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No. 27 Bookworm Podcast : James Younger and the problems with transgenderism

October 23, 2019 by Bookworm Leave a Comment

In my latest podcast, I talk the custody battle over James Younger and the myriad problems it raises with the fad called transgenderism.

Bookworm PodcastMy latest podcast is up and running. You can listen to it through the audio embed below, or at LibSyn, or through Apple Podcasts. The podcast:

1. Explains why I do not believe that “transgenderism” is real.

2. Discusses the facts of the James Younger case.

3. Explains the lack of science underlying so-called “transgenderism.”

4. Gives a best guess as to why doctors go along with all this.

5. Discusses how promoting transgenderism advances the Left’s agenda.

6. Talks about the effect of James Younger’s travails on politics.

Contrary to my usual practice, I will not be publishing a companion, because this podcast, aside from giving facts relevant to the James Younger case, mostly rehashes posts I’ve done before. I’ll therefore simply list below articles and posts to which I refer in the podcast: [Read more…]

Filed Under: GBLT Tagged With: Anna Georgulas, Anorexia, Gender Dysmorphia, GENECIS Program, James Younger, Jeffrey Younger, Sarah Scott, the Pill, Transgender, Transgenderism

Bookworm Beat 12/20/18 — the border wall edition

December 21, 2018 by Bookworm Leave a Comment

I went overboard in this Bookworm Beat, covering the border wall, Syria, Antisemitism, Europe’s fall, science, Michelle and Melania, media bias, and much more.

border wall lawless government DACA Illegal immigrants illegal aliens illegal immigration borderGood walls make good neighbors. Trump did it — he got the House to include $5 billion in the budget bill to build the border wall. I was actually worried that he wouldn’t fulfill a core promise he made both to get elected and to put Chuck and Nancy in their place by saying he’d shut down the government before walking away from the wall.

Yay, Trump! Of course, now I’m worried what the execrable Jeff Flake will do in the Senate.

If you want a reminder about why the Left is fighting the wall with everything it has, despite voting for it some years ago, and strongly criticizing illegal immigration at the same time, Victor Davis Hanson explains: Put simply, a wall destroys the Democrats’ base.

Federal judge opens borders. It’s great that Trump got funding for the border wall. It’s not so great that, just yesterday, Judge Emmet Sullivan, the same guy who erroneously excoriated Lieut. Gen’l Flynn as a “traitor,” decided that America has no borders:

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan — who a day earlier had excoriated former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — ordered the government to allow migrants with iffy claims to be given a full chance to make their case for asylum.

And he ordered the U.S. to un-deport plaintiffs in the case who already had been ousted under the new policy, saying they deserve to be brought back and allowed to claim asylum.

“Because it is the will of Congress — not the whims of the executive — that determines the standard for expedited removal, the court finds that those policies are unlawful,” Judge Sullivan wrote.

His decision overturns a move by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had tried to block asylum claims of migrants who said they faced gang violence or domestic abuse back home.

I am sorry that, for so many people, the world is a terrible place. I know that I’m singularly fortunate that sixty years ago my parents, after waiting patiently for years to get visas, legally immigrated to America allowing me to be a citizen of and grow up in this great country.

I also know that life is unfair and that we don’t make it more fair by destroying ourselves. The Leftists are demanding that we import into America the pathologies that have plagued Latin America for hundreds of years. I’m not willing to be a part of that suicide pact — although I don’t know what I, personally, can do to take away the gun the Left is figuratively placing in America’s mouth, with its finger on the trigger.

On withdrawal from Syria, I’m conflicted. Although I suspect a lot of Americans didn’t even realize we still had around 2,000 troops in Syria, it’s proving to be a hot button issue now that Trump has announced a troop withdrawal. His stated reason is that he promised we’d be in Syria to defeat ISIS and, having defeated ISIS, it’s now time to leave.

I think this was a good decision for a few reasons. First, Trump did what we keep asking our leaders to do, which is to state a clear objective and then, when that objective is achieved, to announce “victory!” and to withdraw. No quagmires for President Trump.

Second, as I noted, I bet a lot of Americans didn’t realize we even had troops in Syria. In other words, this was not a war that the nation supported. It was an “action,” the purpose of which was not obvious to most Americans. I firmly believe that you cannot endlessly demand that a nation send its blood and treasure to foreign shores without being able to articulate why. Without ISIS, no one was articulating a why, so Trump did the right thing by pulling our troops out.

