T is for the Capitol of Texas: Texas Legislature and Abortion.

My colleague Sasha Thomas wrote about the new abortion bill in Texas that was effective on November 2nd.  Although I'm not sure what her thoughts are about abortion set in stone, I have to plead with the "pro-choice" side of things. I think it's perfectly find to disagree with abortion because we are all entitled to our own standards of morality. However, in one perspective, abortion is a science that can prevent human life from developing, rather than viewing it as murder. I agree with the 20 week limitation because a baby is more than half way done with developing at five months old and I can see where that would be qualified as murder. I think the greater principle of abortion being illegal is the government taking away our right to CHOOSE. I think "pro-choice" doesn't necessarily mean that you agree with abortion, but that you disagree with the government making the decision for you. If abortion was completely prohibited, women who wanted to end their pregnancies would find a way to have an under-the-table procedure which could be unsanitary and lethal. The underlying message of the issue of abortion is that just because one group of people disagrees with something does not mean that all people disagree with it and there is no such thing as a uniform belief. The government definitely should not have the right to interfere a woman's decision, no matter what it may be! I witnessed Wendy Davis's filibuster live in June and I remember everyone protesting for women's rights to their own decisions and maybe one or two people in the crowd representing Pro-Life views. However, who cares about what the people care about, right? Before you know it, conservatives will likely block any possibility of abortion whatsoever, blocking a woman's ability to choose for herself. The real ethical issue shouldn't be about abortion but about the decision to choose to have one or not.

In other news, I found an interesting article comparing Texas legislature's abortion laws to Rosemary's Baby here that I thought I might share.

Peace on Earth and Peace TO Earth!

When it comes to any sort of government, environmental policies should be a top priority since they prove to be vital to our existence. It's easy to think that everything on Earth comes without a price. The past few generations were born into Western civilization, adjusting to lifestyles far from the primitive ways that our ancestors had lived beforehand. It is embedded into our everyday philosophy to take, take, take and most of us don't realize that we are actually taking from the planet that we call home to an abusive extent. 

Ideally, the first place to start would be putting valuable leaders into office. Thirty to forty years ago, the  environment was taken very seriously in the world of politics. The past fifteen years, we have not only completely ignored anyone who tries to warn us of our inevitable future, but we have also worsened our condition. We are burning fossil fuels at a soaring rate, overpopulating the planet, and slowly depleting our ozone. We're cutting down our rain forests, which are a source of 50% of the oxygen that we breathe. These are only a few of the harsh environmental conditions that human beings are responsible for. 

By destroying the environment, we are also destroying ourselves. Skin, liver, bladder, and lung cancers are only few of the hazardous health conditions that have been scientifically linked to the damage we are doing to the environment. If we were to spread awareness of environmental degradation and the effects that it has on our resources and ourselves, we could push legislators to consider the environment as a top-notch priority.

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) tries to step in as much as they possibly can, with acts like The Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act, in an effort to establish some sort of order and respect to our world and ourselves. But many of the efforts that the EPA, as well as many other credible scientists and Nobel Peace Prize winners, are being disregarded because of the typical "If we ignore it, maybe it will just go away!" philosophy that Americans are notorious for abiding by. 

A big motive that separates politicians from acknowledging environmental complications is money. (What else?) Many businesses thrive from the very things that are destroying our environment: Logging, coal and oil, etc. We wouldn't necessarily have to destroy these things altogether but we could find alternative ways to go about it. If the government started to monitor the amount of carbon and methane that we release into the atmosphere, we could little by little improve the quality of the air that we breathe. If our nation put reproductive laws into effect, we could put a halt on overpopulation, which threatens the limited amount of resources that we have, as well as challenges us economically. (Sorry Duggar family, but you gotta tie the tubes. Learn to adopt from The Humane Society for a better deed.) If our politicians monitored the corrupt gasoline and coal businesses that break environmental ethics and penalized them for doing so, we could take a giant leap to having a healthier planet. 

By looking at our history, we can see how and why certain events went wrong and how to prevent them from happening again. The big BP oil spill in 2010 is one of those horrendous events that we could easily refrain from happening again with the blessing of technology. Many environmentalists urged Halliburton to install an acoustic switch, an emergency shut-off operation, onto the drilling site. However, political gods such as Dick Cheney thought this to be a bunch of "hoo-haa" and a significant waste of money. I suppose it would have been way better to be safe than sorry, because that particular oil spill destroyed many ecosystems and contaminated the water, among other hazardous aftermath situations. Although that specific oil spill was immensely saturated in media attention, oil spills aren't a rare occurrence. There are, on average, about 22 oil spills per year. This is an example of irresponsibility that could have easily been prevented. Fracking is an example of another political stance that our legislators should take more seriously. The consequences linked to fracking are astronomically more detrimental to human beings than marijuana, a substance that has been illegal in the United States for far too long. 

Sometimes I hear people discussing global climate change and addressing it as a "scam." These people commonly roll their eyes at environmental facts and accuse anyone who cares for the planet of being a "hippie" or a "tree hugger." I guess some people feel that their logic is worthy enough to compete with science, but they're definitely not omniscient, and ignoring the damage that we as human beings are mindlessly causing to the only home we have is not going to make it go away. 

If things keep continuing the way that they are, then when the effects of our damaged environment start  taking a tremendous toll, we're going to wonder how it happened. What went wrong? How did this happen? Why didn't we take the world more seriously? This is usually the typical case for humanity, being warned against something time and time again and then wondering why we didn't listen in the first place. However, there is good news, and that is that we CAN take a step to prevent this from happening, and it all starts with getting politicians to become more serious and more proactive in all important environmental affairs. 

Government or no government, our planet needs to be taken care of. Plenty of people boast that they are proud to be Americans, but they often forget that America is a place on planet Earth. We might as well take things into our own hands and start now to do all that we can to protect our country, our planet, and our kind. It's a life or death situation and there should be life or death policies as well!