[Peace-discuss] Obama gets another one right

[Neil Parthun]

I concur.  In states where the stigma of abortion is lessened with  
more liberal laws, there are low abortion rates.  If students are  
taught the risk/benefit analysis of sexual activity and different  
protection measures, they can better prepare themselves to minimize  
potential unwanted pregnancies before they even occur.  I wonder how  
much of the rise in abortion has come from the fervent "abstinence  
only" education being shoved down peoples' throats while getting rid  
of educational measures to protect people that choose to engage in  
sexual activity.

Given this topic, I went back to something I wrote when I was working  
for a local newspaper in 2005-2006 and I sent this to another  
columnist who suggested that it was great that banning abortion would  
be wonderful.

Mere prohibition has not worked in the past (when abortion was  
illegal, alcohol, the war on drugs, etc.) and still will not work  
today.  Making abortion illegal will simply mean that the women  
wealthy enough to go to a place where it is legal will still get  
their abortions and those who can't will go towards unsafe means to  
procure
them (i.e. back-alley coathanger shops)

If you truly want an abortion free country, then let's educate the  
people and actually take care of the urban poor.  Instead of cutting  
poverty rolls, cutting aid to the poor with Medicaid, instead of  
outsourcing good paying jobs to 3rd world developing countries  
because it is cheaper leaving only minimum wage low skill jobs that  
make it
nearly impossible to raise a family, instead of cutting Pell grants  
and educational grants that make it easier for youths to get  
financial aid, instead of believing that it is somehow moral to send  
soldiers off to die for Middle Eastern oil supplies, instead of  
cutting funds to schools and having property taxes as the primary  
funds of schools
which creates a perpetual system of educational inequality, instead  
of believing that it is somehow moral to execute a prisoner, instead  
of having a system of racial profiling that creates a society where  
there are more black men in prison than in college, instead of  
stepping over the homeless and not truly helping...Instead of turning  
a blind eye to the underclass working poor of America by telling them  
to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when they have no boots to  
speak of -- take care of these people.  If people have the money,  
time and can take care of their children, they will.


Live hard,
      Neil

We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear — fear of  
poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or  
fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for  
bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp  
on vague charges of being a terrorist sympathizer.
[hunter s. thompson, 1937-2005]

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil  
obedience...Our problem is that people are obedient all over the  
world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war,  
and cruelty.
[howard zinn, 1922-]
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