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Time Magazine vs Mothers on Mother’s Day
by Gina Loudon  
May 14, 2012 

TIME Magazine, in synchronized coordination with the rest of the pathetic media, found some random mother and child to exploit to mock a reverent holiday.  The article is presumably about the conflicts associated with “attachment parenting”—a parenting theory popular in the 1970’s that has made a small comeback among mothers today.   

The cover touts a mother posed with her 3-year-old boy (whom they made look much older in the photo) with his mouth fixed on her breast for all to see.  Willing to neglect all social graces to boost their slow sales at TIME, the magazine pits parental rights advocates against breastfeeding mothers, and makes a mockery of motherhood, in general. 

The cover is mere bait to lure curious onlookers to subscribe to their site to read the article.  I didn’t.  But the content of the article is somewhat irrelevant, because it has become the “Mother’s Day” photo of 2012, drawing unknown numbers of confused onlookers to subscribe just to see what is said about this photo. 

I submit that their cover exposes a deeper agenda.  I see a disgusting political play to attempt to force families to cynically choose sides between the “out of my bedroom” business, and the “family-friendly, values-voters” types.  This sort of division is an attempt to prop up the Obama re-election campaign’s invention of a Republican “war on women” that doesn’t exist. 

Comments immediately ensued with feminists screaming at all proverbial white men to keep their hands off of their bodies (as she bares it complete with a photo suggesting indecency, even sexual perversion). 

I am the mother of five amazing children.  I breast fed all of my children for years, and did so publicly when appropriate.  I wore my babies in a sling, and subscribe to many of the bonding techniques advocated in Attachment Parenting theory.  I spoke recently to a group of women who advocate total freedom for birthing babies, and I helped my husband pass the Birth Freedom Act in the Missouri State Senate. I believe such freedoms are a parent’s constitutional right.  TIME Magazine’s attempt to draw lines between breastfeeding advocates and First Amendment advocates is flawed. Conservative women are savvy, and will not fall into the trap that liberals are setting for them.   Conservative women will not be told that they need to choose between their private rights as parents to mother their children as they see fit, and common moral decency.  

Benjamin Franklin warned, “We have given you a republic, if you can keep it.”  Those profound words mean that Americans would enjoy the greatest liberties of any people in the history of mankind, but we would only be allowed those liberties as long as we can self govern.  Time and again, virtually every one of the founding fathers described the strong moral character, and the peoples’ ability to self govern as the key to the survival of the republic.  This photo is exhibit A of the media’s attack on our Country using a “victim flavor of the day”—in this case, mothers and their children. 

Every conservative I know supports a woman’s right to breastfeed, and most understand that sometimes, that means that women will nurse discretely in public.  TIME Magazine’s portrayal ignores all decency and glamorizes a woman making a nuisance of herself.  There is no controversy here.  The question of “where to draw the line” is an old one, but TIME brought it up now, as if to say that conservatives must consent to all portrayals of breastfeeding or they are “anti-woman.”  What is the next controversial cover that conservatives will be forced to condone or be branded “anti-woman”?  Maybe they will show a single dad naked in bed with his young son?  Perhaps they will feature a baby being breast fed by a medically enhanced, breasted man?  The list goes on. 

The media’s deliberate attempt to pit groups of people into corners and to divide them should offend every “victim flavor of the day” that they attempt to exploit. 

Contrast the spin and exploitation of the current media’s efforts to carry the water for this administration, with the 1980’s administration of Ronald Reagan.  He quoted a Jewish proverb that sums it up beautifully:  “God could not be everywhere – so He created mothers.” 

This mother’s day, I hope that mothers everywhere are blessed, and that they fundamentally reject the leftist media’s attempt to divide us based upon our private parenting practices.  Further, I hope that those who have the insight to see through this thinly veiled exploitation will dig deep inside and use every bit of maternal grit they can muster to fight for the Constitution that this administration and media assaults daily. 

That way, one day our daughters and sons will have the same rights we have to parent their children as they best deem fit.  Our founders understood a principle my co-author and I discuss at length in our new book, coming out later this summer.  Charles Carroll, Signer of the Declaration of Independence said that “Without morals, a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.” 

God bless our Mothers, this Mother’s Day! 

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