Abortion

I thought that the Pro Choice website had a better argument. They stated their mission right away on the home page and everything else on the site clearly related back to it and proved that they following their mission statement. The Right to Life website was not as convincing for me. I think it is because I have an education. Their website only explains different types of procedures used to abort a pregnancy and uses language to try to scare away women. The Pro Choice site addressed the fact that Right to Life does this and explained why they were wrong and what really happened. The language used in the Right to Life site also reminded me very much of how Sarah Palin would explain an abortion and the reasons she would give to make it illegal. That right away pushed my vote towards the Pro Choice website. One topic that really cleared up confusion for me was the section about the Crisis Pregnancy Centers on the Pro Choice website. In the video we watched I was very confused about what these were. They seem like they are supposed to be clinics to help women who are trying to get abortions or decide if that is the right choice for them. Then when the women get in there they are told that they cannot get abortions because it will damn them to hell and even birth control is unreasonable. The Pro Choice website explained how these centers draw pregnant women win by making them look like abortion clinics but then do everything they can to scare women into keeping the baby. Seeing both of these websites helped me learn how both sides of the issue makes their arguments and has kept me in a pro-choice mindset.

Thinking responsibly I would say that a parent does have the right to know whether their daughter is having an abortion or not. However, seeing as I am a 17 year old boy I do not think this is necessary. At this age we are old enough to make our own decisions, even if they are stupid ones. If a 17 or 18 year old girl has sex and gets pregnant then it is her choice how she wants to deal with it. If she decides to abort then she should be able to do so without her parents having to be notified. As a 17 year old male I also have a few selfish reasons for this thinking. If I were to get a girl pregnant at this age I would not want her dad to know about the abortion because I value my life and do not need him to take it away from me.

I don't think that the father should have the right to consent to the abortion no matter what age. It is not his body to decide about. Just because he is the father of the pregnant girl doesn't mean he knows what she wants or whether the abortion would be right or not. If a woman is raped and the father refuses to let her abort then she will be stuck with the reminder of what had happened to her for the rest of her life and she won't be able to have the chance to let it go by not having the child. It is easy for men to say that abortion should be legal or should be illegal because they do not have to go through the procedure. In the end it is the woman's choice and only she knows what is best for her body and what direction she wants her life to go in.

It is interesting to me that the Governor of Illinois is prove choice, yet there are a lot of Pro Life laws about abortion in our state such as the Abortion Ban. It says that a woman can only abort the fetus before the 12th week of pregnancy. I think this is a good thing because in the very early stages like this you can't really tell that a woman is pregnant. The fetus is still just a little blip on the ultra sound and, to me, doesn't even resemble a baby. It keeps it less personal so it would be easier to have an abortion. However, it has been ruled unconstitutional because it places an undue burden on the woman. A few of the other Pro Life laws in Illinois were also classified as unconstitutional so I think this state is still very much Pro Choice.

Clifford Boggess

When I was first introduced to Clifford Boggess I thought right away that he should have been executed. All I knew was that he murdered two old defenseless men. He said that he was in total mental control and knew exactly what he was doing as the crimes went on. The second murder was even premeditated since he planned out his target without even knowing anything about him except for that he had the money that Boggess was looking for. Boggess even said that in the first murder he was just "hurting to be brutal". As time went on though I started to feel less strongly about my first instinct. He was adopted when he was a baby and by age four he was abandoned by his adoptive mother. His birth mother was abusive and he came from a long family history of abuse. When thinking back on his childhood, Boggess talked about how he craved attention whenever he could get it. I think this is because he probably felt unwanted since he had been abandoned by two different mothers. Based off of the rough childhood that he had, I am not surprised that he ended up committing the crimes he did. After the whole film though, I do not agree with the execution of Clifford Boggess. However, that is just because I am not one of the victims of the murders like Frank Collier's brother or the granddaughter of Jim Hazelwood. If I were one of them I would have wanted him dead right away instead of nine years after the murders. I do believe that he should have gotten a life sentence in prison though, with no chance for parole. I think that his crimes were terrible but I believe that over his stay on death row Boggess changed as a person. I think he was able to see that he committing horrible crimes. I think that he should have lived with the guilt of what he did though. Even though he believed Jesus forgave him, I think knowing that the victims families are never going to be the same would have eaten at him for the rest of his life. I don't think that his life would have had societal value as a Christian since there are plenty of people who do crazy things and then think they are off the hook because of Jesus, but I think his artwork was good and could have brought something to some people.

