On Wednesday, my wonderful girlfriend, Michelle, asked me if I could find for her instances in which abortion had to be used to save the mother's life. I found this to be a curious request; I, too, had always maintained that one of the ways in which abortion should be used is to protect the life of the mother. Neither she nor I had ever seen a case study of an instance where abortion had to be used to save the mother's life. Is this an urban legend -- perhaps one of the biggest urban legends of all? Since folklore is one of my hobbies, I set out in search of the answer.

LexisNexis was predictably useless. It does not find esoteric things, but works great if you're writing an endnote-laden "Gotcha!" book.

Google was useful. Unfortunately, web pages are only as good as the people who write them, and when it comes to this issue, everyone seems to accept the theory that abortion could be used to save the mother's life. Most of the webpages I visited were either pro-choice; or, if pro-life, noted that abortion should only be used in cases of rape, incest, or if the mother's life were in danger. Yet none of the webpages could cite an example of abortion being used to save the mother's life.

Then I came across a famous line by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop: "Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my 36 years of pediatric surgery, I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother's life. If toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother's health, the doctor will induce labor or perform a Caesarean section. His intention is to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby's life is never willfully destroyed because the mother's life is in danger." This seems to make sense: if you're in a situation where the mother's life might be in danger, why is it necessary to sacrifice the child for the mother? Complications happen in pregnancies, and delivery can be induced, or a Caesarean section can be done. Why abortion?

But if you don't like pithy quotes, you may read this article written by Dr. Koop when Congress last tried to pass a partial-birth abortion ban in January. He says, "The primary reason given for this procedure -- that it is often medically necessary to save the mother's life -- is a false claim, though many people, including President Clinton, were misled into believing this. With all that modern medicine has to offer, partial-birth abortions are not needed to save the life of the mother, and the procedure's impact on a woman's cervix can put future pregnancies at risk. Recent reports have concluded that a majority of partial-birth abortions are elective, involving a healthy woman and normal fetus." He makes another clever observation when he notes, "In their strident effort to protect partial-birth abortions, the pro-choice people remind me of the gun lobby. The gun lobby is so afraid of any effort to limit any guns that it opposes even a ban on assault weapons, though most gun owners think such a ban is justified. In the same way, the pro-abortion people are so afraid of any limit on abortion that they have twisted the truth to protect partial-birth abortions, even though many pro-choice Americans find it reasonable to ban the procedure. Neither AK-47s nor partial-birth abortions have a place in civil society."

Even though I take a pro-choice stance on abortion, I'm troubled by the lack of skepticism when it comes to this "mother's life in danger" clause; even the Texas law which was the subject of Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113) made an exemption for the mother's life. I'm still wondering about this issue. Is it a colossal hoax, or have there been legitimate instances in which the mother's life has been saved through abortion? Let me know; Michelle and I are interested in this.

Posted by Mark at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Why can't anyone leave moral arguments out of discussions of the gay marriage issue? Phyllis Schlafly, writing for Human Events Online, notes, "President Bush has proclaimed Oct. 12-18 as Marriage Protection Week because it is becoming clearer all the time that the institution of marriage needs protection from the courts." Discussing the ruling in the case Lawrence v. Texas, Schlafly mistakenly reports that Justice Anthony Kennedy cited "a European court ruling, because he couldn't cite the U.S. Constitution." This is completely and totally false; readers of the decision will realize that the Constitution comes up immediately, in section II of the decision: "We conclude the case should be resolved by determining whether the petitioners were free as adults to engage in the private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution."

Schlafly succeeds in vilifying any judge who tries to legalize same-sex marriage by calling him an "activist," which is only pejorative to those people who don't like activist judges, viz., Schlafly herself. Her only defense for why gay marriage should be illegal is the repetition of the word "sanctity," as though by repeating this word, her argument will become stronger. But she never succeeds in getting by the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires equal protection under the law. Limiting marriage to heterosexuals only violates the Fourteenth Amendment due to the legal guarantees afforded couples classified as "married." The website ReligiousTolerance.org enumerates some of the 1,400 privileges afforded couples simply because they are married ("Typically these are composed of about 400 state benefits and over 1,000 federal benefits"). These include joint parenting; joint adoption; joint foster care, custody, and visitation (including non-biological parents); status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions where one partner is too ill to be competent; joint insurance policies for home, auto and health; and dissolution and divorce protections such as community property and child support (more examples are available at the website).

