Political leanings...

[cthulhu]

The problem with scrapping AA is that once you control for other factors behind "blacks do badly at school" one of the underpinning reasons they do worse at school is because they are black.

People have done studies controlling for income and school in Chicago, and while blacks do as well as white on school entry exams, their performance drops over time. Probably due to adverse cultural factors.

So really, what factor are you going to control for, except what affirmative action already does? For this reason any plan suggesting scrapping affirmative action is hot dang crazy. That said, it could certainly be supplemented with opportunities for poor people too.

Australia is actually more than happy to give you a scholarship or a break on entry requirements for being poor, being from a regional area (which have worse schools) and being a black man.

Which is not a bad approach really. As all of those factors can be shown to have an adverse impact on educational outcomes, so we should try and correct for all of them - and lets not skate over the fact that black people have worse outcomes because they are black!

[Catharz]

Reminds me of that study which showed a strong placebo effect for 'racially biased' exams.

[tzor]

1184539745[/unixtime]]Okay two things, what in the heck did girl mean back when it didn't indicate gender, and how does having to take time off from school to deliver/take care of a baby morally relate to gay bashing?

Armed with a vague reference that a "girl" was a woman less than 18 years of age I went to Webster and found no numerical line. With that I went to Wiki, looking for a good age reference.

The word "girl" first appears during the Middle Ages. The Anglo-Saxon word gyrela = "ornament" may have given rise to the modern pronunciation of "girl", if the change in meaning can be explained. Alternatively, it could have come from the Old Low German word kerl, which would have been consistent with its original meaning. While there is no general agreement about the etymology of "girl", it is found in manuscripts dating from 1290 with the meaning "a child" (of either sex). A female child was called a "gay girl"; a male child was called a "knave girl". Like many other words that originally were not gender-specific, "girl" gradually came to be used primarily and then exclusively for one sex. There are manuscripts dating from 1530 in which the word "girl" is used to mean "maiden" (also originally applied to both sexes), or any unmarried female. Within little more than a century, however, the word began to take on implications of social class. In 1668, in his Diary, Samuel Pepys uses the word to mean a female servant of any age: "girl" = "serving girl". Note the parallel shift in the meaning of the word "maid".

Note: I did not attempt to equate being bregnant with gay bashing. I did attempt to equate the arguments of an abortion as a way of hiding the fact that a young child became pregnant to avoid the social stigma attached therein and possible acts committed by bigots with the notion that people should hide their orietation in order to avoid the social stigma and possible attacks committed by bigots.

I have some degree of sympathy for a person's life, but the notion of abortions as a means of hiding false social trangressions I have no sympathy whatsoever for. The basic argument of "If you have an abortion then no one will ever know" was one of the reasons why Susan B Anthony was such a strong anti-abortion woman. In her day it wasn't about pro-choice; rich and powerful men were forcing women to have dangerous abortions in order to hide the fact they were fooling around and to avoid the financial complications of bastard children.

Phonelobster, it's not that I disagree with your assertion of "forcing someone to go through a long, painful and life threatening pregnancy and then commit a large portion of the rest of their life to involuntary child care," but rather that I disagree that this is a universal condition.

1. Nine months is long ... on the other hand I think I might be able to come up with a few thousand people currently in Iraq who would, after serving their second or third term there, consider it very short indeed.
   
   
2. Painful ... I'll leave that to the experts.
   
   
3. Life threatening ... unfortunately the argument falls flat because women have been traditionally been married and giving birth shortly after puberty for thousands of years. There are risks associated with very early ages, as there are for very late ages. But it is not a blanket life threatening condition.
   
   
4. Involuntary child care. Not in the age of the granparent-parent generation. There is always the adoption option.

To summarize. I think there is a letigimate argumet that sometimes in some cases it is not medically prudent for a young girl/woman to carry a child to term. However I do object to the notion that an abortion can be used to simply cover up the fact. I object strongly to those who try to promote the ability to hide the procedure done technically on a legal minor from those legally responsible for that minor's care.