Third, as long as the Western world refuses to tackle the problem of Islam head on, and without an imminent threat from a concerted non-government army such as al Qaeda or ISIS, these far-away battlefields are just band-aids. It makes no sense to send young men to die in Syria or Afghanistan to kill people who our leaders refuse to acknowledge are terribly dangerous. Again, without a clearly articulated purpose, why are our boys and men being sent to die?

Fourth, outside of Israel, which is a beacon of light, freedom, and innovation in a backwards, benighted region, I think the whole of the Middle East can go to Hell. I want them to leave us alone and I want them to leave Israel alone, but otherwise I don’t think we should be doing business there. Trump, by unleashing America’s energy sector, has cut the tie that bound us — namely, oil dependency.

Fifth, to the extent Iran is a threat, let the Sunni nations fight it. We can provide support for those nations (weapons, advice, etc.), but they should be their own front line. Making them the front line also forces them to make nice with Israel, because, as the Muslims say, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

For more on all these points, I suggest reading this post from Daniel Greenfield. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Open Threads Tagged With: Afghanistan, Al Dubin, American Citizenship, Antisemitism, Asylum Claims, Border Wall, Busby Berkeley, California, Carter Page, China, Claas Relotius, Deep State, Dermophis donaldtrumpi, Desmond Tutu, Dhimmitude, Economy, Electric Car Subsidies, Emmet G. Sullivan, England, Europe, Federal Reserve, Gold Diggers of 1933, Harry Warren, Hege Storhaug, Illegal Immigration, Iran, ISIS, Islam, Israel, Israeli War of Independence, Jihad, Justice Kavanaugh, Latin America, Mahmoud Abbas, Marijuana, Mattis, Media Bias, Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, Middle East, Muslim violence, Open Borders, Remember My Forgotten Man, Russia, South Africa, Stock Market, Sunni Muslim Nations, Syria, Terrorism, the Pill, Toxic Masculinity, Troop Withdrawal, Trump

Can we stop using euphemisms that implicitly accept Leftist ideas?

February 5, 2018 by Bookworm 22 Comments

When the Left uses euphemisms, it does not do so to be kind; it does so to set the agenda for immigration, trans activism, and other Leftist policies.

Transgender euphemisms doesn't cover thisI am not a fan of euphemisms. I’ve always struggled a bit reading people’s emotions (I was probably on the Asperger’s scale before they had a name for it), so I prefer straight speaking, whether I’m saying it or hearing it. Demanding precise word choices means that I actually understand what the conversation is about, without having to struggle to find and then translate subtexts.

Having inadvertently offended people over the years, however, I now know that I periodically need to use euphemisms, something I do as a conscious effort to avoid giving offense where I intend none. (I especially use euphemisms regarding death. To say that someone’s loved one is “dead” has a cruel finality that softens with the phrase “passed away.”) I use them but, subject to the aforementioned exception, I don’t like them.

I especially dislike euphemisms when the Lefties put them out there. One of the most brilliant things Trump did in his State of the Union Speech was to deny the Left the word Dreamers, a euphemism they dreamed up for illegal aliens. Now Americans are the dreamers, which renders the world powerless as a form of Leftist thought control.

And you’ll notice I referred to illegal aliens. I drive my Progressive Facebook friends crazy when I correct their phrase “undocumented immigrants.” These are not people who have stood in line and filled out forms, only to forget some teeny bureaucratic detail. These are people who sneaked into America, knowing that doing so was against this country’s laws. That they are not citizens means that they are “aliens,” and that they broke the law to get here means that the are “illegal aliens.” Pretty clear, right?

The same is true with the euphemistic phrase that “Islam is a Religion of Peace.” Yes, if you accept Tacitus’s way of defining Roman peace: “They make a desert and call it peace.” Or yes, if assume Leftists’ failed  spelling and actually meant “Islam is a Religion of Pieces — the tiny little pieces of blown-up, incinerated, mutilated, sliced human bodies. Those kind of pieces.”

Oh, and God do I hate the whole “trans” thing. I especially hate the fact that so many conservative outlets refer to “transgenders,” and “transgender woman” or a “transgender man.” Take for example the pathetic Rose McGowan’s outburst at a bookstore the other day, when she was shilling her new book about a life filled with abuse. (I do mean it when I say she’s pathetic. Her life started with her parents abusing her with bizarre sex cults and abandonment. No wonder that predators such as Weinstein saw her as an easy mark. Predators have a knack for finding people already made vulnerable by past life experiences.)

