A completely different take on abortion

I generally stay away from comment about abortion publicly because it is such a touchy issue, considering that we talking about somebody's life, whether it is the mother or the unborn baby.

This post is not necessarily an argument, but it is something to think about.

My personal view and political view on abortion are not completely congruent. Personally, I'm only in favor of abortion in the instances of rape, incest, and when childbirth would present an immediate health risk for both mother and child where would be insurmountable odds for fatality. Politically, I'm not quite "pro-choice" and I'm not quite "pro-life" either. It continues my general tradition of not favoring any political extremes whatsoever.

I decided to take into account three prominent argumentative view points and approach them objectively.

"The Life Argument"
Central to the debate, especially when it comes to abortion laws tied to pregnancy terms, is when life begins. Aside from the colloquial definition about what "life" is, what about the scientific definition of life?

The scientific definition (or really criteria) of life is generally regarded as anything that exhibits a period of a self-sustaining biological process. A single cell organism and a multi-cell organism, in any stage of development, actually meets this criteria. Anything that that does not exhibit a period of a self-sustaining biological process, or activity for that matter, is not considered life.

In reality, one can argue that this begins when the fertilized egg moves into the uterus as a zygote with the zygote, through cell division, increasing in size while travelling through the Fallopian tube and becoming a blastocyst roughly five days later.

This argument could be further looked at, especially in regards to analyzing it from a religious  (objectively, because I am agnostic) or human rights point of view, however, it would be moot because I'm approaching this argument from its common denominator.

"They Can Be Adopted Argument"
The general emotional response by those that are against abortion is that children that are not "wanted" can be easily adopted by a loving family. I decided to take a look at this from three statistical points: the rate of adoptions, rate of abortions, and the rate of how often women choose to relinquish their children for adoption instead of option for an abortion.

I decided to take a look at the adoption numbers from 2002-2011. They are available here. It does not paint a complete picture, considering I elected not to use adoption rates in the 1970s as affected by the legalization of abortion, but it paints a little bit more relevant picture. Here are five key takeaways:

• At the end of FY2011, 59% of children that were waiting to be adopted was because parental rights had been terminated. It was higher in 2002. However, now, there's fewer kids waiting to be adopted.
• For 6 of the past 10 years, the number of adoptions in a given fiscal year ranged from 50,000 to 52,000. It increased to a high of 57,000 in FY 2009.
• The number of children waiting to be adopted, number of children served in public foster care, the number of children in public foster care at the end of the year, and number of children entering public foster care, have been on a slight declining trend. 
• For five years more children entered public foster care than exited; it was reverse in fiscal years 2007-2010. In 2011, roughly 10,000 more kids entered foster care than exited. 
• Even the statistical report itself noted that are flaws in its gathering of statistics, considering most of it is accumulated in six month spans.

Adoption rates in general nosedived after state by state reforms, culminating with Roe v. Wade decision, that legalized abortion in the 1970s, as well as the rate that infants were relinquished by their birth mothers for adoption. I had trouble finding numbers past the 1990s, but a trend that has been taking place that by 1990, less than 2% of women place their newborn children up for adoption, a rate which was at 1.4% in 2002. The abortion rate was 19.6 per 1000 women in 2008, or 1.96%, which was a reported uptick.

I also want to note that the median time spent in foster care has increased from 12 months in 2000 to 15.4 months in 2010, with the average time spent in foster care for child welfare participants being 26.7 months. In essence, while fewer kids are being put up for adoption and entering into the foster care system in general, they're actually staying longer. However, the numbers presented by Children's Rights do not specify statistics for newborns entering foster care from birth and seeing how long they are in foster care before they are adopted -- at least from what I was able to gather.

I do want to note that I was unable to find any polled statistic that asked a question of whether or not a woman chose abortion in lieu of adoption or vice versa. The answer to that question could be deduced from the aforementioned statistics, however, it would be admittedly short sighted and flawed. In the end though, Cory Richards, head of the Guttenmach Institute that often conducts adoption research, wrote in 2007 that it is erroneous to believe that adoption rates and abortion rates are related and refutes the notion that adoption solves the problem of abortion. His conclusion that it will be far more effective to curve abortion numbers by helping women prevent unwanted pregnancies, which is the prominent reason behind abortion in the first place.  This assessment has been apparently been vindicated based upon the success of a free birth control program preventing unwanted pregnancies in a Washington University study conducted in St. Louis. 