I am generally not a "pro-choice" person, but I tend to hold the position to a high standard. If you claim to be pro-choice then you need to support an environment where a person can equally choose to not to do something as they can choose to do something. The old joke about Ford's Model T, "you can have it in any color you want, as long as you want black" points out the fallacy of the one sided pro-choice argument. Arguments of abortions as a means to hide problems and make them all go away is snake oil con artist arguments.

Note that there is also a problem with the medical angle but it isn't unique to abortions. Insurance and lawsuits have also caused a significant and potentially troubling increase in births through C-Section.

[Crissa]

Life threatening ... unfortunately the argument falls flat because women have been traditionally been married and giving birth shortly after puberty for thousands of years. There are risks associated with very early ages, as there are for very late ages. But it is not a blanket life threatening condition.

No, no it doesn't.

Death by childbirth had been enormously common up until the middle of the last century.

Look it up.

...Also, the number of C-Sections have dropped in the last ten years due to increases in technology. It's good that we have healthy babies and mothers instead of risking their health to a danger - C-sections may have been used unnecessarily, but it was because risks were being moderated. Better healthy than unhealthy, most people would say.

-Crissa

[technomancer]

Involuntary child care. Not in the age of the granparent-parent generation. There is always the adoption option.

So instead of the child-turned-parent being forced to involuntarily take care of a child, we force the parents/grandparents to do it? Nice.

But the adoption arguement is the reason why I'm piping up.

I quick google search for Number of Adoptions yields this link.

In 2000 and 2001, about 127,000 children were adopted annually in the United States.

Another quick google search on Number of Abortions yields a couple of links. Here is one from the Centers for Disease Control itself. There is a table about halfway down which lists the number of legal abortions performed in the united states, by year.

2000 showed 857475 abortions reported. If you believe some anti-abortion websites, 48,589,993 abortions have been performed since 1973. For reference, New York City has a population of about 8.6 million.

Compare that to the number of adoptions, and you come up with an inescapable conclusion: Without any other changes, if you remove abortion as an option, you will potentially throw 8 times the number of children currently adopted each year into the adoption system. Even assuming that only 1/4 of the girls and women who would normally desire to simply terminate the pregnancy actually give the kid up rather than take care of it themselves, we're still talking about a signifigant number of children, especially when compared to the actual number of adoptions.

At this point in time, whether I am pro-choice or pro-life is moot. Until a viable alternative is suggestion, I will support the measures which are working. It is preferable that the whole situation never comes up in the first place, but even with top-notch education and ready access to birth control (and de-stigmatizing the procurement, possesion, and use of birth control methods), shit happens.

[tzor]

1184618602[/unixtime]]Death by childbirth had been enormously common up until the middle of the last century.

I don't want to sound flippant, but death was enormously common up until the middle of the last century. These deaths were due generally to complications during pregnancy and were not related to age factors in any way.

Adoptions numbers are strange, a complex problem of supply and demand. I know a lot of stories about people who want to adopt but have a hard time doing so. I know a lot of stories about people having to adopt people from other countries. Not to mention the odd supply on how some nations "export" less desirable genders (yes girls) because boys are wanted but not girls. (This is true both in China and in Russia.) Adoptions may be broke, but I've always believed that if something was broke you fixed it, not use it as an excuse for something else.

I would like to point out that I am in general not in favor of removing abortion as an option. I want to see abortions as unnecessary. I want to see an awareness where more people will choose not to have one and have the resources already in place to allow them to make that choice.

As to the question of C sections, I recently saw something on the TV about how many were worried about the increase in the numbers performed in hospitals. If I get the time I'll try to google up some numbers.

[Crissa]

1184626964[/unixtime]]I don't want to sound flippant, but death was enormously common up until the middle of the last century. These deaths were due generally to complications during pregnancy and were not related to age factors in any way.

