Abortion isn't just a women's issue

In Texas in 2011 there were 62 abortion providers; 46 of those were clinics. On October 3rd there were only 8 abortion clinics following the second round of HB2. When the Supreme Court put a hold on HB2 on October 14th, some abortion clinics re-opened. Currently there are 21 abortion clinics in the state of Texas. Some of these are likely to close down after appeals are filed and the court gives its final ruling in January (according to fundtexaswomen.org ). This makes getting an abortion very inconvenient for a lot of people as some people are far away from the closest abortion clinic.

HB2 is a law regulating abortion clinics the same way hospitals are regulated. I suspect that this was put in place not out of safety, as regulatory laws are supposed to be, but because the lawmakers were pro-life.

Rightfully, there has been a huge backlash to this. In this article I will focus on how a lot of pro-choice activists have been treating this as a women's issue and how doing so excludes male voters and thus reduces support for their cause.

As an example, the source randomly selected for the statistics on abortion clinics at the top of this page is not only named 'fundtexaswomen.org,' it has a pink background. To their credit, in August 2014 they changed the name of their organization from 'Fund Texas Women' to 'Fund Texas Choice,' but their website explains that their reason for doing so is to not exclude transgendered men, and it mentions nothing about wanting to include cisgendered men in the discussion.

It is often assumed that men oppose abortion in larger numbers than women but according to spectator.org, studies show that gender does not correlate with being pro-choice or pro life. In fact, more men than women oppose abortion limits, and fewer men than women support them (according to an article by The Guardian).

Given this information, one could still understandably assume that even though an equal number of men and women are pro-choice, more of those women actually want to get involved than the men who are pro-choice. Surprisingly, a google image search of 'abortion protest texas' doesn't support this theory. In the foreground you see mostly women, but if you look at the background of the photos there are almost as many (if not as many) men as there are women.

The fact of the matter is that men are also affected by these laws. For every pregnancy, there is a father as well as a mother, and therefore the decision to get an abortion affects both parties. Given this and the fact that men seem to want get involved in the movement, it seems inappropriate for pro-choice rhetoric to be targeted at women and exclude men. It is also highly probable that this costs them a lot of support from men -- support that they could really use.

And more support could go a long way. In the last gubernatorial election, Wendy Davis, whose keystone issue was abortion, lost in a landslide (39%-59% according to CNN ) to Greg Abbott. She did particularly poorly among men (32%-66%). Compare this with Sarah Palin, for whom the nydailynews reports that 57 percent of men, and only 43 percent of women consider her qualified to be president.

Wendy Davis put in so much work in her campaign trying to win over female voters but if she were to have any hope of winning, she would need to have done better among male voters. Since her main issue was abortion, including more males in that conversation of abortion would have increased her votes.

In conclusion, the conversation of abortion has been held as if it is a matter that only concerns women, but men also care about these issues. If pro-choice activists made more of an effort to have male support, they would be able to be more effective.

I am critiquing my colleague Ms. Tran's blog post SAY "NO" TO MARIJUANA. She clearly did a good job because a lot of people are critiquing her blog.

Her blog is well worded and is very captivating. It also demonstrates that she genuinely cares about people. She wants Texas to be prosperous and wants our children to be safe. In this entry I will address whether continuing to criminalize marijuana will accomplish this as she believes.

She opens with a statement about how the media depicts it being cool to drink and smoke tobacco. This is true. I also agree that this is a problem, but I don't see how this is relevant to marijuana . Maybe she's implying that by legalizing marijuana, add campaigns would appear to make it cool and more movies and TV shows would depict marijuana use. In Colorado, where cannabis is legal, the cannabis industry is not allowed to advertise (according to reuters.com). TV shows and movies already portray smoking marijuana as cool. I don't see how legalizing marijuana would create more of that.

Later she makes a claim about how illegal drug use is associated with other more violent crimes. This statement, along with the work she cites, does not distinguish between marijuana and all other illegal drugs. I think her argument would be more compelling if she only made claims about marijuana since that's what this article is about.