Where is Schlafly's answer to the equal protection issue? It's nowhere, ostensibly because she does not want to afford homosexuals that same rights as everyone else. This is not a question of sanctity of anything; it's a question of one group of people imposing its morals on everyone else. This is why those opposed to gay marriage can only offer demagogical arguments: they understand that if it were a straigh-up legal issue, homosexuals would be allowed to marry. As such, they try to entangle morality and "sanctity" into the debate to try and confuse everyone on the outside of that debate. "A public uninformed about the U.S. Constitution, an acquiescent bar and a spineless Congress have for years allowed activist judges to expand their powers at the expense of elected representatives and in violation of the separation of powers," she writes at the same time she relies on the same uninformed public to believe her arguments.

Posted by Mark at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

During the strike here at Miami University in scenic Oxford, Ohio, I remember one of the strikers holding up a sign which read, "Miami is rich because we are poor." I remember that my first reaction to this sign was that it was terribly wrong. The sentence on that sign forms a statement of causality: Miami is rich, therefore, we are poor. Cause: Miami is rich; effect: we are poor. The immediate consequence of Miami's wealth, the sign asserts, is the poverty of its workers. Can we write this statement in reverse? "Since we are poor, Miami is rich." This is an entirely different causal relationship: the immediate consequence of the workers' poverty is Miami's wealth; Miami is wealthy because of the poverty of its workers. This statement is completely wrong.

I often get upset at statements which insuate that the only way wealth can be made is by depriving others of wealth. To say that wealth can only be made by taking it from others is to assert that there is a finite amount of wealth -- an economy of wealth, if you will. If I were a beautiful female chemistry student, I would say that wealth is a "closed system": no wealth can enter or leave the system, thereby resulting in a conservation of wealth, where no wealth is created or destroyed. It merely changes hands. The world of chemistry's ideal gas laws depend on the existence of a closed system; unfortunately, in the real world, there are few closed systems. So, too, it is with wealth: the money system is not closed. Capitalist societies create money all the time; it is usually achieved by investment, sometimes achieved by physically printing new money (but this is a bad idea), most often achieved without taking money from anyone.

Does this mean that becoming rich means that someone necessarily becomes poor? In the sense that someone else could have received money that was newly created, then yes, everyone who is not the recipient of that new money is poorer in the sense of economic profit, which measures the amount of money someone could have made. However, in the sense of real profit, the people who did not receive that new money are no poorer than they were before. Revenue that you didn't receive at all can't be considered "lost" revenue, because it was never yours to begin with! You never had it, so you couldn't have lost it!

Capitalism requires hard work to create money, and cynics would contend that it takes less physical labor to make a million dollars than it does a hundred dollars. Are we better off with capitalism than we were before? The short answer is: yes. (The long answer is "yes," too.)

Capitalism comes from the tradition of democracy of the 18th century. The 18th century was the world of reason, whose motto was "Think for yourself." This motto implies that you have the ability to think for yourself, and that you are obligated to exercise that ability. Your reality is determined by you and you alone. This also means that others cannot determine it for you by any means, and this is where democracy comes into play. Prior to the 18th century, there was no possibility of economic success for everyone. People, by virtue of their birth, had a maximum possibility of success imposed on them. There was no opportunity for them to exercise the individual liberty which Enlightenment philosophers contended that they had; the framework of European civilization at that time said that a person was born to a particular place in the social hierarchy and really couldn't change his place in that hierarchy. Where's the individual liberty in that?

As with the movement toward democracy from a limited monarchy (people using their individual liberty to choose their own leaders rather than an external entity -- alternatively called "God" or "Tradition"), there was a movement toward a more democratic economic system, which allowed for success based on merit, a person's ability to use his individual liberty to determine his level of success, regardless of the conditions of his birth (which he cannot control, by the way). This Age of Reason hit the middle class where everything always hits the middle class in every society: in the pocketbook.

Capitalism gave the "middling sorts" -- doctors, lawyers, merchants, and other people who did not use their physical labor to make a living -- the chance for success based on this concept of merit: if you worked hard, then you were worthy of whatever you earned. It was, like so many other things in this time, an empirical method. A person was worthy of success based on how hard he worked, which was the proof (empirical data) that he should have that success.