Those younger than 16 and older than 30 have a high risk of complications - even with modern medical care.

Just because 'death was common' doesn't mean that we should discount what is normally a very important time in a mother or child's life. This was one of the very first problems solved by modern germ theory, and in fact created the very proceedures that we still use today!

Just because other people were still dying doesn't mean it wasn't important. Modern Germ Theory, tzor.

As to the question of C sections, I recently saw something on the TV about how many were worried about the increase in the numbers performed in hospitals. If I get the time I'll try to google up some numbers.

Yeah, it was a worry, but the numbers are out of date by the time people start worrying about them. The number of c-sections have gone down in the last ten years because we have an ever increasing knowledge of physiology of pregnancy.

Twenty years ago, it was experimental to induce labor... Now it's common practice to schedule this ahead of time. Twenty years ago doctors were uncertain that their C-sections would heal and so would not attempt normal labor after a c-section - now we know that we can repair the damage done and that a C-section no longer prevents normal birth later.

Now it's entirely normal for women at the end of their reproductive careers to still be capable of natural birth - a hundred years ago they were lucky to make it that far.

Science and medicine changes rapidly. What was true last year may not be true this year because of new studies, increased data, and further developments.

I'll admit adolescents being at risk in pregnancy is far from evidence based medicine... But any pregnancy is more risky than none. That is evidence based. That's why it's an unnecessary risk.

...The whole argument of it delaying schooling, employment, etc; as well as being responsible for a new life is enormously taxing.

-Crissa

PS - Adoption is totally an inappropriate thing to mention here - There may be a shortage of healthy babies, but there isn't a shortage of children. It's irrelevent because you don't get healthy babies from underaged or irresponsible mothers.

[tzor]

On C-Sections. I googled the news and found an article from July 13 on FORBES.COM

The rate of women who deliver their babies via Caesarean section stands at a record high in the United States, accounting for more than 29 percent of all births in 2004.

...

The use of Caesarean-section surgery has increased by 38 percent since 1997. About one of every five babies was delivered through C-section then; now, the rate is more than one of every four babies.

ON the matter of age and compications ... I find the over 30 number ironically interesting, I think most women wait until their well over 30 these days to have their first child.

I'm going to need some numbers before I continue. I did a quick google and SIECUS seems to have a Sgt. Friday, "just the facts ma'm" type of report.

• Each year in United States, 800,000 to 900,000 adolescents 19 years of age or younger become pregnant.
  
  
• In 1997, 2.6 per 1,000 women under the age of 15 became pregnant compared with 3.5 per 1,000 in 1990.
  
• In 1997, 63.7 per 1,000 women 15 to 17 years of age became pregnant compared with 80.3 per 1,000 in 1990.
  
• In 1997, 141.7 per 1,000 women 18 to 19 years of age became pregnant compared with 162.4 per 1,000 in 1990.
  
  
• In 2000, the birth rate for women 10 to 14 years of age was 0.9 per 1,000 compared with 1.4 per 1,000 in 1990.
  
• In 2000, the birth rate for women 15 to 17 years of age was 27.4 per 1,000 compared with 37.5 per 1,000 in 1990.
  
• In 2000, the birth rate for women 18 to 19 years of age was 79.2 per 1,000 compared with 88.6 per 1,000 in 1990.

I slapped that on a spreadsheet and threw up a graph because I'm a visual kind of person, even though there is a problem between the years.



Now we can perhaps argue over what percentage was necessary, a CYA precaution, or not necessary. I think the argument is subserviant to a more important question ... "Although pregnancy rates among adolescents have steadily declined in the past decade, the United States continues to have the highest adolescent pregnancy rates among industrialized nations." ... How can we continue to reduce pregnancy rates so that they become at least the average of industralized nations and even better below the average.

