Abortion Essay

(boy did I nail this right in the nick of time. 8:59 on the dot. The ending was a bit different in the essay I submitted. I typed the last few sentences in the form right before I sent it off. And I can't remember what they were exactly).

The abortion debate is not an issue that can be discussed unemotionally. This argument is fundamentally tied to morals, on both sides of the issue. It cannot, it seems, be impartially considered. Answering the question “How, if at all, would American society change if the current legal right to abortion is either severely restricted or eliminated?” is difficult. There is no unbiased information. Research is concentrated on proving one side or the other right. Neither side can get past rhetoric and propaganda to present a clear picture of how society will change.
The moral arguments being carried on, while in one sense very important, are unhelpful.

One side asserts that eliminating abortion will return women to the dark ages. This is not true. American women do not use abortion as the primary method of birth control. Unlike some European countries, where four abortions occur to every one live birth, abortion ends only about one pregnancy in ten. Statistics show that the majority of women having abortions do not repeat the procedure.

The other side hails the end of abortion as the means to altar the moral fiber of our nation. That is unlikely. Surface changes do little to affect character. Legally protecting the status of the unborn may save lives, but will not make lives more intrinsically valuable.

Statistics tell us that somewhere between 700,000 and 1,100,000 abortions are performed every year in the United States. If abortion was restricted or eliminated, on the surface it would seem to have a dramatic effect on our nation. Despite being the wealthiest nation in the world, we struggle with poverty. Almost one-fifth of people who work full time, year round still live below the poverty level.

After becoming frustrated with the one sided arguments in books on abortion or women’s rights, I came across “The Persistence of Poverty in the United States.” I wanted to know why the wealthiest nation in the world can’t absorb the increase in population. By gross numbers, we should easily be able to. The difficulty is that the same women who are having abortions, are at the greatest risk of poverty.
Mangum’s book describes a process referred to as “the feminization of poverty.” The American economic structure has become such that household must have more than one income to rise above the poverty level. At the same time, the number of two parent households has declined. The highest rates of poverty in the nation are single mother families. These women are in dire straits because they are less likely to have higher education, they have less work experience and amount of time available for employment, and must pay for child care while working. The elimination of abortion will certainly increase the number of single-parent households in our country. There will be an increase in cyclical poverty as well.

However, this phenomenon began almost simultaneously with the advent of legalized abortion. Using the “well being of a child in a poverty-stricken, single parent home” argument to protect abortion rights doesn’t work. The free access to abortion hasn’t prevented the shift to the single parent family in the last thirty years.

If abortion were eliminated, American women would continue with the myriad contraceptives still available. Adding almost one million people to society every year would exacerbate problems that already exist, but not cause a new crisis. The politics and moral considerations aside, eliminating abortion will merely further exacerbate problems that will take more than reproductive rights to fix.

Headlines, Breadlines blow my mind

Headlines, Breadlines blow my mind, and now this deadline..

Oh crap. The scholarship deadline that I thought I'd have until midnight to do, is due at midnight EST! Crap.

Oh well, I always work better under pressure.

Banning Sousaphones

"By the sidewalk, there's a sign with what I presume is a Korean character in the universal slashed-circle prohibition symbol, but at a fleeting glance it kind of look like Seoul has banned sousaphones."

Snarky Review Quotes

Favorite Quote for the Snarky Review?

"You can't carry handguns if you're an Australian citizen? What if you're in the outback and you need to kill something? Do you just throw a Foster's bottle at it and hope for the best?"

Every time I come to Seattle I waste entirely too much time on cable and free internet. Which is much faster and less annoying than going to the library where the characters take a second apiece to type. And God forbid you make a typo.

I spent all evening watch reruns of sitcoms and playing around on the internet. After doing the crucials of email, myspace, and blogging, I started doing searches for the complete Harry Potter boxed set. Usually the new book comes out in the early summer, but from all the fan sites, I gather J K Rowlings is still writing it, and it may not come out until 2007. Which might kill us all, but is a very good plan if they're still trying to film all of the movies. If she holds off for a year that will give a chance for Hollywood to catch up a bit. The last chapter was written long ago, and the last word is "scar." Which is the end of my hours of research. Which consisted mostly of taking Harry Potter trivia quizzes. My average on the easy ones was 100%, and on the very difficult ones was 85%. As you can see, I'm managing my time wisely. One set of questions I got wrong every time were the Heads and Ghosts of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Who even cares about those houses?

Then I found this site which features snarky reviews of recent sitcoms. I've spent all morning reading reviews of Lost.

Lest you think I'm completely wasting my time, I'm also doing laundry, getting enrolled into an online degree program, researching scholarships again (speaking of which, I have to read a book and write an essay about how the US would be different if the current abortion laws were reversed. Does anyone know a good book on the subject? Preferably something non-incendiary. I'm pro-life myself, but surely there's something out there that would just logically state what would change if our population was growing at the rate of conception instead of births...maybe it's impossible to be impartial on this one). And I've cooked two meals. Neither of which involved Ramen.

Doors Swinging Again

Doors Swinging Again

I had a meeting with my principal about whether or not we'll be having a spring program. We won't. Not with this little time left in the year. But she also told me that they won't be re-upping my contract next year due to budget cuts. So I won't be teaching in the fall. Which leaves me open to other things. I don't know what. But I'm free again. To do...something.

Two nights of working

Two nights of working in a row. A major incident with the credit card machine -- I'd forgotten to clear out the previous night's batch, so I could not for the life of me get my paperwork to balance. Shane was there to help close, and he found the problem. We were there late anyway with a lady whose husband was still trying to get their truck out of the snow. There was no one else in the bar, so we watched Lifetime. Early in the afternoon we watched several typically Lifetime-esque shows that Will and Grace refer to as "Honey our daughter ran away from home but don't beat me 'cause you're an alcoholic." Later that evening we watched Will&Grace, and back to back Frasier. It was great. Some nice hours for me, since I was bartending instead of cocktailing, and I don't work the rest of the week.

Tonight I'm going to finally see V for Vendetta.

He is Risen!

He is Risen!

Settled Again...finally

Settled Again...Finally.

I'm now moved into my new place. Alone for the moment. A little concerned about expenses until job #2 picks up a little. Speaking of which, I called in for my schedule on Friday, found out that I was supposed to work today. left early today to get there on time (after coming in 2 hours late last week) and was told the schedule had changed and I wasn't working. New rule: call closer to monday.

I'm back to the Entre Nous guide to living. I've started walking to the grocery store once a day to pick out about the next three meals worth of food. This is partly thrift, since I have almost no money, and am currently borrowing from my tithe cache, and partly because I can buy little bits of very fresh food instead of all the processed crap. This morning I had a cup of coffee, a banana, and yogurt. For lunch I had a baked potato with butter and cottage cheese. Tonight I will be resorting to tuna helper, but instead of canned tuna, I'll be adding a pound of imitation crab meat to the garlic cream pasta. Tomorrow, more yogurt and another banana with my coffee. Tomorrow lunch, another baked potato. And then probably tuna helper leftovers for dinner with the remaining fresh broccoli and french bread.

I'm going to go now. I'm using the library computer, and it takes about a minute for the screen to catch up with my typing. Free evening, I'll probably be working on some sewing projects.

Highlight of the Sermon on Sunday

"If religion was all that was needed, then Jesus was just a bad Jew having a bad Friday." ~Garth Gustafson