But to my point, here are headlines from conservative outlets:

WATCH: Rose McGowan GOES OFF On Transgender Heckler: ‘Shut The F*** Up!’

Rose McGowan Loses Her Mind When Transgender Calls Her ‘White Cis Feminist’

Video – Rose McGowan Gets in Screaming Match with Trans Woman

Rose McGowan gets into shouting match with transgender woman, cancels all public appearances

Each of those headlines implicitly accepts that the heckler in the audience actually is “transgender”; indeed, a “trans woman.” Talk about science denial. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Donald Trump, GBLT, Gender, Immigration, Lefties on Parade Tagged With: Birth Control Pill, Dreamers, Euphemisms, illegal aliens, Illegal immigrants, SOTU, the Pill, Trans Man, Trans Woman, Transgender, Trump, Undocumented Immigrants

Abstinence — still the safest form of birth control for all living things

July 28, 2017 by Bookworm 6 Comments

Recent news stories reaffirm that, if you’re a woman who cares about the environment, your preferred form of birth control should be abstinence.

birth control pill the pill estrogen abstinenceI was cleaning out the files on my computer when I came across a poster I put together three years ago. Looking it over, I realized that today’s news stories make it a very current poster.

The first apropos story is the report revealing that male sperm counts are plummeting, raising the possibility that the human race will die out (if it doesn’t first bake, freeze, or get immolated by a super volcano, of course).  One thoughtful commentator wonders if the problem could be all the estrogen in Western waterways.

It’s not just men. Fish are also showing signs of estrogen, resulting in intersex fish. One wonders if that explains the uptick in men who believe they’re women. The problem is that it doesn’t explain the uptick in women who think they’re men.

With those two news stories in mind, it’s obvious that I have to resurrect my abstinence = environmentalism poster:

Abstinence birth control intersex infertility estrogen

[Click image to enlarge,]

Filed Under: Environmentalism, Sex Tagged With: Birth Control, Birth Control Pills, Environmentalism, Estrogen, Intersex Fish, Male Infertility, Sperm Counts, the Pill

Progressive social policy ignores the dangers of birth control pills *UPDATED*

June 28, 2017 by Bookworm 18 Comments

Glenn Reynolds is absolutely right when he wonders if birth control pills have contributed to the dramatic rise in strokes in young urban women.

birth control pill the pillToday at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds put up the following short post:

A WORRISOME INCREASE IN STROKES among young people in large cities. The increase among women is more than double that among men, which makes me wonder if hormonal birth control plays a role.

Reynolds’ supposition is right on the money. Birth control pills are dangerous and there are no brakes on the cultural pressure encouraging women to take them. Worse, not only our popular culture, but our governments, local, state, and national, have decided that it is virtuous to encourage girls as young as twelve to take a powerful chemical so that they can engage in unlimited adolescent sex.

In California, a child of any age, without parental consent or knowledge, can get contraception or an abortion. Meanwhile, also in California, your minor daughter cannot get a tattoo at all nor can she get her ears pierced without your consent . . . but she can just toddle off get a prescription for birth control pills or get an abortion without your being the wiser for it. The assumption seems to be that birth control pills are harmless and that parents, by contrast, are harmful.

As it happens, birth control pills, which some schools hand out like candy, are anything but innocuous.  Without even knowing the science, common sense tells us that it’s ridiculous to think that you can feed nuclear-powered hormones into a barely pubescent girl without have some effect on what should be her natural development.  In addition to that, those dangerous side effects you hear about birth control pills, including the strokes Reynolds mentions, are very real: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Abortion, Children, Health Tagged With: Abortions, Birth Control Pills, Ear Piercing, Parental Consent, Pedophiles, Planned Parenthood, Side Effects, the Pill

Bookworm Beat 3/29/17 — web design and teaching an old dog new tricks

March 29, 2017 by Bookworm 10 Comments

I have been a bit remiss in blogging the past few days, but that’s because I’ve been caught up in web design and lose track of time.

Web design NYC Tech ClubI’m creating the web as a companion piece to my app project. Learning web design provides me with fun and frustration in equal measure.