Bullying in Today's Schools

I am still very shocked by the number of suicides recently due to cyberbullying. I had no clue that the issue was as bad as it is and unfortunately it took the death of all these kids for people to catch on. The Phoebe Prince story is still a big deal even though it happened months ago. I was reading in a magazine a couple weeks ago about how the school is now forever tainted by what happened. All other schools in their area just refer to them as the bully school. It's going to take a while for them to get over what happened. Even our school is still thought of as the party school where students died on homecoming. However, bullying here at DHS isn't as bad as it is in other places. This could be because not as many people see it or because the people being bullied don't speak up. I think another reason we do not have a huge issue with bullying is because our school is not very diverse. We are almost all white middle class citizens in a very Jewish area. There isn't much that someone can make fun of someone else for that wouldn't also apply to themselves. I don't want to say that no one is bullied here because I'm sure there are some, but it is not as prevalent as in other places. I think that there are also a lot of students who are confident enough in their own skin that can brush off something a bully would say or laugh about it with a friend. For the most part we are a very tight knit group of kids since we all grew up in a small town where we all know each other. I think that if we want bullying to be eliminated completely then it is the responsibility of the students. We need to educate everyone about bullying and how it affects people. We could do something similar to Challenge Day or something like what Highland Park does with the Anti-Defamation League, where they bring together all the freshmen to discuss bullying and share personal stories as a way to stop it before it even starts. If we make it known that bullying is not acceptable and even try to make it look like it isn't cool then I think kids will stop since they won't get the glory that bullies may have gotten in the 1950s.

Drug Testing in Schools

I am strongly against drug testing in schools. I understand that once you walk into a school there are very few rights that apply to you. After twelve years of the public school system this is very obvious. I get that sometimes bags need to be searched in order to keep schools safe. I have been subject to that twice so far in my four years of high school with two different bomb threats. However, drug testing is a step too far. School officials do not need to search a students body to keep schools safe. This is the ultimate invasion of privacy. What students do on their own free time should be of no concern to the school. By instating drug testing for student athletes, schools are just trying to go out of their way to catch someone in the act. It is also unfair that just the athletes are tested. This leaves students in clubs and other extracurriculars free to get high and go about their day. Student athletes are held to such a high standard today and that causes plenty of problems in schools. School officials seem to still be in the 1950s mindset where the starting quarterback and head cheerleaders rule the school. However, from a students point of view this is not true. Plenty of people go about their day and hang out with their own friends and don't even pay any attention to what the athletes do. They are no longer the biggest influence in schools anymore and don't need to be held to such a high standard because most people just don't care. If the school wanted to do drug testing right they would include the entire student body. However, most people would find this search to be unreasonable and, based on the ruling in New Jersey v. T.L.O., if the search is unreasonable then it is also unconstitutional. This whole idea of reasonable leaves too much in the eyes of the paranoid school officials. We have seen plenty of unreasonable decisions made by our own school officials to feel warm and fuzzy about the fact that they will be deciding when it is and isn't reasonable to search our bodies for drug use. Things like free pizza or plastic cups at lunch set off our school administration and cause them to make unreasonable decisions. How are they going to be able to convince us that what they say about drug testing is reasonable. In my opinion, the students should be able to decide what is reasonable when it comes to their own body, not school administrators who are more worried about high test schools so they get more federal funding instead of the students themselves.

Keeping Religion Out of School

In 1995 President Bill Clinton said, "Nothing in the First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-free zones, or requires all religious expression to be left behind at the schoolhouse door." This is a very important policy because it allows religious students to take time out of their day, if they need to, to pray or do anything else to honor their religion. However, the separation of church and state prevents public schools from preaching religion and making their students practice religion. The Portland Adventist Academy tried to push the limits of separation of church and state. Since they were Seventh Day Adventists they could not do work on their sabbath which went from sundown Friday to sundown on Saturday. Because of this, their athletic teams could not participate in games or tournaments during the sabbath. The state basketball tournament was generally played on Saturday afternoon which would keep the Portland Adventist Academy from participating if they were to reach the State Finals. The school board tried to petition to change the time of the State Finals.

7 Days of September

Watching the destruction of 9/11 and paying attention to it's effects on people for the first time since third grade was not what I expected it to be. As an eight year old it is hard to really understand what is going on. All I remember about September 11th was being walked home from school by my mom and going home and seeing images of the planes going into the towers on CNN. As a third grader it is really cool to see all the fire and explosion. It was like watching a movie. Now watching it as a senior in high school the experience is very different. The most disturbing thing to me is the sight of people jumping off the top of the building. I can't imagine a situation where I would ever have to throw myself out of a window a hundred stories above ground instead of waiting to be burned alive. I liked watching this film because it showed how not only New Yorkers but how the rest of America reacted to the attacks. When people watch documentaries about 9/11 most of the time it is just about the towers being hit and collapsing and the events of that day. I liked being able to see how the rest of the week unfolded because when it was happening I was too young to understand what was happening. I think that this movie gave a great perspective of what happened and how it affected America. After watching it I found myself feeling a stronger sense of patriotism and anger towards anyone that would want to do this to my country.

Speech Codes on American Campus

The students in the fraternities having race parties should be punished without a doubt. After all the things that went on in this country with the Civil Rights Movement and racism in our country it is amazing to me that people can still act this way. Based on the video we watched in class with the Harvard professor and the speech codes packet we read i don't think that they'd be able to be seriously punished since they were not violating the First Amendment. However, the university should be able to suspend the right for the fraternity to hold parties or even be on campus because the black face party is not only offensive but it could be considered fighting words and can incite violence between those white kids with the paint on their face and the black students on campus. I know that if I was attending that university I would not want things like that going on because I would not have to deal with the uncomfortable tension that comes as a result of this party. I also wouldn't like it because I would be worried about which minority they would go after next. As a Jew outside of the North Shore, I would be a minority and would not like to be targetted like the black students were in this case.