20th Anniversary of Anita Hill's Testimony

This month is the 20th anniversary of Anita Hill's testimony against Clarence Thomas. Here is an interview with her:  http://feministing.com/2011/10/08/the-feministing-five-anita-hill/
This year I had to deal with the insurance company of a man who rear-ended me and I ended up taking them to civil court for money they refused to pay, despite my having the right to it. However with some loophole, the judge ruled that they did not have to pay me the money.

The process was difficult and anxiety-provoking, and I was the victim! And because it was nowhere near as challenging as it would be for a woman in Anita Hill's situation, or a victim of rape trying to speak out against her perpetrator, I have an even greater appreciation that cannot be expressed in words for women in those types of situations.

As anxiety-provoking and frustrating as my first court experience was, so was the benefit in me being forced to think of women in similar yet exponentially more difficult circumstances.

Remembering those who died 10 years ago today.

In this article Sam Harris posits that religious belief is the root of terrorism and that focusing only on eradicating terror does not accomplish the larger goal of a safer society: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/september-11-2011/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SamHarris+The+End+Of+Faith%2C+by+Sam+Harris
I think that many people are motivated by power and politics and they, though not necessarily consciously, use god or religious ideas to justify their behavior. However I agree with Sam on the big picture, for fighting that began 2000 years ago due to religious differences largely explain the hate-related crimes that continue today, as exemplified by the September 11th attacks.

Religion can be a 2-edged sword. It gives so many peace and purpose. And I don't mean to minimize that at all. Further, I just see different religions as simply different ways of living that bring qualities that all humans might strive for regardless of culture, such as humility and the capacity to love and respect. At the same time, the second edge is that it can hold us back from progressing toward a more just and equitable world. I see religions as trying to explain life's big questions before science was at a point of answering those questions. After all, we used to believe the earth was flat and now we have a more accurate sense of the universal bodies.

At the same time, many still believe certain notions despite us having more scientific explanations for them. Some still believe that certain diseases come from immorality rather than lack of education on how to prevent or treat the diseases. Or that losing a home to a tragic incident such as natural disaster or accidental fire are due to god punishing the person. This then leads to agony in trying to figure out why god would do that when it is the natural chaotic process of the weather or a simple accident from which nobody is immune. Further, traditional belief has oppressed various groups of people such as women and lower castes in Hindu society. As Sam Harris so beautifully describes in his book The Moral Landscape the scientific process can get us to a moral landscape even better than traditional religious thought because it is informed by how the world works rather than a set of arbitrary axioms that may have served to keep certain people in their place. He very astutely recognizes that so much religious belief is outdated given what we now know about our physical world and yet many continue to believe without thinking critically.

If god is the answer for everything, then why do science? Scientific laws don't apply only where we want them to. If gravity applies everywhere, so does law of causality, conservation of mass and energy and law of parsimony. We need to be open to learning more about the world so that our decisions can be more informed and empowering rather than simply holding onto tradition. Then only will we achieve peace because we wouldn't be judging others simply because they are different than us.

Surrogacy in India

Now someone can pay thousands of dollars to a woman in India to be a surrogate for their child. This has been bothering me for a while. On the one hand it's a way for someone to find a surrogate who is not otherwise able to, and a woman in India gets an opportunity to improve her financial situation by providing this service. On the other hand, I see it as a way of taking advantage of the women's financial situations and willingness to do whatever they can to earn the money. These women are renting their wombs in a sense.

Another aspect of this issue that occurred to me as I was watching the story is that surrogacy in general (aside from the issue of "exporting" it to India) is another example of when abortion may be indicated. To increase chances of a successful pregnancy, the doctor injects a few embryos to help insure that one implants. There is then also the chance that more than one will implant, decreasing the safety of all those embryos in the womb. The doctor then will need to abort all but one, in order to have a healthy and safe pregnancy for the remaining one.

Dr. Patel talks about all these details and risks with the parents and woman who is to be the surrogate. Due to religious reasons one or both parties involved may tell the doctor to inject only 2, for example, because they want to minimize the risk for abortion. This is certainly a conversation between the parties and the doctor and it is important that the doctor explain all possible scenarios so that the parties involved can make a decision with which they are comfortable. And that is the point right there, that the parties involved are making the decision, not the law.

If abortion were completely outlawed, then there would be less of an opportunity for surrogacy, something that is an imporant option for those who are not able to go through pregnancy themselves. That is why I do not understand why so many folks automatically see abortion as completely bad. There are more gray areas in the world, little black or white with what is right or wrong. We have to educate ourselves on all such issues and what the ramifications would be on outlawing something or making a blanket statement that something is just outright wrong.

Cost of unintended pregnancies.

Check out this link for a study on abortion rates and an informative video:

http://feministing.com/2011/05/24/the-very-real-cost-of-unintended-pregnancies/

Here's a link to an article talking about the cost of abortions being illegal in Dubai:

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/general/illegal-abortions-a-fatal-choice-1.834605

On traditional marriage, and world hunger

How super fantastic is our current president?? So fantastic that he has made examining the improvement of women's lives a priority. His administration is the first since 1963 to release a comprehensive report on the status of women, finding that heterosexual couples are "marrying later, marrying less, and for reasons other than having children. And it's making them (and their kids) happier and healthier." Here is the link to the article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/09/traditional-marriage-us-report?commentpage=last

Also, a new report released by the Food and Agriculture Association states that giving women the same access as men to resources for production is the way to start to reduce world hunger: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/07/women-equality-reduce-world-hunger
Well duh. The more people who work, the more that is produced.