If you’re thinking of designing your own blog, I highly recommend the DIY videos from NYC Tech Club. The videos clearly walk you through each step for building a website, from getting a domain, to finding a server, to designing a WordPress site.

This is my second site build — I did the first for our local Navy League chapter — and there’s been a huge leap in website design in just the last couple of years. This means that I’m starting at square one.  As an old dog, learning these tricks can be time-consuming. I also lose track of time. If the dogs didn’t bark me off when it’s time to feed or walk them, I’d never look up from the computer.

Still, I always do sneak in some reading and I’ve got posts I want to share with you. In no particular order:

Stop panicking about politics. The Left is in perpetual panic/aggression mode since the election, but conservatives are doing a good job of panicking as well following the first attempt at healthcare and the endless claims that Trump committed treason with the Russians.

Regarding health care, Scott Adams says, “Don’t worry. Trump is a systems guy and the systems are working just fine.”

And on the subject of Russia, Charlie Martin, one of the most intelligent thinkers and analysts, has this to say:

Folks, doing business with Russia isn’t illegal.

Being a lobbyist who lobbied for Russia in the past isn’t illegal. For Democrat NeverTrumpers: You don’t want to push this, since John Podesta did quite a lot of lobbying with Russians, and the Clinton Foundation did a lot of business with the Russians. It’s not illegal to talk to Julian Assange. It’s not illegal, it’s not even cooperation, to say: “Hey Russia, why don’t you release Hillary’s emails?” And frankly, it would take a complete nincompoop to think that Trump was illicitly coordinating with the Russians by saying something in a press conference.

 

Judges are morons. To any of my readers who are judges or have are associated with judges, I’m sorry for saying this, but it has to be said. Judges — at least if they’re Progressive — are morons. Evil too.

The latest example of how dreadful Progressive judges are comes from the Supreme Court of the State of California. In a move that actually impresses me in a bizarre way, a Republican governor managed to put into place a Chief Justice who is more stupid and harder Left even than the infamous Rose Bird.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Donald Trump, Education, Immigration, Judges, Judicial activism Tagged With: Affirmative Consent, California Supreme Court, Donald Trump, Harvard, Health Care, Immigration, Media Bias, Ötzi the Ice Man, Rockville Rape, Rule of Law, Russians, Tamalpais Union High School District, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, the Pill, Washington Post

The Bookworm Beat 6-6-15 — the “I’m still standing” edition and open thread

June 6, 2015 by Bookworm 12 Comments

Woman-writing-300x265I’m sorry for the long silence, but to quote Granny Clampett, “I was just plumb tuckered out.” Between escalating work demands and the usual family demands, I haven’t had either spare energy or spare time. It was only two days ago that I stopped being in denial and accepted that, for the time being at least, I have a 3/4 time legal job that requires a heightened level of commitment and organization. (Incidentally, I’ve found that, for managing large projects, Microsoft’s One Note, when combined with a good calendaring program, is very helpful.) I still intend to blog, but I just need to buff up my time management skills a bit.

And that’s it for the excuses. On to the post itself:

It’s not such a wonderful life

Victor Davis Hanson has scored another home run with his post examining at Obama’s new world order as another Pottersville:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Barack Obama, Crime and punishment, Education, Feminism, Free speech, Iran, Police, Second Amendment Tagged With: Barack Obama, Black on black crime, Draw Mohamed, Emma Sulkowicz, Free speech, George Zimmerman, Guns, Iran, Mattress Girl, Nuclear Iran, Obama's Pottersville, ObamaCare, Pamela Geller, Police, Self Defense, the Pill, Third Wave Feminism

Friday afternoon round up (and Open Thread)

February 28, 2014 by Bookworm 5 Comments

Victorian posy of pansiesLots of good stuff today, so I’m going to dive right in.  As always, these aren’t in any particular order, so you may find interesting things buried halfway down the list.

I’ve made the same point before, but I still like to see it come from Daniel Hannan and Jonah Goldberg:  Nazis came from the Left, not from the right.  Incidentally, I still like the way I phrased it, which was that we should get rid of the archaic Left/Right or Fascist/Communist/Capitalist language and, instead, look at political systems in terms of Statist versus Individualist forms of government.  The world’s most famous bad guys, no matter the name they gave themselves, land on the statist side.  America, before Obama, was more individualists, as she was when she went around the world freeing people from statists calling themselves Communists, Fascists, Nazis, Military Juntas, Muslim Fundamentalists, etc.