[Crissa]

...You realize that your abortion number includes the overwhelming number of spontaneous and other miscarraiges, right? I'm not sure, but I believe that those numbers at one time outnumbered the actual abortions. Your data doesn't include that information...

(The data is also does not include anything which would tell us if abortion is more or less common than in any other age groups, or more or less common before or after legalizing it.)

And as long as your friends are picketing Family Planning clinics, refusing to aid sex education, and tossing hissy fits over condoms, we really aren't going to make much more progress on the issue.

Abortion is such a non-entity when it comes to raw numbers: For all the young women that needs to be educated, there's less than two percent who will even be faced with the question. That is, by the way, less common than being hit by a car. *

Real numbers, tzor, real numbers.

-Crissa

[tzor]

1184716682[/unixtime]]...You realize that your abortion number includes the overwhelming number of spontaneous and other miscarraiges, right? I'm not sure, but I believe that those numbers at one time outnumbered the actual abortions. Your data doesn't include that information...

Oops, yes I did forget to mention that. I was generally more interested in the overall size of the bars and the birth percentage so I got lazy over the term used in my diagram (a miscarraige is technically a "natural abortion").

Don't bring up cars. Did you know that the number of people who die each month in the US due to automobile accidents is roughly equivalent to the total number of military personnel who have died in Iraq? Real numbers tend to make most arguments sort of pointless.

Family Planning Clinics ... for the most part where I live that's mostly run by Planned Parenthood. The local group is known for, among other things, trying to get schools to get children to attend "workshops" outside of the classroom (often by trying to sneak through parential notification) that in effect encourage those children to lie to their parents, they are known for giving away condoms that are known to be rated poorly by consumer reports, and they are constantly lobying for absolute abortion rights that superceede even standard medical legal practice.

The problem is that people often raise issues with vague numbers when it suits their purposes. I wasn't the one who argued that abortions were necessary because of "complications" without going into the detail of the percentages of complications that were really life threatenting or would cause serious permenant damage given the state of modern medical care.

Raw Numbers: "In 2000, the highest numbers of reported legal induced abortions occurred in New York City (94,466), Florida (88,563), and Texas (76,121); the fewest† occurred in Idaho (801), South Dakota (878), and North Dakota (1,341)." Total known is apparently 751,866.

Being hit by a car? Let's look at the NY City numbers. "There were 416 traffic fatalities in 1999, a 13% jump from the prior year, with the greatest increase involving cyclists. But Grotell said that 1999 tally was the second lowest in 11 years."

94,466 abortions
00,416 traffic fatalities

[PhoneLobster]

Did you know that the number of people who die each month in the US due to automobile accidents is roughly equivalent to the total number of military personnel who have died in Iraq?

There are a number of differences there.

1) We basically can't actually stop people from driving cars.

2) We actually know WHY people drive cars.

3) People have good, or at least plausible reasons for driving cars.

Also you are confusing an argument used by pro war types to try and minimise the needless impact of what is certainly a contender for the dumbest idea of the new century with an illustration of the likelhood of a woman being faced with an unwanted pregnancy.

There is a distinct difference really.

NOTE: Also you seem to mistake being hit by a car for fatalities when addressing Crissa's claim, and a quick average of your road fatality numbers doesn't really seem to be correct for your war fatalities claim by about two thirds or so. And its a typical minimising strategy to only count US deaths as it would take something like four years worth (of what I assume from a quick average of your numbers is) US road fatalities to account for just the civilian deaths in Iraq since 2003 alone.

EDIT: NO wait, sorry, lets see, thats what, 400 ish fatalities for a state, you got what? 50 states of something crazy like that, so 20,000 fatalities a year. But I somehow got the number off by a factor of ten compared to the civilian casualties in Iraq. So more like 30 to 40 years of your road fatalities would be required.

