Sunday, April 27, 2008

Conservatives are Self Defeating

From my understanding of social conservatives abortion is considered a greater evil than pre-marital sex. However they always seem to be pushing abstinence only sex education. Perhaps they are unaware of the fact that adolescents who receive an abstinence-only education have a significantly higher risk of unwanted teen pregnancy than those who receive a comprehensive sex education. It's only common sense that the more unwanted teen pregnancies occur the more abortions will occur.

This issue is important to me as I myself am anti abortion. I can't understand why they are so opposed to teaching adolescents about birth control. It's wrong to prevent the spreading of knowledge that is deemed objectionable. The act of premarital sex is in itself not bad because it does not harm anyone when done safely. Keeping knowledge from people that keeps them from making informed decisions that can prevent teen pregnancy is bad. Schools should teach the options.

Conservatives need to get their priorities straight. Because of their push for the ineffective strategy of abstinence education they have aided in the increase of teen pregnancy, and by extension, abortions. It is wrong to keep knowledge from people, because knowledge leads to better decisions. Abortion is wrong but it is currently legal and the best way to decrease the amount of abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancy through the use of birth control.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

A New Start

Ok I'd abandoned this blog for several months now but this time I'm really going to try to stick to it. Hopefully I can stay into enough to to have at least one post a week. Either way consider this the official opening of this blog.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Thanksgiving is tommorrow

Thanksgiving was made into a national holiday in the U.S. By Abraham Lincoln on October 3, 1863 to celebrate all the good things that have been given to us. However some of us are more fortunate than others and, while tomorrow will, for many of us, be a day filled with food and joy for others it will be just another day of trying to get by and make ends meet.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN in 2003, over 25,000 people died every day from starvation. For many in developing countries tomorrow may determine whether they live or die. The majority of those who die will be women and children.

In developing countries such as the U.S. many live below the poverty line. Roughly 36 million (or 12% of the population) people in the U.S. are impoverished at any given time. These people are not just bums living on welfare either, an article in Business Week published in 2004 stated that "Overall, 63% of U.S. families below the federal poverty line have one or more workers, according to the Census Bureau," and the majority of those without jobs are searching.

Roughly ten billion animals are killed yearly for food in the U.S. alone, that's about 27 million daily. An article in the Seattle Times says that "A growing number of scientists agree that animals are conscious and capable of experiencing basic emotions, such as happiness, sadness, boredom or depression." One could make a good argument that if animals have emotions (which seems to be the case) they should have a right to life and it is our moral responsibility to prevent the torture that they experience because of animal experimentation and factory farms.

This Thanksgiving why not find it in your heart to give those less fortunate than yourself something to be thankful for? Donate to a worthy charity, volunteer for a good cause, practice random acts of kindness, find someway to make someone happy.

Bibliography:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_22/b3885001_mz001.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2818615.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation
http://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/matheny.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2003333119_animals01.html