***

One of the things that distinguished George Bush was that he was a good manager — proving that he got something useful out of his stint in Harvard Business School. He surrounded himself by efficient, knowledgeable people who reflected well on this country’s competence, even if one didn’t agree with its policies. The opposite is true for Obama. He is a terrible manager who surrounds himself with people who know as little as he does.

Obama’s conduct is typical for an insecure person. He needs to surround himself with ineffective sycophants who say nice things to him and who don’t threaten him with their greater talents and skills. Obama gave the game away a long time ago when he announced, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” Genuinely smart — and mentally healthy — people don’t actually say things like that.

***

One of the things that drives me crazy about the Left’s insistence on bypassing parents to give young girls access to the birth control pill is the fact that it’s not just about sex (and the Left uses sex to bribe girls away from the nuclear family). It’s also about how high risk pills are. California kids can’t get their ears pierced without permission, but girls can easily get pills that are associated with strokes, blood clots, breast cancer and, now, multiple sclerosis. The Pill is a very dangerous medicine, but it’s so wrapped up in Leftist feminist politics, no one is willing to say “no” simply on safety grounds.  The fight about the Pill on moral grounds is a good fight.  The fight about the Pill on health grounds should be a winning fight — but nobody’s doing battle there.

***

Two excellent views about Putin’s escapades: Terresa, at Noisy Room, harks back to the Nazi notion of Lebensraum.  Paul Rahe, at Ricochet, thinks Putin is a fool, trying to relive the glory days of the Cold War but, in fact, reaching far beyond Russia’s actual, very limited, economic abilities, not to mention exposing Russia to the very real risk of a Chinese takeover. Fool or madman, the one thing we know with certainty is that Putin’s policies will destroy many lives, both inside and outside of Russia.

***

My sister lives in Oregon. After the millions it spent on its Obamacare exchange, she ended up signing up the old-fashioned way: by paper. The only question is how long the media can keep the prestidigitation going, so that people don’t realize that they’re on the losing end of a shell game.

***

Colleges across America: “Due process? We ain’t got no due process. We don’t need no due process! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ due process!”

***

Jonah Goldberg nicely analyzes something that we’ve been talking about here, which is the speed with which the gay marriage debate has gone from the fringe to “you’d better accept it or else.” As many famous people have learned to their cost, one of the most effective techniques for moving the debate forward without regard to the merits is the GLAAD & Friends tactic of “nice little place/career/life you’ve got here. . . . Shame if something happened to it.”

***

Roger L. Simon issues a call to arms: Take back Hollywood. It drives culture and, to the extent conservatives jumped off the entertainment bus, we’ve left the lunatics in the driver’s seat.

***

The IRS scandal continues unabated. Those who think it’s been addressed and repaired have been flim-flammed yet again. Moreover, if you follow the money to public servant corruption, that may go a long way to explaining why our bureaucracy, which is supposed to be studiously apolitical, has thrown its immense power to the Democrats, the political party owned by the government workers’ unions.

***

I really, really like Allen West. Here he is with a vivid, but emotion-free, summation about both Common Core’s academic weaknesses and the madness of Obamacare mathematics.

***

My bet without doing any research is that, if you studied political identity in the military, you’d see that the military is still more conservative than the population as a whole. What you’d also see, though, is that every subsequent new batch of enlistees is more liberal than the one that came before. Remember, the new enlistees are young and Democrats have marketed themselves successfully to the young.

We know that young people in the general population are souring on Obama as job prospects dim.  Military enlistees have a job, but there’s still the possibility that they too will sour.  To the extent that Senate Democrats refused to increase veteran’s benefits, the very minimal chatter I’ve seen amongst the few young enlistees who are Facebook friends is that they are feeling hostile to the Dems right about now.

Filed Under: Open Threads Tagged With: Birth Control, Contraceptives, Gay marriage, Hollywood, IRS, Multiple Sclerosis, Nazis and Leftism, the Pill, Veteran's Benefits

While it’s not government’s role to advance morality, it’s also not its role to advance immorality *UPDATED*

March 24, 2013 by Bookworm 31 Comments

Libertarians have it right when they say it’s not the government’s responsibility to legislate morality.  It’s the people’s responsibility to be moral.  Government’s job is to have “few laws, but unbreakable,” all directed at a stable, just (not fair, but just), constitutional society in which citizens have the best opportunity to live free and, one hopes, moral lives.

