Doctors who perform abortions, etc

This article at Salon.com asks many good questions about abortions. For instance, for those of us who are "pro-choice," is it really OK for a woman to have complete discretion to have an abortion? What about after she has 12 abortions? What if she aborts because the child would have been a girl and she wants a boy? What if she aborts because the fetus has a deformed arm? This article also provides some stats about the terms during which abortion doctors are willing to perform abortions:

Of the only 1,787 doctors who perform abortions at all, 67 percent perform procedures only in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Another 13 percent perform procedures between 12 and 20 weeks. The remaining 20 percent of doctors report performing some abortions up to 23 weeks, but once you hit that 24-week limit only 8 percent will perform an abortion. And we know there are now only two doctors who will perform abortions after 24 weeks.

Comedian Janeane Garofalo, who sums up religion as the fear of vaginas, offers a new solution to the abortion dispute. It begins at about the 4 minute mark, and she calls it "the buddy system."

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How dangerous plastics freely work their way into your house

I was in a bad mood after I wrote a post summarizing a recent Harpers Magazine article demonstrating that the United States government is working hard to keep its citizens from knowing whether numerous commonly used chemicals are dangerous.

After all, our government is supposed to be there to protect us yet it appears that our government is, instead, kissing up to the chemical manufacturers, allowing them to dump highly questionable substances into the products American consumers purchase and use.

And now, I’m in a worse mood. I just finished reading an extraordinary article called “You Are What You Drink Out Of,” by Nadia Pflaum. This article appeared in a local alternative St. Louis newspaper called the Riverfront Times. Pflaum’s story is available online, and thank goodness, because this is extraordinary piece of writing and it serves as an illustration of just how corrupt the system has become. I’ll give just the basic outline here. You’ll want to go read the entire article, however, if you want to be prepared to pull out Exhibit A the next time you get into an argument with one of the many remaining Bush-loving purported free-marketers.

The story centers around Frederick vom Saal, a biology professor at the University of Missouri. He is one of the leading experts on bisphenol A, a chemical that is ubiquitous in the United States-more than six billion pounds are produced every year. The trouble is that bisphenol A contains a substance that acts as a synthetic hormone …

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