Opinions: Senior Issues
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Are We Schizo or What?
by Harris Sherline
The Supreme Court has held that abortion is a constitutional right; however, that right has caused a great deal of confusion in our society. It is legal to abort a fetus at almost any stage of its development, including mere moments before the infant is born (“partial birth abortion”), but it is homicide if the fetus is killed, say, by a gunshot wound in the mother’s stomach. However, it is not murder for a mother to terminate her own pregnancy at the same stage of development for purely personal reasons. So, for some purposes, the law recognizes the same fetus as a living person, for others it does not.
Tobacco is a legal product and is heavily taxed by the same government that has subsidized tobacco farmers for decades. Both the Federal and state governments tax cigarettes, ostensibly to offset health care costs incurred by smokers or to establish programs designed to discourage young people from smoking. Then they use the money for other purposes, often completely unrelated to tobacco use. If the product is so bad, why not just make it illegal? The obvious answer is that there is just too much money in it for the government and our politicos. So, the product stays legal and is both heavily taxed and subsidized, health considerations aside, so long as it keeps feeding money into our tax coffers.
We put people in jail for ingesting something they like (as in drugs), while tolerating, even encouraging, the proliferation and aggressive marketing of prescription drugs throughout our culture, including the schools. At the same time, using marijuana for health reasons, even with a doctor’s prescription, is still a Federal crime, even in those states that have legalized it.
We tell our children that sex before marriage or at too early an age is a bad idea, while dispensing condoms to them at the schools.
In many states, underage girls must have their parents’ permission for a medical procedure, or to have their ears pierced, but they can get an abortion without parental consent or knowledge.
We try to teach young people that they should be good citizens and respect the law, while at the same time we tolerate the airwaves being flooded with music, videos and TV programs that are vulgar, challenge authority, celebrate violence, preach hatred and generally pollutes their minds.
Americans treasure their rights, yet for generations we have passed laws that intrude into the lives of people in a wide range of areas: limiting free speech, restricting the ownership of guns, intrusive tax regulation, making various consensual sexual acts illegal (even for married couples), and smoking, to name just a few.
Gambling is illegal or strictly regulated in various states, often bemoaning the fact that it can be addictive, yet many of those same governments operate and aggressively promote lotteries.
We constantly preach tolerance, but experience far too many shocking incidents of intolerance and prejudice, abuse, brutality and murder.
Is it any wonder there are so many problems in America today and that our children are often confused about the meaning of right and wrong when there is such contradictory, schizophrenic behavior in our society?
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