The fact is that, way too often, once government starts legislating morality, those efforts backfire.  Prohibition is the perfect example of this backfire.  By the second half of the 19th century, America was awash in liquor, and it was becoming a terrible problem, especially for the poor.  It wasn’t at all uncommon for the family breadwinner, whether male or female, to drink away earnings and then die young from alcohol-related diseases or accidents.

Dry movement

Faced with this epic disaster, society responded with a vast Temperance movement aimed at getting people to stop drinking.  This was a social movement — a grassroots movement, long before that term was invented.  Young men swore temperance oaths and young women swore that “Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.”

Bootleggers

By the time WWI started, vast swaths of America had voluntarily gone dry.  Prohibition wasn’t the leading edge of Temperance, it was the tale end, and what a disastrous tail it was.  Those who didn’t want to drink had already stopped.  And those who did want to drink instantly became criminals for engaging in an activity as old as humankind.  Worse, prohibiting a popular activity, even in its most reasonable form, created a giant vacuum that sucked in every two-bit criminal and big-time hood in America.

We want beer

When alcohol was outlawed, only outlaws drank, brewed, and sold the stuff. Not only did Prohibition fail to legislate morality, it undid much that the previous Temperance movement, which relied on peer pressure and moral suasion, had achieved when it came to convincing Americans to temper their drinking.

Just as bad as legislating morality is legislating immorality, which is where today’s American governments, local, state, and national go.  I stumbled across this fact when I tried to go online to renew a prescription for one of my children and was told that I couldn’t have any access to my child’s medical record, including prescriptions.  In California, when a child turns 12, he or she can keep secret his or her record.  My kid can’t get her ears pierced, can’t go paint-balling, can’t ski, and can’t get a salon tan without my input, but your daughter and mine can get the Pill or an abortion without your being the wiser for it.

Birth Control Pills

As it happens, the Pill, which some schools hand out like candy, is anything but innocuous.  To begin within, it’s ridiculous to think that you can feed nuclear-powered hormones into a prepubescent or pubescent girl without have some effect on what should be her natural development.  In addition to that, those side effects you hear about the Pill are real.  Girls are worried they’ll gain weight if they go on the Pill.  What they should be worried about is strokes, blood clots, or vomiting themselves to death.  I’ve known people who have suffered from all of these side effects although, thankfully, all survived.  This is the last thing that loving parents should allow the state to determine for their child without parental input.

Ask your average liberal why this is so, and he will tell you a terribly sad story about a girl growing up in a horrible home who was raped by her uncle, or her mother’s boyfriend, and, when she turned up pregnant, was beaten or turned out onto the street.  That is an affecting tale but how common is it, really?  I don’t have statistics at hand, but common sense tells me that the vast majority of parents love their daughters.  If a girl wants to have teen sex or shows up pregnant, these loving parents want to be involved — and their involvement is the best thing that can support a child who is about to make or has already made a bad decision.

Getting my ears pierced

These hard luck stories mean that we have created a tyranny of the minority.  Liberals will say that the beauty of America is that it protects the minority by drafting legislation protect those minorities.  But this isn’t how it’s supposed to work.  America protects the minority by assuring that every member of a minority group (whether defined by race, religion, sexual orientation, country of origin, etc.) gets the full benefit of available constitutional rights and is not subject to prejudicial laws or conduct.  It does not mean that 90% or more of the country has its rights stripped away because some girls come from backgrounds that  see them mistreated.  Maltreated girls are tragic situations that a moral people should want to remedy, but that a government should never address with legislation.  It’s not government’s job to try to legislate away the human condition.

So next time a liberal tells you that he’ll never vote Republican because Republicans try to legislate morality, you might want to tell that person that the problem with Democrats is that they consistently legislate immorality.  A good opportunity to make this point might be when one of your liberal friends is outraged that his daughter was confronted in a public restroom by a naked man with fully functioning physical equipment who claimed that his presence there was perfectly legal because he self-identifies as a woman.  Or you could advance this point of view when your liberal next door neighbor calls from the ER to ask for your help because his daughter went septic from an abortion — and he didn’t even know she was pregnant.  Or perhaps you’ll throw it into a conversation with the woman at your office who is counting her lucky stars that her teen daughter will recover from the stroke she got after the Pill, which Mom didn’t know she was taking, caused her to have a blood clot.

