Pro-lifers for Obama

I started writing this as a response to this article: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2008.10.14_George_Robert_Obama%27s%20Abortion%20Extremism_.xml

As I see it the number of abortions is a function of both the availability of abortions and the number of unwanted pregnancies. McCain's policies would probably have a fairly neutral effect on the availability of abortions and if anything an increase in unwanted pregnancies since he's against forcing insurance agencies to cover birth control. Obama's policies would lead to an increase in the availability of abortions and a decrease in the number of unwanted pregnancies (through nearly universal health coverage including contraception and increased social programs for single parent families). I don't know enough to say which would realistically lead to a lower number of abortions but I don't think it's delusional to say that Obama’s policies might do more to reduce abortions than McCain's. Robert George treats abortion as if it were an isolated issue but it isn’t. Bill Clinton was easily “pro-abortion” as George defines it and also supported the freedom of choice act but abortions went down something like 16% while he was president. Then George Bush was a pro-life president and abortions just went down a couple percent. Abortion is a huge and serious problem in our society and we should work against it but voting for a candidate just because he says life begins at conception is often not the most effective way to do that. Congresspersons have too much respect for their constituents and Supreme Court justices have too much respect for legal precedent to enact a ban on something that has been an established legal right for 35 years when only 29% of Americans want to see it banned. To see abortion eliminated completely or made illegal or mostly illegal would require a fundamental change in our society, one that can’t be accomplished by voting for the right people or lobbying for the right interest groups but can only be accomplished by investing in people’s lives, building up the social fabric of troubled communities, accepting and loving people who are pregnant and single, telling people why life is actually worth protecting, and introducing them to a God who is worth living for and cares about every person. In the meantime I hate seeing the votes of some of my fellow pro-life Christians bought so cheaply. If we start wars around the world over petty issues, if we allow the checks and balances in our constitution to be consistently bypassed opening the way to more dangerous authoritarian leadership, if we keep thwarting international efforts to control climate change and shift the price for our extravagant lifestyles to the poorest people in the world, if we base our energy policy on having the best lives for ourselves now and assume the future will work itself out, we’ve done a disservice to our country and to the world. I know a lot of Christians will still vote for McCain but I hope they at least agree with his views of government or see him as a good leader or something. Specifics of abortion law do matter to me but I think there’s a lot more at stake this time around. If looking for the most “pro-life” candidate isn’t even necessarily a good way to reduce abortions it can’t be the best way to choose a president.

Discrimination

I was going out the stairwell door in Duke hospital the other day and stopped to hold the door for a nicely dressed white middle aged southern woman behind me. She was far enough back that I had to wait several seconds for her to catch up. I don't usually wait holding doors that long but I did this time without thinking about it. As I kept walking I wondered why I held the door for this woman when I wouldn't normally wait for someone so far back. I realized later I wouldn't wait that long to hold a door for (1) a man (2) a younger woman (3) a woman dressed in business attire (4) someone poorly dressed (5) someone ethnically Asian or Latina or (6) a woman who seemed to not be originally from the American south for another reason (since I think I associate chivalry to some extent with traditional southern culture). I may have picked out some of the various rationales for each of these distinctions in my subconscious - some seem good and useful and I want to keep them while at least one is bad and useless and so want to get rid of it - but I won't go into it now. Suffice it to say that in one seemingly innocent gesture I simultaneously discriminated based on gender, age, class, and race.

The American Dream

Here is the beginning of a front page Wall Street Journal article from a couple days ago: "Detroit's money troubles are starting to put a key part of the American dream - a pricey new car - out of reach for many people". I was never a fan of the American dream when I thought it was just about comfort - having a decent house, yard, car, furniture. Those things could facilitate an interesting and meaningful life, but as dreams go you couldn't get much more boring or empty. Is extravagance really part of the dream now? Does your car really have to be new and pricey? I wonder if that kind of standard is the American dream for people who accomplished the first dream and needed a new one but didn't take the time or energy to look for one that would matter.

Knowing how to think

I've always valued accurate information and have sometimes, to a fault, thought poorly of sources of information that was less then accurate. In high school for example, I would regularly tune out of sermons in church if I was able to pick out one fact that was wrong. We had a lot of guest preachers so everybody got a fresh shot. If he said Paul wrote something to Timothy, then quoted a verse from Titus, I didn't care if a similar thought had been expressed to Timothy too, I was gone. If he said Pippin's troops stopped the Moors in the battle of Tours I didn't care if his point was just to give a quick overview of relevant history before what I was later told was an excellent sermon. I was busy thinking about how great I was for knowing that Pippin had died 18 years earlier. I guess I was an arrogant little snot. I think my problem was that I didn't have to do much myself so I could critique other people without a point of reference.
Now that I have more things to do I'm learning to appreciate having the right way of thinking even when the details aren't spot on. The other day, I was looking into using a tool called an infrared spectrometer on a sample of mine at school and needed to know about how deep the rays would go into my sample. I asked a contact at a local university, we'll call it the University of North Dakota, who had used that instrument before.
"hmm so infrared is shorter wavelength..." they responded
"I think it's longer"
"ok so that shouldn't penetrate as far.."
"I think it should go deeper"
My question was answered as completely as I needed it to be with two incorrect facts and a correct way of thinking. Without me, they could have found the answer online in a few seconds but without them I would have been lost.

Hello Cyberspace

Every now and then I think of things I want to write down. Usually I forget them. Sometimes I write them on pieces of paper. Sometimes I leave those pieces of paper in my car with the windows down and it rains and makes them hard to read. Now I'm going to write things on blogger.com.