Ms. Tran mentions the children several times in her article so I think it's important to clarify that if marijuana were to become legal in Texas it would only be legal for those over 21. This is the way it is in other states where cannabis is legal. As far as whether or not children would use more cannabis if it were made legal I think the answer is 'no'. Being illegal makes smoking cannabis something kids do to be "cool." If it were legalized, fewer kids would smoke cannabis, I believe. This would be especially true, I think, if the schools made an effort to teach kids about how cannabis can turn people into lazy, weak characters that no one would desire to be.

She makes an interesting argument that I have never heard before in the debate to legalize marijuana. She claims that if Texas were to legalize cannabis, more government resources would go into drug education, rehabilitation and treatment. The cost of this, she says, could outweigh the tax revenue gained from taxing the sales of marijuana. She doesn't provide a reason to believe this, but it could certainly be true and I am curious to know if this will be observed in Washington and Colorado where cannabis has been decriminalized. One thing she failed to consider, which our college Brady Ryan pointed out, is that Texas would also save money by incarcerating fewer people if cannabis were decriminalized. Almost $4 million per day according to Mr. Ryan. This could have the potential to put decriminalizing marijuana back in favor for the taxpayer.

Mr Ryan also points out that marijuana related deaths are in the double digits, and that since Colorado decriminalized cannabis, crime has gone down over 10% and that violent crimes have gone down 5%. It seems to me people who smoke cannabis are really only harming themselves (and possibly the people that care for them and depend on them, but only because they care for or depend on them). Shouldn't people have the right to choose whether they do this to themselves? Isn't it not much different than saying that women should have the right to have an abortion? And most importantly, wouldn't the criminal justice system be better off spending it's limited resources on regulating firearms and on prosecuting violent criminals? You decide.

Failure of the Texas Education System

People always talk about how resilient Texas is. How its economy holds up when the other states get hit hard. In some ways this has been true in the past, but to say that Texas is an example for the rest of the country does not make sense. Texas is failing in major ways and is headed for a bleak future.

Texas has one of the worst education systems of any of the 50 states. It is ranked number 47th in overall SAT scores, 43rd in high school graduation rate, and last in adults over the age of 25 with a high school diploma. They also spend 27 percent less per student than the national average.

And what does Texas do in spite of this disturbing news? New textbooks in Texas are attempting to re-write and put a conservative spin on history. They say global warming is an unproven theory. They state that there is no separation of church and state in the government, and that the founding fathers didn't believe in a secular government.

This is allowed to happen because the Texas Board of Education is made of right wing republicans. Teaching students false information wastes their time, costs money, and could cause students to lose trust in the system. Doing this to promote a conservative ideology is jeopardizing Texas's future.
Unfortunately, a lot of the textbooks written for the Texas education system are used in other states, so they are not only spreading falsehoods around Texas, but around the nation.

However, this probably doesn't worry Texas Republicans too much because they oppose the teaching of "higher order thinking skills." This was written into the Republican Party platform in 2012.

How is Texas going to be resilient if the future generation is being educated under the current system?

Even now, the so-called poster child to the rest of the country is suffering hardships. Texas ranked worst of all 50 states in a 2012 scoreboard issued by the federal Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. And the state that has a reputation for its rugged independence no longer gives more than it gets from the federal government. Every year during the first term of the Obama administration, Texas received more money than it gave to the U.S. treasury. How is Texas an example to the rest of nation?

In short, anyone claiming that Texas is a poster child for the rest of the nation has a lot of questions to answer. How is Texas going to face economic problems in the future with a failing education system? And if Texas is the utopia that it's supposed to be, why does it have the lowest rating of all 50 states in healthcare? And how can Texas claim to be independent when it's receiving more dollars from the federal government than it's paying in taxes?

Ebola Precautions

I am critiquing the an article on the Dallas Morning News about stopping the potential spread of ebola in the united states. My opinion of this article is that they are over reacting, as the media tends to do, about Ebola. But I also think they have kind of an interesting outlook on the problem.

