I’m waaayyyy too busy to keep this blog up every few days. I’m just going to randomly post whenever I get to it. I’m also thinking about starting an advice blog too since I will be more motivated to be on time if there are actual questions and I love giving advice. :]
Yep.
38% of Americans surveyed now believe that there has been too much “mixing of religion and politics”. 30% believe that politicians are not expressing enough involvement with religion.
I think that this is a good sign. Hopefully more people will become convinced that separation of church and state is important and begin to see how it will help them.
Nate Phelps, the son of hated church leader Fred Phelps, is opposed to his family’s extremist congregation. He grew up in a radical home where his father ran a strict regimen, both religiously and physically.
Nate Phelps shows that atheists are everywhere, and it is important for them to come out and support each other. Even in the strictest and most unaccepting places, atheists can stay strong and search for help.
I love this blog post! A lot of people have been really upset about “taxpayers” paying for “other people’s” health care. When you pay taxes, that money supports you! Women who work and pay taxes are earning their own healthcare. In case you haven’t noticed, it is not only conservative men who pay taxes. All taxpayers should have a say in how their money is used, and the taxes they pay should help them.
The SSA I help run hosted a bone marrow and organ donor registration drive at our school on Tuesday (March 6).
I think that everyone who is physically able should be a donor. There are thousands of people with cancer and other diseases who need transplants. An organ transplant happens if you die and your organs are intact, so there isn’t much of a reason to not be a donor unless you have a disease or your religion forbids it. (Actually, a lot of religions that want the body to be buried intact put saving a life as a higher priority than saving the body of a dead person. The Judeo-Christian tradition of preserving the body whole comes from when they lived in Egypt and the Egyptians believed that the body was the home of the soul after death.)
A lot of people are trepidatious about bone marrow donation. The process is now used for less than 25% of donations. Most patients can be helped by a peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) transplant. For this type of transplant, a donor takes a drug that increases PBSC production for a few days then goes to the hospital and has a procedure similar to a blood donation (like the Red Cross ones). If the patient needs a marrow transplant, the donor is anesthetized and a tiny incision is made near the hip. A small hole is cut in the bone and marrow is extracted. The discomfort from these procedures lasts 1-2 weeks, but compared to the suffering of a cancer patient that the donation relieves it it insignificant.
You can sign up for these donor lists online, and organ donor registration is usually an option when getting a driver’s license or ID card.
It’s sad that some parents will stop caring for their children because the children aren’t carbon copies of them. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes young adults are forced to leave their families due to differing beliefs. LGBT and atheist youth are at a higher risk for this than a lot of other groups, and many LGBT and atheist people who are disowned by their families think they have nowhere to go. It’s dangerous for young people who don’t know how to live on their own yet to be suddenly thrown into the world to fend for themselves. A lot of them end up on the streets or with groups of people who use them.
This post is to let you know that if you are forced out of your home there are people to help you. There are a lot of non-religious and LGBT support groups on meetup.com, and the reddit page /r/atheisthavens has a list of people in various cities (mostly in the US) who are willing to help young people who have been forced to leave their families for many reasons. Of course, you should try to stay and work things out with your family as much as possible, but if your life is in danger or your family refuses to let you come home there are people who want to help you.
Other places that might help are Unitarian Universalist or Humanist temples, LBGT Pride centers, YMCA (even though it is Christian run, if you’re over 18 they’re known for being helpful to homeless people).
If you are pushed out of your family or run away and you are under 18 there will probably be some legal proceedings. Those will probably depend on the state where you live, so you’ll have to find that information for yourself since I can’t post for every state.
We need to work to encourage families to accept their children, even if their children don’t turn out exactly how they want. Nobody should have to lose their family because of who they are.
I ended Tuesday’s post by talking about how HB 2838 only talks about the right of a woman not to have an abortion. There is a big hole where the right to have access to a clinic or hospital that performs abortions should be. HB 2838 repeats over and over that the doctor or clinic who performs an abortion on a woman without the consent of her parents (if she’s under 18) or her husband can be sued, and anyone who pushes a woman to have an abortion can be sued.
Why is there nothing allowing a woman to sue someone who prevents her from getting an abortion? (I’m not entirely sure that this isn’t a separate law, so please tell me if I’m wrong!) If a woman wants to get an abortion but her husband won’t let her, what can she do? If she is afraid to go to the clinic because there are protesters hurling insults at her from the sidewalk, how can she stop them?
As I said in the last post, this anti-abortion bill is like abstinence-only education. It tells you that you have the right to say no, and tells you how to say no, and tells you that nobody can force you to say anything but no, and it very briefly tells you what possible bad things could happen if you say yes, and you can avoid those things if you just say no. It never mentions that the risks might be worth it, or that you aren’t a horrible person if you say yes, or that you can say yes of your own free will without being forced.
The AZ state legislature is replacing HB 2036 (a bill about lawyers) with HB 2838. HB 2838 restricts abortion rights in the state and forces doctors to use unscientific emotional tactics to prevent women from having abortions.
With this new bill are the following restrictions, along with many others:
A doctor must perform an ultrasound and offer to tell the woman about the baby, show her the ultrasound, and listen to the fetal heartbeat. The doctor must tell the woman about a website created under this bill that has information about non-abortion options and fetal health conditions. An ultrasound was previously only required after 12 weeks pregnancy.
From the bill: “THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES MAINTAINS A WEBSITE THAT DESCRIBES THE UNBORN CHILD AND LISTS THE AGENCIES THAT OFFER ALTERNATIVES TO ABORTION.” “INFORMATION THAT IS DESIGNED TO INFORM THE WOMAN OF THE PROBABLE ANATOMICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE UNBORN CHILD AT TWO‑WEEK GESTATIONAL INCREMENTS FROM FERTILIZATION TO FULL TERM, INCLUDING PICTURES OR DRAWINGS REPRESENTING THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNBORN CHILDREN AT TWO‑WEEK GESTATIONAL INCREMENTS AND ANY RELEVANT INFORMATION ON THE POSSIBILITY OF THE UNBORN CHILD’S SURVIVAL. THE PICTURES OR DRAWINGS MUST CONTAIN THE DIMENSIONS OF THE UNBORN CHILD AND MUST BE REALISTIC AND APPROPRIATE FOR EACH STAGE OF PREGNANCY. THE INFORMATION PROVIDED PURSUANT TO THIS PARAGRAPH MUST BE OBJECTIVE, NONJUDGMENTAL AND DESIGNED TO CONVEY ONLY ACCURATE SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION ABOUT THE UNBORN CHILD AT THE VARIOUS GESTATIONAL AGES.”
The bill also changes the time requirement for the ultrasound and medical information discussion from 1 hour before the procedure to 24 hours before the procedure. It also mandates rather than recommends a post-op doctor’s appointment.
A man can sue the doctor/clinic for civil damages if they perform an abortion on his wife unless her pregnancy was a result of “his criminal conduct”.
My biggest issues with this bill are that it tries to scare women out of getting an abortion even if they actually want to get it done. It creates tons of new requirements that make an abortion more difficult to do discreetly. It continually talks about how women need to sue if they are coerced into getting an abortion, and they can’t be coerced into getting one. That’s great because no woman should have to change her medical intentions because of someone else. The problem is that this bill only talks about the right of a woman not to have an abortion. It reminds me of my abstinence-only sex ed class where they kept teaching us about “saying no” until we felt like saying “yes” was not an option.
I think I’m going to try to always post on Tuesdays and Thursdays and post on other days when I feel like it. If I start making a ton of articles I’ll change it. Now that I have some stuff on here I think I shouldn’t post every day. :]
