Yes...that's what I'm afraid of.

Sarah Palin, painted for Women's Work, an online gallery exhibit of women's political art
©Zina Saunders 2008. All rights reserved

I don't know Zina Saunders, but she has certainly hit a nerve with me with this painting. Somehow, this image reached inside me and reverberated loudly. Yes. That's what I'm afraid of. Palin just seems like the ultimate right-winger - the strongly committed Christian who will fight a woman's right to end a pregnancy that will do no-one, including the unborn child, one iota of good. I worked as a social worker for a state agency for ten years after graduation from college, and saw the effects of unwanted pregnancies - and pregnancies resulting from incest and rape - play themselves out in the lives of neglected and abused children, and in children who were literally killed or maimed psychologically and physically for life, and unashamedly admit that in many of those cases, I came to believe that abortion would have been the kinder, gentler solution. It's easy - yes, EASY - for members of the religious right to insist that every pregnancy should result in a live birth, because THEY don't have to deal with the consequences, don't have to witness the life-long pain and anguish caused by their determination that their will should prevail. I've seen it, tried to rectify some of the damage, and far too often, haven't been able to. I once took a 13-year-old rape victim to an abortion clinic to get an abortion. That's right. And there was a Catholic priest pacing in front, carrying a sign with a photo of a shredded fetus on it. He approached us with an appeal for my young client to "think twice before committing murder." (If only the rapist had thought twice before committing rape, eh?) I looked at the man with what must've seemed like pure hate in my eyes, and said to him, "So are YOU going to adopt and raise all these babies you're trying to save?" Like I said, easy to take a stand when after your shift is over on the picket lines, you can go home, ask the housekeeper to brew you a nice cuppa tea and maybe bring you a little snack - no messy babies crying, no snotty-nosed children dragging on your robe, no worrying about how you're going to feed, clothe, and house them. But - once that fetus that you've saved from murder reaches 18 or so years of age, you have no problem supporting an adminstration that will now send him/her over to some foreign country to get killed. That's not murder; that's dying for your country. (Or oil, actually, which we all know is worth losing a *few* lives over). But, back to Palin - ruthless, egotistical, ambitious, dogmatic, self-serving Palin. Any woman who identifies with Sarah Palin, or buys that she is the quintessential "hockey mom" needs a serious reality check. Seriously. And call me squeamish, but that picture of her that's circulating around the internet with her and her young daughter proudly posed behind the carcass of a moose that she's shot in the face turns my stomach. Oh, enough out of me for now. I'm not 100% convinced that Obama is going to be able to make much change in the country, but I'm voting for him. The kind of change we'll see with McCain & Palin is just too gruesome to even contemplate before lunch.