Since the late 19th century, this idea has begun to change. No longer should success be based upon merit, but upon need. Everyone needs success, and therefore, everyone should have it. It's not quite correct to call this Marxism or socialism; more correct to call it communism. It could even be called Utopianism -- a perfect world where everyone has as much as he needs, no more and no less. Even so, as it is in its present incarnation, the idea of success based on need is a return to the old system success "because we say so." This time, however, instead of a higher authority proclaiming that only a few people are worthy of success, everyone, this authority says, deserves success. This is not feasible in real life. As Lincoln said that you cannot fool all the people all of the time, neither can you cannot guarantee success for everyone all of the time. The creation of wealth depends on successful people to create that wealth. If everyone has wealth -- regardless of success level -- then we will miss that crucial step where each person has the wealth he created and we will have to start taking wealth from other people.

Does it follow that Miami is rich because its workers are poor? No. Miami is rich because it is a university of 15,000 students that charges about $15,000 per year to attend. Miami is rich because it is the largest land-holder in Butler County and has made wise investments. Miami did not make anyone poorer in these activities. If anything, it created more wealth through education, land holdings, and investments. Miami did not steal any money from its workers and Miami did not make them poor in the process of making itself rich. Each person has the right -- the liberty -- to be poor or to be rich, and as much as I think Miami should give its workers a living wage, I totally disagree that the university is responsible for their poverty, just as I disagree that their poverty is what has made the university rich. Wealth is not created in this country by impoverishing others; it is created by merit, and anyone who thinks that making others poor will necessarily make him rich will soon be one of those poor.

Posted by Mark at 3:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“When I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean . . . to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing.”

Attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, the above quote should serve as a motto for every government everywhere. What does this mean, though? Roosevelt does not advocate a handout, that every person in this metaphorical game of cards deserves to win; rather, each person should have an equality of opportunity to win: each person should have the same chances for success. Of course, no entity short of God himself can guarantee success for everyone.

TR did not suggest that everyone is capable of the same level of success or that everyone should have the same level of success. What we all ought to have is the equal chance to use our different gifts to our own individual potential, and this is the key: the individual ability to succeed or fail.

Take a marathon. All the participants in a marathon have different abilities, and not everyone will finish first. Indeed, only one person can finish first. Let us call this aspect of the race the “nature” aspect; each person is endowed, by virtue of his physical composition – over which he has no control – with different abilities. Also, each person in a marathon will experience the event differently, and these experiences will be based on chance. One runner may experience a sudden cramp, another may trip and fall, while another surges forward, having spent the race shielded from the drag of the wind by runners ahead of him. Let us call this aspect “nurture”: that which a person experiences. A man also has no control over nurture, for the events of his life affect him completely at random. Nonetheless, his nature will determine how he deals with the problems of his nurture.

Regardless of nature or nurture, everyone begins the marathon on an equal playing field: the starting line. This is the only certainty that the runners have: that they all begin at the same place. This provides a maximum of personal liberty – the ability to succeed or fail – and equality of opportunity. The race officials, however, cannot guarantee victory for everyone. All that they can guarantee is that everyone has the same ability to use his or her gifts to succeed.

Guaranteeing success is an affront to personal liberty – it requires an external force to manipulate the dealing of the cards (to use TR’s metaphor) so that one person wins and one person necessarily loses. The affront is to the loser, who was essentially cheated out of his ability to use his talents to determine his own fate. His fate was decided for him by someone else, and his fate was determined to be that of the loser. Individual liberty – the ability to determine what you want to do with your life and how you want to do it – is the most important thing that a human being can have. Starting the race on an equal line is okay; ending it that way is not, since it is the agency of the people themselves that determines the outcome of the race.

What role, then, must government play in ensuring that such a “square deal” exists? A government, in the ideal, exists to protect the rights of its citizens from infringement by other citizens and other governments. It tells you what you cannot do because these things are affronts to others’ liberty. What, then, are the powers of the ideal government? It must, first and foremost, ensure that the people are free to use their individual natures to determine their own futures and it must defend individuals against those who would take that freedom away or limit those liberties.

