Abortion, Miscarriage, Birth: Don't Be Confused

"Abortion" is a word used to indicate the expulsion or removal of the contents of the uterus in early pregnancy. Historically, "spontaneous abortion" was the term used when this happened naturally or due to a medical condition, and "induced abortion" referred to performing an abortion intentionally. At some time during the 20th century, it became customary to call a spontaneous abortion a miscarriage, and to refer to an induced abortion simply as an abortion. No matter what terminology is used, this is a situation in which a pregnancy ends without a birth.

Birth is the process by which an infant is expelled from the uterus. This may occur when a pregnant woman undergoes "labor", a series of contractions that enable her to push the infant out. It may also occur surgically, in a process called "Caesarian section", typically shortened to "C-section", during which the surgeon cuts open the uterus and extracts the infant. In some cases, doctors may determine that it is necessary to induce labor medically rather than wait for it to occur naturally. Once a birth occurs, the pregnancy is over.

In recent times, some people have invented the term "post birth abortion" to refer to something that is physically impossible. Abortion ends a pregnancy, as does birth. Once a pregnancy has ended, there cannot be an abortion, just as there cannot be an additional birth.

A typical pregnancy is expected to last about 280 days (40 weeks). An infant born at 39-40 weeks is "full term". An infant born earlier than 37 weeks is considered "premature" or "preterm". Babies born very prematurely are likely to have health problems. The earlier the birth, the greater the risk of severe problems or death. At 28 weeks, a birth is extremely preterm. Successful birth before 28 weeks is not viable; this will be considered a miscarriage.

We now know that more than 30% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, most so early that the woman may not even realize she was pregnant. In some cases of miscarriage, the contents of the uterus are not fully expelled. To avoid infection or other health risks, medical treatment is needed to remove all the tissue. This may involved a procedure called dilation and curettage (D&C) or dilation and extraction (D&E). Sometimes medication is used. Occasionally, some people get confused and think that the treatment following a miscarriage is the same as an abortion. It is not. A miscarriage ends the pregnancy; at that point an abortion is impossible.

Click this link to see the March of Dimes explanation of miscarriage.

Click this link to see the Britannica explanation of birth.

Click this link to see an NIH discussion of termnology.

 

Blah blah blah

Some people wonder why trump's followers accept his incoherent, nonsensical speeches. It's because they can't distinguish between intelligent speech and the ravings of a lunatic.

Perhaps you've had the experience of trying to explain something of moderate complexity to a person like that. They tend to just stare dully or else they snap, "Speak English!" because they don't know the words you are using. To them, complex sentences and words of three or more syllables are impossible to understand. So they don't expect to be able to make sense of a leader's speeches.

When trump's speeches veer off into word salad, they can't tell the difference, since, for them, most English discourse is like a secret code. All he has to do is use occasional baby talk, make smug faces, and throw in a few buzzwords -- border, babies, Christian, communists, Democrats, unfair, veterans -- and they think he's on their side. They really can't tell when he is incoherent. And even when he speaks in complete sentences that follow each other, they don't notice how ridiculous his claims are, because they lack critical thinking skills and don't have the broader knowledge needed to evaluate such statements.

 

America is Already Great

Whenever I walk around in an American supermarket, I am nearly overwhelmed by the abundance. I can choose from a truly amazing selection of fruit and vegetables, meats, canned goods of every kind, snacks and treats. Thanks to refrigeration and modern transportation, I have access to products from all over the country, and all over the world. Look how many varieties of milk there are! Try to count all the flavors of yogurt! The breakfast cereal aisle is astonishing. And there is a special deli section where salads, main dishes, and casseroles have been prepared for people to take home. There are beautiful pastries and fancy cakes in the bakery. There are also departments for housewares, beauty products, health supplies, and more. How lucky we are! ^@realrkwest
 

It Will Happen to You

Maybe you don't care if Republicans pass laws that let county clerks refuse marriage licenses to gay couples, because you're not gay, don't know many gay people, and tend to think being gay is kind of icky. And maybe you won't care when they decide to extend refusal to interracial couples, because you're a little more comfortable when people "stick with their own kind." But eventually, it will reach you or someone you actually care about.

