but she is eloquent and sharp as a tack still to this day.

She predicts that Missouri will be forced to build orphanages once again as unaffordable children are abandoned. First they took healthcare away when they slashed Medicaid, and then they followed last years draconian budget cuts (over 1.1 Billion from the budget of a poor state with a stupid taxation policy called the Hancock Amendment) with this year denying contraception to poor women. How short-sighted and stupid, in my grandmothers words. No access to birth control if you can’t afford to see a private physician and then pay for both the visit and the prescription. (Farmers don’t have health insurance as a general rule, and they sure as hell don’t provide it for their hired hands.) Abortion is restricted, and when children are born to poor parents they aren’t eligible for basic preventive well-child care through the Medicaid program.

Maybe Missouri can get some of China’s business. Maybe parents won’t have to go halfway around the world to adopt a child. Maybe the Republicans in the statehouse have already got it figured out and have the list of patronage grants already drawn up for the faith-based private adoption services they predict will be needed to place all of those Missouri babies that the birth parents couldn’t afford to prevent, and certainly can’t afford to keep.