What are your priorities saying about you?

According to the Idaho State Department of Education, homelessness nearly doubled for Idaho children in well under 10 years. 4,758 children were living in Idaho without consistent housing in 2010-2011. This increased to 7,820 homeless children in 2017-2018. The shortage of affordable rental housing and an increase in Idaho poverty are listed as the two main reasons for homeless children in Idaho. I would think Idaho legislators would be concerned more about these already born children rather than attempting to break with the federal law Roe v. Wade.

The Idaho Foodbank website states that more than 220,000 Idahoans, including more than 72,000 children, are “food insecure,” meaning they live at risk of hunger. More than 1 in 6 Idaho children and about 1 in 8 Idahoans are food insecure. Yet Idaho legislators are focusing instead on restricting women’s health choices in an attempt to force women to bring more children into an already desperate population. How insane do you have to be to not see that what’s actually needed instead is: sex education, free birth control, affordable housing and health care for women, equal pay and more jobs? Unless, of course, the legislators think that males will suddenly stop pushing females for sex on an almost constant basis.

The Idaho Foster Care and Adoption website state that there are currently 1,818 children in foster care. These children have been put into an imperfect system by a governing society so concerned about controlling women, that they are blinded by the fact that there are already too many children and families suffering, neglected, abused and at risk. Idaho legislators are simply ignoring a crisis in the state to drum up support from their ill-informed base. Allowing already born children to go without basic necessities, lacking a sense of security for their basic survival, and to have little chance to be able to afford any advanced education, is a monumental travesty.

Attempting to restrict women’s choices with her own health and wellbeing won’t stop abortion. Anyone who remembers the past can confirm, forcing women to make unsafe choices, when an unplanned pregnancy occurs, puts her in jeopardy of unsafe abortions.

I’d suggest that those who are inclined to restrict women’s health choices think for a few moments about the children already at risk in Idaho including homelessness, hunger, neglect, bullying, emotional abuse, physical violence, rape, molestation, incest, prostitution, pornography, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and filicide. What are your priorities saying about you, Idaho?

CINDY AASE

Sagle