to continue on this tangent....the above text is the core problem....I would bet that a huge percentage of anti-choice advocates don't want proper sex education taught to kids (and that's who it needs to be taught to) and easier access to contraception as it is "against god's will". Am I using too broad a brush to paint the anti-choice lobby? ...In my experience, no.
I have had a fair share of ex co-workers that were pretty religious (church every Sunday) and in the course of working with them, the abortion debate came up now and again. My first question to them if they oppose abortion was that they must support sex education/contraception....the answer about 90% of the time was "NO".....their rational was that just 'talking' about sex/contraception just encourages sexual activity....in their minds, if you don't discuss it, it doesn't exist. Human nature was something to be repressed in their eyes
This is of course, is based on their religious faith ("sex is sin") and the way that they were taught to not question their beliefs....which kind of segues into the thought processes of the modern day GOP and it's embracing of the religious right.
The modern day GOP mostly see themselves as infallible....this is why you hardly ever see them admitting they are wrong about anything (see: Dubya and his inability to be introspective and admit any sort of fault)
As far as debating politics with relatives....it could be considered both a blessing and a curse as both my parents happen to be dead and we never really got around to discussing it.
That being said, they were fairly open minded but as they were from a different time (my father served in WW2) little prejudices would sneak in every now and then. If they were still around, I don't think they would have any problems with Obama being prez.
I did get a spam "Fox talking point" email once from a distant aunt....I sent her a response where ever single point was refuted...never got another email from her.
That's the thing, exactly. I should have been more clear and said 'If you're really sincere about being anti abortion, you should be in favour of sex education and contraception ... but I know that most of them aren't (or at least the most vocal ones aren't)."
The thing about medical sciences, in many ways, it's as absolute as physics or mathematics. People increasingly stop vaccinating against measles, like clockwork it will be followed by an increase in the number of cases of the disease. One thing goes down, the other will go up. Same thing with sex ed and contraception. Take them away and it will be followed by a rise in pregnancies. Abstinence as a policy by itself just does not work because people are people just for starters.
I'm completely flabbergasted by the reaction to Gardasil, the cervical cancer vaccine (though to be honest, not completely surprised) and the statements that it'll lead to an increase in promiscuity. That's as gross a misunderstanding of behavioural psychology as I've ever seen. In this case, it's especially important for us to see if it works in a population because among other things, there's a lot of countries where women just don't have the means to get a pap smear, ever. If we can show it works in a large population (and ideally for life, fingers crossed), we can do a lot of good with it in many other countries. It's not all about us.
On the upside for science, there's still a lot of amazing things going on in the US. They're looking for the Higgs Boson particle, building space ships, constructing the most amazing buildings and I was amazed about what's required to build state of the art aircraft carriers these days and all of that is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of people still doing amazing things and there always will be so there's hope out there yet.
Edited by Shan - 12/8/11 at 9:30pm