The bottom line? The question would have to be what is the exact relationship between the rates of abortion and the rates of adoption, especially when one is chosen in lieu of the other. While it somewhat exposes the holes in the "they can be adopted"argument with no real concrete data that supports that standpoint, it is true that almost all newborn babies that are put up for adoption ended up being adopted at some point and the general consensus (granted almost overwhelmingly anecdotes given on adoption lifestyle websites and blogs) is that the wait times aren't very long as typically the demand for children exceeds the supply of children (and that was really creepy writing that line).


"It's My Body Argument"
I generally stay away from this because unless I have no interest, nor any business, in telling a woman what I think she should or should not do with her body.

I'm not going to get into details about the various views this question about the woman's body raises because believe me, we have seen and heard just about every last one of them and then some. Yet, this is almost an extension of the life argument, with a twist.

When Laci Peterson was killed in 2002, her husband Scott Peterson was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for both Laci and their unborn son. Often times, in many states, whenever a pregnant woman is slain, the criminal is charged with not one, but two counts of murder (the mother and the unborn child). While this is difficult to bring up, it does expose inconsistency -- if a pregnant woman is slain, additionally resulting in the death of the unborn child, and a vast majority of law enforcement agencies charge the offender with two counts of murder, then what is abortion exactly? Abortion does result in the death of an unborn child.

At the same time though, if you look on your Census long form, it doesn't ask if you have any current unborn children for statistical purposes. In fact, I seriously doubt that the Census Bureau actually counts yet-to-be-born-fetuses as statistical members of the population.

Are those extremes? Probably, but it does take into consideration in regards to what is considered life, what isn't considered life, and when and where the line of government intervention should be drawn, especially when abortion is actually a private, difficult decision for the mother or the mother and her partner. Right in there lies a question that has no objective answer. Should the dominion of the woman's body include the unborn child, and thus free from the intervening arms of government? Or should we consider the woman and the unborn child not one, but two separate distinct persons with individually recognized civil and human rights?

The lack of congruence in the life definition, even in our own legal system, speaks volumes and something to seriously consider when arguing for or against abortion.

Overall, a true tragedy in this debate is the shortsightedness practiced on all sides, and the avoidance of asking deep philosophical questions in regards to abortion, absolving ourselves to keep the debate emotional. Abortion is a debate that can't be solved by conformity with beliefs because even amongst the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" argumentative camps, there's vast fallacious inconsistency in the definition of when is the little thing in the woman's womb should be considered, well, a person, considering that people are all multicelluar beings that started when, well, two cells divided in the Fallopian tube after fertilization. 

If (Insert Name Here) Wins the Election

If Barack Obama wins the election, liberals will be vindicated, conservatives will wonder how did this happen, and thus will begin the strangest 4 years in the history of this country thus far.

If Mitt Romney wins the election, conservatives will be jubilant, liberals will be depressed, and conservatives will become even more depressed when they realize too little, too late that Romney will continue the majority of the policies Obama put in place, save pushing for a lightening of financial regulations, and Romney is center-right instead of far-right.

If Barack Obama wins the election, the libertarians will probably reach for the nearest cyanide pills, for they will lament heavily the big "liberal boogeyman" staying in office, while expanding government and shitting on civil liberties.

If Mitt Romney wins the election, libertarians too will still reach for the nearest cyanide pills, for Romney is not Gary Johnson or Ron Paul, still a Keynesian, and still advocates for a foreign policy that advocates American unilateralism (blatant redundancy).

If Barack Obama wins the election, then conservatives will go back to the drawing board, and don't be surprised if the Republican Party actually begins a shift back towards its historical pro-business centrism that was more or less the characterization of the party from the Reconstruction-era all the way to the adoption of the Southern Strategy by the Nixon campaign in 1968.

If Mitt Romney wins the election, then the Democratic congressional caucus will probably embark on a campaign to destroy Romney to the same degree that Republicans went on a campaign to torch Obama.

If Barack Obama wins the election, then it reinforces tribalism and the emotional political response, which is what carried, among other things, to Obama's 2008 victory.

