Vaccine Mandates

This blog will probably be censored because, unfortunately, that’s what has been happening in America recently.  Too pro-life? Your content will be censored.  Have anything to say about vaccines other than that they are “safe and effective”? Then you’re an anti-vaxxer and must be censored.  Want to talk about the benefits of zinc and vitamin C or D when it comes to COVID treatment?  Sorry, you’re censored, too.

A little background on me: I am fully vaccinated.  Actually, I have had more vaccines than the average person because I have traveled overseas so much, so I’ve been vaccinated against things like yellow fever and typhoid.  As recently as last summer, I got a varicella booster and my husband got an MMR booster so that our physician would clear us to travel to volunteer.

However, ever since I was in my later stages of pregnancy this past year, I began researching vaccines.  I wanted to know what I would be injecting into my newborn baby.  What I found I did not like.  I know that some people reading this will probably click away, labeling me as one of those crazy anti-vaxxers, but maybe you should first ask yourself how much you know about vaccines.  Have you ever asked to see the ingredient list?  Have you ever considered that some of those ingredients have the potential to be harmful?  Have you considered why anti-vaxxers feel so strongly about vaccines?

After hours spent reading The Vaccine Book by Dr. Robert Sears, reading The Vaccine-Friendly Plan by Dr. Paul Thomas, reviewing the CDC, FDA, and AAP websites, vaccine inserts, listening to podcasts, and watching documentaries, I am horrified by the way big pharma controls America.

This blog isn’t about every vaccine and its ingredients (I have a 21-page document that I’ve already typed about that).  Rather, it’s about whether or not they should be mandated.

In order to send a child to public school, that child must be vaccinated.  Yes, there are medical and religious exemptions, but not in every state, and in some states they are very difficult to acquire.  Some states have philosophical/personal belief mandates.  You can look up the mandates in your own state here.  Private daycare facilities can determine their own criteria, as well as private schools.

It’s one thing for a private school to have a mandate; it’s private after all, so it makes sense that it has its own rules.  A parent can choose to send his or her child there.  The problem I have is with public school mandates.  This is why I do no believe that children should be forced to be vaccinated in order to attend American public schools:

1. Quick Increase in Vaccines

I was born in 1988.  At that time, there were 4 recommended vaccines (DTP – diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis, MMR – measles/mumps/rubella, Polio, and Hib).  In order for my parents to follow the CDC’s recommended schedule, I needed a total of 24 doses.

Today, the CDC schedule recommends fourteen vaccines, which equates to a total of 69 doses (50 individual shots since some are combined).

69.

In 32 years, the schedule increased by 45 doses?  Is that really necessary?

Vaccines have absolutely helped this country to eradicate deadly illnesses such as smallpox and polio.  But today’s vaccine schedule protects against illnesses that aren’t quite as dangerous or ones that can be avoided in other ways, such as rotavirus and chickenpox (varicella).

Rotavirus is an illness that causes diarrhea and vomiting.  Is it common? Yes.  But for most infants, it’s the unpleasant equivalent of a stomach bug.  The children who die are those who become severely dehydrated.  I understand the fear surrounding the illness, but children can also die from dehydration stemming from a stomach bug.  Should we try to make vaccines for that?  What about strep throat?  That can be fatal as well.  Do we need a vaccine for that?

Some of the vaccines are actually more dangerous than the illness they’re protecting against.  Case in point: rotavirus.  The illness causes diarrhea and vomiting.  The vaccine causes seizures in 1 out of every 1,000 children.  That may sound like a small chance.  I wanted to see what has those same odds for comparison’s sake.  After a c-section, a woman has a 1 out of 1,000 chance of developing a DVT (deep vein thrombosis…aka blood clot).  I got 2 blood clots after my cesarean.  I know two other women who did as well.  With those odds, I should also know 3 people whose babies developed seizures from the rotavirus vaccine.  A seizure is a big deal.  If I had to decide if I would prefer if my baby gets a bout of vomiting and diarrhea OR seizures, I would definitely choose the former.

If you look at the information from the FDA about the rotavirus, you will also notice that a side effect of the vaccine includes diarrhea and vomiting.

Wait.  The vaccine is intended to prevent diarrhea and vomiting, yet it may cause diarrhea and vomiting?  Yes.

What about chickenpox?  When I was a child, almost every classmate of mine got the chickenpox.  It was a normal childhood illness that wasn’t pleasurable, but for most children, it also wasn’t deadly.  Most kids got those itchy red bumps that their parents treated with lotions and special baths and they missed a few days of school.  (I actually never got the chickenpox, so they forced my mom to give me the vaccine before high school.  My school wouldn’t let me into 9th grade if I didn’t have proof of having the illness or proof of the vaccination.)

The Varicella vaccine a live vaccine, so it has the potential to actually cause chickenpox.  Only about 1 out of every 65,000 cases of the chickenpox is fatal, yet severe lung inflammation was found in over 1 out of every 1,000 test subjects during vaccine trials.  The vaccine has also caused seizures, meningitis, and pneumonia.  Are those reactions rare? Yes, but to me they aren’t worth the risk when I know that the chickenpox isn’t that severe for most children.

Let’s get more into the problem with side effects…

2. Vaccine Side Effects

All vaccines have side effects, which is why a parent is handed a vaccine insert that tells them what they should look out for in the hours and days following the shots.  Have you read these inserts?  They’re absolutely terrifying.

I had planned to follow Dr. Paul’s delayed vaccine schedule, which spreads out the vaccines so that babies aren’t getting so many simultaneously.

At my son’s 2-month pediatrician visit, the plan was to give him his Hib and DTaP vaccines and wait until 3 months for Prevnar (the CDC would also want him to have Hep B, rotavirus, and polio shots at that time).  Six shots all at once for my 2-month-old baby was too many for me.

I had already done my research and I was concerned about the DTaP vaccine, but I knew that Daptacel was safer than Tripedia (those are the two brand options).  My plan was to tell the pediatrician that I would only use Daptacel for DTap and I would only use ActHIB (not PedVaxHIB or Hiberix) for Hib.  The brands I had settled with were, in fact, the two that she had.

I should have listened to my motherly instincts, but since I had switched to a pediatrician who was more vaccine-friendly, and she told me that she had never seen an adverse reaction from that vaccine, and she had my preferred brands, I gave it the okay.

Only after the pediatrician left the room did a nurse come in with the shots and the vaccine inserts.  I had just a few seconds to look at the papers.  Is it really fair to expect a parent to read through the side effects in mere minutes before making an informed decision?  Every vaccine insert on the CDC schedule should be given to every parent before they even leave the hospital with their newborn.  That way, they have time to weigh the benefits and drawbacks.

Here is the Daptacel FDA information.  In the US study, .3% of babies experienced seizures.  .3% is small, yes, but that means that some babies are experiencing DTaP-induced seizures.  There were also cases of pneumonia, sepsis, meningitis, and pertussis. Again, I know that those are low odds, but they still exist.

My pediatrician never mentioned the risk of seizures.  I saw it only on the vaccine insert that I was given after she left the room.  And it wasn’t even on the part of the insert about rare reactions.  It was listed along with other, seemingly harmless reactions such as local tenderness and swelling.

1 out of every 1,000 babies receiving the DTaP vaccine experience over 3 hours of nonstop crying, which is indicative of encephalopathy, which means that some sort of brain damage has occurred.

A doctor cannot honestly tell me that vaccines are “safe” when we know that some babies die as a result of vaccines every year.

3. Mandates

Everyone can agree that vaccines have side effects.  Will everyone experience those side effects? Of course not.  But some will.

How, then, is it acceptable that children whose parents have decided that the benefits of certain vaccines don’t outweigh the drawbacks are not allowed to attend public school?

People often think that public schools only turn away children without any vaccines, but that isn’t the case.

I refused the Hep B vaccine for my son at his birth.  Why?  Well, hepatitis B is transmitted primarily as an STD, or through dirty needles.  It can be extremely dangerous if the mother has Hep B, but any mother receiving prenatal care in the US is tested for this during pregnancy.  My baby will not be sleeping around or using drugs, so he has virtually zero chance of acquiring Hep B at this point.  And because vaccine immunity does not last forever, he most likely will not even be protected by the time he is a teenager, when he could more likely get the disease depending on his life choices.

A much smarter time to vaccinate against Hep B would be during early adolescence.  But in New Jersey, 3 doses are required for any child entering Kindergarten.  It doesn’t matter if I vaccinate my child against rotavirus, Hib, DTaP, and Polio before Kindergarten.  If I wait on Hep B, public school isn’t an option.

I may be able to get a religious exemption, but if not, my state does not honor the personal belief exemption.  Thus, my child will be unable to enter public schools in New Jersey because I don’t want to vaccinate him against a disease that he has a minuscule chance of acquiring before he is 5 years old.

Is this vaccine important? Yes.  I have my Hep B vaccine, mainly due to all of my overseas travel.  In my opinion, emergency workers and healthcare personnel should be vaccinated against it, as well as people who engage in casual sex.  But my baby?  No, that isn’t necessary – especially from the moment of birth.

How can a country force parents to vaccinate their children for A) illnesses that the baby has virtually no chance of acquiring and B) with the chance that the vaccines will actually kill their children?

Varicella is also required before Kindergarten, even though the chickenpox has never been considered a fatal illness.

4. Liability

Most people don’t know this, but Congress decided in the 1980s that vaccine manufacturers hold no liability when it comes to their products.  No liability.

There is literally no other children’s item that has no liability.  Bad vaccine batch?  Oops!  The company can’t be sued.

Instead, we have what has been dubbed “vaccine court” for parents of children injured by vaccines.  Since 1988, it has already paid out over $4.4 billion dollars to these families, but that money will not bring back their deceased children.  Nor will it cure their children who have lifelong problems and disabilities as a result of vaccines.

Take a second to consider that figure: 4.4 billion dollars.

According to HRSA.gov, “Since 1988, over 22,130 petitions have been filed with the VICP. Over that 30-year time period, 19,114 petitions have been adjudicated, with 7,477 of those determined to be compensable, while 11,637 were dismissed. Total compensation paid over the life of the program is approximately $4.4 billion.”

Over 22,000 petitions have been filed, yet most people I speak to have never heard of vaccine court.  How many parents have children injured from vaccines, but they don’t even know that they should be awarded some money?

Thousands of children have been injured from vaccines, yet vaccine manufacturers cannot be held accountable.  This just doesn’t make sense.  If more Americans knew this, I believe that things would have to change.

5. Medical School

Our pediatricians would never give out vaccines if they knew that they were potentially harmful, right?

Right.  I like my pediatrician.  I think she has good intentions.  I’m sure that even the pediatrician whose practice I switched from due to her views on vaccines has good intentions.  The problem is that med school barely teaches anything about vaccines.

Ask your doctor to see the vaccine ingredients.  Most doctors can’t provide that to you because they simply don’t know.

When I took my son for his 2-month shots, the nurse asked about which one I would be getting at the next visit and I said something about not getting two shots with aluminum at the same time.  Now this nurse was a lovely woman.  Her intentions were good.  But her response was: “there aren’t any vaccines containing aluminum.”  She had no idea.

Most of our vaccines contain aluminum (Hep B, DTaP, Pneumococcal conjugate, and others), which is used as an adjuvant (it makes the vaccine work better in creating an immune response).  Prior to 2001, many of our vaccines contained mercury, until they realized how dangerous that was.  New decade, new metal.  It’s still not safe.  But before I get down that rabbit hole, back to the nurse.  She administers vaccines every day, yet she was unaware that they contain aluminum.

