Middle of the road

So, this political season I found this site that sends you though a series of questions to see how you compare to the candidates running for office. I took the quiz back before the primaries, and have just taken it again recently. Both times I came to the same basic conclusion, I am smack in the middle of the road. My political view can be summed up in the following phrase: leave me alone.

On one had, I truly believe (and a hat tip to Law Dog, here) that your guns are your guns. On the other hand, I believe that my womb is my womb, and the decisions to be made about it are between me, my husband and my God. Now before the 'pr.o-l.ifer's' get all in a tizzy, I don't like ab.ort.ion, I do not condone it, and wish it did not happen. However, I firmly believe that the way to go about it is to make it not seem like the lesser of all evils.

I went to school in a suburban/rural community out side of a upper/mid sized urban area. We were the only high school I knew of at the time that had a nursery in school (I have since heard of one more, but only one). The mothers each had to take a 'study hall' period to work the nursery, which provided the staffing, and they were supervised by an instructor. Was this ideal, probably no, but the graduation rate among our mothers was close to 90 something percent (within a few percentage points of the general population). In the meantime, mothers in the larger, urban school system were taken out of the mainstream school and placed in 'special' schools for teen mothers. These schools were not, at the time, voluntary (though I think they may be now), the mother had to go even if she intended to give the baby up for adoption, did not offer advance placement classes (even if the mother had been taken them previously) and the father of the child was not required to attend (therefore did not have their educational path interrupted). The graduation rate for their mothers dropped to close to 70%.

Several years ago, there was a case in the news of an attempt to expel a young woman from the National Honor Society because of her pregnancy. I will be honest here and tell you I cannot find the link, and I don't remember the specifics or the outcomes, but suffice to say, even if she won out, she still had to be brought up in front of everyone one she ever knew and forced to defend herself.

Until we take the shame and the stigma away from an unexpected pregnancy, abo.rtion is going to continue to look like a good alternative.

At any rate, that is probably enough ranting for now, and probably quite enough to set people completely off my blog.