For shits and giggles

Summer is here

I walked back from the bus stop after watching Pirates 3 tonight and I enjoyed the wonderful weather. Mundane way to start a story, I know but that's just how it is. My life is rather mundane right now. I am not learning about catabolic or anabolic processes of a cell, I'm not trying to figure out the pH of a solution via convoluted calculations, nor am I studying electricity and magenetism. I am simply existing. Waking up in the morning, free to prance in my underwear, bathe and then watch lots of TV, or read, or play; whatever I like is such a wonderful feeling! And these are the few times in our lives that we will get to experience a long summer vacation of this nature. Sad, isn't it?

oh..fuck this.

blur

I'm having a hard time remember what I did yesturday or today or last week.

The days sort of blur together and mean very little at this point. I really don't want to move out. It's a pain in the asshole. Majorly.

Today: Moved Catie out. Dealt with some annoyances. Failed to get emotional.
Dinner with the staff. Had my second interview with the MOS. Don't know how it went. I seriously want the job. I have a genuine desire to inspire teens to become science nerdy/dork-types.

There were three people interviewing me at the same time. It was a little intimidating. I didn't have many questions for them so I felt a little stupid.

off to sulk.

I had a birthday, and now I am hungry

I had a really good birthday this year, sans the lack of dan and ani thing. I went to La Summa to eat with friends. Then we had madness at the afterparty. Kat's room got a little messy but she's a really good sport about it. I then went to go see Carousel with my family and it was cheesy but I was spending time with my family.

That is always good. Last day of classes is May 7th. My finals are going to be hard. I don't want to take any of them. Specially not cell bio.

I am starving and cannot wait to eat my food. I shall, in good time. Our last lab report for QA was due today. It's turnned in and that is all I have to say. this week will pass by in mediocrity. The only thing I have to look forward to is seeing spiderman 3 with nicholas--the only guy friend I have at the moment.

I have one free movie ticket from RA appreciation day.

everything else is pretty unremarkable. I spent today relaxing in catie's room burning music from her Itunes.

tonight there will be a staff meeting. And that is all. Whoopie.

Being a woman in this country just got a little more ridiculous

"You're loosing your rights and you don't even know it."--Dean Diane Raymond

Kat brought this up last night about how the Dean walked into my freshman honor's class and made this statement. It meant very little to us because we were wide-eyed and in awe of her presence. I mean, we were being taught by the DEAN of the college of arts and sciences. THE academic Dean. The one that matters!

I didn't know what her statement really meant. I'm sure she wasn't just talking about the issue at hand in this entry but it can definately apply.

First I want to start off with an article:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/18/scotus.abortion/index.html


Next I would like to commend Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her dissent:
http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1176887057227

Here is the text of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003
http://www.theorator.com/bills108/s3.html

Highlights from her dissent:
"In keeping with this understanding of the right to reproductive choice, we have consistently required that laws regulating abortion, at any stage of pregnancy and in all cases, safeguard not only a woman’s existence — her life — but her health as well. Faithful to precedent unbroken from 1973 until today, the Court held seven years ago in Stenberg v. Carhart, that a state statue banning the very procedure at issue today — intact D&E — was unconstitutional in part because it lacked a health exception. If substantial medical authority maintains that banning a particular abortion procedure could endanger women’s health, we held, a health exception cannot be omitted by the legislators."

"The Court asserts that its ruling furthers the Government’s interest in “promoting fetal life.” But the Act scarcely furthers that interest, for it targets only a method of abortion. The woman may abort the fetus, so long as her doctor uses another method, one her doctor judges less safe for her. The Court further pretends that its decision protects women. Women might come to regret their physician-counseled choice of an intact D&E and suffer from “[s]evere depression and loss of esteem,” the Court worries. Notably, the solution the Court approves is not to require doctors to inform women adequately of the different procedures they might choose, and the risks each entails. Instead, the Court shields women by denying them any choice in the matter. This way of protecting women recalls ancient notions about women’s place in society and under the Constitution — ideas that have long since been discredited. "

"In treating those women, physicians would risk criminal prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment if they exercise their best judgment as to the safest medical procedure for their patients. The Court is thus gravely mistaken to conclude that narrow, as-applied challenges are “the proper manner to protect the health of the woman.” "


Parts of the Act that I find totally offensive:
The Congress finds and declares the following:

(1) A moral, medical, and ethical consensus exists that the practice of performing a partial-birth abortion--an abortion in which a physician deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living, unborn child's body until either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother and only the head remains inside the womb, for the purpose of performing an overt act (usually the puncturing of the back of the child's skull and removing the baby's brains) that the person knows will kill the partially delivered infant, performs this act, and then completes delivery of the dead infant--is a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited.

So suddenly government officials have a right to decide what is MEDICALLY NECESSARY? Since when did THEY go to medical school?

And if they're sooooo qualified to decide what is medically necessary, why the hell don't they use the proper term instead of the retorical phrase of "partial-birth abortions"? IT'S CALLED IDX OR D&E thank you!
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/18/scotus.abortion/index.html

"Specifically, the ban encompasses what doctors call "intact dilation and evacuation" (also known as IDX), which Congress in its legislation termed inhumane.

It is a rarely used second-trimester procedure, designed to reduce complications to the woman. More common is "dilation and evacuation" (D&E), used in 95 percent of pre-viability second-trimester abortions, according to Planned Parenthood. Both are generally performed after the 21st week of pregnancy."

What I don't understand is the last part of the 2003 Act but that's probably because I know nothing about how to read law-based literature or whatever. In any event, I don't like what is happening here because it violates the doctor's right to practice, it encroaches on the doctor patient relationship, and in ways the hippocratic oath.

"Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God."

"I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick."

It is for the patient and the doctor to decide where they want to go with their life, prognosis, and treatment. Additionally, if the family (husband, partner, parents etc.) have wishes to keep the mother alive or if she herself wishes to choose her life over the unborn fetus (in those rare cases) then it is the physicians' duty to comply and aid where they can. There is so much more to this than "pro-life" and "pro-choice". As Kat said, if you're not pro-life what does that make you? Pro-death?

Honestly. What the hell?

Dan comes home earlier than expected

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RA appreciattiion

yay. I'm appreciated.