The reaction to Zika I'm seeing from my EvangaConservative students runs like this: They post a picture of a baby with Zika-related birth defects, and then a story about how woman want the right to avoid having babies with similar birth defects -- through insect control, pre-natal screening, birth control, abortion, or whatever method.
Then the EC students post comments like, "OMG, I can't believe this WOMAN would just throw away this baby! I know SO MANY women who are just SUFFERING because they can't have a baby and here is this WOMAN wanting to KILL hers because it isn't PERFECT!"
So I think this is the Talking Point in the EC Circles. Zika Babies are just Angels from Heaven, why would you want to do anything about Zika?
That seems like sound reasoning. Next topic!
Yeah,1 sounds about right. After all, Zika isn't the first time they've had to confront birth defects and the usual script is what 1 says. This one just has an obvious, visible deformity and a known cause.
I was going to link to this (a few months old) about a Illinois legislator wanting to deny birth certificates and public benefits to children of single mothers where the father is not identified. Then I saw a Snopes "mixed" verdict saying this was for financial purposes, to identify fathers capable of financial support - which is greatly missing the point, since the punishment is so far out of proportion and the only exceptions are (a) if another family member offers financial support or (b) artificial insemination, extremely paltry. Apparently Snopes is happy taking Republicans at their word!
That would be just horrible, but I'd hope the Supreme Court would not allow it. A birth certificate has got to be a civil right somehow.
The part about needing some relative who's willing to assume financial support of the child really freaked me out. And why and how does that get listed on a birth certificate? I have a friend who's adopting some children she's fostered for years as a single parent in IL today and it doesn't seem like this system is set up to accommodate that.
A birth certificate has got to be a civil right somehow
You'd think, but this sounds just like the sort of crack that people fall through. Birth certificates could easily never have been defined as a right because it never occurred to anyone that a public servant would be so evil as to deny one.
You can't get a state ID without one. It's effectively denying somebody the right to exist legally.
Sure, but did any legislator ever think that this had to be guaranteed?
Probably most of them. Lots of people have tried to cut off public assistance before, but I've never heard of trying to deny a birth certificate except here.
You can't be president without a birth certificate, apparently. The Constitution gives the eligibility requirements for the office of the president and you can't have the Illinois General Assembly creating new ones about having to know who your father is. So, this is unconstitutional. QED.
I have enclosed one legal analysis, $2.50, and 20 box tops from Life cereal. Please give me my ASSLaw J.D.
Didn't the Supreme Court at some point find birth legitimacy to be something the state needs more than rational-basis to discriminate on?
Further to 11, might this interfere with people's voting rights?
#14 That's a feature, not a bug.
OBVIOUSLY.
Yeah, this is not legal advice, but while it's possible the litigation hasn't been done about issuance of birth certificates as a right, I can't imagine there's any doubt about how it would come out.
We're all going to be stateless people eventually, might as well enjoy it.
14 Sounds like the purpose of the law, IME.
Which reminds me: has there been a bastard President yet? Senator?
According to a musical that I can't not hear the soundtrack of, there was one as Secretary of the Treasury.
John Snow was Treasury Secretary
23: Oh, well done.
I am a bit surprised there hasn't even been a Senator in that category. Ramsay MacDonald was a child of unmarried parents, and he was PM back in the thirties.
John Snow was Treasury Secretary
If only he'd been born a century earlier, he could have been a Know-Nothing.
There must have been a bastard Senator by now, whatever VP Burr says. I don't have a candidate, but there have just been too many.
I can think of plenty with their own bastards.
I'm not sure when people in general started not giving a shit whether somebody's parents were married- in Britain probably some time between 1965 and 1975 at a guess. But I'd imagine that as of about now children of unmarried parents will start being completely normalised in senior political jobs and probably nobody will even remark on it.
I suppose Gerald Ford counts, technically.
Illegitimate Senator. Blanche Bruce, Reconstruction-era Republican born in slavery. I'm sure there are more, but 'born in slavery' struck me as an easy place to look.
Were Bill Clinton's birth parents married?
His mother was married a bunch of times.
