Two Abortion Stories

Image by Labour Youth

A few weeks ago, I came across this paragraph at the bottom of the second page of an article on a search and consent case the Supreme Court was about to hear at the time.

In other action on Monday, the court rejected an appeal concerning an
Arizona county jail's policy on abortions for pregnant prisoners. The
unwritten policy requiring an inmate to obtain a court order before
jail officials would transport her for an abortion was found by an
Arizona appeals court to place an undue burden on the right to
abortion. The justices, without comment, turned down the Maricopa
County sheriff's appeal, Arpaio v. Doe, No. 07-839.

Now, maybe it's a sign that my head's been buried in the sand the past few months (election, election, election, aaaahhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH), but this one took me by surprise. And then there was this article last week: Health Database Was Set Up to Ignore 'Abortion'.

The Arpaio v. Doe decision came as a pleasant shock to me. Of course there are government officials trying to limit abortions - I'm not that out of the loop. That this would be an even bigger problem for prisoners, whose rights and movement are greatly restricted is also no big shock. Never mind that most prisoners are in a uniquely, shall we say inconvenient, situation to bring a child into this world - 'they shoulda thought of that before they went and had sex.' What did surprise me is that the Supreme Court - the Roberts Supreme Court - might possibly side with those women who, realizing that they cannot care for their children and uncertain that anyone else will do so for them, choose not to bring a pregnancy to term behind bars. And don't give me that old sob story about all the childless couples out there ready to adopt these unborn children. The number of children in semi-permanent foster care speaks differently.

Now, I know that Arpaio can't really be taken as a test case for how this court will treat future abortion cases. The sheriff's appeal was rejected without comment, masking any opinions held by members of the court. But it still made me happy, unlike the second story, about search limits on Popline, only the world's largest reproductive health database.

It all started in February, when the Agency for International Development, the government body that funds Popline (which is run by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University), noticed that it included two articles on abortion advocacy. They 'expressed concerns,' it was determined that the articles didn't meet the database's criteria, and the articles were removed. Then the database's search engine was reprogrammed to ignore the query word 'abortion.'

Right...That's not an overreaction at all. As Debra Dickson, one of the Popline managers pointed out, database users still could still find information on abortion by using such search terms as, "fertility control, postconception," and "pregnancy, unwanted." Silly me! It's 'Guess the Query Word!' Here I've been missing out on a great game.

It's still not clear exactly what happened. In a statement on the School of Public Health's website, Dean Michael Klag, promised to look into the issue, assuring people that "I could not disagree more strongly with this decision," which he hadn't been aware of it until that morning.

In the end, this'll probably all be chalked up to an explosive misunderstanding on the Popline managers' part, but it's easy to see how they got there. The database does depend on federal funds, and the paws currently clutching at the purse strings don't exactly smile upon family planning going further than what you learn in an abstinence only sex ed class. Maybe there was some personal ideological motivation there too, but most likely they just got scared. Massive databases don't fund themselves, and with the Bush administration out to get anything that smacks of 'immorality,' what would you do?

Gah! I may not agree with fiscal conservatism, but at least I can comprehend it. Moral conservatism... Just because you have a close personal relationship with Jesus, doesn't mean I have to. Believe me, I've tried. We just couldn't seem to make it work. Please, stop trying to save me from myself.

Damn, I'm Hungry

So, as I’m sure many of you have noticed firsthand, there is a massive food crisis going on throughout the world right now. I’m sure you all noticed, you went to Trader Joe’s or Chipotle and they were out of a bunch of stuff, like bread and other essential items you need to survive, right? Oh wait, you haven’t noticed, you’ve only read about it? Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot we live in a rich country so it’s not our problem. Never-mind.

Alright, we may as well talk about it, that’s kind of like helping right? So I guess all these poor countries all over the world have no food or something. I can’t imagine it’s that big a deal, I mean it’s just food, but I guess it is. Alright, so the crisis cost the Prime Minister of Haiti his job. And it’s caused a few riots, but just in countries like Indonesia, Egypt, the Philippines, Cameroon, and the Ivory Coast (where the price of beef has almost doubled—in three days). Ok and maybe there’s been a little civil unrest in a couple of other places; but it’s just in countries like Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mauritania, Morocco, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Mexico, and most of South America. Most of those places are probably in Africa though, and they don’t really have food there anyway, right?

Either way, all I know is that all this “agflation” (my new favorite political buzzword) can’t be the United States’ or Europe’s fault. It’s gotta be India’s and China’s fault, if they didn’t have so many damn people eating so damn much there would be plenty of food left for Africa and those other places. Oh yeah, and fuel prices have gone up too thanks to India and China’s trillion people driving all their fancy new cars, which makes fertilizer way more expensive and makes it cost like $300 for my boss to fill up his Hummer. This, coupled with poor harvests in 3rd world countries (which has nothing to do with global warming, which China and India also caused; that is, if global warming existed, and it doesn’t) has created this food crisis.

Alright, so maybe the United States is investing way more of its subsidies for corn into biofuel (in 2005, 6% of U.S. corn production was used for biofuel, now it’s 23%). Ok, and maybe rich countries like the United States have caused developing nations to become reliant on food imports so that the U.S. can subsidize its farmers (we sure taught them a lesson in self-reliance when we switched the subsidies for corn from their food to our precious biofuel!). And maybe corn ethanol is one of the least efficient and least practical fuels ever. And sure, the amount of corn ethanol biofuel it takes to fill up the average American car requires roughly the same amount of corn the average African eats in an entire year. Whatever, though, maybe if all these countries learned about the wonders of democracy and capitalism they wouldn’t be so hungry all the damn time. All I know is I can walk down to the corner and buy a Big Mac for $2, and if the United States can do it, I don’t understand why everyone else can’t. And we’re in a recession too (which has nothing to do with the lack of investment in food commodities that may or may not have something to do with the food crisis)! Again, I place full blame for this on India and China.

Seriously though readers, a lot of people in the world are starving and it’s only going to get a much, much worse. Don’t take your plentiful food for granted and don’t ignore the problems faced by people in developing nations. Please. At the very least, go to www.freerice.com and donate rice to developing nations while playing a fun game that vastly improves your vocabulary; it's an easy way to do something good!