Social Issues

A study back in February tried to link a cause and effect that the earlier a child lost their virginity, the more likely they were to end up juvenile delinquents. While on a rudimentary level that seems it could be true as an 11-year-old with an active sex life is probably not getting too much in the way of parental guidance, but now it appears to be patently false:

That new analysis, a reworking of the same data the Ohio team used, is one of several recent instances in which a more precise parsing of data has begun to turn longstanding societal presumptions on their head. By bringing evidence to bear on complex social issues, these studies are forcing individuals and policy makers to rethink such hot-button topics as the benefits of breast-feeding, the risks of teen child-bearing and, in the latest example, the harms long presumed to result from teen sex.

Like many of the newer studies, the latest one — led by Paige Harden, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville — uses the powerful techniques of behavioral genetics. The field specializes in studies on twins, which can help tell whether behavioral traits are the result of genes or the social environment and which have periodically stirred controversy when they focused on the genetic underpinnings of criminality and intelligence.

A similar incident yielded heated debate across America when a family in Seattle decided to give a disabled girl a hysterectomy.

Now, half way across the globe, a mother advocates for the same treatment for her 15 year old daughter…

Alison Thorpe said her 15-year-old daughter Katie, who cannot walk or talk, and needs round the clock care, will suffer undue pain, confusion and indignity by the onset of womanhood.

She wants surgeons to carry out a hysterectomy to save her daughter, who she says has no prospect of having a child, from the distress and inconvenience of menstruating.

In a tennis match type of wins and losses for the anti-abortion clan, all the attempts at blocking the clinic’s opening finally subsided with an ultimate win for a Planned Parenthood clinic in Aurora, Illinois…

A Planned Parenthood clinic in Aurora that will offer abortion services is scheduled to open today after city officials late Monday issued an occupancy permit for the controversial medical center.

While the permit clears the way for the immediate opening of the 22,000-square-foot clinic, opponents vowed to continue their efforts to keep the center shuttered.

Abortion foes already have organized mass protests and prayer vigils near the clinic, which Planned Parenthood initially had expected to open last month.

In one of the most politically motivated Judicial decisions ever, a Judge sides with the city counsel in denying Planned Parenthood the neccessary permits to open their largest clinic ever.

The $7.5 million building stands finished but empty. It was supposed to open Tuesday, but Aurora officials would not provide the necessary occupancy permits while a city-commissioned review is under way to determine if laws were broken after Planned Parenthood applied for building permits under the name of a subsidiary.

Christopher Wilson, representing Planned Parenthood, told Norgle that if the medical facility housed a foot clinic, Aurora officials would not be holding such an in-depth review.

A woman in Carpentersville, Illinois, claims that when her babysitter called 911 when her child was in distress, the paramedics refused to take the baby to the hospital simply because he was Hispanic:

The federal lawsuit said the village “had a practice and/or policy to limit emergency medical services to persons of Hispanic ancestry.”

Gloria Lopez, 28, who now lives in Elgin, alleges paramedics Diane Graham and Martin Gruber acted with gross negligence and violated 4-month-old Osbiel Lopez’s civil rights in failing to take him to a hospital after a 911 call in September 2006.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago claims the event was part of a villagewide effort to reduce services to Hispanics.

Come on, really? Paramedics just thought they would let a baby die because he had brown skin? Paramedics who work in a Chicago suburb of 30,000 people, 40% of whom identify themselves as Hispanic? Maybe that’s why they took jobs in that town, so they could get their jollies treating Mexicans like shit. Please.

While the door is open for certainly some sort of negligence that may have gone on here, this seems like a spurious use of the race card that hurts folks that have legitimate reasons for playing that hand.

Hmmm…tough call. A woman who is offended by a certain book, takes the book and pays retail price for them. The library threatens to sue, they don’t want the money, they want their books back.

Tax dollars support a library, don’t they have to answer to the people? Plus, given that the woman paid retail value for the books, can’t the library re-buy them at wholesale and they’d be ahead? Doesn’t everybody win?

Unfortunately, I still don’t think you can knowingly steal from a library, even if you do pay for the books.

JoAn Karkos was “horrified” by the contents of It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex & Sexual Health. Instead of burning the books, which she describes as “pornographic,” the Maine mother borrowed copies from two local libraries and refused to bring them back.

“Since I have been sufficiently horrified of the illustrations and the sexually graphic, amoral abnormal contents, I will not be returning the books,” Karkos wrote in a letter the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries last month, according to the Associated Press. She enclosed a check for the MSRP of the book.

Well, he did host “Politically Incorrect” for many years. It’s not as if he’s being hypocritical…

On Friday’s episode of Real Time, Bill Maher introduced one of his “new rules,” “Lactate Intolerant,” in which he argues against breastfeeding in public. As he explained, he doesn’t want women showing their tits in public unless they are appropriately packaged for heterosexual male consumption. (Revealing what he thinks is appropriate, he made a snide reference to Britney Spears’ body in one of the other new rules, drawing a good laugh.

If nothing else — this is an interesting debate to watch.

How much influence do anti-abortionists have? Will they succeed in making sure the largest Planned Parenthood, located in a largely hispanic area in Illinois, never opens? They are doing more than just praying about it. Apparently, Planned Parenthood uses a parent company to apply for permits, which is common with most businesses. The problem presented by the anti-abortionists is that the counsel in Aurora, Illinois was scammed because the parent company, Gemini, didn’t disclose that they were really a Planned Parenthood clinic performing abortions. The company applied for a permit citing that they were a medical clinic.

Should this have to be disclosed? Should it be required?

In Illinois today, a federal judge is expected to hear an intriguing argument in the abortion debate. At issue: Is Aurora, Ill., a city of nearly 175,000 about an hour’s drive west of Chicago, trying to stop Tuesday’s scheduled opening of the nation’s largest Planned Parenthood clinic because of political pressure from anti-abortion activists? Or was the clinic’s true nature — that is, its Planned Parenthood genesis — not readily apparent to city officials when they originally approved permits for the building? Or is it a bit of both? The case is already one of the most heated in the nation’s grassroots abortion wars, and protests in Aurora this past weekend drew hundreds of anti-abortion demonstrators.

Don’t you think that having a place to live ought to be a requirement of parents? I fail to see how being homeless is an acceptable lifestyle for babies and children. Shouldn’t the DCS intervene on behalf of infants and children whose parents are homeless, to assist in permament housing or foster care?

It’s no wonder this little baby starved to death. My first instinct is to question why the mother would not give the baby up for adoption:

LOS ANGELES—A homeless mother whose 7-week-old baby died of starvation, dehydration and neglect at a Skid Row shelter was charged Tuesday with child abuse.

The felony complaint seeks Ranetta Marie Maxwell’s arrest in connection with the Aug. 10 death of her daughter Jasmine, who spent her brief life with her mother at downtown’s Union Rescue Mission.

Jehovah’s Witness parents tried to deny their premature babies life saving blood transfusions after a few of them experienced seizures and other very serious complications, due to their religious convictions.

Fortunately, Canada protects children from parents in cases where their parents beliefs will put the children at grave risk.

VANCOUVER (CP) — The rights of children in need of potentially life-saving medical treatment should trump any rights of their parents, a lawyer argued Monday in a case involving blood transfusions given to four surviving sextuplets.