The same is true of many of the doctors.  Most med schools do teach about vaccines, but only once during one class session.  They are taught the CDC schedule.  They are taught that they are “safe and effective.”  The end.  Unless doctors do their own outside research, they will never know the true risks of vaccines and they may not be aware of the ingredients.

6. Ingredients

-Cow serum

-Cow tissue extract

-Monkey kidney cells

-Guinea pig embryo cells

-Chicken embryos

-Chicken kidney cells

What is this list?  Some of the more strange vaccine ingredients.  But again, most people and doctors are unaware of this.

The even more concerning list to me is the following:

-mercury (still in some of the flu vaccines)

-aluminum

-formaldehyde

I could write an entirely separate blog about the ingredients and all of the issues surrounding them, but let me just talk about aluminum for a moment.

Years ago, vaccines commonly used mercury as an adjuvant until it was later discovered to be dangerous, even in small amounts.  At this point, it was removed from most vaccines (with the exception of some flu vaccines).

Instead of mercury, aluminum is now used.  I switched my deodorant to an aluminum-free version years ago because there have been a variety studies that have found the dangers of aluminum buildup in our bodies.  That made me wonder how safe it is that aluminum is being injected in so many of our vaccines.

This is what I found the most interesting: the FDA has aluminum regulations when it comes to parenteral drugs like intravenous nutrition.  The toxic dose for a newborn baby is 10-20mcg and for an adult the toxic amount is 250mcg because the aluminum accumulates in the bone, urine, and plasma of the patients receiving this nutrition.  Based on the limit of 5mcg per kg of bodyweight per day, a 15 lb baby should receive no more than 34mcg aluminum.  However, the Hep B shot that is given immediately following birth has 250mcg aluminum.  That is the toxic amount for a fully grown adult when it comes to intravenous nutrition, yet it is given to every newborn baby in America (unless the mother refuses).

I’m aware that the FDA guidelines are based on ingested aluminum, which is different from injected aluminum, but there is no study that specifically looks into the safety of the amount of aluminum present in our vaccines.

The FDA has said that 850mcg is the maximum amount allowed in any individual vaccine, but the CDC schedule has babies receiving anywhere from 295 to 1225mcg of vaccine at their 2-month appointment, depending on which brands of the six shots are chosen.  There are no studies that have looked into the safety of a baby receiving those six shots all at once.

In 1996, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported in its policy entitled “Aluminum Toxicity in Infants & Children” that aluminum toxicity can cause neurological harm.  However, no one has ever measured levels of aluminum absorption into the bloodstream, then excretion through urine when injected into skin and muscle of infants.  Both the FDA and AAP say it may be a problem, but it hasn’t been studied.

Infants following CDC schedule get around 4,000mcg of aluminum during their first six months of life.  That is unacceptable to me.

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I’m not here to tell people not to vaccinate their children, but I believe that families should be better informed about the risks and benefits.

When my son was born, the hospital tried numerous times to give him the hepatitis B shot and only because I had done research before delivering did I know that it was not necessary for a baby whose mother had tested negative for the disease.

Not once did they tell me why I should give him the shot or what the potential side effects were.  They just wanted to give it to him because that’s what the CDC says.

As a person who has struggled with Lyme disease, I know that CDC guidelines aren’t always valid, particularly concerning Lyme treatment.  We’ve seen the CDC make numerous mistakes when it comes to COVID-19 as well.  Yet some people believe anything written by the CDC as though it came from God Himself.

I also know that big Pharma is extremely corrupt and contributes billions to politicians.  Look no further than the opioid epidemic to find proof that drug companies do not always have our best interests in mind.  The amount of money spent on vaccines every year in the US is staggering.

What do I ultimately want?  I want parents to be able to decide whether or not to vaccinate their children while still being able to send them to public school.  I want parents who choose a delayed schedule to not be brushed aside as crazy anti-vaxxers.  I want pediatricians and doctors to be taught about the side effects.  I want vaccine manufacturers held responsible when their vaccines injure children.  I want many more safety studies on aluminum and other vaccine ingredients.

My naturopath even explained to me the best way to prepare my body or my child’s body for vaccines in a natural way through the use of vitamins C and D.  I want information like that to become more mainstream.

You’re not a bad parent if you vaccinate your child, but you also shouldn’t be deemed a bad parent if you’re hesitant about some vaccinations.

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***Update on August 19, 2020:

Massachusetts is now mandating the flu vaccine bu December 31st, despite the fact that the flu shot often has low rates of efficacy.

The Sun Does Shine

I recently finished reading Anthony Ray Hinton’s book, The Sun Does Shine, after having read his attorney, Bryan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy earlier this summer.

The Sun Does Shine is absolutely one of my favorite books that I have ever read.  It brought me to tears numerous times and it makes me want to do anything in my power to help elicit change within the American justice system.  As a teacher, I don’t have a direct impact on the justice system, but I hope that by informing my students about some of these issues, some of them may choose to enter professions where they can make a difference.  Maybe some will end up becoming lawyers who work for organizations like the Equal Justice Initiative or the Innocence Project, fighting for those who are wrongfully imprisoned.

*Spoiler alert – if you plan on reading this book, you may not want to continue reading this blog.*

Hinton grew up poor, black, and without a father in Alabama.  He says how he was born guilty, as far as the prosecutors and the all-white jury were concerned.

It seems that the police in Alabama needed someone to pin the blame for three murders that had taken place.  They knew very little about the suspect, except a guessed height, weight, and the fact that he was black.

Hinton somewhat fit the description, so he was pinned, despite clear evidence against him being the perpetrator.  I have always known about the problems of mass incarceration and our racially biased justice system and I have always been anti capital punishment.  But I really thought that when people were wrongfully convicted, they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time,  or that something else had gone wrong to cause prosecutors to believe that they were the actual criminal.

That is not the case.  It was clear from the start that the prosecution didn’t necessarily know (or care to find out) if Hinton had actually committed the murders; they simply needed someone to be sent to prison to calm the fears of the people of Alabama who were afraid of a rampant murderer out on the loose.

I also thought that it was great that our country assigns lawyers to those who cannot afford one, not stopping to realize that those lawyers are paid almost nothing and often do not put their heart into the case.

Hinton’s lawyer was a disgrace.  He was upset about only being paid $1,000.  He received phone calls from some man claiming to be the actual murderer, yet he never followed up on the lead.  He was only allowed $500 for a ballistics expert to see if Hinton’s mother’s gun (the alleged murder weapon) had actually fired the bullets.  A good ballistics expert would have cost around $15,000 and would have easily proved Hinton’s innocence.

But as Hinton’s future lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, says, it’s better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent in America.  Sure, Hinton got a court-appointed attorney, but that attorney later turned out to be friends with the prosecutor.  Sure, they got a ballistics expert, but he was blind in one eye and couldn’t properly operate the microscope he was given.

If you are poor and a minority and charged with a crime in this country, there is a good chance that you will end up in prison, or, in Hinton’s case, on Death Row.

People believe that the days of slavery and the Jim Crow laws are over, but they are wrong.  Sure, legal slavery is over, but mass incarceration is a different form of the same injustice.  Hinton lived for 30 years in a 5’x7′ cell, with one hour of time outside the cell per day.  Not only is that cruel punishment, but it’s even worse when we know that he had done nothing wrong.  I wish that Hinton was the exception, but there are thousands of other men and women just like him living in prison right now.

We need more people like Bryan Stevenson to fight for the innocent.  But more than that, we need justice reform immediately.  You should not be more likely to be convicted a crime because of the color of your skin or the amount of money in your bank account.

We live in America, the land of the free, but is it really?  Sure, we have lots of freedoms when we’re rich and white, or at least middle class and white.  But what about the bottom classes?  What about the blacks and hispanics?  Can we truly say that they are free to live out the American dream?  Can anyone say that we’re on a level playing field?

When Hinton was arrested, the detective told him that we was under arrest for kidnapping, robbery, and murder.  This detective actually told him, “I don’t care whether you did or didn’t do it.  In fact, I believe you didn’t do it.  But it doesn’t matter.  If you didn’t do it, one of your brothers did.  And you’re going to take the rap.  You want to know why?  Number one, you’re black.  Number two, a white man gonna say you shot him.  Number three, you’re gonna have a white district attorney.  Number four, you’re gonna have a white judge.  And number five, you’re gonna have an all-white jury.  You know what that spell?  Conviction.  Conviction.  Conviction.  Conviction.  Conviction.”

Despite these words, Hinton was confident in his ability to win the trial.  After all, he had checked into work the night of the murder.  He had never fired the murder weapon.  He had people who could vouch for his whereabouts.  He knew that it was impossible to drive from his job to the site of the murder in the amount of time it would have taken.  He knew that similar murders were continuing to take place while he was in jail and on trial.  His mom helped him to get the $350 for the polygraph, which he passed.  He had faith that justice would prevail.

Unfortunately, he didn’t realize quite how corrupt our justice system really is.  He didn’t realize that they wouldn’t even allow the polygraph results to be used in the trial.  They wouldn’t follow up on the leads they had from a man who continued to call saying that he was the murderer and not Hinton.  It seemed like such a simple not guilty verdict.  The problem was that he didn’t realize that being black and poor were his crime.

After being declared guilty, Hinton wasn’t even able to hug his mother goodbye.  He was “chained and shackled like a slave being taken to auction.”

Life on death row sounds brutal.  He lived in a 5’x7′ cell for 23 hours of the day.  Breakfast was at 3am, lunch at 10am, and dinner at 2pm.  One hour outside of the cell was allowed per day.  He could shower every other day, with guards watching the entire time.  Every time an inmate was executed on the electric chair, he would smell their burning flesh.  Now imagine living that life knowing that you did nothing wrong.  I would think that you would go crazy.

He knew that he would never get the chance to get married, have children, or enjoy any of life’s pleasures.

For the first 3 years, he had a rough time, ending his belief in God, being angry about his situation, wishing he could murder the prosecutor.  He wanted his dignity back.

But eventually, something shifted in his mindset.  He wondered why it was that he left God and he decided to make some choices.  Yes, he could choose anger and hatred, but who was that hurting?  Instead, he could choose hope, faith, love, and compassion.  So that’s what he did.

He started speaking to the other inmates through his bars, developing friendships and reaching out to the men around him.  He eventually petitioned for access to books (they had only been allowed law books and the Bible before) and started a book club.

Through this book club, the men were able to share their stories, their fears, and their questions.  They read books like Go Tell it on The Mountain and To Kill a Mockingbird. They were able to form a sense of community despite their horrific living conditions.  Some unlikely friendships were also sparked, most notably Hinton’s friendship with Henry Hays, who was on Death Row for lynching a black boy when he was a KKK member.  Hinton could have ended the friendship when he learned this, but instead, he chose compassion.  He realized that Hays had grown up with racist parents.  Hays admitted that everything he had been taught by them had been a lie.

Eventually, Bryan Stevenson became Hinton’s lawyer after a few prior lawyers didn’t work out for Hinton.  Stevenson was working for him (for free) since 1998, clearly aware of the problems surrounding the original trial.  Yet exoneration would not occur until 2015.  Every time Stevenson thought progress was being made, and appeal would just be denied.

Stevenson found gun experts from Texas and from the FBI who said that none of the bullets could have been shot from Hinton’s mother’s gun.  That was the only evidence present in the initial trial.  By 1999, it was clear that that one piece of evidence was wrong.  Yet still, Hinton had to live in prison for 16 more years since Alabama would not admit to any mistakes.