If Mitt Romney wins the election, then it reinforces arguments prevalent amongst blacks that it was fueled by a resentment amongst white Americans that there is a black executive, especially in the wake of what will probably be a controversial Associated Press study.

If Barack Obama or Mitt Romney win the election, then somebody will be jubilant, somebody will be unhappy, and there plenty of people discontented by the fact that their ideological wet dream, no matter what it is, is still not coming to fruition.

On The Dallas Cowboys

Each of the four major sporting leagues in North America has at least one team or two teams with manic depressive fan bases that, until pushed to the brink, they have an enduring love for their franchise -- the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox in baseball, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens in hockey, the New York Knicks in basketball, and the Dallas Cowboys and Oakland Raiders in football.

The Cowboys are dismissed by many fans of other teams in the NFL as blind and delusional for that Cowboys fans continuously hang on to hope that the glory days experienced during the 1990s when they were the undisputed most popular and successful franchise in the NFL during the decade with Troy Aikman under center, Emmitt Smith running up the middle, and Michael Irvin catching passes in the wing will eventually come back. This is the despite the fact that anything relatively promising has been stymied by Jerry Jones' ego, overpaid players, and a payroll that consistently hovers around the salary cap that prevents the Cowboys from effectively shopping for free agents. Not to mention, questionable draft decisions since the 1990s heyday only adds to it.

If I can digress for a moment -- I have to give that team credit for being able to find non-drafted free agents and team throwaways as if they were incredible moments of serendipity.

This is not the worst I have seen the Cowboys; remember, they were once upon a time coached by Dave Campo, and during his three seasons as a pushover head coach, he coached Cowboy teams to an even 15-33 record -- I say even for that the Cowboys finished each  year with a 5-11 record. In truth, it was a direct result of the Cowboys having no real plan once the Aikman-era came to a concussion induced screeching halt and Irvin and Smith moved on. It's the ultimate moral hazard: when things are going well, you're never inclined to ask "Then what?" It has cost the Cowboys dearly.

The Cowboys have largely forgotten what allowed them to be so successful previously: a staunch, intimidating defense -- which Rob Ryan still has a long way to go before it is to the level expected out of a Ryan-family defensive system; a clicking offense that features a dynamic, healthy running game (which has not existed since Emmitt Smith, DeMarco Murray not withstanding), a fluid receiving core (noticed I said fluid, and not talented -- Dez Bryant and Kevin Ogeltree are talented, but they are glaringly inconsistent); a solid offensive line (Tony Romo is probably the only quarterback I see on his ass as much as Michael Vick); a play making, decisive quarterback (Romo has it in him, but he will display poor decision making at inopportune times), and a head coach that knows how to get his players to play disciplined football. But of course, Jones is still stuck in his unrealistic wet dream of coming across next generation of the Triplets and won't employ a coach that doesn't amount to being a "yes" man (see the divorces with Jimmy Johnson and Bill Parcells).

For the record -- the Tony Romo-Dez Bryant-DeMarco Murray trio has the talent that the original Triplets did, but not the decisiveness that they had. Romo does have the grit, and for all the criticism that he receives, that should at least be commended.

The Cowboys have largely played .500 football under Jason Garrett. However, after the 34-18 rout at the hands of the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football, I'm seeing a response that really does illustrate how far the Dallas Cowboys have fallen as a franchise.

You already seen the numbers -- Romo's putrid TD/INT ratio; how the offense still cannot get into gear; how the defense can play so well, yet at times can fall flat on their face. It's hard to imagine the Dallas Cowboys, who will emerge from their bye week with a really tough match up against the Baltimore Ravens, whom are, along with the Houston Texas and New England Patriots, a favorite to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl.

As a Cowboys fan, I'll be the first to say it: the Cowboys deserved to be ripped for their putrid showing so far. And the Cowboys of the past few years is a clear illustration of Jones' shortsightedness. He may have been "disappointed" at the performance on Monday night, but in the end, fortunes and failures of the franchise are completely his responsibility and you have to wonder if there will ever come the day that Jones will finally swallow his pride and find someone that he accepts as a better evaluator of talent than he ever will be to make the decisions in regards to who plays for the Cowboys.

