Junior high bathroom birth leads to capital murder charge

Why do so many of these tragic dead baby stories happen in Texas? Must have something to do with the state's abstinence-only policy. What bothers me most about it is that this does not have to happen.

What if, instead of making pregnancy out to be the most horrible thing that can happen to a girl, someone had told this girl her options? What if, instead of telling her sex is wrong, someone had told her how to have sex responsibly?

Teaching teenagers that they're too young and irresponsible to handle birth control and pregnancy creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. How can they use birth control if they've been taught that it's useless? How can they deal with pregnancy if all they've been taught is that it's too awful to deal with?

Why not teach kids how to use birth control, how to know if they're pregnant, and what to do about it? Because it might encourage some of them to have sex?

Isn't it more important to stop girls from giving birth in toilets and winding up in prison?!

Where the fuck are our priorities, when chastity is more important than saving lives?

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"Tolerance is a problem threatening the morality of America."

They don't allow commenting, so I'll ask here.

Why is the Abstinence Clearinghouse Blog calling for more religious intolerance?

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American Life League keeping us safe from HIV education

If being "pro-life" is just about saving babies, why do they have such a huge problem with HIV education?

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Pro-Life Senators 4 Death!

This disgusts me.

President Bush's efforts to broaden a widely respected, bipartisan program to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa have faced roadblocks by seven Republican senators.

Bush had hoped that Congress would pass legislation to spend $50 billion to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis primarily in Africa in time for the Group of Eight summit in Japan next month. However, the seven socially conservative senators, led by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., refuse to support the legislation unless spending focuses more heavily on treatment than on prevention.

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the seven senators — Coburn, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and David Vitter of Louisiana — criticized the bills' increased spending over the next five years from $15 billion to $50 billion, the expansion of AIDS funding to countries such as China and India and the inclusion of funding for agricultural-assistance and poverty-alleviation programs.

"The bills' support would allow morally questionable activities, including advocating with host governments to change gender norms and policies and promoting activities that could include needle distribution to drug users," the senators wrote.

Apparently, for some people, preserving gender roles is more important than saving human lives. I'll never understand how these folks manage to claim the "pro-life" label, when they are clearly anything but.

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Obama looking to influence down-ballot races in TX

This is great news. (Via.)

In an unusual move, Obama’s campaign will also devote some resources to states it’s unlikely to win, with the goal of influencing specific local contests in places like Texas and Wyoming.

“Texas is a great example where we might not be able to win the state, but we want to pay a lot of attention to it,” Hildebrand said. “It’s one of the most important redistricting opportunities in the country.”

It's encouraging to know that Obama has his eyes on Texas' redistricting in 2010, and helping with down-ballot races here, especially in light of this news.

A new Texas Lyceum poll shows Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and challenger Rick Noriega (D) in a statistical dead heat for U.S. Senate.

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Ready or not, teens make reproductive choices

I'm more fascinated than shocked by this story...

As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there's been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town. School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

Apparently this town is so small, isolated and economically depressed, having babies right now is the best thing these girls can think to do with their lives. As a teen mom myself, I can sympathize. Obviously being a teenager makes motherhood harder, but it doesn't make it any less rewarding.

Now the community is divided over whether to provide easier access to contraception. (The nearest women's clinic is 20 miles away.) I don't know how anyone could object to the idea. Girls can decide to get pregnant at 15, and there's no stopping that. If you force girls to choose between abstinence and pregnancy, some are going to choose pregnancy, because teen pregnancy is not the end of the world. Where is the harm in giving them another option?

Not that it would have done anything to prevent this; nothing can prevent girls from getting pregnant on purpose. Teenagers make reproductive choices, whether we think they're ready or not. Denying them access to contraception only makes it harder for the girls who don't want to have babies.

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Duffy - Mercy

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Amtrak finally receives funding

Wow, it's about time!

A nearly $15 billion Amtrak bill passed the House Wednesday as lawmakers rallied around an alternative for travelers saddled with soaring gas prices.