The other problem was that an appeal was not allowed without new evidence.  The ballistics information was technically old evidence since it was mentioned in the original trial.  Despite the fact that the ballistics “expert” was not credible, it was extremely difficult to get any court to allow to look into the case again since there was no new, different type of evidence.

They had hearings and appeals and they kept getting denied, despite this new ballistics evidence. After one hearing, they were told that too much time had passed and they couldn’t waste taxpayer money.  Too much time had passed to potentially release and innocent person from death row?  That doesn’t even make sense.  Oops, we kept you falsely imprisoned for so long that it’s just easier if you stay there.

Hinton would have a glimmer of hope, only to have it all come crashing down when another appeal was denied.  Then his mother died, which almost broke him completely.  He never got to say goodbye.  He never got to hug her one last time.  He was wrongfully stuck behind bars for no reason except for his race and socioeconomic status, while his mom was dying.  At this point, he almost gave up, even considering suicide.  But then he realized that his mom would not want that; she would want him to continue fighting, so he got up and that’s what he did.

Stevenson got Hinton’s name into the media, in both a New York Times article and a 60 Minutes interview.  Stevenson also published an article about Hinton’s situation and the death penalty in general in The Birmingham News.  The article is quite moving; here is an excerpt:

“Like most Death Row prisoners, Hinton was presumed guilty before trial.  Without money, political power or celebrity, he was a nameless black man imperiled by a system of justice that is shockingly tolerant of errors, a system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.”

“With 34 executions and seven exonerations since 1975, one innocent person has been identified on Alabama’s Death Row for every five executions.  It’s an astonishing rate of error.  What most defines capital punishment in Alabama is error.  Reviewing courts have concluded nearly 150 Alabama capital murder convictions and death sentences have been illegally and unconstitutionally imposed.  Reversals outnumber executions almost 5 to 1.  While some states have seriously examined their death penalty systems and pursued reforms, Alabama leaders have recklessly called only for speeding up the execution process.”

He goes on to talk about how the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded, but nothing changed in Alabama.

Even the guards began to believe that Hinton is innocent.  They gave him some privileges of extra free time.  They asked for his advice on their personal issues.  They asked Stevenson when Hinton would be freed because they were all certain about his innocence.  Yet still, Hinton’s appeals were denied.

After eventually petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court, Hinton was finally exonerated.  We like to view that as a success.  When the news reports about exonerated prisoners, they act as though it’s a joyous occasion and yes, it’s joyous for that person in that moment, but really, it’s a tragedy.  It means that the justice system messed up.  It means that we stole a portion of a person’s life.  It means, for people like Hinton, that we stole his chance to ever be a father or grandfather.  We stole his time with his dying mother.  It means that he had to experience and smell 54 inmates, many of them friends, die.  Then he has to enter a world that is foreign with all of the technological changes that occurred over those thirty years (cell phones, the internet, GPS).

Yet despite all of these tragedies, Hinton still chooses joy.  He admits that it’s difficult not to consider the ‘what if?’ or ‘why me?’ questions.  It’s difficult not to hold anger against the state of Alabama, especially after receiving no apology and no financial compensation.  But he knew that while Alabama stole 30 years of his life, he would not allow them to steal any more.

This attitude is remarkable.  Nobody would be surprised if Hinton was bitter or resentful.  Nobody would be surprised if he was suing Alabama for some monetary compensation.  His attitude really puts life into perspective.  We face obstacles and question, “why me?” but Hinton says that is a selfish question.  Why anyone?  If you have terminal cancer and ask “why me?” are you insinuating that someone else deserves it more than you?

We must all take a lesson from Hinton and his outlook on life.  Anger hurts us more than the person we’re upset with.  The same is true of jealousy and comparison.  We have a choice to make every day: hate or love? anger or joy? greed or compassion?

And along with that, we all have a role in fixing the justice system.  We need to write to our politicians, sign petitions, vote for candidate vowing to fix the broken system.  We cannot sit back and relax when we know that around 1 out of every 10 Death Row inmates is innocent.  And that’s only Death Row; how many innocent prisoners must be sitting in jail cells all around the country?  Their crime?  Black and poor.  Hispanic and poor.  Their crime was being born the wrong skin color and not being wealthy.  That’s it.

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone is Missing the Point

In light of the recent shootings, I posted what I viewed as a simple status update on Facebook: “How many mass shootings need to occur before the United States actually starts to make changes? I understand that people disagree about gun control, but we have to try something. We can’t just arm every teacher, cashier, movie theater attendant, and festival worker. How about starting with an assault weapons ban? Can’t we just try it? Instead, we sit around arguing and nothing ever changes. People just continue to die.”

I knew that people would disagree, but I was surprised how, 2 days later, people are still commenting.  Last I checked, there were 108 comments.

The people posting on feeds like this usually fall into one of the following categories:

1. Pro-Gun Enthusiasts

These people do not want ANY changes in terms of tightening gun laws.  Nothing.  No background checks.  No assault weapons bans.  Nothing.  Most of them pose hypothetical arguments about angry and insane people finding a way to kill anyway.  They ignore any factual comments about the results that have occurred in countries like Australia and Canada and their tight gun regulations.

Their arguments are often full of holes.  Okay, I understand that you want your guns, but at what cost?

Personally, I don’t like guns at all.  I will never own one.  I will never have one in my home.  I’d be happy with a complete ban, but I know that isn’t a realistic option in this country.  I’m not fighting for that.  I say we start small – let’s AT LEAST improve background checks.  But the pro-gun enthusiasts will not even concede that small amount.

2. Mental Healthers

These people say that everything ties back to mental health.  While I agree that part of the problem definitely lies in the field of mental health, that is not the only issue at hand.

Yes, people who have exhibited violent tendencies associated with their deteriorating mental health should not be allowed to purchase guns.  But that still ties into the realm of tightening gun laws.  We need a both/and approach rather than just identifying one issue.

Mental health issues exist everywhere.  That alone cannot be the problem, or other countries would have similar mass shooting issues.

3. The Culture of Death Religious Folk

I am passionately, devoutly Catholic, so I am not here to bash people who are faithful.  However, their arguments sometimes fall short.

They say that the problem is a lack of morality and this culture of death that has been perpetuated as a result of legalized abortion, state-assisted suicide, etc.

Again, I agree that we live in a culture of death.  I am staunchly pro-life.  But when this comes to mass shootings, what, then is the solution?

I keep asking people with this viewpoint what they suggest we do to make a change.  They usually stop answering at that point.

We do live in a culture of death, but again, we need a both/and approach.  Yes, you should teach morality to your children, but your children also shouldn’t be able to buy an AK-47.  Yes, you should put emphasis on the family, but you shouldn’t be able to go to a gun show and purchase a gun without any background checks.

I am all for prayer, but prayer must coincide with action.  If I pray to find a new job but never send out a resume, then yes, a job can find me, but it’s unlikely.  Let’s pray for our country.  Absolutely.  But let’s also write to our politicians about implementing some changes.

Yes, we live in a culture of death, but again, that is not unusual for America.  Many other countries have similar problems, yet they aren’t killing each other the way we are.

4. The Bad Parenting Accusers

These people are similar to group #3, but many are not religious.  They claim that the problem is the breakdown of the family and bad parents.

Yes, many of these shooters had bad upbringings, but if that is the reason for our mass shooting epidemic, then it seems like we have to accept that nothing will ever change.

There will always be bad parents.  We can’t change parenting.  Sure, we can improve things like the foster care system and child protective services, but bad parents have always existed and will continue to exist.  Again, this is not a problem that is only happening in America.

Despite a poor upbringing, tighter gun laws will still help fewer of these violent men who grew up with bad parents from getting a gun.

5. The Let’s Arm Teachers Crew

This group has little to say in light of recent events, but they were very vocal any time a school shooting erupted.  “Just arm the teachers!” they would say.  Although I disagree with arming teachers, that isn’t even part of the discussion now that shootings have taken places in not just schools, but movie theaters, stores, downtown cities, festivals, and government buildings.  Unless we plan to train every American who has a job to be armed, then this is an unrealistic option.

They say to increase security.  Really?  At every single place that exists in our country?  Are you aware of the debt the US is already in?

 

Every time I commented to someone on Facebook, I kept asking them for a solution.  I have plenty of possible solutions:

-assault weapon bans

-tighter background check laws

-tighter laws against people with established violent tendencies from purchasing weapons

Yet most of the people who disagree can not tell me a tangible solution.  They only tell me that I’m wrong.  But we can’t just end it there.  If all of us who want tighter laws are wrong, then please, by all means, give me an option.

Instead, most of the people who disagree have nothing to say to fix the problem.  Get better mental health.  Okay, but how?  In what ways?  Make better parents.  Um.  Okay.  How do we go about that?  Fix the culture of death.  Okay, but how?  What can we do NOW?  Make abortion and state-assisted suicide and the death penalty illegal?  Gosh, I would love that.  But that seems a tough mountain to climb; it’s one that will take time.

Time is something that we do not have.  There have been more shootings than days in the year 2019.  We need some quick changes.  Yes, over time, let’s work on the bigger issues.  But in the meantime, we need change NOW.  Yesterday.  We needed change 8 years ago, for goodness sakes.

People keep saying how we can’t just address the symptoms of a bigger problem, but you know what?  If I am sick with a cold and cough and the doctor tells me that I just have to let it run its course, I’m definitely going to take a cough drop.  Will a cough drop cure the cold?  No, but isn’t is pleasant to take away the cough?  Of course.

Advil doesn’t fix your sprained ankle, but nobody will tell you not to take the Advil to get some relief.

Will some quick laws on background checks and assault weapons eliminate mass murders?  No.  But it will make a difference.  It will decrease their frequency.  And if you disagree, then let’s just try.  We have to do something.  It’s clear that the doing nothing approach we have taken is failing miserably.

How Many Must Die?

How many people must die before America’s diametrically opposed political parties can try to come together to make changes?

How many must die before we can at least try an assault weapons ban and see if anything changes?

How many must die before we can make major changes to the way we deal with mental health in this country?

In light of the Walmart shooting in Texas and the shooting in downtown Dayton Ohio just FOURTEEN hours later, we need to come together.  We have no choice.  America is falling apart.  I cannot say that I am proud to be an American when I hear of shooting after shooting taking place but almost nothing changing.

Lawmakers try to make bills to adjust gun control, but they are always shut down.

This shooting occurred in Texas, a state with very loose gun laws.  People like to say that shootings occur more with restrictive laws.  That isn’t the case here.

In Texas, people are allowed to carry handguns in most situations.  Convicted felons can regain the right to carry after five years out of prison.  Lawmakers had tried to place a ban on bump stocks, but that bill was never passed.  They tried to make a law requiring background checks for people who buy guns at gun shows…that didn’t pass either.

How many times does the same thing need to happen before anything changes?

How many times do news outlets need to promise not to share the details of the perpetrators since it has been found that many of them revel in the idea that their crimes will cause their names to be all over the headlines, yet we quickly learn their names, ages, races, and backgrounds almost immediately?

People will be discussing this shooting for probably around two weeks, considering that it was a more major shooting than the ones where only a couple of people are killed.  They will debate.  They will get angry.  They will fail to compromise on any front, and the topic will be pushed to the back burner.

Fast forward a few weeks (or more likely days…or in our case today, just fourteen hours) and we will have another young adult white male who most likely purchased his weapons legally and probably has some history of mental health issues who will commit a similar crime.

I don’t mean to stereotype, but that’s the typical situation.

