Fetal Pain

I heard on the radio today that Utah's House bill 222 requires doctors to tell those people who want an abortion 24 hours in advance that their fetus can feel pain, and also to provide them the option of giving the fetus anesthesia. This raises some questions in my mind.

First of all, let me say that being pregnant has solidified my conviction that voluntary abortions are wrong. My church's official stance is that even though there are some very rare cases when abortion can be the morally right thing to do (rape or definite imminent threat of death to the mother), even in those cases "do not automatically justify an abortion. Those who face such circumstances should consider abortion only after consulting with their local Church leaders and receiving a confirmation through earnest prayer"

Second, the idea that there are real people who can honestly believe that fetuses do not feel pain feels completely absurd to me. I am not a scientist, but I can feel the baby inside me moving. If I stand up, or change positions, she will move, too. We saw her drinking the amniotic fluid during the ultrasound a few days ago. She can hear my voice. She's not just a blob of cells. She's a living being. She is a person, and I am sure she can feel pain.

My first reaction to this bill was, "Well, this is as good idea because women who understand that their baby can feel pain will be less likely to get an abortion." In general, I feel like anything that will reduce the number of abortions is a good thing.

Later, I looked at some comments on the Deseret News blog - they were mostly unintelligent, but there was one idea that struck me: if you claim that a fetus can feel pain, you are calling it a person. Allowing this person to be aborted is allowing lawful murder.

I think that abortions are murder, and they should be made illegal. Does condoning this bill mean that I am contradicting my personal beliefs about who is a person? I still feel inclined to support the bill because I do think it will reduce abortions, which, while not as good as eliminating them, is still a step in the right direction. What do you think, though?

21st Day in Gaza

Here are my thoughts about the conflict in Gaza.

I think that it was a big mistake for the Palestinians in Gaza to elect Hamas, but I can understand why they would do it. If your government does absolutely nothing to help advance your needs, you probably would vote the other way, too. My parents changed political parties for this very reason.

Palestinians living in Israel wanted rights. They wanted the ability to work, travel in and out of Jerusalem and its environs without frisking and massive checkpoint delays. They wanted either to become citizens of Israel, or of a sovereign Palestinian State, which so far does not exist. They wanted economic prosperity. They wanted the ability to own a house that was not destroyed merely because of and Israeli Antiquities project - what I call "Political Archeology." Disgusting. Palestinians wanted Israel to actually take a stance against the illegal settlements that radical Jews have been building inside "Palestinian" territory for the past 50 years. Palestinians wanted to be able to travel freely between countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority.

Israel did nothing to help the Palestinians. The Palestinian government Fatah did nothing to help the Palestinians. They elected Hamas, who, with its radical violent ways of obtaining goals at least promised that it would do SOMETHING to help the Palestinians achieve these goals.

It was a very sad day when Gazans elected Hamas to be their official government. Since then Israel has had strict control of its borders, the U.S. and the U.N. have blocked trade, and Gaza has never known such poverty.

Israel used the rocket attack by Hamas last December as an excuse to go inside and blast as many Palestinian people as they could. You have to understand that Gaza is a super dense urban area. There is no way that Israelis could have launched any attack on Hamas without expecting huge death tolls of Palestinians. This did not stop them. There have even been reports on the BBC of Israeli soldiers rounding up innocent Gazan children and shooting them in a school building.

The "defense" argument is bogus. If I tap you on the shoulder and you respond by dislocating my arm, slicing off all of my fingers, and giving me two black eyes, there is no way you would be able to argue it was "defense". The kinds of rockets that Hamas owns are mainly garage-made, crude instruments that cannot aim at a target with accuracy. Recently, there are accounts of Hamas posessing more advanced weaponry that it smuggled through the tunnels from Egypt to Gaza. Yet there has not yet been evidence of their existence. These rockets hit all the way into Beersheba - but they didn't kill anybody there. Just because Hamas has the ability to hit farther into Israel than it ever has before does not give Israel license to kill as many people as get in their way.

Anyway, I don't understand what the heck Israel is going to gain from inflaming the Palestinian and Arab world except more recruits for Hamas. Israel looks like a bully to the UN, the EU, and, though not as significant, to me.

