218 pages and we have come full circle. The first page on this thread with a workplace shooting in Illinois and now a shooting at a parade on the Fourth of July. America's birthday.
I've been thinking about birthdays a lot lately. We celebrated a family birthday recently. The usual affair--some gifts, a special meal followed by cake and ice cream, and an off-key rendition of the birthday song because we're not choristers but we're enthusiastic and corny when it comes to milestones.
And birthdays are a milestone; at least for many of us they are. Birth and death sandwich all the milestones any one cares to commemorate in between, but those two acts are the lighting of the candle and blowing it out forever.
So how odd that yesterday I'm reading about a pregnant abused ten year old in Ohio traveling to Indiana to receive an abortion since her home state forbids it. But in two days, the Indiana Legislature is set to revisit their laws on abortion with an eye to banning or restricting it completely. Indiana, the state where residents from nearby states that have more restrictive gun laws--states such as Illinois, travel to buy guns.
Does it strike anyone else as incredibly and intolerably sad that a ten year old may have that reproductive care option removed while an older male, such as her abuser, could travel to the same state (actually in Ohio, there is no need to travel), purchase a gun, and then should he choose, visit cruelty and suffering upon even more people?
Ten years old is not pleasant for every child in this country, but it should be dammit. As adults, we talk a lot about 'deserve' or 'deserving.' Who deserves this or that and who doesn't or how nobody promised anyone a rose garden and all the meaningless phrases that we use because we cannot bring ourselves to create a country where ten years old is that age where every child has a special meal and cake if they want it, and the people who love them sing a hokey song, and all the laughter that only ten year olds can laugh. That laugh that starts out with a giggle and crescendos into a fall-down-on-the-floor, holding the stomach, thank god I am ten years old in this moment laugh.
Ten year olds deserve to celebrate being ten--not by giving birth or dying at the hands of a person with a gun.