People who want looser gun laws claim that this happens because the United States is too strict  with gun control.  We need to train and arm our teachers, they say.  We need to eliminate gun-free zones.  We need more states to allow open carry so that everyday citizens can fight back.  But we have no data that any of that will improve the problem.  If you look at my previous blog, you will see how many accidents happen in schools where guns are allowed.

Let’s look at some data from Mother Jones and a study that looked into 62 separate shootings that occurred from 1982-2012:

-Over 3/4 of the guns were purchased legally

-Many locations were schools and workplaces, but also restaurants, shopping malls, religious buildings, concert areas, and government buildings.  No location seems to be off-limits.

-44 of the assailants were white males, with an average age of 35

 

Look at this map of mass shootings.  It is absolutely horrifying.

Gun violence is now a leading cause of death in America, according to Business Insider:

“The chance of dying from gun violence overall is about 50% greater than the lifetime risk of dying while riding inside a car, truck, or van (a category that excludes pedestrian, cyclist, and other deaths outside of a motor vehicle). It’s also more than 10 times as high as dying from any force of nature, such as a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, flood, or lightning strike.”

“These measures suggest Americans are more likely to die from gun violence than the combined risks of drowning, fire and smoke, stabbing, choking on food, airplane crashes, animal attacks, and natural disasters.”

Now, despite the fact that these numbers are alarming, gun violence is still a topic that has little research associated with it.  How can this be?  Are we afraid of the answers we may find?  Are gun owners afraid that their rights may be restricted if we go forward with these studies?

Other countries have experienced some mass shootings and within just weeks or months, they have passed restrictions.  In New Zealand, it took only 6 days after their recent mass shooting to pass restrictions.  6 days, “Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a national ban on all military-style semiautomatic weapons, all high-capacity ammunition magazines and all parts that allow weapons to be modified into the kinds of guns used in last week’s attack” (NY Times).

Now let’s compare that to the Las Vegas shooting: “After a gunman killed 58 people in Las Vegas in 2017, it took 443 days for the United States to ban bump stocks,”  Over a year just to ban bump stocks.

I won’t get on a whole separate tangent, but our country is so divided that it takes years for even minor changes to occur.  Republicans and Democrats seem less likely to see eye to eye on issues than ever before.  Sometimes I wonder if people support certain viewpoints only because of their political party.  As an independent, I don’t feel tied to support or reject laws simply based on my political affiliation.  I make decisions based on what I believe is the best option for the most people.

We NEED to come together.  We NEED to compromise.

We can’t just let America continue to allow innocent people to die almost daily at the hands of these killers.

And if you have the time for this long article, I highly recommend reading it: “We Asked 12 Mass Shooters: What Would Have Stopped You?”

 

 

 

 

California Confession Bill

I’ve been hearing about this bill in California that would make priests mandated reporters who have to divulge information gleaned during the sacrament of confession if  child abuse is involved.

Apparently, there are already seven states that have passed similar bills.

Priests are already mandated reporters across the nation, but not during the sacrament of confession, where everything confessed remains confidential.  California law currently has an exemption in terms of mandated reporting for a priest who “acquires knowledge or a reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect during a penitential communication.”

Those who are trying to pass the bill think that this seal of confession is ultimately hurting children, but the child abuse scandal isn’t only present in the Catholic church.  There have been similar instances across all other denominations, in schools, and other organizations.

I wonder how many times a person even admits to their child abuse during confession.  I don’t know that this bill would really make a significant different.  Does a priest who molests children really go to another priest to confess that sin?  I’m not sure.

If a priest is just suspecting another priest based on observations, then he can absolutely tell the authorities; he is obliged to, actually. This law is trying to nullify our religious freedom as Catholics.

As a religious education teacher at my church, my seventh grade students often ask me if a priest can ever tell someone what they heard during confession.  My answer was “no” because they will be excommunicated if they ever do.  The Catholic canon teaches that the seal of confession is inviolable.  Thus, priests who violate this seal are excommunicated from the Church.

The reason for this is because we want people who are truly sorry for their sins to have the freedom to confess them before God without fears of retribution.  I understand that it seems scary to think that a serial killer could potentially go to a priest, make a good confession (if he is truly sorry), and get away with the crime.  But how often does that hypothetical situation ever take place?  No, I don’t have clear data on the matter, but I would guess that it is extremely rare.

What about attorney-client privilege?  Clients are allowed to refuse the disclosure of communications with their attorneys.  An attorney can know that a person committed murder or rape or child molestation and he does not have to ever release that information. The lawyer cannot lie and say the client didn’t commit the crime if he knows that the client has, but he also doesn’t have to admit to his knowledge.  So it isn’t only the Catholic church that has this privilege of secrecy.  Catholic priests should not be legally required to divulge the information provided to them during the sacrament of confession just like defense attorneys do not need to release confidential information provided to them by their clients.

We could argue that a lawyer should be forced to tell the courts if he knows that his client is guilty of murder.  But that is not how our judicial system works.  Rather, the prosecution must prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that the alleged criminal is guilty. The same should be true in terms of priests and confession.  If a crime is admitted to during confession, then the priest must keep that information confidential.  Just like the prosecution must prove a defendant is guilty in a court of law, the police officers have the responsibility of finding the perpetrators in child abuse cases.  That is not the duty of the priest unless the priest has learned some information outside of the confessional.

What will happen in the states that pass this law?  Will the priests be jailed for remaining silent?  Or will they tell the authorities this information and face excommunication?

These bills are encroaching on our freedom of religion.  As much as I am thankful for all of the privileges that I receive as an American citizen, it seems that more of our religious freedoms are being attacked with each coming year.

Despite my belief that abortion is morally wrong, some of my teacher union dues help fund Planned Parenthood.  Catholic hospitals and organizations across the country are being forced to pay for birth control for their employees or to distribute it to their patients.  Catholic hospitals in some places are forced to offer abortions.  Now priests are going to be breaking the law if they uphold the Church teachings with regard to confession?

These are scary times for Catholics and we need to have the strength and courage to fight for the truth and for justice.

 

Our School Shooting Epidemic

The United States has a gun violence epidemic.  Everyone is aware of it, but nobody has a solution.  Most countries that  have experienced school shootings have quickly tightened gun control.  But not the USA.  Instead, we want to add guns to our schools.

The Columbine shooting is one of the most infamous, as it was one of the first memorable mass school shootings in history.  Other notable school shootings include Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and Parkland.

But the list extends well beyond that.  It seems that we hear about another shooting every week…often multiple times per week.

I started writing this blog a few days ago, but just then there was another shooting in Colorado just yesterday.  One student was killed and eight were injured.

Just look at this list of school shootings that must be updated all of the time.

The 1st shooting recorded dates back from 1840. 3 more occurred in the 1850s.  Let’s jump ahead a bit to see the more recent decades.  Here are the counts as well as some of the more notable shootings:

1960s – 17  (18 killed/31 injured at the University of Texas in 1966)

1970s – 30 (7/2 injured killed at California State University in 1976)

1980s – 41 (6 killed/32 injured in Stockton California in 1989)

1990s – 65 (15 killed/21 injured at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999)

2000s – 64 (-10 killed/7 injured in Minnesota in 2005;

-33 killed/23 injured at Virginia Tech in 2007;

-6 killed/21 injured at Northern Illinois University in 2008)

2010s – 182 (-7 killed/3 injured at Oikos University in 2012;

-28 killed/2 injured at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012;

-6 killed/4 injured at Santa Monica College in 2013;

-5 killed/1 injured at a high school in Washington in 2014;

-10 killed/9 injured at a community college in Oregon in 2015;

-6 killed/18 injured on a reserve in California in 2017;

-2 killed/18 injured at a high school in Kentucky in 2018;

-17 killed/17 injured at a high school in Parkland, Florida in 2018;

-10killed/13 injured at a high school in Texas in 2018;

-10 injured at an elementary school in Georgia in 2018)

The 2010s aren’t even over yet and we have had 182 shootings (as of May 3rd).  There were 89 shootings in a 4-year period from 2010-2014.  93 more from 2015-April 2019.

Some people may say that those numbers need to be compared to other highly populated countries.  It is difficult to even find a list like the one for the United States when it comes to other countries because they don’t have the same problem we have here.

Let’s look at Canada first (population of over 37 million):

1960s – 0 school shootings

1970s – 1

1980s – 1 (14 killed/15 injured in 1989)

1990s – 2

2000s – 1

2010s – 2

I understand that Canada has a much smaller population than America, but those numbers still show that they have very few school shootings and the numbers aren’t increasing.  The US numbers are increasing at an alarming rate.

Let’s look at Germany (population of over 27 million):

1960s – 1 (10 killed/22 injured in 1964)

1970s – 0

1980s – 0

1990s – 0

2000s – 3 (17 killed/7 injured in 2002)

2010s – 0

Yes, a smaller population, but again, school shootings aren’t a problem there.

You can look up the information yourself for any other country.  None comes even close in comparison to the rate of shootings in the United States.  Some of those countries have very strict gun control laws (Japan, Australia, England, China) while others have much looser laws (Honduras, Finland, Sweden, USA).

In China, citizens are generally not allowed to purchase firearms.  China is obviously not a country I seek to imitate politically, but because of its massive population of over 1.3 billion (the US has over 372 million citizens), it’s interesting to look into.  Guess what? Mass shootings in China are rare.  Yes, China has had some school stabbings, but still not even comparable to the number of shootings in America.  And I would much prefer a student with a knife in a school than a student with an AR-15.

Gun laws alone are not the entire problem, as the USA and Finland both have loose gun laws, but Finland doesn’t have the same issue of continuous school shootings.

However, those who argue that stricter gun laws will not change anything are simply incorrect.  There is always the argument that criminals will still get their hands on weapons despite the laws.  Yes, that will be true for some people.  But isn’t that the case for any law?

When murder is illegal, people still murder others.  Should we forget about those laws because people are just going to break them?

Why impose speed limits if we know that people will still speed?  Why ban anything really, because someone will break the law regardless?

That is no argument.  In a civilized world, we need laws to protect the citizens as much as possible.  There is no reason why any American citizen needs automatic or semi-automatic weapons or bump stocks.  None.  They’re not necessary for hunting.  They’re not necessary to protect one’s home from invaders.  The only argument that makes sense is that people simply want the guns because they like them or they want to practice shooting them for fun.  I’m sorry, but that isn’t a good enough for these items to be legal.

Look at this CNN article about the shootings in the US.  We had 57 times as many school shootings as the other major industrialized nations combined since 2009.

This is horrifying, yet it seems as though little action is being taken.  This is our recent vicious cycle:

• school shooting
• grief/mourning
• gun control protests (from both sides)
• politicians talk about their plans and have meetings
• [usually] nothing significant happens
• we forget about it and go back to normal life
• another school shooting happens and we start all over again

After Parkland, I really hoped that there would be stricter gun control in this country.  The students were furious about this situation.  They protested, they held the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., they gave speeches, and they appeared on television shows and news programs.  President Trump met with them as well as school officials, lawmakers, you name it.  It seemed as though gun control would be tightened, but it hasn’t really changed much in the US.

Talk to the parents who lost children at Sandy Hook.  What do they want? Stricter gun laws.  Talk to the teens who lost friends at Parkland.  They, too, want tighter gun laws.

What does Florida do this week?  Passes a law allowing teachers to be armed.

The people who have the most direct experience with school shootings are calling for the exact opposite.  Their pleas have apparently fallen on deaf ears.

Compare that to New Zealand, which just faced a terrorist attack that killed 51.  I know it’s not the same as a school shooting, but what was New Zealand’s response? To quickly pass a bill banning the sale of many semiautomatic weapons and instituting a buyback program.  This bill will become law just 4 weeks after the attack.

