"Today, the growing economic and social pressures in our country are putting millions of women, children and families at increased risk of abuse and neglect, especially when families are denied basic support services and economic opportunity"
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Casey frames abuse and neglect not as private moral failures but as predictable policy outcomes. The sentence is engineered to drag the debate out of the courtroom and into the budget ledger: "economic and social pressures" are the engine, "increased risk" is the measurable result, and the villains are structural - a country that withholds "basic support services and economic opportunity". It is political language with a prosecutorial edge, designed to make austerity sound less like prudence and more like complicity.
The subtext is a rejection of the comforting myth that family breakdown is mainly about bad choices. Casey is signaling that when wages stagnate, jobs disappear, housing becomes precarious, and healthcare is rationed, the stress concentrates inside the home - where children and women absorb the fallout. By emphasizing denial ("when families are denied..."), he shifts agency upward, toward institutions and elected officials. Someone is choosing scarcity.
Context matters: Casey, a Democratic governor and later U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, built a brand on working-class Catholic populism in the late 20th-century squeeze - deindustrialization, rising inequality, and a political turn toward welfare retrenchment and "personal responsibility" rhetoric. His wording anticipates a fight over what counts as "family values". For Casey, family values are less about scolding and more about scaffolding: childcare, income support, access to work. The line works because it weaponizes compassion as an argument for material policy, insisting that neglect is not just an act; it's a condition we can underwrite or alleviate.
The subtext is a rejection of the comforting myth that family breakdown is mainly about bad choices. Casey is signaling that when wages stagnate, jobs disappear, housing becomes precarious, and healthcare is rationed, the stress concentrates inside the home - where children and women absorb the fallout. By emphasizing denial ("when families are denied..."), he shifts agency upward, toward institutions and elected officials. Someone is choosing scarcity.
Context matters: Casey, a Democratic governor and later U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, built a brand on working-class Catholic populism in the late 20th-century squeeze - deindustrialization, rising inequality, and a political turn toward welfare retrenchment and "personal responsibility" rhetoric. His wording anticipates a fight over what counts as "family values". For Casey, family values are less about scolding and more about scaffolding: childcare, income support, access to work. The line works because it weaponizes compassion as an argument for material policy, insisting that neglect is not just an act; it's a condition we can underwrite or alleviate.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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