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Abortion

As you either know, or have figured out by now, I'm a guy. As a guy, I understand that I have far less of a right to talk about "what a woman can/should do with her body" than a woman does. However, as a citizen, I have every right to discuss what our government does about abortion.

I would have to say that in today's lingo, I'm "pro-choice". This is not to say I think abortion is right or just or a good way to prevent unnecessary births. My personal opinions about Abortion are complicated, and as I have no personal experience with it, irrelevant (which does not mean that I wont talk about them here). I am "pro-choice" because I don't like the idea of President Bush becoming Dr. Bush, OB/GYN. There are a million different reasons why women get abortions. They range from horrible situations like incest and rape all the way to ending an accidental pregnancy. I'm sure woman have gotten abortions for reasons I could never fathom or understand. To think that our government should decide when it's right and wrong to get an abortion is crazy. I completely understand (although I don't agree with) the stance that an abortion is killing a living thing, and that if you believe that, you think most, if not all, abortions are wrong. This does not mean, though, that the government should stop people from making such a personal decision. These are personal decisions, and if you believe that it is wrong, you have made that decision for yourself -- you do not have the right to make such a personal decision for everyone else.

This is where the "pro-choice" movement screws up for itself. They focus on statements like "woman's right to choose", and "my body, my decision". These statements make people think (whether it be right or wrong to think so) that pro-choice = pro-abortion. A MUCH better stance for the pro-choice movement would be to say, "Abortion is a very serious, difficult topic. We think it should be a decision between a woman and her doctor after weighing all the issues." I know you can't put that on a billboard or scream it on the steps of the supreme court, but that's exactly the point. I understand people yelling and screaming about gun control (the topic of a later blog, I guarantee), because that is a much less personal issue. It's an issue of personal freedom and whatever. Abortion is a serious issue with serious repercussions for each individual involved. Those people on both sides who scream and rally are not treating this issue with the sensitivity it deserves. This behavior also leads to statements like "All abortion is wrong." Clearly there are cases of the health of the mother that could make an abortion a reasonable choice.

Partial Birth Abortion. Sounds quite horrible, huh? Sounds kinda like parents who wait until the last minute to make the decision if they want to keep the baby? That's what many people want you to think, but this is obviously not the case. Partial birth abortion is used mostly to save the life of the mother. The fact that this is now illegal is scary. There is a good article on this here.

Basically, we need to sit down, as a nation, and realize that being pro-choice does not mean that you support abortion, it means that you support the medical community and understand that a doctor who has been practicing medicine for 20 years knows more about health issues than all 535 congressmen (that's 100 senators and 435 representatives, for those of you confused) put together. We need to start realizing that life is complex. Things are not usually RIGHT and WRONG.

Olive Theory

I have a new theory. The theory is based on surveys of people I know. It is about as unscientific as a theory can be. So, on to the theory...

I believe that a person's opinion about olives can tell a lot about them. More specifically, two people should only date, get romantic, and get married if they have the same opinion on olives. Most people have extreme opinions about olives. People that do not like them (like me) REALLY don't like them and will never eat them. People like that should only be with other people who don't like olives. In fact, I think it should be a question asked on online dating services.

This post has been in what may be a series of not-as-serious posts on my blog. I'll try to post idiotic posts like this from time to time for levity.

AIDS and Poverty

We, as Americans, love thing simple... we also love when a single problem has a single solution. This is the case with both AIDS and poverty. It seems to me that most Americans think of these problems in America and world-wide as the same epidemics. Let me explain why they're not:

AIDS:
If you live in America, you know (or damn well should know) that using condoms helps reduce the spread of AIDS. If you don't know this, perhaps you might want to consider coming out from behind the rock you've been living under. Obviously condoms don't work 100% of the time, but they sure do work most of the time. Now, if you're living in America, and you want to be careful, you can go to your neighborhood CVS and buy a box of condoms and use them on your next "night out". In fact, it's even easier than that... if you can't afford to buy the condoms, there are places you can go to get them FOR FREE. Now, let's say you live in rural Swaziland, Africa. Unfortunately for you, CVS does not have an African Bush location, so you're kinda screwed there. Also, there's a good chance you don't have electricity, running water, an independant media, plumbing, etc. Your only contact with the outside world might just be the crazy guy from the Discovery Channel. There is probably no way that you know what a condom is, let alone that one might save your life. In fact, you might not know the nature or cause of what is killing you.

Poverty:
In America, we have things like Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, homeless shelters, work assistance, etc. If you are poor in America, you have the resources to lift yourself up from you crummy situation and better youself. I'm not saying it's easy or that everyone can do it, but it is possible. There are jobs available, and there is assistance if you pursue it. Now, I'm not saying every homeless person will be a CEO some day, but I think most homeless people of reasonable mental ability (mentally disabled homelessness is a different problem) have the ability to improve their situation, either by themselves or with the help of charities and the government (for commentary on if the govnerment should be spending money on social welfare, see the approximately 1 billion blogs on the topic). I'm also not saying that this will be easy or that people who are homeless all somehow want to be, but there is hope and a good chance for these people to life a better life. Now, lets say you live in Darfur, Sudan. You have spent most of your life enduring a genocidal, civil war. You probably live in a refugee camp on the border between Sudan and Chad. Your life expentancy is quite low because there is a good chance you will die of malnutrition, starvation, disease, rape, murder, or a genocial mass killing. There is probably a 0% chance you will ever see a full plate of food, and you will surely never eat at anything as nice as a soup kitchen. You spend you entire life hoping that a helicopter gunship doesn't fly overhead and shoot you and your family down with a spray of machine gun fire. No matter how hard you work, you will never be able to better your situation. There is no transportation to get you out of the area, and even if there was, no one would take you in. You can't even try to walk away from the refugee camp, for fear of being killed and your wife and children raped. Your only hope is that the civil war ends or that African Aid workers come and that life may be better for your children.

Now, I'm sure our government recognizes the distinction here, but I don't believe most Americans do. It's time that we recognize that there is a monumental difference between the problems here and in African, and the solutions are quite different as well. In fact, it is almost incorrect to call these the same epidemics. In America, the AIDS rate is 0.6%. In Swaziland, the rate is 38.8%. That's 65 TIMES greater! In America, the unemployment rate is about 5.5%, in Zimbabwe it's 70%. With an unemployment rate that high, how could you ever find a job?! We need to understand how different problems are around the world and start forcing our government to help these people in resonsible, ethical ways.