As for Jason Garrett, the 2-2 record so far serves as a litmus test as to what direction he's going to lead this franchise. Personally, he isn't the guy and I hope he is fired at the end of the year. Even with the Cowboys being fairly green, the lack of discipline on the offensive side of the ball, Garrett's bread and butter, is glaring and inexcusable.

As for Romo, he is a talented quarterback that is by no means a franchise player that the Cowboys can build around. He needs key offensive players that are far better than he is -- and I'm talking to the degree that the Bears' Matt Forte, the Texans' Andre Johnson and Arian Foster, and the Ravens' Ray Rice are light years better than their team's respective signal callers. Murray and Miles Austin are better than Romo, but they're not players that can carry the offense and single-handedly win games like Forte, Johnson, Foster, Rice, or even Victor Cruz of the Giants. With a pathetic offensive line, Romo is relied upon to not only get out of trouble, but also be a playmaking quarterback under pressure, something that, as talented as he is, will always be undermined at some point because of his sometimes poor decision-making.

At the same time, I still understand a clear point -- the Cowboys are still rebuilding, albeit at a frustrating pace. Yet, rebuilding in football is a lot different than in baseball, considering that there is so much parity in the National Football League. A lot of us envision this hump that the Cowboys need to conquer...and while they are scaling up the incline (with a struggle), they haven't quite got over it. The lack of discipline and at times, the outright sloppiness of the Dallas Cowboys prevents them from getting to where a lot of us fans and the franchise themselves want to be.

In the end, as Cowboys fans we'll keep watching. We've always been enthralled with this franchise -- from the uniforms, to the players, to the coaches, to the owner, to the culture, to how they are a cultural symbol of Texas, and the hope that eventually, the Cowboys will emerge from this decade plus old stream of mediocrity.

The People Screwed The People

Realize something: the government didn't screw the people -- the people screwed the people.

As we delve deeper in our cynicism over the circus roadshow that is the American political scene, we should definitely keep something in mind: the political party tribalism that many of us -- both Democratic and Republican -- have partaken in, has largely fueled the decline of the system. The idea and supposed need for ideological purity and ideological champion only exacerbates it. A person, these days, be damned if they actually see value in some tents of both sides of the political spectrum -- depending on how it affects their psyche personally.

All sides of the political spectrum remain caught in the romantic American narrative that fuels protection of the American unilateral landscape - economically, politically, and socially. The romantic American narrative is central to the relative feelings of insecurity by American conservatives and libertarians and the feelings of lament by American liberals and progressives. It dominates political discourse today; which, by the way, has largely disintegrated into a comedic sideshow.

Collectively, we refuse to critically think and we let cynicism get in our way.

We'll assume conspiracy theories in the "name of truth", but the reality is that conspiracy theories, which may or may not be true, are acts of insecurity that ridicules acts of insecurity carried out by those in power and thus produces the double negative of fighting the consequences of insecurity with more insecurity. Nothing gets solved.

We'll bitch about anything that a Democrat or Republican would be quoted for saying by an Internet meme, or a partisan commentator or publication, yet when we find out the actual quote and the actual context that it was used in, we willingly remain in denial.

We'll whine about the economy, yet we're actually whining about the fact that the United States no longer has unilateral economic insulation as it was broken down by globalization and offshoring as acts of efficiency, which is what the American system emphasizes. An international labor pool has been created; and heads that resent collectivism in all forms implode.

We'll obsess over ideological violators (think Bush for liberals and progressives and Obama for conservatives and libertarians) at any cost, blame Washington, instead of actually blaming ourselves as pandered-to constituents who will actually vote the same exact people we collectively are disgusted with into office. Then, the same game gets played over and over again.

We'll fight for ideological champions, label it grassroots activism, then blame anyone and everyone but ourselves if the champion isn't successful. The only thing that ideological champions do out of the need to remain ideologically pure is create even more inertia than necessary. Ideological champions, not champions of common sense actually employing critically thinking skills to actually solve problems, prove to be far more damning than those that bend before they break.

Yet, how did the people screw the people? By our own callousness? No. By buying into anything and everything that the mainstream media spews out? No. By not voting for Ron Paul? No.