A government is obligated to provide education to all its citizens. Education is the greatest equalizer, the most important requirement for success in civil society. In times past, he who had the largest army or the biggest gun was the one who held all the power; the human race has advanced to the point where merit is the criterion of a person’s success in society, and more education creates more merit – in a general sense. Of course having a higher-level education does not automatically mean that one is the most qualified member of a society. It does mean that that person, generally speaking, of course (as there are exceptions to every rule), is more qualified than someone who never had a higher-level education. A government must provide its citizens with the skills necessary to live in civil society: literacy and an understanding of mathematics (“reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic,” as they used to say). People, of course, are free to use their individual judgment to decide whether or not they want to be educated, and that is their prerogative.

A government is not allowed to make moral judgments. No moral is absolute, for what I may consider right is not what others consider to be right. With this statement comes the caveat that the purpose of a government is to protect the individual liberty of its citizens, and thus any action which hinders the liberty of those citizens should be punished or should be punishable so as to deter such acts from happening. Murder, theft, and other such crimes are not crimes against morality but crimes against individual liberty. The use of force to override merit and individual liberty cannot stand as a valid method of success. This said, the people may otherwise decide what morals they have, respectively. The only thing the government may do is take actions that allow the people to exercise their own individual liberty or punish those that limit others’ liberty.

TR never believed in handouts; he believed in hard work. But he also believed, in an age of unfair working practices, that people should not have artificial hindrances to their success: how can a worker achieve success with a pittance wage? How can consumers be successful when faced with monopolies and trusts that artificially increase prices? TR’s Square Deal is not Marxism (“from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”), for it does not depend on the doctrine of need: “I deserve this because I need it”; rather, it depends on the doctrine of equality of opportunity: “I deserve this because I work hard, but my liberty is being usurped by forces beyond my control.” The true Marxism is the elimination of individual liberty in favor of collective equality, exactly the opposite of the TR ideal.

Posted by Mark at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had seven comments? Yes, people who are not my friends are actually reading this thing! Two people read my entry about Spain (España: un reflejo) and took offense to it. "It is amazing the stupid quick opinion some people can make being one week in a country," said a visitor named Laura. "Last question, did you spend your whole week vacation in the same little turistic village... next time say to your travel agency that spain is about 504,782 sq km more.
have fun in your beatiful deep-thinking country.. you guys are doing it ok... hahaha... VIVA AMERICA! hahaha.. you all are VERY pathetic... at least i am not a citizen of the most hated-fool country."

Well, Laura, I actually spent six weeks in Spain, and I lived with the Spanish. This was not some week-long vacation (I don't know where you got the idea that I was there for a week; maybe I didn't post how long I was there). You're correct in saying that I didn't travel to too many places other than Toledo (where I lived for those six weeks), but in the places I did visit, I saw a lot of the same things. Friends of mine (who also lived in Spain for six weeks on the same study-abroad trip) who visited other cities in Spain agreed with my assertions.

I did not mean to defame Spain; I think it's a great place and I would love to go back again. What I did intend to do is express the feeling I got from being there. We have many cities like Toledo in the United States: places that thrive on tourism and memories. It's not that these places are bad, it's just that they are somewhat depressing to be in. Take, for example, the festival of Corpus Christi. Almost every Toledano I asked about it agreed that the festival is still done mostly for the tourists.

Another visitor named Pab said, "Escuse me, oh experienced citizen of the first world, have you visited Florida? Have you taken a trip to Venice Beach? NY? Niagara Falls? Uhggg...It's awful... all full of shitty tourist . Poor places to live, don't you think?" Yes, Pab, I do agree with you: I would never want to live in Niagara Falls. Again, the United States also has these tourist-only cities in which the only service offered is the service of tourism.

Unfortunately, I have to cite you for the following comment: "Sure that you had lunch at least 3 times in the Toledo's Macdonals ...am i wrong?" Yes, you are completely wrong. The only thing I ever went to McDonald's for was a small Coke. I never ate at any American-style restaurant or ate American-style food.

"Don't worry if you disliked our country. Spain is now trying to atract a different kind of visitor. The call it quality tourism. You know, people who likes nature, culture, history, to have intelligent fun, to try different flavours, to discover new cultures... nothing for you," Pab continues. It's not that I disliked your country at all. I loved Spain and I will return. There's nothing I love more than visiting four hundred-year-old cathedrals. It's just that seeing tourist shops everywhere with T-shirts and little statues of Don Quixote makes me feel depressed about Spain. Like I said, the thousand years of Spanish history (and it is truly a great history) has been reduced to a six inch tall wooden statue of Sancho Panza or a replica dagger.

