OneUterusToRuleThemAll

As the Aunt in Charge of Handicrafts, I am usually aces at putting shit together. This came with no instructions. The little metal frame thats supposed to hang this fucker up doesn’t fit to the papier mache/light fixture in any way I can fuckin figure out.

Any engineering majors out there wanna take a crack at this stupid decoration? Because I am about to grab the duct tape and do this the Texan way.

A woman is not a basket you place your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood hen you can slip duck eggs under. Not the purse holding the coins of your descendants till you spend them in wars. Not a bank where your genes gather interest and interesting mutations in the tainted rain, any more than you are.

You plant corn and you harvest it to eat or sell. You put the lamb in the pasture to fatten and haul it in to butcher for chops. You slice the mountain in two for a road and gouge the high plains for coal and the waters run muddy for miles and years. Fish die but you do not call them yours unless you wished to eat them.

Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman. You lay claim to her pastures for grazing, fields for growing babies like iceberg lettuce. You value children so dearly that none ever go hungry, none weep with no one to tend them when mothers work, none lack fresh fruit, none chew lead or cough to death and your orphanages are empty. Every noon the best restaurants serve poor children steaks. At this moment at nine o’clock a partera is performing a table top abortion on an unwed mother in Texas who can’t get Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die of tetanus and her little daughter will cry and be taken away. Next door a husband and wife are sticking pins in the son they did not want. They will explain for hours how wicked he is, how he wants discipline.

We are all born of woman, in the rose of the womb we suckled our mother’s blood and every baby born has a right to love like a seedling to sun. Every baby born unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come due in twenty years with interest, an anger that must find a target, a pain that will beget pain. A decade downstream a child screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched, a firing squad is summoned, a button is pushed and the world burns.

STARCH MASKS

O N   H E R    B O D Y

does that mean

Pranget sex?

20 foot waterslide

while uu are

Casually in the Journal of Surgical Edication.

First, it’s important to understand why we undertake a census to begin with.  The purpose of the census as described in Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, referred to as “[t]he actual Enumeration,” is to determine apportionment of representatives in the House of Representatives. How many Representatives should each state get in the Congress?

An interesting and important historical note is that this section initially counted slaves as worthy of representation, but only at a rate of “three fifths of all other Persons.”  Because of this, we no longer look to this section to determine who is counted in the census.  Instead, we look to the 14th Amendment.

Passed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to grant freed slaves the full rights enumerated in the Constitution and to obligate the various former Confederate states to recognize those rights.  This included the right to be counted in the census, and thus be represented, fully, in the House of Representatives. 

Section 2 of the 14th Amendment says:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.

How and why should this language include undocumented immigrants?

1. That’s what the Constitution says.  The Constitution does not distinguish between citizens and residents of the United States. The 14th Amendment in its plain language says “the whole number of persons in each state…”  It does not limit that to citizens, voting-age citizens, property owners, children or adults, or any other qualifiers (aside from the one clearly stated) that you can think of.  Persons.  That’s it.

2. The census is not just for voters.  If the Congress was interested in counting only those persons in the United States that are eligible to vote when determining apportionment, the 14th Amendment could have said so plainly.  But the census is conducted only every ten years.  The Congress anticipated that during those ten years, a decade of new voters would come-of-age, and if only voters were counted instead of all persons, that could mean that by the end of the decade, the apportionment was not just a little bit wrong, it was very wrong.  

By extending the count to all persons, including children, the 14th Amendment accounts for new voters.  By doing so, the 14th Amendment acknowledges that an individual’s status may change between one census and another.  A person may begin the decade as ineligible to vote and end it as a voter.  Similarly, an individual may begin a decade as an immigrant and end it as a U.S. citizen.  That person should still be counted and represented, whether they are eligible to vote or not.  

3. Women have always been counted—but they have not always been voters.  The 14th Amendment was passed before women were granted the right to vote.  Because of this, we know that the Congress intentionally meant to include non-voters in the count by using the word “persons” instead of “men.”  By doing so, the Congress recognized that representation in government is about more than simply representing the people who vote for you.  It’s about representing the rights and interests of all the persons who live in your district, including those without the right to vote.   

4. Undocumented immigrants pay taxes.  Even if you believe representation in government is a financial exchange in which representation is only earned through an individual’s monetary contribution (which you shouldn’t because, again, children are counted), undocumented immigrants do pay taxes.  As it is, undocumented immigrants cannot vote.  But they are still present in our communities and participating in our society.  Their communities should not be shortchanged of proper representation.   

5. The census should accurately reflect who lives in our country.  Undocumented immigrants are a part of our communities.  They are our hardworking tax-paying neighbors who are just waiting for the chance to become legalized citizens.  They should not be treated as invisible to our government.  The numbers matter.  They matter when the government is determining what programs are needed for various services from education to disaster relief, public health and housing. The census count should be accurate so that our government representatives across the country know exactly who lives in their district—not just the voters—and can serve them.