The United States is facing decades of gun violence (and my list doesn’t even account for any mass shootings that have taken place outside of schools), and it is still just twiddling its thumbs in terms of  a solution.

Germany banned automated and semi-automated weapons in 2008 in response to a 2002 massacre.

Switzerland passed a law for stricter ammunition storage after a mass shooting in 2001.

Australia banned automatic and semi-automatic weapons for “personal defense” in 1996, 12 days after a mass shooting.  It also offered a buyback program.

America’s response to shootings:

COLORADO:

There have been over 12 mass shootings in Colorado, some of the worst including the Columbine shooting in 1999 and the Aurora shooting in 2012. In both cases, the assailants were armed with semi-automatic weapons.

Colorado law “still prohibits local governments from restricting gun laws,” according to a New York Times article entitled “20 years after Columbine shooting, little has been accomplished on gun control.”  The University of Colorado wanted to prohibit concealed weapons on campus, but that was blocked.  People in Colorado can have a gun (loaded or unloaded) while driving.  They can carry concealed with a permit, but there is no need for a permit for the purchase of a gun.  And there is no permit required for open carry in any location except Denver.  One must simply be 18 years old.

Tom Mauser, whose son was killed at Columbine, began fighting for stricter gun control laws just days later.  There were thousands of people present.  20 years later, he is still fighting.

Despite the pleas of the Denver mayor, the NRA held a convention there right after the Columbine shooting, where Charlton Heston, the president of the NRA, said that there is nothing more “precious” than the Second Amendment.  What a slap in the face to the parents of students killed during the shooting.

Very little has changed in Colorado in the last 20 years since the shooting.

VIRGINIA:

The Virginia Tech shooting occurred in 2007. 32 students were shot and 23 were injured.  The perpetrator used two semi-automatic pistols.

Virginia, like Colorado, requires no permit to purchase a gun. Open carry is allowed for people over 18 without a permit. Anyone over 18 who has proof of citizenship can purchase an assault weapon.  Background checks are not required for private sales.

The assailant in Virginia Tech should have never even been able to purchase a gun because of his mental illness.  However, according to a NY Times article, “the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification only addresses the state criteria, which lists two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police — someone who was “involuntarily committed,” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.””  Despite clear mental illness issued, the assailant did not fit into either of those two criteria.

Just like Colorado, very little has changed with gun laws in Virginia since the shooting.

CONNECTICUT:

The Sandy Hook shooting occurred in 2012 by a perpetrator with his mother’s semi-automatic rifle.  He had the rifle, a shotgun, and two handguns, as well as 24 magazines.

Now, Connecticut was already a state with tighter gun laws.  Permits are required to purchase a firearm. There is a partial assault weapon ban.  There are magazine capacity restrictions.  Background checks are required for the purchase of weapons.

Despite CT’s already tight laws, parents of children who died in Sandy Hook fought for harsher laws, especially federal ones. Governor Malloy passed new restrictions to the state’s assault weapon ban in 2013.

Following the shooting, a Gallup poll revealed that over 92% of Americans favored a law requiring background checks for all gun show sales.

But on a federal level, nothing changed.  The Senate rejected a bill that would expand background checks and ban some assault weapons modeled after military assault weapons.

It seems that the wishes of the NRA matter more than the wishes of 92% of Americans who wanted more extensive background checks.  Background checks don’t even limit anything about the actual sale of guns.  It has nothing to do with limiting which types of guns can be sold.  The background checks just require that we really know who it is who is getting a gun.  Why this is not easily passed as law is unfathomable to me.

FLORIDA:

The shooting in Parkland, Florida occurred in 2018.  This time, it seemed as though gun laws would finally change.  Many of the high school students who survived decided to use this tragedy to fight for more gun control.  They organized the March for our Lives.

Depending on the state in which you live, gun laws have changed.  There have been bump stock bans. And eight states: “Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, as well as Washington, D.C.—have passed Red Flag laws which allow family members and law enforcement to seek a court order to temporarily restrict a person’s access to guns if they’re a danger to themselves or others.”

But now Florida also passed a bill that allows for teachers to be armed.  It seems we take 3 steps forward and 2 steps back.

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Arming Teachers?

We already have armed guards in 43% of schools (2015-2016 school year), in the form of police officers and armed security guards.  But there have been no studies done proving that these armed guards deter crime or stop the assailants in the process.  A study from 2019 showed “no evidence that the presence of resource officers in schools lessened the severity of school shooting incidents.”

The opposite may even be true since most of the perpetrators have every intention of dying.  President Trump has said that shooters are “not going into a school when they know they’re going to come out dead.”  Actually, they usually do not intend to come out alive.

An article from The Washington Post said that “certainty of death, in other words, is no deterrent to mass shooters. Most of them may, in fact, be driven by it.”  The article continues:

Because many offenders are suicidal and expect to be shot and killed, they wouldn’t be deterred by places with armed guards or gun-toting citizens,” said criminologist Adam Lankford, who studies mass shootings at the University of Alabama. “In fact, a significant subset of these offenders have specifically targeted government buildings and military facilities” — places where armed opposition is all but certain.

Studying 185 public mass shootings between 1966 and 2010, he found reason to believe that “virtually all of those offenders may be suicidal or life indifferent.

For many mass shooters, provoking a lethal response by law enforcement officers is part of the plan. The phenomenon is so common that it has a name: “suicide by cop.” For certain mass shooters, suicide by cop “may appeal as a suitably masculine conclusion to their violent attacks,” Lankford writes.

Shooters intending to go out in a “blaze of glory,” either by their own hand or via a shootout with police, are unlikely to be deterred by the presence of more “good guys” with guns. The data on mass shootings would appear to bear this out.

The Washington Post article asserts that  “serious gun violence researchers think that other policies are much better suited to reducing the toll of mass shooting deaths: universal background checks and bans on high-capacity magazines and assault weapons.”

Arming teachers, it seems, it not a viable solution.

Most students, teachers, and parents DON’T want armed teachers.

What if a student gets ahold of a teacher’s gun? What if a teacher tried to shoot a perpetrator, but misses and shoots an innocent bystander? These are questions that we much address.

Just look at this article of every incident of mishandled guns in schools.

Here are some incidents that (fortunately) had no accidental shootings:

Jan 2019: school resource officer leaves gun on the counter in a bathroom (New York)

Oct 2018: students steal the gun from a middle school teacher who brought one to school (Missouri)

Oct 2018: 5th grade student finds gun in bathroom that was left by a security officer (Florida)

May 2018: middle school student finds gun in teacher’s bag (Pennsylvania)

Feb 2018: an elementary school resource officer leaves loaded handgun in bathroom (Florida)

Feb 2018: child pulls the trigger of a gun in its holster while officer visits the classroom (Montana)

Sept 2017: officer leaves loaded gun in high school bathroom (Arizona)

March 2017: intoxicated teacher brings loaded gun to school (Georgia)

But in other cases, some of the weapons have even been discharged:

In April 2019, there have been at least 3 weapons unintentionally discharged in schools: 1 by a school resource officer, 1 by a janitor, and 1 by a police officer.

In March 2018, a teacher unintentionally fired a gun in class, causing 1 student to be injured in California.

In February 2018, a deputy shot himself in the leg in Florida.

In November 2016, a sheriff unintentionally shot his gun and hit a teacher in the neck in Michigan.

There are countless examples of this happening, and I’m sure the numbers will only continue to rise as more states allow for more armed teachers, security guards, and other staff members.

The National Association of School Psychologists has argued that armed guards increase student fear, rather than making them feel safer.

States with the most school shootings:

1. California – 19
2. Florida – 15
3. Georgia – 11
4. Washington – 9
5. Ohio – 9
6. Michigan – 9
7. Pennsylvania – 7
8. Oregon – 7
9. Texas – 7
10. Tennessee – 6

Let’s compare that to the list of states with the most strict gun laws:

1. California
2. New Jersey
3. Massachusetts
4. New York
5. Connecticut
6. Hawaii
7. Maryland
8. Rhode Island
9. Illinois
10. Pennsylvania

Only California and Pennsylvania appear on both lists.  California is the state with the largest population, so it may not be a surprise that there have been more school shootings there.  The same could be true of Texas and Florida, both in the top 3 when it comes to population.  But New York, Illinois, and New Jersey are not on the list.  All 3 of those states have large populations and strict gun laws and they do not have nearly as many school shootings.

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The mental health factor.

I read a book this past summer called No One Cares About Crazy People. It was written by Ron Powers, who had two sons who were both diagnosed with schizophrenia.  He shows readers the way that mental illness is handled in America.  Spoiler alert: the findings show that mental illness is handled poorly here.

According to an LA Times article, “at least 59% of the 185 public mass shootings that took place in the United States from 1900 through 2017 were carried out by people who had either been diagnosed with a mental disorder or demonstrated signs of serious mental illness prior to the attack.”

These are people who were known to have mental illness.  Some of them purchased guns illegally, but many went through legal measures.

A different study found the number to be even higher, at 61%.

Now remember, that doesn’t even account for undiagnosed mental illness or mental illness that lacked signs.  These are people who had clear, often diagnosed problems.  Yet less than one-third of the shooters had ever had mental health care.  That means that two-thirds of the shooters had mental illness that either showed signs or was diagnosed, but they did not have medical care.

The LA Times also shows that “this treatment gap is underscored by evidence showing that the U.S. has higher rates of untreated serious mental illness than most other Western countries. Additional research shows that the gap is even larger for males, who have committed 99% of the country’s mass public shootings.”

It seems that people in America are afraid of attaching a stigma to certain disorders.  That is understandable because we don’t want people to hear the word “schizophrenic” and assume that the person will commit a mass murder.  However, something needs to change in the way we approach this topic.

I have had some students who have exhibited frightening tendencies.  When dealing with one in particular, I sometimes wondered if he would bring a gun to school.  Since it seemed I had no power to change my circumstances, I decided that I would simply try my best to get on his good side so that, God forbid he plan a shooting, I might not be one of the victims.

I know that this sounds horrible because I was only looking out for myself, but I’m not sure what more I could have done.  I have reported students to guidance counselors and social workers, but then it is out of my hands.  With HIPAA laws, I can’t learn of the outcome of any testing (if any has been done).  Sometimes parents have denied testing for their children, even for simple things like speech impediments.  I have had students admit to feelings of psychosis and the most I can do is send them to a social worker and pray that everything turns out okay.

In my 9 years of teaching, I can only think of a few students who truly frightened me and who I believe had the capacity to commit some horrific events.  But what if one of these students had actually done something?  It would have been no surprise, just like it was no surprise in the case of many of the infamous school shooters.  The media would interview me, asking about the signs that I had seen.  And what would I say?  “Yes, actually, there were some disturbing writing assignments.”  “Yes, I overheard some frightening comments.  I reported it, but I don’t know what happened after that.”

I understand that mental health is a tough issue to tackle.  Why the rise in mental health issues? Why is it almost all males with mental illness who commit mass murders? The questions are endless.

I understand a student’s right to privacy.  But I don’t feel that enough it being studied in this country in terms of best practices when it comes to dealing with mental health disorders.

Part of the problem could be with healthcare and insurance.

A study of over 35,000 household across the country, involving more than 200,000 American adults of all socioeconomic backgrounds, was completed with data from 2006 to 2014.

They found that over that time, access to healthcare services deteriorated for people with high levels of psychological distress. “This was somewhat surprising, says Weissman, since legislation like the 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act and the 2010 Affordable Care Act included provisions designed to help close insurance gaps for people with mental-health issues” (health.com).