They could decide to refuse marriage to couples of different religious backgrounds. Or they might decide you can't remarry if your first spouse is still alive. Remember, they won't actually pass a law that says adulterers can't marry their mistresses or that infertile women can't marry. They'll leave it up to the "conscience" and "sincere beliefs" of the county clerk, who attends a church you've never heard of but nevertheless gets to tell you their church controls your life.

And maybe you really don't care if a restaurant refuses to serve Black people, because you're not Black, and you'd rather just be around people who look like you.

Sooner or later, there will be something about you that someone else doesn't like, and you'll be the one who can't shop, can't eat out, can't get married, can't rent an apartment, can't get a good job, can't live a full life being respected as a human being. Be ready to comply.

 

I've Looked At Arsenic From Both Sides Now

Imagine there are two or three people who, for unknown reasons, think arsenic is good food for babies. In the meantime, there are at least 99,763 chemists, 1,567,984 doctors, 258,000 professors of chemistry, and 701,422 nutritionists who know that arsenic is poisonous. The pro-arsenic guys are very busy, writing letters, making podcasts, self-publishing books, and posting all over social media about how great arsenic is. They manage to convince another eight people to join them. One works in a health food store.

The online arguments get the attention of a news network, which decides to explore "both sides of the arsenic issue". Out of the roughly 2,628,169 experts who know that arsenic is poison, they invite one doctor, and out of the twelve arsenic lovers, they invite the store clerk. The interview with these two makes it look as though the pro-arsenic and anti-arsenic groups are equal.

After a few of these interviews, more viewers start to think that maybe arsenic isn't so bad after all. Conspiracy theories arise, claiming that "they" don't want you to have access to healthy, clean arsenic because "it's all about control." More people become convinced, and even a few of the anti-arsenic experts (who are disgruntled because they couldn't get tenure) change sides.

The controversy heats up on social media, fueled by people who claim their children died or suffered permanent brain damage because they were denied access to arsenic. When shown evidence that arsenic sickens and kills, they call it fake news and come up with documents purporting to show that anti-arsenic studies were falsified. One of their doctors writes a book claiming that pharmaceutical companies want to suppress arsenic because it's a natural substance and not profitable.

By now, hospitalizations for arsenic poisoning have tripled. The pro-arsenic faction claims the statistics have been manipulated; all those people got sick or died for other reasons. Many people are afraid to go to Thanksgiving dinner because they suspect Grandma will slip some arsenic into the turkey. Others refuse to attend because their hosts have declared the kitchen an arsenic-free zone. A few mass poisonings occur at church picnics and political rallies. The people most likely to succumb to arsenic poisoning are the elderly, infants, and people with pre-existing conditions. The arsenic lovers say those people were weak and would have died anyway. Portable arsenic test kits become popular. Restaurants lose business. Politicians claim that immigrants are bringing arsenic across the border. China is blamed.

The news media continue both-sidesing the issue.

 

Work Until You Die?

Think about the people who want to raise the retirement age. What kind of jobs do they have? Most have what I call think-talk jobs, jobs that require very little physical exertion, but rely on talking about situations, thinking about problems, attending meetings, applying learned information to situations, reading documents, occasionally writing documents, expressing opinions.

These think-talk jobs are held by Congresspeople, business executives, bankers, some TV personalities, and others whose work is mostly not physical. As long as people retain their mental faculties (and sometimes even when they don't), they can continue doing this kind of work well into old age. People with this kind of work often consider it a big part of their personal identity, and are therefore not interested in retiring. All or most of the people they know do the same kind of work; their contact with other kinds of workers tends to be superficial. It is easy for them to imagine a world in which no one retires before age 80, and maybe not even then.