What gives Israelis the right to control the borders of the Gaza strip, meaning the resources and people who can enter and exit, and not accord the people living there the same rights as Israeli citizens? It's so freaking screwed up that a Jew from Australia could get more rights than a Palestinian living 5 minutes across a wall. And that Israel claims their right to this land based on the Holocaust is just a sick and evil twist.

False Gospel Doctrine

So in the LDS church you submit yourself to 3 hours of church/Sunday. Recently I have only been able to get through the first hour, due to lots and lots of nausea. Today I managed to stay during the first AND second hour, which is Sunday school. You can choose which class you go to (Gospel Essentials is for new converts or investigators, sometimes they have a class on Marriage, or Familiy History...), and I usually go to Gospel Doctrine with Danny because it's where most everybody goes. Today we were with his family at their home ward in Colorado, and the teacher said something that was utterly false doctrine.

If you aren't LDS then you won't know the buzz word "secret combination". Basically, several civilizations in the Book of Mormon perished because people were wicked and turned to Satan for power. They use "secret combinations" - but that's about the length of description the Book of Mormon gives to describe exactly what they do to get their evil power. I think any sane person could understand why a holy book wouldn't include details of sadistic rituals, rites, and secrets.

Anyway, the teacer said that the definition of a "secret combination" is any kind of deal done in secret. To his credit, everyone in the room knew what he MEANT, but what he actually said was that any deal done in secret to the benefit of those making it was a secret combination.

I spent a good portion of the clas shooting holes through his definition in whispers to Danny at the back of the classroom.

"Secrets gleaned by spies during WWII?"
"ANY kind of foreign intelligence? Like in Iraq?"
"What about businessmen? So their company secrets count as 'secret combinations'?"

I ended up raising my hand and saying, "Well, I think you need to say that the definition of a 'secret combination' is any deal done in secret FOR EVIL...what about Mary? If she had told everyone she was pregnant..."

And he interrupted me to say, "That's not what we're talking about, obviously!"

("Well, it's what you SAID we were talking about! If you look at it one way, what Mary and Gabriel did was a sort of 'deal' in secrecy! I'm sure that if Mary could have refused, even though obviously she wouldn't have...")

It bugs me when GD teachers assume that everyone's on the same page, and when they try to make super oversimplified generalizations that just don't work.

I couldn't stay after the GD class because I was super hungry and exhausted, so Danny and I went out to the car, still discussing this issue. Me: "I mean, what's the point in defining a 'secret combination' anyway? The Book of Mormon doesn't! There doesn't seem to be any real value in doing that!"

Sigh. He was probably trying his best, and I'm sure his heart was in the right place. Yet words are extremely important, especially when you are supposed to be the keeper of knowledge.

...and PS I was wrong about the Nausea

...it's back in full swing and sucks because it's hard to find something appetizing, that I would actually enjoy eating.

I hope this goes away soon.

My belly is poufing out! Pictures soon.

sic transit gloria mundi

...if I were a Latin teacher I would die laughing telling this to my class.

So Bernard Madoff is this guy who was a giant on Wall Street. I had never heard of him, but then again I have only been to Wall Street once as a tourist. Anyway, apparently he was the second person to successfully manage a Ponzi scheme since the 1920's. Well, at least that's what they're calling it. So far they haven't really been able to determine exactly how he got away with swindling investors out of 50 BILLION DOLLARS.

My friend Kelly had to comment and correct me. I assumed that he couldn't have possibly swindled 50 BILLION...that I had heard wrong...but no, it's actually 50 BILLION DOLLARS.

At his press release, he's reported to have said nothing but just given a little sticky note to the reporters with these words: "Sic transit gloria mundi."

"Thus Passeth Worldly Glory."

This phrase is used in the papal coronation ceremony.

What an arrogant thing for such a man to say! I told this to my French professor, and it really cracked him up. At the beginning of the semester we had a unit on Latin (the class was History of the French Language), and he happens to be a genius when it comes to English, French, Finnish, Dutch, Hebrew, and of course, Latin.

If only I were a High School Latin teacher. Man, that would be a great story to tell them!