Yet the same study shows that healthcare accessibility has improved for people with healthcare issues that do not involve psychological distress.

Mental health around the world.

Mental health issues are under-reported, so none of the data that we have is flawless, but let’s at least take a look at what we do have.  Here are some interesting charts from Our World in Data:

An article in The Atlantic says that  “mental health disorders include mood disorders, anxiety disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and substance abuse. Over one’s entire lifetime, the average American has a 47.4 percent chance of having any kind of mental health disorder. Yes, that’s almost one in two. The projected lifetime prevalence is even higher: for people who reach age 75 it is 55 percent. The WHO data does not take into account eating disorders, personality disorders, and schizophrenia; the incidence of these disorders together is about 15 percent in the U.S., according to the National Institute of Mental Health.”

This is such a broad category when we say “mental health disorders,” yet I’m not sure why the data doesn’t include schizophrenia.

“After the U.S., Ukraine, Colombia, New Zealand, Lebanon, and France have the next highest rates of mental health disorders of any kind, all falling between 18.9 percent and 21.4 percent in a 12-month period. Japan, the People’s Republic of China, Nigeria, and Israel have the lowest rates (between 6.0 percent and 7.4 percent), especially for depression.”

“In the U.S., only 41.1 percent of people with mental health disorders receive treatment. In other parts of the world, treatment is highly correlated with how developed the country is, and with how much of the country’s gross domestic product is spent on healthcare. Better treatment rates are generally seen in nations with universal healthcare, according to Kessler. In the U.S., he says, it’s not the lowest socioeconomic class that has trouble (they have Medicaid, which usually covers it), it’s the second-lowest socioeconomic group that can’t get care. ”

I don’t have a solution, but I do know that we need to look into mental health disorders much more closely and their correlation to school shootings and mass shootings in general.

According to Heritage.org, “most studies indicate that mental illness is responsible for only a small fraction (about 3 percent to 5 percent) of all violent crimes committed in the United States every year, and most of those episodes of violence are committed by individuals who are not currently receiving mental health treatment.

There is, however, a strong connection between acts of mass public violence—including mass public shootings—and untreated serious mental illness.”

That is the part that seems crucial to delve into a bit further: the correlation between untreated serious mental illness and mass public violence. The article continues:

“The majority of all mass public killers (some studies estimate as many as two-thirds) likely suffered from a serious mental illness prior to their attacks, and often displayed clear signs of delusional thinking, paranoia, or irrational feelings of oppression associated with conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar-related psychosis.

This includes many individuals who committed atrocious attacks on students, including the Parkland shooter, the Virginia Tech shooter, and the Sandy Hook shooter—all of whom had long histories of untreated mental health problems.

Unfortunately, hardly any of these individuals were receiving psychiatric treatment at the time of their attacks.”

I know that we don’t like to focus too much on the perpetrators, but we need to look at some of their backgrounds to understand who these boys were:

Nikolas Cruz (Parkland, Florida / 20 years old at the time of the shooting):

-diagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder, ADHD, autism

-history of cutting himself

-long history of mental health services from middle school through 2016

-scored very low on a “Global Assessment of Functioning”

-mother had passed away

-in 2016 (the shooting was in Feb 2018), “Crisis workers from a South Florida mental health facility were called in 2016 to hold alleged gunman Nikolas Cruz for a psychiatric evaluation after he sent out a Snapchat video in which he cut his arms and said he wanted to buy a gun, according to a mental health report,” according to NBC News.  They decided not to hospitalize him.

-he stopped counseling and stopped receiving special education services after turning 18 in 2016

-he had been prescribed Focalin, Clonidine and Risperidone, which can all increase aggression

-he used a semi-automatic AR-15-style rifle that was purchased legally

It was legal because he had no criminal background, despite a slew of mental health issues.

 

Adam Lanza (Newtown, Connecticut / 20 years old at the time of the shooting):

-diagnosed with Asperger’s

-didn’t seem to feel physical pain, according to one of his teachers

-obsession with mass murder and the Columbine shooting

-deteriorating relationship with his mother

-investigators found information “to suggest Lanza had an interest in children that “could be categorized as pedophilia” – though there is no evidence he acted on it” (USA Today)

-the FBI thinks he may have been planning the attack since 2011 (article)

-he had a meticulous spreadsheet with information about prior mass shootings

-he became a shut-in and hadn’t left his home in the three months before the attack

-he used an AR-15 that was legally purchased by his mother

 

Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech / 23 years old at the time of the shooting):

-born in South Korea; moved to US when he was 8

-relatives thought he was  mentally ill as a child; some thought he was autistic

-diagnosed with selective mutism

-parents sought treatment for him in 8th grade

-wrote in a school assignment his wish to “repeat Columbine”

-had special educational accommodations in high school for an emotional disturbance classification and was excused from oral presentations in school, class discussions, and received speech therapy

-2005: he was found mentally ill and in need of hospitalization.  He was found to be an “imminent danger to himself or others,” but was released to receive outpatient services

-he was allowed to legally purchase firearms in Virginia since he was not involuntarily hospitalized

-P-22 pistol purchased online from out of state, 9mm Glock purchased in Virginia

 

Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold (Columbine, Colorado / 18 & 17 years old at the time of the shooting)

-used  a 9mm carbine and TEC-DC9 that were bought by a friend, and handmade explosives

In reading Dave Cullen’s book, Columbine, it details quite a bit of the boys’ lives.  I also read a book written by Dylan’s mom, Sue Klebold, called A Mother’s Reckoning.  From both of these texts, it seems that Eric was a psychopath who was eager to kill and who wanted to commit a greater atrocity than that of the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVey.  Dylan, on the other hand, seemed to be dealing with more depression.  He seemed to look up to Eric and the aspect of the shooting that he was most interesting was their final suicide.  Dylan wasn’t actually responsibly for most of the killings during the shooting spree.

Most clinicians today agree that Eric was a cold-blooded psychopath, which falls under the category of personality disorders, though he was never diagnosed while alive.  He was charming, intelligent, and easily able to convince his depressed friend to join in on the crime.

They had both been in trouble with the law in the past for breaking into a van and stealing some items from inside.  They were charged with theft, trespassing, and criminal mischief.  They had to complete a diversion program that entailed counseling and community service and they were both released early for such good behavior.

---

Do I have a solution? No.  There is no one clear answer, or else we would have likely solved the problem by now.

To me, it seems that the best next steps include:

-banning bump stocks federally (this was actually done recently, in March of 2019, so that’s some progress)

-restricting automatic and semi-automatic weapons

-requiring background checks for the purchase of firearms (private or public sales, including gun shows)

-determining best practices for school lockdowns

-researching much more into mental health disorders

-passing some sort of litigation that does not allow for people with certain diagnosed mental illnesses to purchase firearms

 

Will all of those changes eliminate gun violence in America? No.  But I believe that it would start to slow down the rapid increase of shootings.  Arming teachers, on the other hand, could potentially have devastating side effects.

Planned Parenthood is a Danger to Women

I watched the film Unplanned yesterday with my husband.  It is a difficult film to watch, but absolutely necessary.  I recommend it to everyone, regardless of their view on abortion.  Pro-lifers will hopefully be moved into action as a result of viewing the film and pro-choicers may realize the evil that takes place within the walls of every Planned Parenthood location.  I also watched this podcast to learn more details about this issue.

The film centers around Abby Johnson, a woman who worked for Planned Parenthood for 8 years.  She was the youngest director of a clinic in Texas.  She had had 2 abortions of her own and she truly believe that she was helping women and their reproductive rights through her job.

However, she eventually began to see the lies that are propagated by Planned Parenthood and she realized how many of those lies were coming out of her own mouth in her conversations with women who went to the clinic.

Although I have always been pro-life, I never realized exactly what happens in Planned Parenthood facilities until viewing this film.  I am appalled to know that the organization comes into local schools to talk to our students during health class.

Margaret Sanger, who lived during the late 1800s and early 1900s, is credited with beginning organizations that would eventually become what we know today as Planned Parenthood.  It is also common knowledge that she was a eugenist, but we ignore that part of her background when we learn about her in our history textbooks.  She wanted people with disabilities to be sterilized.  She presented at a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan.  If you don’t believe this to be true, just look at some of the titles of her published articles: “Birth Control and Positive Eugenics,” “Birth Control: the True Eugenics,” and “The Eugenic Conscience,” among others.  She believed that none of the following types of people should bear children: alcoholics, people with cancer/ syphilis/ tuberculosis, prisoners, you name it.

She was quoted with this in 1921: “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”  This is the same woman lauded as a hero by Planned Parenthood and many of its supporters.

So back to the film (**spoiler alert**).

Abby Johnson was raised in a pro-life household, but she says that she started acting immodestly in college – in terms of her language, her actions, and her clothing choices.  She eventually ended up getting pregnant by a boyfriend and he brought her in to have her first abortion.

She ended up pregnant again and this time it was earlier into her pregnancy, so they told her that she could take the RU-486 pill instead of having the baby suctioned out of her uterus.  They told her that within an hour of taking the pills, she would begin bleeding.  She expected it to be similar to a heavy menstrual flow.  How easy, right?

12 agonizingly painful hours later, she had blood clots the size of lemons falling out of her, which she needed to flush down the toilet.  The bleeding continued for months.

When she called Planned Parenthood because she thought that something had gone wrong, they acted as though her side effects were quite normal, despite the fact that they had prepared her for none of it.

How she ended up later working for Planned Parenthood after that experience is baffling, but it happened.  But before we go into that, Planned Parenthood applauds itself on its safety. I’m not sure how it’s considered safe or acceptable to give this pill to young women without fully explaining what they can expect.  I understand why they do it — fewer women would agree to take RU-486 if they really knew what it entailed– but how is there not more uproar about this?

It is common for women who take RU-486 to experience heavy bleeding, diarrhea, vomiting, and painful contractions. 2% of women hemorrhage and 1 out of every 100 require hospitalization.  This does not sound safe to me.

Fast forward to a day in college when Abby encountered a Planned Parenthood worker on her college campus.  Abby initially mentioned being raised pro-life, and the worker then explained all of the wonderful things that Planned Parenthood does for women.  They have a captivating sales pitch and Abby was hooked.

She started out as a volunteer escort, meeting the women at their cars to escort them into the clinic so that they would not have to hear from the pro-lifers standing outside of the fenced-off parking lot.

The director eventually promoted Abby and she became a counselor.  But she didn’t actually do much counseling.  Many people assume that Planned Parenthood provides women with every option: keeping the pregnancy, adoption, and lastly abortion.  Not quite.  She described her job as more akin to one of those people who sells time shares.

They would give the woman an ultrasound (although they would not let her see it; after all, they don’t want to risk that she would see the baby and realize that she was not ready for an abortion).  Then they would get into their sales pitch.  The ultrasound cost $150.  But if the woman scheduled an abortion on that day, that fee would be removed.  They would tell her how much cheaper an abortion would be if it happened sooner, explaining that waiting a week could end up costing $200 more.

Some of these women are teenagers (and younger).  They’re terrified.  Many are alone, hiding this information from their parents.  Many of their boyfriends have already left at that first positive pregnancy test.  They’re vulnerable and the last thing they need is a sales pitch.  They need compassion.

So it is no surprise that many of these girls and women would be convinced to have an abortion, even if they had doubts.  Abby’s job was not to refer adoption services.  Her job was to sell abortions, lying if necessary.

