Going Backwards Is Not Progress

My Grandma, On Reproductive Rights

This isn't my grandma, and to be honest, I don't know what my grandmothers would have thought about abortion; we never talked about it. But this grandma gets it; she doesn't forget history like a lot of people do.

To this current generation of females - you have it so good. And a lot of you are about to blow it. There are males who are threatened by you and they will do everything in their power to take away your rights. They will take away your birth control, your health care, and yes, your right to your own body.

It's already happening; restrictions on abortion in some states have become in essence, laws against abortion in total. And making abortion illegal (or hard to obtain) does NOT make abortion go away. It goes underground. Women will go back to the back alleys, give their lives to untrained hands, lose their fertility, lose their LIVES.

A female's life should not be superceded by a ball of cells that may or may not become life. (Did you know that about 50% of all fertilized cells do NOT come to full-term fetuses?) A female should not be forced to carry a fetus who will never have a quality life, who may never even make it out of the birth canal (see the current Indiana law that I hope will soon be overturned).

Again, do not ignore history. The reason pro-choice people have the logo of a 'no' slash over a hanger is that before Roe v. Wade, women would use hangers to induce an abortion. Yes, hangers. Wire hangers. Inserted into their uterus to induce abortion. Did it work? Sometimes. A lot of times, the unsterilized hanger perforated the uterus, causing a severe infection and sepsis. And then death.

Thank of that next time you decide to picket outside a Planned Parenthood or vote republican.

TSA Needs To Go

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The TSA is an unneeded and unwanted agency, that came out of a knee-jerk reaction from Washington (and you're surprised?) Believe it or not, the TSA would NOT have prevented 9/11, other than MAYBE taking the box cutters from them (and from the amount of 'weapons' that actually get through, I doubt the TSA would have taken them). The TSA, like so many other government agencies, has become a bloated, red-tape entangled, heavy on administrators and light on actual workers, entity.

9/11 was successful because of the hijacking policies in place at the time. Pilots were told to allow a hijacker to take over, as history had shown, hijackers just wanted to be taken to another country, or demand someone(s) be released from prison, or they wanted money, or ... you get the idea. Hijackers up to that point wanted things, not to martyr themselves or crash the planes. All-in-all, the hijackers of 9/11 took over the planes using something the TSA can't even begin to deal with - words.

We've addressed the actual 'taking over the plane' issue - there is a bar across the door and flight attendants are trained to make sure no one goes forward in the cabin (and I doubt any passengers would allow it as well). There is no need for the TSA. None at all.

Now, I do agree we still need some security, just like we had before 9/11. That type of security did us very well for decades and we need to go back to it. We have much more sophisticated technology now (and not-so-sophisticated - the use of explosive-sniffing dogs is on the rise and they are doing a 100% better job than any TSA agent) that the probability of an explosive getting through the front line (we won't address the back line of checked luggage - it's a crapshoot), is very, very small.

There are other things we could do, we could learn from other countries, but getting rid of the TSA would be the number 1 thing we could do at this point. Kudos to those airports that have decided to privatize.