Vicki Larson's OMG Chronicles

You’re in love with someone for what you think are all the right reasons. You get pregnant despite using birth control; he doesn’t want the child and becomes abusive, you’re not sure what to do but you eventually do what all the “pro-life” (aka forced birth) people say you should do — have the child. How does that work out? For Stephanie Land, author of the just-released best-selling memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, deciding to have her daughter Mia throws her into the world of being poor in America, specifically being a poor single mom. And that’s a message all who claim they are for life but really are just for birth should pay attention to: if you tell women to not have an abortion, how will you support them when they actually listen to you? Because many are going to need that help.

Land’s memoir offers much to contemplate; it not only is a peek into the life of a maid — it’s degrading, she tells me (but clearly not for the people who hire maids, according to recent surveys that suggest that hiring people to clean up after you makes you happier) — but it also is a peek into the life of someone trying to support a family on minimum-wage work, a peek into how people view the poor (spoiler alert: shitty) and a peek into how single moms in particular are treated by society (spoiler alert: extra-special shitty with a chaser of judgment). Generally, society does not approve of single moms.

Doing the ‘right’ thing

Land could have aborted Mia. She had dreams of going to college, becoming a writer. She thought about having an abortion, just as her own mother had almost aborted her. But she thought she’d be able to manage.

So instead she does what conservatives would consider the “right” thing — not get an abortion.

And it sends her spiraling into the world of being poor in America, and all the shame, stigma, scrutiny and surveillance that entails.

Basically, you’re on your own.

Our policies punish women, especially poor women, whether they use birth control or not, or have abortions or don’t. If they happen to get pregnant and then decide to have and raise their child, perhaps with the help of government programs that help them survive — SNAP, WIC, housing vouchers — then they are looked down upon.

“You’re welcome!” a man snaps at Land as she leaves a supermarket checkout counter after having purchased groceries with WIC checks.

Yes, have that baby! Wait, are you actually going to feed her?

Access to contraception

Family planning and poverty are inextricably linked, and it’s typically already-poor women who suffer the most when government makes it harder for them to have access to the family planning health care they desperately need. All across the country, conservatives are trying to do just that. Which is why we see a continued assault on women’s reproductive rights, even access to birth control (oh, but you know, Viagra is still generally covered by insurance because … because, why, actually?)

As Martha J. Bailey, an economist professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in the socioeconomic impact of access to contraception, explains:

More affluent women will be able to pay out of pocket. Research suggests that unintended pregnancies will increase. It’s hard to say by how much, but we know what happens as a result. In 2011, 42% of unintended pregnancies ended in abortion.”

Which is exactly the opposite of what those who reject abortion say they want.

Which leaves women like Land with no other choice but to raise their child in poverty, which has long-lasting ramifications.

Is that truly what people who are against easy access to birth control and abortion want — to have more children being raised in poverty?

My guess is no, but if that isn’t what they want, then what kind of policies are they putting in place to support all family types so they can succeed?

Not many, and whatever policies exist tend to shame poor mothers and keep them trapped in poverty.

Land, who studied at night the whole time she was working as a maid and raising Mia, eventually got a college degree. Now she has staggering college debt on top of the trauma of the past decade.

‘Pro-birth,’ not pro-child

What Maid makes clear is that people who claim to be “pro-life” don’t care about that baby’s life after it is born, otherwise we’d offer quality free or affordable child care and preschool — the two biggest barriers for women trying to support their family — as well as paid family leave. It’s more about keeping women like Land in their place and punishing them for their sexuality.

As Ed Kilgore, managing editor of the Democratic Strategist, writes:

[The] prevailing sentiment among abortion rights activists is that the anti-abortion movement is just applied misogyny — a derivative position from a general attitude of patriarchal contempt toward or fear of women’s sexuality and autonomy.

It’s hard not to see it that way.

Land had a baby outside of marriage, which is not following the conservatives’ beloved “success sequence” script (which can easily be used as a way to “justify all sorts of inequities“).

It wasn’t her plan, but things happen. And now here she is — a single mom. Land followed conservatives’ desire to “choose life” and she followed the American Dream’s can-do message — that if you work hard enough, you can succeed — but she doesn’t see herself as a success story. She got lucky.

Where does that leave her and the millions of women like her?

It leaves them, and the children so-called “pro-lifers” wanted them to have, in poverty and in judgment.