Oh, and I just noticed you chose to select the highest reported abortions, which you didn't compare to worst road fatalities but simply local ones, and of course non reported abortions (and interstate abortions) were unnacounted for while traffic fatalities kind don't have a significant unreported or "interstate" factor...

[tzor]

You know Phone Lobster, I quoted New York City numbers. Unlike abortions I can get really fresh data by a quick google search.

For 2005 we have the following numbers:

Code: Select all

  Drivers	27,472[br]   Passengers	10,036[br]   Unknown	    86[br]  Total	        37,594[br] Nonmotorist	 [br]   Pedestrians	 4,881[br]   Pedalcyclists   784[br]   Other/Unknown   184[br]  Total	         5,849[br] Total	        43,443

Looking up the current number we have 3,622 deaths of US forces. You take that number above and divide by 12 and you get 3,620.25. I had heard that quote from a famous former network news anchor who now pnotificates (ie makes editorials) for NPR. Damn liberal media giving us real facts.

As that commentator pointed out that the reason you don't find senators making long speeches about pulling all americans off of the highways but you do out of Iraq has nothing to do with the raw numbers. In the case of the highways, the American People are mostly convinced that the benefits of driving far outweigh the costs of highway deaths. In the case of Iraq the people are convinced that the benfit of staying in Iraq is not worth the cost of the people.

That's the problem. We can try to appeal to the raw numbers ... if it helps our point. Or we can appeal to raw emotion ... if it helps our point. Or we can appeal to the percentages ... if it helps out point.

Crissia's argument is "the real numbers." You know you can get some real arguments for automobile safety because all the real numbers are out there.

Fatalities per 100 Million Vehicle Miles Traveled ...
Fatalities per 100,000 Population ...
Fatalities per 100,000 Registered Vehicles ...
Fatalities per 100,000 Licensed Drivers ...

I've gotten my data from Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). You can't find this drill down level of detail for abortion numbers and most data is 5 to 10 years old.

That's the problem with this debate. We've been discussing abortions for girls under 15 years of age which apparently, once the numbers are in proved to be a very small number. But this was brought up in terms of the general abortion debate.

The old saying is really true, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.

[Crissa]

So, tzor...

...How are we to educate those young women when their parents refuse to?

...Why are you so against Planned Parenthood when they're doing exactly as you suggest: Educate.

And where the heck did you get those numbers of abortions from?
http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/vi ... able04.htm
~250,000 live births in a year, in the State of New York.

Are you really gullable enough to believe for every two live births in the state, there was an abortion procedure in the City of New York?

-Crissa

PS, my argument was merely that more people aged 15-19 experience death due to accident than abortion. It didn't even include the number who survive those accidents...

Therefore abortion isn't as important as accidental death or even accidental pregnancy, which is obviously important.

PPS: About 30% of conceptions (known) miscarry. ...So tzor's number more jives with the number of zygotes which go down the tube than those intentionally dislodged.
UpToDate: What is Miscarriage?
Study finds 31% Rate of Miscarriage...

[tzor]

Sorry about, forgot to post the due digilence. I got those city numbers from the CDC. Abortion Surveillance --- United States, 2000

I simply don't trust PP. I think they have a significant conflict of interest. That doesn't mean that I believe there should be no education in the classroom - the exact opposite in fact. But I want educators to educate - not third party organizations. Let's take the abortion question off the table for a second - PP is a provider of family planning services. There is still a potential conflict of interest in that they are in effect getting free advertising at taxpayer's expense.

Do I think abortion numbers are that high in New York City? Yes! Clearly this is not the national norm, "In 2000, the abortion ratio was 245 per 1,000 live births in 49 reporting areas and 246 for the same 48 reporting areas available for 1999."

Nit Pick: You need to look at the 2000 numbers, which was 258,455. That would imply a national average abortion number of 63,321 for New York State ... but we are talking about the city right?

Hmmm time to play bouncy bouncy ... ah here we are ...