She had a difficult time selling the RU-486 method of abortions, however, since she knew how horrible her experience had been.  She was eventually reprimanded by her boss for being honest about the experience of medicinal abortions.  Planned Parenthood wanted to sell more of the RU-486 option.  It saved them money because no doctor was needed to perform a surgery.  The girl would simply take a pill while at the office and pop a few more once she went home.  Planned Parenthood did not need to pay a doctor for any of those visits.  Those girls did not even need to be seen by a doctor before taking those pills.

Abby received bonuses for hitting and exceeding her abortion quota.  Yes, despite what Planned Parenthood would like the world to believe, they have abortion goals.  One of the things that started making Abby rethink her career choice (after having been promoted to the status of clinic director) was when she went to a corporate meeting only to be told that she was expected to double her numbers of abortions sold from the previous year.

She had been under the assumption that the true goal of Planned Parenthood was to make abortions rare.  That was what she had always heard, but now she knew that was empty rhetoric.  Planned Parenthood makes their profits as a result of abortions.  No abortions, no planned parenthood necessary.  Do they offer other services to women? Sure, but those aren’t as profitable as abortion services.  And those can be done within many regular doctor’s offices, both OBGYNs and primary care physicians.

Despite her newfound hesitance about her job, Abby stayed at Planned Parenthood, amidst many warning signs that what was happening there was not safe or helpful to women.

Doctors knew that it was safer to perform abortions while using ultrasound equipment so that they could have an image of the fetus.  Planned Parenthood, however, knew that the use of an ultrasound would take 3 minutes longer per abortion.  They didn’t have time for that.  Time equals money, after all.  3 minutes lost is another living baby that could have been killed.

So Planned Parenthood had doctors that would perform abortions without an ultrasound.  They would blindly fish around the woman’s uterus to suck out the baby.  (Although I’m writing in past tense, this is still what occurs).  Sometimes they would accidentally tear the uterine wall since they had no visual.  This could cause heavy bleeding in the woman and even potential death, but they would not call 911.  They couldn’t risk bad press, after all.

Curious on how many women die from abortions and abortion-related side effects each year, or how many are hospitalized?  Me too.  But states are not required to report abortion information to the CDC.  The CDC website says that “states and areas voluntarily report data to CDC for inclusion in its annual Abortion Surveillance Report.”

If the world knew about all of these dirty secrets of Planned Parenthood, I would think that they would be up in arms.  Nothing that is happening within those walls is safe or progressive; it is savage.

Although this wasn’t in the film, Abby was asked in an interview whether it is true that Planned Parenthood sells the parts of aborted babies.  Yes.  It is.  And if you don’t believe me, you only need to do a quick Google search to find a variety of articles on the matter.

According to the Center for Medical Progress, Planned Parenthood admitted to “selling aborted baby body parts from Planned Parenthood of Orange & San Bernardino Counties for profit in violation of federal and California law.”  A 7.8 million dollar settlement followed.

What finally changed everything happened one day when a different abortionist was performing abortions in Abby’s clinic.  He had a different practice and was just filling in for the usual doctor.  Because of the improved safety, he insisted that an ultrasound be used during the abortion procedure, and he needed some help.  Abby, as clinic director, was the one called into the operating room.

When she saw the instrument entering the woman’s uterus in the ultrasound imaging, she noticed the baby jerking back.  She was shocked.  The baby was fighting for its life; something that she had never considered possible.

The doctor was ready and asked for the suction to be turned on.  Abby watched, in horror, as the baby fought against the tube, only to eventually be sucked into a glass jar, and later pieced back together by a staff member whose job it was to make sure that no baby parts were left inside of any woman.

Abby decided to leave Planned Parenthood that day.  She was done with all of the lies.  She knew that she was responsible for the deaths of over 22,000 babies.  She knew that she had lied to women who were about to take the RU-486 pill that they could simply expect some heavy bleeding.  She knew that she had lied about God’s forgiveness to women who were hesitant as a result of their faith, telling them that God would understand why they had to make this choice, and assuring them that He would forgive them.

And she was very promptly sued by Planned Parenthood because the organization was afraid of confidential information being released.  It’s quite ironic because Abby explains how she probably never would have gained attention if it wasn’t for Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit and press release against her.  Why, if an organization is truthful, would they be afraid of the things that a former employee might say?  If they know that their information is honest, they have nothing to hide.

Well, Planned Parenthood has a barrage of information to hide.  Fortunately, Abby won the lawsuit because Planned Parenthood had nothing against her.  And she has now devoted her life to the pro-life cause, especially helping women who work in abortion clinics.

Her non-profit organization, Abortion Worker, offers resources to women who are currently working in the abortion field and who want to get out.  They provide healing, confidential counseling, help with job searches, and even help with paying the bills in the interim between leaving their jobs and starting new ones.

I am so inspired by Abby Johnson and the great work she is doing for the pro-life movement and I was moved by the film Unplanned. I am so happy to hear how it is doing so well in its ratings and I pray that it leads to a mass conversion of hearts.

The film definitely has a call to action to those of us who call ourselves pro-life.  During college, I would sometimes spend my Saturday mornings going to Mass and then taking the hour drive to Pittsburgh to pray outside of the abortion clinic along with a large group of students.  I was trained as a sidewalk counselor (although my fear always kept me in the group of praying students rather than the one going up to the girls to speak to them about their options).

I graduated, moved home, and got busy with life.  Despite always being pro-life, for many years there wasn’t much I really did that was pro-life.  I was against abortion, but that was basically it.  I think that most pro-lifers and most Christians fall in to this  category.  We don’t agree with abortion, but we do nothing to actually stop it, other than maybe uttering a few prayers every now and then.

That is exactly what allows abortions to continue: our lack of action.  To win this battle, we must take action.

I listened to Abby Johnson’s testimony a few months ago and I was immediately called to do something.  I researched the local Planned Parenthood offices and found one about 30 minutes away from my home. It was a Saturday morning and I told my husband that I felt called to go there to pray outside of the clinic.  He agreed and we decided that if it was on our heart, we might as well go that day.

We drove there, rosary beads and miraculous medals in hand, ready to wage a spiritual battle.  He was hesitant since he had never been before, but now we try to go back every Saturday that we’re able to, inviting friends from Bible study and people we know from church.

Sometimes it feels like we’re not accomplishing anything.  There are “no trespassing” signs, so we can’t get very close to the door to the clinic.  We can’t really talk to the women entering.  But we can make eye contact with them through their passing cars.  We pray with the faith that God hears us and that hearts are changing.  We hear the beeping of the cars that pass us and honk their horns in support.

We know that Abby Johnson said she hated it when pro-lifers were outside of her clinic because the no-show rate would skyrocket.  Praying outside of the clinic, we have no idea how many lives we have saved, but we have the faith that something is happening.  If we allow just one woman to turn around and reconsider her decision, then we have been successful.  If we save one life, then that is a huge deal.

Today, everyone wants a feeling of accomplishment, and you might not get that praying outside of an abortion clinic.  You might be yelled at by a person who disagrees with your views.  You might never know whether a life was saved as a result of your efforts.  But that’s okay.  Just keep the faith that God is working through you.

I am incredibly passionate on this topic.  I just wish that the pro-lifers around me would hear the same call that I do and feel the same tug at their hearts.  I want mobs of people to show up with my husband and I each Saturday.  I want to see the Christian community gathering together in solidarity.

We need to stop acting as though everything is relative.  This “anything that makes you happy” mentality is absolute lunacy.  No.  Murdering an innocent human being is never justified.  There are absolute truths in the world.  There are rights and there are wrongs.  I will never agree that something is good simply because someone is happy as a result.  Happiness is not a barometer of morality.  (Sex, drugs, and alcohol all feel good and can lead to only momentary happiness).

Pro-lifers, we need to stop being so scared to stand up and do something. My husband and I have prayed outside of the clinic in miserable weather.  We’ve shivered under our layers of clothing, but wouldn’t we all do the same if we saw a dying child?  Wouldn’t we sacrifice some comfort then?

I don’t mean to say any of this to brag.  I should have gotten more involved much sooner.  It has taken me 10 years after graduating from college to finally be back on the sidewalk and I’m not proud of that fact.  But I’m there now and that’s what counts.  And I need you with me.

We go to the sidewalk with a packet of prayers and songs that I have compiled, but most importantly, information that I have found about local crisis pregnancy centers that will give women other options.  We go there not to judge, but to pray.  If a woman ever comes up to us, we will treat her with nothing but love and compassion.

Planned Parenthood wants you to believe that we’re these crazy extremists who scream out words like “murderer” while toting huge posters of graphic images of aborted babies.  That is not what we do.  We are there to show Christ’s love to a woman who is undeniably experiencing a difficult situation and who needs help and love.

Join us.  We can end abortion.  But we need you.  Doing nothing will only benefit the aggressor.

 

 

How Do I Live in a Country that Allows Infanticide?

I recently wrote a couple of blogs about New York’s new abortion laws (see: Abortion is Not a Celebration and Full Text of the Reproductive Health Act).

But now, our politicians are voting on whether living, breathing human babies have the right to life.  This has nothing to do with abortion.

People who are pro-choice used to determine whether abortion was acceptable based on the moment they agreed that life started.  Many would say somewhere around 21-24 weeks was the time frame.

Recently, many have decided that life only begins at birth.

But now, even babies that are fully born are not safe.  44 Senate Democrats voted on Monday to block a bill that would have provided protection to babies that were born accidentally during an attempted abortion.  It was called the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act and there were only 3 Democrats who did not vote to block it. THREE.

This bill was simply trying to protect the babies that were born alive; it did not change anything with regard to abortion laws.  It would allow for penalties (fines and jail time) for doctors who did not care for a baby that was born alive.  Everyone can agree that these are living babies, but some are arguing that they still don’t have the right to life, even after birth.  I truly cannot fathom this point of view.

If a live baby is born (even though an abortion was attempted), how can anyone choose to either kill it intentionally or let it die as a result of not caring for it or feeding it? People may not agree with my views on abortion, but I thought that most people agreed that infanticide was a heinous crime.

But this is what happens with the slippery slope of abortion.  First, abortion is legalized during the first trimester, then in the second, then in the third, and then any moment up until birth, but what is happening now cannot be called abortion.  Abortion requires a pregnant mother.  What is being legalized now is blatant infanticide –the killing of a precious and defenseless human baby.

Some people may argue that this type of situation is rare.  I don’t care.  Is murder allowed as long as it’s not common?  No.  One baby that is left to die from a botched abortion is one too many.

Many news sources are saying that babies never survive abortion.  Fine.  Then why block a bill like this?  In that view, a doctor would then never be fined, end of story.  They are incorrect.  No, it’s not common, but it’s possible and it does happen.

Yes, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 already exists, but it provides zero penalties to doctors and it mentions nothing specifically about what type of medical care is required.  The new act was going to ensure that a living baby was given necessary medical care if it was alive.  It would have also punished doctors who failed to heed that protocol.

There are plenty of parents who want to adopt.  We don’t have to force that mother to parent the baby, but let’s feed it and protect it and put it up for adoption.  How can anyone live with themselves knowing that they think it is perfectly acceptable to kill that baby?

I simply cannot understand.  I am heartbroken.  I am irate.  I am ashamed of this godforsaken country that thinks that it is progressive.  No, we’re not.  We’re shameful.

We’re full of thousands of people who agree with my stance but who are too indifferent to even make themselves aware of the news.  Too indifferent to care about what is happening outside of their own needs.  Too busy having “me time” and swimming in narcissism to care about things that actually matter.  Disgusting.

