On abortion.
When I was a high school freshman I was completely against abortion. A couple of my aunts were barren and wished for a child. I thought if you are blessed enough to get pregnant it is a miracle you should keep. In my junior year in high school I started to notice that a couple of the high school girls had to drop out because they were getting pregnant. I thought "what a shame". The girls were okay students. But now they will become moms without high school diplomas. What kind of future would they give the child? I remembered at one point when I found out that a friend of a friend was pregnant I just said “why doesn’t she just abort?” I don’t remember what happened to my hard stance on abortion, it just went out the window. No one convinced me, I had just grown tired of so many futures ruined because of teen pregnancy.
I was brought up Catholic and I remember clearly rebelling against my religion when I was 14. I read about all the atrocities the church committed in the name of God; atrocities against Native Americans. Perhaps this stage made me question my sense of morality.
When I was a senior in high school a close friend of mine had an abortion. I remember it was really hard on her and her siblings. The sister that paid for the abortion told me that the whole experience left her traumatized. She had nightmares because she felt guilty that she had facilitated the abortion. A couple months after the abortion, my friend got pregnant again. Her family and friends were disappointed with her. We thought, how could she be so stupid? But we knew she wasn't really stupid, she was probably one of the smartest girls in school. One problem as I see it was her boyfriend, a dumb manipulative jerk. He on several occasions threatened her that if she left him, he would kill her. I am not sure he knew about the first pregnancy. She went through with the second pregnancy. She had a beautiful baby boy. I lost touch and no longer speak to her, last I heard she was still with that jerk.
10 years later my views on abortion has changed slightly. .
I think there should be an honest sexual education program in our schools, starting with elementary schools. In Los Angeles I knew a couple of kids that started to be sexually active in elementary school. It sounds scary and gross but I heard the stories as they say “right from the horse’s mouth”. I wish my mother could design the class… she pretty much scared me not to have sex. My mom should visit all the schools in LA with the belt in her hand. All joking aside, an abstinence only approach worked in my case in high school, but I don’t think everyone has the same experience growing up. I think expecting abstinence in every case is unrealistic. The kids of America need to know what they can do to protect themselves from an unwanted pregnancy or diseases. Protecting the children is a group effort. The parents must show them the whip and the schools must give them the proper tools (knowledge) to protect themselves. I remember my high school would give out free condoms. The students usually would blow them up and throw them around class, but I am sure some used them.
I hold life as a precious thing. I personally have never aborted, nor ever gotten pregnant. - hence why I’ve never aborted. I think to have an abortion or not, is a moral choice. I have my own beliefs a part from any religion. I do not judge those who have had abortions because I’ve never walked in their shoes. It is not an easy choice for anyone to make or to live with. I also know that those who frown upon people who’ve had abortions tend to also be against welfare or funding social services. If society is not prepared to take care of the children brought into this world, society should not have a say in what an individual person does with their body. Many cultures have different opinions as to when life begins. So who’s to say who is wrong or right. However, I do think that late term abortion an infanticide is wrong. And if you walk the streets of India or China, it is something that “just happens”.
The key is to prevent, prevent, prevent, through education. If we can reduce the # of unwanted pregnancies, we can reduce the amount of abortions. NEVER ban abortion because some women will go at great lengths not to have a baby that they might end up losing their own lives, by suicide or in the hands of clandestine abortion clinics.
On the death penalty.
This is a hard one. I feel that you cannot find justice in revenge. However if someone hurt any of my loved ones I would probably want to see them hurt 10 fold, but it doesn’t solve anything. It won’t erase the pain. I would like to think that I have forgiveness in my heart. The thing that makes me think that I may not be able to forgive is when I hear about child abuse. I usually want the perpetrator to suffer greatly and never be released to the public. Perhaps not the death penalty, but it’s where I throw the 8th Amendment’s "cruel and unusual punishment" out the window.
The thing that makes me lean towards a no on the death penalty is that our justice system in America is broken. On several occasions people have been wrongly convicted for a crime they did not commit. Just recently in Pennsylvania two judges were accused of sentencing youths in return for money. The youths were sent to a privately owned prison and the judges got money for it. The prison would reap federal dollars it would get from jailing these youths, and the judges were getting kick backs for the kids they sentenced. The only ones not profiting from this situation were the kids, who lost their freedom. Who ever said you can’t put a price on freedom is wrong; you can. Going rate? I don't know, we should ask the judges what they got. Of course the freedom of others is less valuable than our own. Maybe now we should ask the judges what they are willing to pay NOT to go to jail.
Back to the point, vengeance is not justice, and our system is broken so it doesn't assure us that the right person is getting “justice” served to them. Also by our own laws no one should suffer from cruel and unusual punishment and murder is cruel.
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