Yes, but I had to google to be sure. I'd forgotten -- he was posthumous.
31: I'm not sure that will be the case in the U.S. It's not that I think having unmarried parents will be a bar to high office, but we really are a very marrying kind of people still. At least once you get into the social class where the kids are likely to advance to high office.
I was thinking the same thing -- that the US is going to trail the UK on that front. Although I think we might be safely at 'no one cares' well before being a non-marital child became ordinary (in the 'likely to get elected' social class). I mean, I think we're probably at 'no one cares' now, it's just still not totally common.
Here's an anti-slavery bastard senator. Write a musical about him.
39 - right now people in the US with money get married, and people without money don't get married, generally. And people in the US who run for office are people from families with money. Both of those things are not so correlated in the UK.
40: Part of the glorious tradition of bastard Treasury Secretaries as well. And....He is the only person to have three streets in Portland named for him
39: obvs YMMV, but about half the little kids I know were born out of wedlock. Likewise, it's all so regional -- I can't imagine anyone in mpls trying to make a big deal out of a candidate's illegitimate birth. MN voters tend to have a strong negative response to that kind of mudslinging.
The US actually isn't far behind the UK in terms of illegitimacy rates (41% vs 45% in 2008-9). So in the States I'd guess it's probably far more associated with low education and income, whereas there's less of that stigma these days in the UK.
The variation worldwide in that graph is fascinating - from less than 2% in East Asia to very high levels in Latin America.
I can't imagine anyone in mpls trying to make a big deal out of a candidate's illegitimate birth.
I can, but only as a racist dogwhistle.
45 pwned by 42. At least I added value with a graphic.
46: I guess I should say that I can imagine it out in the more rural precincts, but I still think it would be an unsuccessful strategy.
I should perhaps clarify that when I guessed the 1965/75 bracket for the prevalence of not giving a shit in Britain, many if not most people at that date still strongly disapproved of having a kid out of wedlock, only it no longer occurred to them to take it out on the kid. I don't think the US was that far behind in that respect.
Here's an anti-slavery bastard senator. Write a musical about him.
[SALMON CHASE / LORENZO THOMAS / BENJAMIN CURTIS / JOSEPH FOWLER / JEREMIAH BLACK ]
F E S S / E N D / E N / We can / set him free!
[FESSENDEN]
Emory was issued orders independently
Of Congressional oversight -- how can it be
That Reconstruction won't run endlessly?
Johnson finds a novice, appoints Thomas,
Undoes the Civil War promise, but this office
Goes through Congress Constitutionally.
But the Court of St. George is open to me
Fuck Reconstruction, let the South run free!
Enter me!
OT: I have a new favorite academic title: Geriatric Fellow.
It is great. Except I'm still wincing because I can't get away from the Hamilton soundtrack.
while it's possible the litigation hasn't been done about issuance of birth certificates as a right, I can't imagine there's any doubt about how it would come out.
Au contraire. You may think that, but you would be wrong, at least according to a federal judge last October:
Texas can -- for now -- continue to deny issuing birth certificates to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, a federal judge decided on Friday.
If you remember, a group of undocumented immigrants sued the state because it refused to issue birth certificates saying certain types of identification cards issued by foreign governments could not be used.
The parents of the American children argued that Vital Statistics offices were refusing to accept a matrícula, an ID card issued by Mexican consulates across the country, and a foreign passport without a U.S. visa as valid forms of IDs. Those identifications, the parents argued, are the most commonly available to illegal immigrants living in the U.S.
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in Austin was considering whether to force the state to accept those types of IDs while the case moved through the courts.
The judge said that without a doubt, Texas-born children of undocumented immigrants are being hurt by the Texas decision. Their constitutional right to travel and free exercise of religion by way of baptism are being curbed.
That's a denial of a preliminary injunction by a conservative judge who says it's probably illegal, and also not the same thing as disallowing birth certificates as a matter of law because no father or financial support person is identified.
Still, worse than I figured would get past a court.
But it's only past the court at a preliminary stage, not an actual ruling that what Texas is doing is OK.