I even enjoyed reading these comments, as negative as they may have been. Thanks, Laura and Pab, for reading, and rest assured that I really do love Spain.

Posted by Mark at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Readers at Miami University will no doubt be familiar with today's topic: the strike of food service and maintenance workers here, which has been going on since Friday, September 26. Others may not be so familiar. Well, these workers -- members of Local 209 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) -- went on strike to obtain what they call a "living wage," a wage that would be about 10% higher than what Miami pays them now. First I will offer some facts, then I will offer opinion.

The workers' contract expired in August and Local 209 lobbied Miami for a wage increase. Miami had an independent fact-finder from the state labor board come in to decide what should be done. The fact-finder found that dining and maintenance workers' wages were lower than they ought to be, and recommended a wage increase of 15% over the next three years. The university's Board of Trustees voted to reject the fact-finder's proposal and instead offered Local 209 employees a 4.25% wage increase.

Local 209, for its part, would be happy with a 6% wage increase. At the same time, though, the union has also requested that Miami become a "closed shop," meaning that employees who work in housing, dining, or maintenance must join the union to work here.

Let's go to the videotape

Never in a hundred bizillion years would Miami's Board of Trustees switch to a closed shop system. That would give the union far too much power, and the Board loves having power. It loves having power so much that it hired a pretty mediocre president -- James Garland -- so that it didn't have to wrangle with someone with actual leadership skills. And, in truth, the closed shop request is pretty silly. That's just Local 209 trying to get its foot in the door, which reeks of suspicion. Let the workers decide whether or not they want to join the union.

Now we come to the part about a "living wage." What does that mean? Miami Student columnist Josh Vogt suggested that Local 209 members wanted a "comfortable living wage," implying that they already have a living wage and now want some more money to be able to live comfortably. But what does that mean?

"Living wage" does not apply to individuals, but to families. In a letter to all Miami students, Vice President for Student Affairs Richard Nault notes, "Entry-level workers in the AFSCME unit, such as a staff member who may serve food, do grounds maintenance, handle trash disposal, etc., earn $8.14 per hour. The average worker in the bargaining unit makes $11.06 per hour." A clever way to determine the annual salary of an hourly-paid worker is to multiply the hourly wage by 2000, which reflects forty hours of work per week with two weeks of vacation per year. (40 hours/week x 50 weeks/year = 2000). This means that the lowest-paid AFSCME worker earns $16,280 per year. According to the 2000 Federal Poverty Guidelines, this is poverty-level living for a family of four (but not a family of one, two, or three).

One of my friends stands by the strictly economic argument that the university should not increase these workers' wages, since the market has determined that the optimum price for labor is at what it is currently at, and any attempts by the university to change this price would be inflationary, a "handout," wrong, or any number of evil things. But the world is more than mere economics. Is it ethical to pay workers with families low wages? The university is paying these workers a wage in which they can only just get by. If nothing terrible ever happened to them, they would be fine. If someone becomes ill or if the car breaks down, though, there will be major financial problems.

Then there's the personal responsibility argument, which says, "Why should we pay them more? They don't deserve it. If they didn't want to clean toilets, they should have gone to college." But not everyone can go to college, especially not while supporting a family (and many of these workers do have families to support).

My answer to all of these economic arguments is: can you support a family on $20,000 per year? To give these workers a wage where they do not have to live paycheck to paycheck is not anyone's duty or obligation; rather, it is something the university can do out of good will. Besides, starting in January, Miami will require all workers (faculty and staff) to contribute some money to health care, and a 4.25% raise would immediately be eaten by this new contribution. Give the workers a living wage, I say. Miami can afford it, and workers can't go anywhere else to get an equivalently-paid position. And, as I've always said, the monopoly that Miami University has on labor demand in Butler County could make the wage artificially low. In fact, if we followed strict economics, Miami would have to lower its wage so that there were fewer applicants for jobs at the university. The university is in a pretty priveleged position, and can essentially do whatever it wants, including rejecting the fact-finder's report, which no other university has ever done before.

Posted by Mark at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That's what I said. Boo-yah.

Posted by Mark at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)