When you cannot object, you become an object.
As Mothers, no matter what age, we have this tendency to care, to nourish and to nurture. I do not want to have to take a vaccine against my will. I do not want to be forced to be microchipped. I do not want to mass medicated.
And I reckon most Dads feel exactly the same way.
Back in 1977, I made the headlines in my local newspaper. I was the unidentified blonde woman who brought a local Council meeting to an abrupt conclusion. How? I disagreed with the Council’s acquisition of a water fluoridation plant on the grounds that it was mass medication – and I wasn’t having a bar of it.
My indignant outrage was shared by many of my fellow ratepayers and citizens.
To be sure, we held them off for a few years, but, eventually, they won. But at least we tried.
In those days, I was a breast feeding young Mum from the burbs. My husband and I had a small house with a massive mortgage and we existed from pay day to pay day. In fact, when our firstborn daughter was two, I got a job as a travelling saleslady, selling mops and brooms from the back of the car. The company that employed me was called “ Easyway “ and my job entailed me walking in to a store and announcing that I was the Easyway Lady.
It was a few short months after I started work that I found out I was pregnant with our second child. It was not much fun, as the months went by, to walk in with big belly on display, and announce that I was the Easyway Lady…
I ended up taking a week off to have our second daughter and soon took to the road again to make the money to pay the mortgage. The car now had a toddler, a newborn, mops brooms and nappies a plenty. I would pull up on the side of the road, breastfeed, change nappies ( the old fashioned cloth ones ) give my toddler a quick hair brush to extract stray bits of baby vomit and generally try to muck on and carry on. The nappy bucket would get a bit pungent by day’s end and the car would oft have the feel of a battle zone – but oh, the joy when that pay cheque arrived!
I was also a very proud member of a Nursing Mother’s Group ( that is what we used to call breastfeeding back then – Nursing Mothers. ) Did you know that the word Nurse is an old word? Meaning to care, to nurture, to cherish.
While I was part of this group, I learned that our local Council had purchased a water fluoridation plant from another council – the people of that area refused to have their water fluoridated and the first Council were looking to offload it. And so it was we were TOLD that our water supply was going to have a chemical added and we would all be mass medicated, whether we liked it or not.
I was beyond angry. It was not as though I had a problem with flouride at that time. In fact, I have never heard of it before. It might be brilliant. It might not. That was not the point. I reasoned that it could be fantastic. But to have something forced on me, without my permission, was not on.
And so I started my campaign to stop this attempt to medicate the masses.
We were a small city of around 55,000 people. My friends at my Nursing Mother’s Group rallied behind our cause. We all believed passionately in the love of our children, our families, our wellbeing and health. If we wanted our little ones to take fluoride, let us give them a tablet or a syrup. But don’t FORCE it on to us.
Our message was a simple one: Mass Medication, against the People’s Will is against everything that makes us a democracy.
We collected in excess of 85% of the adult population in signatures – not because they disagreed with fluoride but that they disagreed with mass medication.
Today, 43 years later, the spectre of mass medication has raised its ugly head again. This time, about the Chinese Flu. About being microchipped. Mass medicated or mass meddled with.
No, a thousand times no.
The two little girls in the back of my car are grown women with children of their own. Times have changed, but Motherhood has not, has it? Or has it? How many young Mothers have the time to campaign for something they feel strongly about? And when one does, she is shot down for being a bad mother and her child is stripped from her and forcibly taken by Police.
I do not want to have to take a vaccine against my will. I do not want to be forced to be microchipped. I do not want to mass medicated.
I did not then and I do not now.
Mass Medication is wrong. Let us choose for ourselves.
And for our children.
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