serious/thought-provoking links

[baratron]

the_siobhan linked to this with the warning: This is really hard to read. El Salvador: pro-life nation. About women who've been horribly injured from illegal abortions in a country where it's now impossible to get a legal abortion, and how they're prosecuted and sent to prison on top of the punishment from their injuries. As horrible as it sounds, but important to read if you can read it without getting triggered.

anansi133 is a new addition to my friends list after alt.polycon, and he comes with very interesting posts, for example Out-of-Context Problem. He also linked to Why we banned Legos a.k.a. The political history of capitalism with LEGO(tm).

How to Deal With Impossible People has been on my mind a lot this week, for some reason.

rosefox wrote about college graduate Adam Shepard's "interesting experiment" in trying to work his way out of poverty, and how boneheaded the reporting on it has been.

What it's like to be a sexual minority. A fantasy by Brian McNaught, from Gay Issues in the Workplace. For all of you who are happily heterosexual and can't understand why the queer folk make so much fuss.

Comments

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Thanks for these.

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

"What it's like to be a sexual minority. A fantasy by Brian McNaught, from Gay Issues in the Workplace. For all of you who are happily heterosexual and can't understand why the queer folk make so much fuss."

That link is now broken; the guy has moved his website here, but no longer includes that story. I've found another copy here (as part of a longer article).

I thought it was an interesting story, although I'm not convinced that it's an accurate reflection of the real world; I've elaborated on that here.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Apparently there are some serious issues (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/opinion/31pubed.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) with the El Salvador: pro-life nation article. The woman whose case is held up as an example of the terrible abortion law apparently killed a full-term infant after birth, rather than aborting a foetus at 18 weeks. Rather a different spin on things. With the date of the article being 2006, I wondered if there'd been an update or any further research. Unfortunately, Google search is full of people either praising or condemning that article, and the issues in it seem to have meant that no other newspapers have wanted to touch the topic.

There's a bit more on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_El_Salvador). Apparently the law's existed since 1998 - that's appalling! The Center for Reproductive Rights has a report published in 2000 called Persecuted: Political Process and Abortion Legislation in El Salvador - A Human Rights Analysis (http://www.reproductiverights.org/pr_01_1130salvador.html). But I was unable to find anything newer.