New York State by location and age - Births

So let's see ... in New York City, there was 120,988 births in 2000 forming a very significant portion of that 258,455 number. Using the average we get the estimate of 29,642. That means the CDC's numbers on the city is a factor of 3 above the norm.

Heck, I just realized I live near the abortion equivalent of Bagdad! No wonder I'm so parinoid.

[Crissa]

Yeah, that's why we don't get up in arms about estimates, and merely worry about them being true. Since the CDC number matches the US norm for spontaneous abortion (which is the medical term for miscarriage), one would most likely think that's what it really is.

We've already discussed why Planned Parenthood doesn't make a profit, and why it actually loses money on every proceedure performed in clinics. So logically, you have no reason not to walk down to the nearest clinic or office and pick up some literature and start supporting them, tzor. You can help them lower the number of abortions required by people by educating others around you.

And I really bow to your Google-fu. It's very good. Better than mine. There's no reason you can't come to these conclusions on your own!

-Crissa

[PhoneLobster]

Looking up the current number we have 3,622 deaths of US forces. You take that number above and divide by 12 and you get 3,620.25. I had heard that quote from a famous former network news anchor who now pnotificates (ie makes editorials) for NPR. Damn liberal media giving us real facts.

And so clearly the road fatalities for a single state you chose were deliberately half the average state fatalities being a gross misrepresentation to compare with your selection of the highest mysterious abortion estimate number in your earlier claims.

Also you still do not account for the 600,000 to 750,000 civilian casualties in Iraq at all.

And I really have to ask the same question as Crissa. If you are so against Planned Parent hood "going against parents behind their back" how the hell are we supposed to provide sex education to the very people who need it most?

[tzor]

1184799781[/unixtime]]Also you still do not account for the 600,000 to 750,000 civilian casualties in Iraq at all.

No I didn't because he didn't. And I don't think anyone has ever suggested we should pull out of Iraq because of the civilian casualties. All arguments I've heard about our own casualties ... ironically ignoring contractor deaths but that's a side issue.

The question of "going behind the parents back" is not a question of overriding the parents desire not to have sex education for their kids. I come from Long Island, not the Bible Belt and while it may be more financially conserative than the city it certanly isn't more morally conserative.

Actually my Google-Fu is quite poor, annoyingly so. More over a lot of stuff I hear is from people who are not internet savvy so I often can't find links that would show data one way or another. Last and least is the fact that I live in New York, where everything is done back door and off the record by secret meetings with the unholy trinity of the Assembly Speaker, the Senate Majority Leader and the Governor.

[PhoneLobster]

Two small things.

No I didn't because he didn't.

Wait, there's some other guy in this conversation? And if there is why does he get to decide if civilian deaths count?

And I don't think anyone has ever suggested we should pull out of Iraq because of the civilian casualties. All arguments I've heard about our own casualties ...

You really really are out of touch with the anti war movement aren't you? Because, just to let you know, get you up to speed...

The civilian casualties are the MAIN reason most people were and are against this war.

No, really, focusing on the US casualties is an utterly narrow perspective not even widely seen within the USA outside of the discourse of the minority pro war right. There are some people who give a big damn about the US killing well over half a million totally innocent people for no reason at all. They are the same people who were part of one of the biggest street protest movements in history and the majority of the worlds population.

You should really pop round their place and introduce yourself some time, get to know the guys hear about their opinions on killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, you know a whole "Tzor meet the majority of the worlds population, majority of the worlds population, meet Tzor." kind a thing.

[tzor]

1184851353[/unixtime]]Two small things.

No I didn't because he didn't.

Wait, there's some other guy in this conversation? And if there is why does he get to decide if civilian deaths count?

Yes I believe I said, "I had heard that quote from a famous former network news anchor who now pnotificates (ie makes editorials) for NPR." I would like to give you more but after a while all those damn former news anchors seem alike to me and the NPR web page doesn't make searching by commentator name easy.