The people screwed the people by being in denial, refusing to understand, and being insecure about the changing dynamics of the world that we live in. Indeed this world is dynamic and this country is a part of it, not above it. A lot of what we have seen in the past sixty years would have happened regardless of who was in power, because of the position that the United States was put in after two global conflicts in regards to economic wealth (fueled by the greatest amount of collective consumer demand the world had ever seen up to that point) and political wealth (the latest country to assume "Most Powerful on Earth", an anthology of sorts preceded by Britain, Spain, and The Roman Empire).

Anybody or really anything (i.e., businesses or firms) that assumes some sort of powerful position and is aware of their power has insecurity come over them, whether it is the political office or the boardroom. They're going to act on their insecurity in some fashion. And we the people have acted on our insecurity. We either don't or won't understand what needs to be understood. We'll remain in denial of things that shouldn't be denied. And those of us that have a sour taste in our mouths when it comes to where we believe, individually, for the United States to be at this point must come to terms with the fact that it is really because of us.

The Middle Class Fallacy Revisited

I already wrote about this before, but I'm going to write about it again.

The middle class is a fallacy.

This is not a diatribe linked to political ideology. I could sit here and regurgitate a whole bunch of facts and figures, and what has happened to the economic standing of the middle class of the past 10 years. I could talk about how that same article released yesterday related American mindset where they blame just about anything and everything -- to big business, to big banks, to Wall Street, the government policy, to Obama, to Bush, and so on. I've already given what I believed happened, and I'm going to do it again, in brief.

Before I do that, I want to illustrate that the middle class was never a legitimate socioeconomic standing; it is almost as a believable of a demographic as supply-side economics is a believable school of economic thought. It is a socioeconomic concoction fueled out of total bullshit, first coined in 1745 in James Bradshaw's pamphlet Scheme to prevent running Irish Wools to France, and subjected to more meanings  than most people today would really care to keep up with. These days, the middle class takes on a populist romanticism meaning, which the more and more I hear about it, the more and more foolish I come to realize it really is.

There's really two types of people that participate in today's capitalist economy -- those that can "make it" and those that "cannot". Anything beyond that is by definition of relative personal comfort and convenience: someone that makes $25,000 year may be living comfortably and feel like he or she has it made thanks to a very cheap standard of living; someone that makes $47,000 a year may feel that he or she is living marginally based on factors such as education attained, a personal view on the value of their skill, personal debt, and just really a relative desire for more money.

I know, I know - the whole "middle class" label gives people a certain sense of belonging and purpose; that's more or less why it takes on so much meaning as it does now. Because of the meaning that it takes on, it became legitimately seen as part of social hierarchy; the unfortunate side effect is that because of people not seeing the payoff, as in, "I worked my ass off and now why is all of this happening to me?", we get to be inundated by whining, bitching, and polls by Gallup demonstrating why people are so scared to consume.

I'm sticking by the things I've been pointing out the last few weeks: that labor has become devalued thanks to automation and globalization, that profit superseded volume as the barometer of success, that personal debt is still too high, and this is largely the end game of what happens when a country moves further along as a post-industrial economy. In short, it wasn't a matter of if it was going to happen, but when it was going to happen.

But of course, we're so far off in populist romanticism when that the question gets asked "I've done everything right, and now why is this happening to me?", we'll look for answers anywhere and everywhere, now matter how ludicrous or empty the answers may be. We wait and salivate for the personality that will assuage the middle class that feels sick and tired of being sick and tired, never mind the fact that the modern middle class was just a side effect from the massive pent up consumer demand and cheap energy prices after World War II. We listen for candidates that espouse "middle class values", despite spewing out rhetoric and suggestion policies that really don't do anything to solve the problem.

But what irritates me is that the modern concept of the middle class is a fallacy that only amounts to being an end within itself, yet we refuse to recognize it. Instead of answering the question "Well, what we can do about preserving the middle class", the question that should be asked is what will happen to consumerism when private debt levels stabilize? And beyond that...Will we consume smarter? Will banking systems discourage loose credit? Will we finally find value in human capital once again like before? Will the current barometers of success still stay the same? Are we seeing what could possibly the new reality of the Information Age?

My biggest gripe of all is using the "middle class" jargon as a political tool, continuously allowing one of the biggest socioeconomic fallacies ever bought into to persist. This is not really about the decline of the middle class -- this really needs to be a discussion as to how more people can effectively participate in today's economy.