I want chicken, I want liver, Meow Mail Meow Mail I’ll deliver?

Obama’s a politician, and like all politicians, he’s kind of a liar. A lot of things he’s done in the past few days have irked me. Like nominating Timothy Geithner, tax-evader extraordinaire, for treasury secretary. Obama hails Geithner, a man who happened to misplace $34,000 in tax dollars from his 1040 to his personal bank account, as someone who can help take charge of the financial crisis. Maybe Obama could teach Alanis Morrissette a thing or two about the meaning of “Ironic”.

Obama has spent his first few days in office systematically reversing Bush’s policies. Some of them I’m ok with, others, I am not. The reversal of the “gag rule” has really gotten under my skin. That is to say the lifting of all restrictions that previously barred the United States Agency for International Development from financially supporting international nongovernmental organizations that “perform(s) or actively promote(s) abortion as a method of family planning” abroad. My frustration here is two-fold.

Firstly, Obama is taking a baby-and-the-bathwater approach to a sensitive issue.
think it’s important, vital even, for America to provide financial aid to educate people about all things pertaining to conception, pregnancy, and beyond – which obviously includes abortion. I do not however, feel the need for the US to finance the promotion and facilitation of abortion with TAX DOLLARS. If Obama wants to donate his savings to private organisations that want to fund the promotion and execution of abortions in the US or abroad, so be it, but for Obama to decide that MY tax dollars will go towards the promotion of abortion, is a bit much for me.

Secondly, Obama’s entire approach to abortion angers me. He claims that, referring to Bush’s reinstitution of this legislation, “for the past eight years, they have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries,”. Call it semantics, but it makes my blood boil when people refer to abortion as family “planning”. Planning means to cognitively formulate a course of action in the event of something happening. The word planning, in this case, implies a preemptive effort to prevent pregnancy. Contraceptives are planning. Abortion (and in this case I am referring to those opting to abort a foetus for reasons other than rape, incest, threat of maternal death, or even high-risk of fatal defect in the foetus) is a morally reprehensible afterthought, it is not planning. Classing abortion as family ‘planning’ is dumping it in the same category as pills and pieces of latex: an attempt to euphemise abortion. Unfortunately for the irresponsible, abortion includes a heart beating, fingernail forming, living being, and no amount of whitewashing it as “family planning” will make it sound any less violent.

Whether Obama believes a foetus to be a life, life potential, a baby, or just some kind of new organ developing in a uterus, he should at least call abortion what it is: the intentional extermination of a forming human -or in the case of partial-abortions of which Obama is so supportive, a fully formed human.

On that point, or at least an extension of it, I’m completely baffled by how the US views abortion. There are fetal rights laws, and the murder of a pregnant women can be ruled as a double homicide, yet the President believes that a baby who manages to be born following a failed abortion has no rights other than to be killed in a hospital sink? A bit too graphic? Watch a foetus’ reaction to an attempt to abort it, then talk to me about graphic.

Not only does Obama see the abortion as nothing more than a cure for the unglamorous consequences of biologically successful sex, he also claims the birth of a child to be unnecessary “punishment” (or a miracle), depending solely on whether the child was wanted or not (it’s a punishment if his daughters accidentally get pregnant, but the existence of his daughters is a miracle apparently). The plague of our society is the “have our cake and eat it” mentality. We want sex, without the routine of contraception, but we don’t want a natural consequence of it. Michelle Obama even goes as far to suggest abortion to be a “constitutional right” – insinuating that as humans, we actually have the right to do what we want, and not deal with the outcome or accept the responsibilities that come as a consequence of our actions. Interesting.

Infact, Obama seems to believe that we shouldn’t have to deal with the negative consequences of our actions at all, in this case. He said “Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at age 16, so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.” I think I can infer from this quote that along with values and morals, he will teach his daughters about things like STD’s and how you contract them, contraception and things like that. So after all that teaching and educating about the appropriateness of sexual relationships and all the bells and whistles that go along with it, if his daughters were to err from what they were taught to be correct, he still wouldn’t want let them deal with the consequences of the “mistake”? So if his daughter was taught morals and values and honesty, but she grew up and made the mistake of stealing from a company, he wouldn’t let her go to jail?

Obama says after teaching his girls, if they make a mistake he will not see them suffer the punishment of having a baby. A baby could only be viewed as a punishment is it’s life is inconvenient. When it inevitably cramps the style of the mother, or is stressful, and not as fun as the sex the mother had to produce it. Also, if they have unprotected sex with someone with HIV, I’m sure he’s not going to want his daughter to suffer that consequence either but she won’t have much of a choice on that one. Just because it’s scientifically possible to exterminate a foetus doesn’t qualify abortion as an escape from the preventable consequences of sex.

I’m becoming less coherent as this post goes on, so I’ll wrap it up. What I’m trying to say is this: I don’t like Obama using my taxes to promote and facilitate abortions rather than educate about contraception and the tragedy of abortion.

Abortion will never be a cure for irresponsibility.

I might be hearing things wrong, but I swear that a line from “American Boy” goes something like: “I just met this five foot seven guy who’s just my type”. Is Estelle a midget?

Hannah’s sister found this on yahoo answers.

True Story

I made the cut for grad school… nice!

Go Here! (Thanks to Hannah who pointed this out to me)

Rachel found thisSad Dog

Be careful what you wish for, because if you have a really lovely husband, you might get what you wanted….yeeeeaaaahhhhh, turning twenty-three has it’s perks.
Excuse me while I go make some bread.

Even though I’m only 23, sometimes when asked how old I am, I have to take 1986 away from the current year to figure it out. I’ve been this senile since I was about 19.