UPDATE:  Earl left a comment pointing out, regarding my last paragraph, that it’s not nice to lecture people about politics when they’re facing a life crisis.  He’s absolutely right.  I was making a rhetorical point and got carried away.  I also live in a community where everybody thinks everything that happens is an opportunity to inject politics, so I’m a little bit touchy.

As it is, were I to raise the subject at a sensitive time, I’d raise it sympathetically:  “Oh, my God!  That’s terrible.  I can’t believe she almost died.  You must have been so shocked to discover that your daughter had an abortion.  How did it happen that she was able to do it without you?  Really?  The law just let’s her?  That’s bizarre.  I know you guys would never ignore her.  This is something you would have wanted to discuss with her.  It just doesn’t seem right for the law to kick you out of the relationship….”  That kind of thing, trickled out over many conversations.

Filed Under: Morality Tagged With: Birth Control, Ear Piercing, Legislating Immorality, Legislating Morality, Pill Side Effects, Prohibition, Temperance Movement, the Pill

The good news and the bad news for the Duchess of Cambridge

December 3, 2012 by Bookworm 3 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I said to my sister, “Kate’s pregnant,” referring to the Duchess of Cambridge.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Because,” I told her, “the British press was filled with daily stories about her, showing her going her and there, and always talking about her perfect style.  Suddenly, though, she’s vanished.  She’s not showing up anywhere.  so I’m betting that she’s pregnant and suffering from morning sickness.”

I was right, not only about the pregnancy, but also about the morning sickness:

The acute morning sickness suffered by the Duchess of Cambridge causes nausea and vomiting for up to five months of pregnancy – or, in rare cases, until the baby is born.

Known as hyperemesis gravidarum, it  afflicts one pregnancy in 50 and is much more serious than the nausea commonly experienced by expectant mothers.

The condition can lead to severe dehydration and puts both mother and baby at risk of being deprived of essential nutrients.

[snip]

Sufferers can be left vomiting up to 30 times a day, with exhausting and hazardous consequences. They cannot eat or drink without retching and may lose up to 10 per cent of their body weight, which can trigger a build-up of toxins in the blood or urine known as ketosis as the body tries to compensate for lack of food by mouth.

Hospital treatment for these women is essential, as without intravenous feeding and fluids they are at risk of becoming dangerously dehydrated.

That was me during both my pregnancies.  As I would tell anyone who would listen, Charlotte Bronte died from hyperemesis gravidarum.  Fortunately for my pregnancies and my health, I was able to benefit from Zofran, a medicine created for people undergoing chemo and radiation.  While I was beyond miserable 24/7, for more than nine months, I didn’t throw up so much that I had to be hospitalized.

Sadly, this misery was nothing new to me.  As a young woman on the Pill, I also suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum, since the Pill tricks your body into thinking it’s pregnant.  It took over a year for the doctors to stop telling me I was neurotic and start connecting my 24/7 vomiting to the Pill’s toxic effect on my body.  I therefore never got any medicine to treat the nausea. During that very long year, I lost over 20 pounds off an already small frame, and my cumulative GPA plummeted by 12 points.  That same year, one of my friends almost died from a blood clot brought about by the Pill.

You can understand, therefore, why I view the Pill with deep, deep suspicion and think it’s unconscionable the way the Leftists in government and in the medical establishment want to give it to young women like candy.  The same people who rant against cigarettes are totally copacetic about something that has the potential to be just as, if not more, harmful than tobacco.

I got one more side-effect from hyperemesis gravidarum — it wore me out.  I was younger the three times I was so sick, and had fairly good physical and emotional reserves.  I never missed a day of school or a day of work despite the fact that I was driving the porcelain school bus between five and twenty times a day (and night).  I had goals and I had my pride.  Now, though, when I’m old enough that I should have deeply engrained discipline, I don’t.  If I like it, I do it.  If if I must do it, I will do it.  And otherwise, I find it hard to motivate myself.  This is especially so when I get sick to my stomach.  I can power through pain, but I can no longer power through nausea.

I wish Kate much luck.  She’ll need it.

Filed Under: Health Tagged With: Charlotte Bronte, Duchess of Cambridge, Hyperemesis Gravdarium, Kate Middleton, Morning Sickness, Pregnancy, the Pill

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