1184851353[/unixtime]]

And I don't think anyone has ever suggested we should pull out of Iraq because of the civilian casualties. All arguments I've heard about our own casualties ...

You really really are out of touch with the anti war movement aren't you? Because, just to let you know, get you up to speed...

The civilian casualties are the MAIN reason most people were and are against this war.

Really? I think it's intitutively obvious to a casual observer that if we do a massive pullout at this time there is going to be far more civilian casualties not less.

In any event, that wasn't my point in the first place. My point was that absolute numbers are meaningless. If you want to get to extreemes compare how many people die in automobile fatalities, airplane fatalities and space shuttle fatalities. Now consider how many people cry and moan about shutting down NASA every time there is a shuttle accident.

[Josh_Kablack]

1184370340[/unixtime]]
People get jobs all the time because the applicant was old friends with the manager, or went to the same fraternity, or is a firend of a friend, or was recomended by a superior, and whatever. College? Same. You get preferential treatment if your parents or relatives went to that college, you get special treatment depending on which extra-curricular activities you participated in, and such.

While my younger brother was attending Sarah Lawrence College, my father passed away suddenly over the holiday season. Fortunately a friend told my mother to put off the forms and instead call up their financial aid office and talk to a real person absolutely as soon as she could. She did so, and exceptions and adjustments were made so that he could continue his studies despite the family's sudden financial change.

While nothing that drastic happened during my time at school, I just filled out the forms, and consequentially will be in debt the rest of my natural life, despite having attended a cheaper and less prestigious university*.

Yet at least once a year, I see a "perspectives" article from some professor or other complaining that kids come to them wanting their grades changed for the asking, with no relation to performance and how detrimental that is to values and society, yadda yadda yadda.

*In fairness, I made some mistakes at school, but even without those mistakes his undergrad would have been cheaper - despite the two years I spent at the local community college first.

[Crissa]

It may be asked why I keep bringing things up. It has been said here (on another thread) that no one would support removing women's right to vote... We know that isn't true.

So what then?

Between picking and choosing what meager support I can give to various organizations, I work to raise my voice and others' towards the means of government - a protector, supposedly, of our rights - to balance against the pressured of greed and capitalism.

If you believe in something, you should be frank about it.

-Crissa

[tzor]

1185055749[/unixtime]]It may be asked why I keep bringing things up. It has been said here (on another thread) that no one would support removing women's right to vote... We know that isn't true.

Wait a minute. My irony meter just hit Aleph 1 on the infinity scale. Sen. Kay O'Connor once said that "The 19th Amendment is around because men weren't doing their jobs, and I think that's sad." The Senator is a woman. Somehow she thinks it is wrong for a woman to vote but not for a woman to run for office? That's so sad.

Ironically women's sufferage is older in America than our Constitution. It was a fundamental principle in the Five Nations Constitution. It's not their fault the founding fathers didn't borrow that feature from the Native Americans.

[dbb]

O'Connor, of course, later
[counturl=80]claimed to have been misquoted.[/counturl]

Also, good news: O'Connor lost. Not even in the general election -- she lost in the primary.

--d.

[Crissa]

Yes, well, people who actually fess up to believing that women shouldn't vote don't get very far in a democracy where half of voters could be women...

Also, don't go quoting a 'constitution' that wasn't written until 1979 and women couldn't hold titles in it... *sigh*

You may not believe it, but there really are people like that. And they take advantage of people like you, tzor, who have big hearts and hopes.

-Crissa

[dbb]

I'm actually not sure which is the more depressing possibility:

a) O'Connor's opinions were accurately represented, and she still got something like 40% of the vote, or

b) O'Connor's opinions were misrepresented, and the image people will have of her until she dies will be "she thought women shouldn't have the right to vote".

It's a tie, I guess. They're both pretty discouraging (though not as discouraging as some of the other possible outcomes, like "her opinons were accurately represented and she got elected").

--d.