The article seemed like sort of a plea to the people who were potentially exposed to keep themselves in isolation. This article calls them heroes for risking their health to try and save this man, and calls upon one more favor for them. They are in a way offering a reward to them if they comply rather than calling upon the government to force them too. I think this is a good strategy I don't hear about being used very often and I think it could be far more effective because they might feel good that they are doing everyone a noble favor rather than just being forced to do something. This could make it more likely for people to co-operate and for other potentially infected people to identify themselves.

They are overreacting in my opinion though. It seems that at this time the expert opinion is that Ebola is not a great danger and there are even many articles on the Dallas Morning News explaining that. The problem is that nowhere in this article is that explained. Someone could pick up the Dallas Morning News, flip to this article and start reading, and think that Ebola was coming for them and that they should walk around with a face mask. I think they should have included in their closing paragraphs how should affect an ordinary Dallas resident. What precautions should they take? What is the threat level? Should they even worry? According to most experts they shouldn't worry and they should carry on with their lives. This article almost seems like it was written to the people that tried to save Thomas, not the general public. It is interesting to the general public knowing what these people are going through, but I just think they should also include a brief take home message for the general public.

So it was an interesting article and the writers took an interesting approach. But as we all know the media likes to blow things out of proportion for entertainment purposes and they certainly did in this article.

Critique of the Texas Fred blog

 I chose to critique the Texas Fred blog article titled Pentagon Official: The facts are in, And Obama's Policy is a Direct Danger to the United States. The article describes a report by the National Defense Panel that states that the president's military policy will leave the military weak and the U.S. vulnerable to attack.

Overall, I disagree with this article even though I think it does raise some good points.
I disagree that the U.S. shouldn't cut military spending. I think this because the national debt is huge and there is also still a huge budget deficit. We cannot keep living this way and something has to give. I think the military is an excellent place to slash the budget since the U.S. spends a way bigger percentage of its budget on defense spending than almost every other country.

I do agree with this article when they make a point about how Obama is talking about potentially invading Iran and Syria while at the same time proposing these budget cuts. This is inconsistent.

However, I feel that we do not need additional wars at the moment and that the U.S. is better off focusing on its economy. Historians say that it is nearly impossible for a nation to stay on top militarily if its economy fails. As far as safety is concerned, the U.S. has a lot of powerful allies, and in addition, proper intelligence is what we need to prevent attacks rather than brute military force. This article doesn't discuss any of that.

Nor does this even give a possible motive someone would have to attack us. It seems like we should consider changing our foreign policy so that there are fewer threats, especially considering that we currently spend more than 600 billion dollars per year on defense spending according to the Department of Defense's website.

Also, the article doesn't explain who the National Defense panel is and why we should trust them to be unbiased. I think that the Nation Defense Panel's opinion on how much money should be spent on Defense is like asking a wine specialist how much you should spend on wine. The U.S. could always have a bigger and better equipped military, but a panel of defense experts aren't going to be informed about the opportunity cost of doing so. Their skills are better suited to critiquing what we're doing with the resources the defense budget has.

So while I think the article did bring awareness to certain inconsistencies with the Obama administration, it failed to consider the big picture. 

Hannah Overton's case overturned

I chose to read an article in Texas Monthly titled "Hannah Overton's Capital Murder Conviction is Overturned." It details an obstruction of justice where a mother (Hannah Overton) was falsely accused with the murder of Andre Burd, a child she was in the process of adopting.

Her soon-to-be child had died mysteriously and doctors determined the cause to be salt poisoning, a rare death. It was then that she was accused with his murder and sentenced to a life in prison.

However, she did not get a fair trial due to some evidence of her innocence being excluded. This included that the child had an eating disorder which could cause him to eat large amount of things like salt.

I think this article is worth reading because it shows, sadly, how the justice system can make mistakes and how these mistakes can have grave consequences for innocent people and their families. The Houston police department has a bad reputation for making these kinds of mistakes and I think it's important because this is happening in our neighbor city Houston.