The Evils of Indifference

One of my favorite speeches to teach is Elie Wiesel’s “The Perils of Indifference.”  This speech was given on April 12, 1999 in Washington, D.C.  Elie Wiesel is the author of the book entitled Night.  He is a Holocaust survivor, political activist, and Nobel prize winner.

The message of his speech is that indifference is the greatest evil, even more than direct hatred.  That may sound confusing, but let me explain by pulling together quotes from his speech…

He starts off by remembering the day he was rescued, the day when the American soldiers entered his prison camp.  He “remembers their rage at what they saw” and he describes how he continues to feel grateful for that rage.

If the soldiers seemed unfazed upon entering the prison, that would show a lack of compassion.  That is the exact problem with many people today: their indifference.

I can tell people all about stories from my mission trips and although they are interested in the stories, they just don’t  care enough to donate money, volunteer, or get involved in any other way.  They believe that the people who are dying in other countries aren’t their problem.  They are indifferent.  Rather than feeling hatred at Joseph Kony or other genocidaires, they just ignore the problem and act like it doesn’t matter, or they say something about Africans being savages who cannot be saved.  This indifference is dangerous.

I think it is safe to assume that the majority of people on this globe suffer from indifference.  They are too concerned about the problems that only affect themselves and their inner circle of friends and family.  Anything outside of that circle simply isn’t their concern.

But that is exactly what allows evil to run rampant: a large group of people who don’t  care enough to do anything about these evils.

Wiesel continues his speech by emphasizing the gratitude he feels toward America for finally stepping in during the Holocaust.  He then defines indifference as, etymologically, “no difference,” proceeding to ask a few rhetorical questions about it.  Is it a virtue?  “Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one’s sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?”

But then he quickly provides a clear response: no.  It is not a virtue. He admits that it can be “tempting” and “seductive,” but to the person who is the victim of such indifference, it can mean life or death.  While the indifferent person enjoys his glass of wine, the people who are victims of mindless atrocities are losing their lives.

Now, I think that at times, some indifference may be necessary so as to not be constantly feeling depressed about the state of the world, or feeling that there is no hope.  I don’t think it is wrong for me to go out to dinner, go on a vacation, or enjoy my own life.  However, this is only true if I also do my part in tackling such indifference.  If I always ignore the problems of the world, as many people do, then I have a serious problem.

I travel on mission trips to try to improve the lives of those I serve, at least in small ways.  I make donations toward organizations that are out working in the trenches to improve our world.  I teach my students to be ethical, responsible citizens.  I’m not a perfect person, as I know that my acts of service are not able to entirely change the world.  But there are many American adults who never give a penny to charity, who have never volunteered (or stopped after they didn’t need it anymore for college applications).  It is these people who shouldn’t have the pleasure of enjoying that glass of wine with dinner, forgetting about the children who are being raped and maimed at the hand of sadistic leaders who continue to get away with murder (literally) because nobody has stopped them.

“To be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman.”  

Sometimes, I feel completely overwhelmed by the problems of the world.  There are so many horrible problems that I wish I could solve.  Poverty.  Hunger.  Malnutrition.  Lack of access to clean water.  Sex trafficking.  Slavery.  Addiction.  Abortion.  Euthanasia.  A disregard for the sanctity of life at all stages.  Pornography.  Global warming.  The extinction of animal species.  Healthcare.  Racism.  The justice system.  The war on drugs.  Homelessness.  And on and on and on.

I cannot fathom how so many people live their lives without ever consider the people who suffer on a daily basis.  I probably donate more money and volunteer more hours than many Americans, but I still sometimes feel guilty when too much time has passed since I felt I made a significant contribution toward the betterment of society.  I just don’t understand how people can spend five hours each night watching Netflix and never feel ashamed by their wasted time.  It can make them almost inhuman because of their complete disregard for humanity.

Wiesel says that indifference “is more dangerous than anger and hatred.”  That may sound surprising.  Isn’t it the bigot who is worse than the person who ignores the problem?  Isn’t it the rapist who is more evil than the bystander?

No.  Because the bystander it a good person who is allowing that rape to take place.  That bystander knows that what he is witnessing is wrong, but he is too concerned about his own safety to help the victim.  I’m not making excuses at all, but maybe the rapist is high on drugs and not fully aware of his actions.  Maybe the rapist has a mental illness.  None of that excuses the rape, but if the bystander is aware of the evil that is taking place, doesn’t he have an obligation to help?  If he knows it is wrong and does nothing, then he might as well be an accomplice.  Society can agree that the rapist is evil.  The bystander, however, has now also become evil if he does nothing.

Take this 2010 story from The New York Post as an example.  A homeless man in Queens saved a woman from a man who was attacking her with a knife, only to be attacked himself.  Surveillance footage shows him lying in a pool of blood while 25 bystanders walk by.  He saved the woman and was attacked himself some time around 5:40am, only to be found by firefighters at 7:23am.  Were his wounds fatal at 5:40?  I don’t know, but by 7:23 he was dead.

Those bystanders should feel partially responsible for his death.  They didn’t have to face any danger to save this man’s life (or at least attempt to).  They could have just taken out their phone and dialed 911.  Was that too much effort for them?  Was it simply easier to turn their head and walk away?

This isn’t just the case in America.  A Chinese girl was run over by a truck and there is video footage of witnesses doing nothing.  In the very beginning of Peter Singer’s TED Talk, “The Why and How of Effective Altruism,” he shows the video.  People walk right past her body and do nothing, to the point that she is run over again before a man finally helps, though it is too late.  She is dead.

This is why indifference is more dangerous than hatred.  That doesn’t mean that murderers and rapists are good, but they are fewer in number than those who are indifferent.  The murderer is still committing an evil crime, but there are times when it has only occurred as a result of good people doing nothing.  They are facilitating the murder.

“Indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor — never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten.”  Hitler would have loved those who were indifferent.  Why?  Because they weren’t stopping him.  No, they may not have been directly killing people, but indirectly, they were aiding the process.

Martin Luther King Jr., in his letter from Birmingham Jail, asserts that “the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

It is easy to condemn the extremists whose horrible actions are broadcast all over the news.  But they are in the minority.  The majority of the world is comprised of good people who are silent.  They are people who are good, but timid.  People who are cowardly when it matters the most.

It is their silence that allows evil to continue.  There’s a line from William Shakespeare’s play, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar that reads “cowards die many times before their death; the valiant taste of death but once.”  Every time we good people are silent when we know that we must do something, we are “dying” to ourselves.  We’re too afraid to stand up for truth, for justice, for humanity.

“Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.”  If I act indifferently, I don’t just ignore the child soldier; I punish him even more by allowing his captors to keep him in that position without facing resistance.

If I am indifferent, I continue buying those diamond rings, thereby allowing the blood diamond industry to continue and to make profit from me.  Rather than helping those who are suffering, I am abetting the enemy.

Elie Wiesel says how the Holocaust consisted of three types of people: victims, killers, and bystanders.  Which group was the worst?

Most people would quickly say it was the killers.  But by sheer number, there were many more bystanders who were doing nothing.  Such bystanders could have stopped the killers before the extermination of millions of Jews.  But they didn’t.  That is the problem of indifference.

To me, the most heartbreaking moment of Wiesel’s speech is when he says how “our only miserable consolation was that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets. If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction. They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the railways, just once.”

He and his fellow prisoners believed that the world didn’t know about their plight.  They thought it was a huge secret because surely, somebody would have stepped in if they had known, wouldn’t they?

But that wasn’t the case.  America knew.  Other nations knew.  But their indifference took hold.

Wiesel brings up something that we never learn about in American history classes.  He explains what happened with the St. Louis.  It was a ship that was carrying almost 1,000 Jews to safety in 1939.  They were going to enter Cuba and then the United States with visas that they had previously applied for.  The quick version of the story is the fact that this ship was turned away.  28 passengers were allowed to disembark, but Cuba refused to allow that for the rest of the passengers.  The boat was sent back to Europe.  Wiesel says he doesn’t understand why Roosevelt allowed that to take place.  He proceeds to ask numerous rhetorical questions:

“Why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering of the victims?”

“Why was there a greater effort to save SS murderers after the war than to save their victims during the war?”

“Why did some of America’s largest corporations continue to do business with Hitler’s Germany until 1942?”

It all comes down to indifference, which is still a problem today.  I wrote a blog a while back entitled Hard Work and Determination Aren’t Always Enough.  After posting it on Facebook, I knew that some people would disagree. But worse than those who blatantly disagree are those who are indifferent.  Those who don’t care about the plight of the black race in America.

We must rally up good people who have the courage to stand up against the evils of this world.  Too many people feel like they can’t really elicit major change.  While that may be true at times, think of all the change that would occur if every indifferent person spent even a small amount of time fighting back.  This whole world would change.

The recent abortion laws have been my most recent frustration.  I believe that abortion is an evil that must be fought.  There are thousands of people in the United States who agree with me.  The problem is that they would rather not ruffle feathers.

They will tell me how horrible abortion is, but when I ask them to become involved in Pro-Life work, they sheepishly back away.

When I offer that they can come pray outside of the abortion clinic with me, they suddenly stop responding to my messages.

So although they call themselves “pro-life,” are they really?  They may think that they are, but in reality, they’re just helping the abortionists to continue the work that they are doing.

If we want the world to change, we need armies of people standing up against the evils.  We need groups of indifferent people realizing that they must end their indifference and use their courage for good.

Elie Wiesel was grateful that the soldiers who entered his prison camp showed rage.  He needed to see that people had realized the evil that was taking place during the Holocaust.

Let us all give up our indifference, even if only for short periods of time. Together, we can change the world.

 

Full Text of the Reproductive Health Act

Since there is an abundance of biased news sources reporting on New York’s Reproductive Health Act of 2019, I have decided to read through the language of the actual bill to ensure a non-biased look into its language.  Full text here.

Here is what stands out to me:

“Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures performed in the United States.”

As a teacher of rhetoric, I know a logical fallacy when I see one.  What evidence is there to back that claim?  The bill itself provides none.  One of the safest medical procedures compared to what?  What exactly constitutes a medical procedure?  Is it safer to have an abortion than to get my blood drawn?  Probably not.  Safer than an EKG?  No.  Safer than an MRI?  Nope.

Here are some risks from abortions:

-pelvic infection

-blood clots in the uterus

-heavy bleeding

-cut or torn cervix

-puncture or tear of the wall of the uterus

-anesthesia-related complications

-scar tissue on the uterine wall, which can lead to future infertility or miscarriages

-depression

(Even the abortion pill can cause bleeding, blood clots, and infection, according to Planned Parenthood’s website)

Okay, let’s keep reading the bill.

“A health practitioner licensed, certified, or authorized under title eight of the Education Law, acting within his or her lawful scope of practice, may perform an abortion when according to the practitioner’s reasonable and good faith professional judgement based on the facts of the patient’s case: the patient is within 24 weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or there is an absence of fetal viability, or the abortion is necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.”

“Or health” is concerning to me.  This isn’t about saving a mother’s life.  Countless OB-GYNs have said that third trimester abortions are never medically necessary to save a mother’s life because the baby could just be delivered alive and still live.

But what could now fit the “or health” aspect of the bill?  Can a mother who is fed up with gestational diabetes choose an abortion?  One who is sick and on bed rest?  “Health” is much too vague.

“‘Person,’ when referring to a victim of a homicide, means a human being who has been born and is alive.”

So there won’t be any double counts of murder for a guy who murders his pregnant girlfriend.  But what happens if he beats her up badly, but only enough to kill the baby that is living inside of her?  What happens then?

Pregnancy can actually be a trigger for domestic violence.  This bill is not helping that situation at all.