The bipartisan bill, which passed by a veto-proof margin of 311-104, would authorize funding for the national passenger railroad over the next five years. Some of the money would go to a program of matching grants to help states set up or expand rail service.

Besides the $14.9 billion provided for Amtrak and intercity rail, an amendment to the bill would authorize $1.5 billion for Washington's Metro transit system over the next 10 years.

The White House has threatened a veto, saying the bill doesn't hold Amtrak accountable for its spending. But similar legislation has passed the Senate, also with enough support to override a veto.

"Nothing could be more fitting to bring before the Congress today, on a day when gasoline has reached $4.05 a gallon across the United States on average," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., a longtime Amtrak critic who teamed up with Transportation Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn., on the legislation.

Amtrak's previous authorization expired in 2002. The railroad's supporters say a new authorization will allow Amtrak to make long-range plans and take advantage of what they say is a growing appetite for passenger rail.

Unlike the Senate version, the House bill includes a requirement for the Department of Transportation to seek proposals from private companies to create a high-speed service that would take travelers from Washington to New York City in two hours or less. The idea has long been championed by Mica, who says the United States must catch up with European and Asian countries on high-speed rail travel.

Seriously! Why don't we have European/Asian-style high-speed rail in the US? Why does our government only subsidize airlines and highways? It's about time we had another option!

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Parents for Fucking Lies

Oh for fuck's sake, just stop with the goddamn lies already! These freaks at the National Abstinence Education Association can't write half a sentence without lighting their pants on fire. Look at this shit! (Via.)

Abstinence education empowers teens

Empowers teens? Since when does anyone need to be empowered to not have sex? Most teens have spent their whole lives not having sex! It's not like it takes any kind of effort or skill to not have sex. I'm not having sex right now. I've been not having sex all damn day! Look, everyone, I can blog and not have sex at the same time! Who the hell do these nuts think they're kidding, here?

...to avoid risk by making good health decisions,

Decisions? As in, plural? Abstinence is plural now? Abstinenceses?

Abstinence education, as funded by Congress, is decidedly more inclusive than “just say no”.

And how! Just LOOK at these requirements! These classes don't just teach about the benefits of abstinence. They also have to teach that abstinence is the expected standard; that abstinence is the only way to avoid pregnancy and disease; that abstinence until heterosexual marriage is the expected standard; that not abstaining is bad for you; that not abstaining is bad for everyone in the whole world; how to reject sex; and why abstinence until "self-sufficiency" is important. See? Way more inclusive than just abstinence!

Abstinence education is in fact broader and more holistic than other approaches and focuses on the real-life struggles that teens face as they navigate through the difficult adolescent years.

Real-life struggles! Like how to keep your sticky tape sticky and your chewing gum un-chewed!

Abstinence education realizes that “having sex” can potentially affect a lot more than the sex organs of teens, but as research shows, can also have emotional, psychological, social, economic and educational consequences. That’s why topics frequently discussed in an abstinence education class include:

* Information about contraceptives and their effectiveness against pregnancy and STDs

Oh yes, helpful "information" like "condoms don't work" and "they're a hassle" and "sluts use them!"

There are vast differences between abstinence education and CSE. The major distinction is how each approach regards teens. Abstinence education believes teens can and increasingly do, avoid sex, so the discussion empowers them to make the healthiest sexual decision – which is to abstain. By contrast, CSE assumes that teens don’t have the ability to avoid sexual experimentation, so most of their time is spent talking about sex and the use of condoms and other forms of contraception. Comprehensive Sex Education assumes that teens will engage in high risk sexual behavior and are content to merely reduce the risk of that behavior.

See, abstinence-only proponents understand that teens don't have sex because they want to have sex; they only do it because they don't know how to stop! So it's not a matter of convincing teens to be abstinent. They all WANT to be abstinent; they just don't know how! So all we have to do is teach them how, and obviously they all will! I mean, it's not like teenagers get horny or anything. Teenagers: they're like kindergarteners, just taller!

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