Compare them to people who have body-using jobs: Construction workers, gardeners, janitors, garbage collectors, farmers, warehouse workers, food servers, and many others. Some jobs that may not look physically demanding really are, because they require the worker to stand for hours. Think of grocery cashiers, hairdressers, department store clerks, and others who are on their feet all day.

People lose strength and stamina as they age. A person at 65, even if healthy, is not as strong as they were at 45. Physically demanding jobs can be hard on the body over time and are often not practical for older people. Yet the people with think-talk jobs often fail to understand the challenges of body-using jobs. A lot of these people ignore the fact that older people are often let go by their employers, sometimes because they are at a higher pay grade, sometimes because they are physically outperformed by younger workers. It is very difficult for people over 50 to get hired anywhere (although it sometimes happens), and it is a rare employer indeed who wants to hire someone over 65.

If we imagine that every person who reaches age 65 has the option of keeping their current job or getting a new one, we are kidding ourselves. Besides, having 75-year-olds on the roof laying shingles or operating a steam press all day doesn't seem like a good idea. Who would feel good about making a great-grandmother clean public restrooms until the day she drops dead from exhaustion? People who have paid into Social Security or some other retirement plan for decades deserve the chance to finally relax and get what they paid for.

 

Other People's Problems

The worst problem you have is the worst problem you have.

If someone is crying over a hangnail, it is easy to say their problem is meaningless when compared to the guy whose arm was blown off. At the same time, it is not right to get into the habit of dismissing and invalidating other people's experiences or demanding that they can't have a feeling or a reaction to something unless it meets certain standards.

There are people who think it is silly to grieve the death of a pet, because it is not a human being. There are people whose first reaction to anything someone else worries or complains about is to sneer at "first world problems". Some people seem to think that if they don't know anyone with a particular problem, that problem doesn't really exist. And there are those who minimize everything that happens to others because "it could have been worse". Imagining a worse scenario doesn't magically make this one acceptable.

If there were a truly objective scale for measuring tragedy, it might show that the worst thing that ever happened to my neighbor isn't nearly as bad as the thing that happened to me. But it is still the worst thing that ever happened to him, and he has the right to see it that way. His experience is just as real as mine.

 

They Want it All, And They'll Take it From You

The oligarchs have more wealth than they can possibly use, and even if they never made another dime, they, their children, their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren would still be incomprehensibly wealthy.

They can have anything they want or need: Big houses, big vacation houses, spare apartments in cities around the world, nice cars, designer clothes, the best food cooked by private chefs, whatever medical care they need at top hospitals with famous doctors, multiple yachts, private hunting ranches, hairdressers who travel with them on their private jets, secret bunkers (underground mansions) in case of nuclear war, their own private security force, private schools and top-notch universities for their kids, lawyers on retainer, ownership of TV stations, newspapers, and tech companies, and the hired help needed to acquire and maintain all their possessions. In summary, they have everything. ^@themrswest

Yet, somehow, that isn't enough. Not only do they constantly want more, they want to make sure that everyone else has nothing. They crave a world where they have absolutely everything, whether they need it or not: All the power, all the means of production, all the necessities, all the luxuries. And they want that world to be populated by impoverished serfs who have nothing and live short lives of sickness and pain. Why? I truly don't know why. It's very hard to get into a mindset where other people's misery is perceived as making your life better. But there it is.

Link: The Koch brothers' political activism and its damage to America - "The Kochs' Ayn Rand–inspired hellscape has yet to completely come to fruition, but the ideas the duo promoted are now part of the regular discourse—and have been for a while."

Link: While the Planet Burns: Billionaires Are Busy Hunkering Down for the Apocalypse - "Many of the wealthiest people in the world have decided that Earth is a Titanic heading for an iceberg. As a result, they have decided to create luxury lifeboats for themselves."

Link: The Koch Brothers Are Even Worse Than You Think - "Koch was found guilty of criminal conduct in many cases.... The workplace is becoming more dangerous under this constant pressure to produce profits."

Link: Robbing the poor to pay the rich - "Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor is increasingly popular as we leave the 20th century, especially in this country"