THE SUMMER TIMES
Commentary
THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2014
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ABORTION: WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY? Vanessa Chabaux, Kelly Eng, Camila Marcus, and Jane Song, Summer Times Contributing Writers Imagine yourself in a hospital room where you ponder the unwanted child inside of you. You are an aspiring woman, yet this fetus merely serves as an obstacle in your life. This child will always remain as just a traumatic reminder of your rape. The laws and the protestors demonstrating against abortion frustrate you; if only they could feel your pain. You then question, “How is it that an unborn fetus can be worth more than yourself?” You contribute to society and pay the proper taxes, all of which a fetus cannot do. You think of the baby’s father, and how he is not burdened by a baby growing inside of him. He gets to resume his life and who he is financially and socially. At this moment, all you care about is getting rid of the baby inside of you. That is when you realize that your only form of salvation is abortion. An abortion is to terminate a pregnancy after careful consideration of the patient; it is what women do to get rid of the fetus inside of them. For several reasons, the mother decides that she is not in a condition to have the baby, so she ends its life. This can be done by surgical or clinical abortion, or by taking medication. A significant number of women get an abortion in the United States. In an article published in June, The New York Times stated that three out of ten women will
undergo abortion throughout their lifetime. It would be unjust to deprive those thirty percent of American women of the right of abortion. Making abortion illegal is unfair to women who choose, by their own will, to undergo the operation. For example, in McAllen, Texas, the government shut down the only abortion clinic the city had because of the restrictions of a new law. This forced women to drive long distances, four to five hour-long trips, to the nearest available abortion clinics in San Antonio and Austin. It is immoral to deny these services to women, as Senator Wendy Davis stated: "These health centers provide lifesaving preventive care... and birth control to Texan women... Politicians... are... threatening the health of women across the Rio Grande Valley.” Abortion should be legal, no matter the circumstances. Every woman has the freedom of choice and will. She has the right to do whatever she wants to do with her body, including whether to give birth or not. A woman should be allowed to have multiple options for what to do with the child in her body because the rights of an unborn fetus are less important than that of the mother. There are many opposing ideas as to a certain stage of development where the fetus is considered “living.”
There is no correct answer supported medically or philosophically pertaining to the living state of a fetus. However, the mother, a grown woman is clearly considered a living human being, whereas it is unclear if a fetus is. Therefore, the living mother should be granted more support and rights than a fetus, who is still relying on another being for its resources. Abortion should be available under any methods of conception. There are many situations where the mother has no control over the conception, such as where sex education is insufficient in many areas. The mother may have not been properly educated about the consequences of sexual intercourse, or she may have also been raped. However, abortion is illegal in some places. Therefore, the mother would most likely seek out illegal methods of abortion which can lead to severe health risks. Dangerous methods include the consumption of an abortion pill called misoprotol, which can cause miscarriages. Additionally, abortion should be legal because an unwanted child would cause financial stress, and negatively interfere with the mother’s job and her daily life. So next time, before you judge a woman undergoing abortion, put yourself in her shoes.
B ODY OF L IES : ART INSPIRATION D ON ' T B E F OOLED AT THE SEASHORE Kevin Ding B Y M ODEL I MAGES Summer Times Contributing Writer
Mentallah Bahnasy, Lydia Hough, and Sophia Gilmour Summer Times Contributing Writers “When unnatural thinness became attractive, girls did unnatural things to be thin.” - Mary Pipher, a psychologist and author, on anorexia and eating disorders. It’s very relevant in such a technology- oriented world, the way women are portrayed by the media, and the effect it has on the public. Though eating disorders are often discussed, we neglect the idea that body image issues affect a huge percentage of teenage girls and even if not specifically diagnosed as anorexia or bulimia (diseases which involve self-induced purging or starvation to achieve a certain weight) can drastically affect the way girls see themselves. It’s the fault of the society we live in that these issues have occurred on such a large scale, but it’s not too late to try and reverse the effects. Media all over the world are focused on one ideal body for women and girls. It is shown on models in magazines, actresses in movies, and all over advertisements and catalogs. They are creating standards for what women are “supposed” to be such as a certain weight, shape or clothing size. However, only 5% of American females possess this ideal body. Many women and girls idolize these individuals, and therefore strive to become like them. Anything and everything is done to meet society’s standards. They begin starving themselves, and dieting, to the point when it becomes unhealthy. These standards for women in society must cease because they are causing a change in the norm for women. Media work on a global scale effecting all in their reach and consuming nations at a time. The unachievable social norms and standards that are created regarding a woman’s body type weave into the minds of millions and can have fatal results. According to the ANAD, the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, 95% of people with eating disorders are between the ages 12 and 25 and of those, 20% will die prematurely. A single touch-up, the digital flattening of one’s stomach or the perfecting of a single blemish, creates a mass amount of pressure for a girl to become someone she isn’t. Women and girls all over the world are speaking out against the negative effect of social media. In 2012, Judy Bluhm, an eighth grader from Maine, started a petition on Change.org targeting Seventeen Magazine, one of the world’s largest teen magazines. Her petition spread across the nation until July, when Seventeen launched a treaty banning the use of Photoshop in any of their photo-shoots. Bluhm told ABC news, “You need to see something realistic--you need to see a representation of what truly represents a teenage girl nowadays.” We support this thought because if girls are being exposed to the bodies of real people instead of ones that have been digitally shaped to perfection, it will lessen the pressure placed on girls today. Social media have objectified women for years; however, they have also targeted the problem. Change. org is a website that collects digital signatures to support the innovative ideas of people all over the world. It is social media at its best, changing the course of women in the media along with problems in the justice system and beyond. If individuals unite to become a force against the false ideas of what is perfect, we can use social media against itself, thus creating an environment of Body Peace.
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After looking at the awesome sculptures made by Andy Goldsworthy, I took inspiration and decided to make a sculpture/art piece that is inspired by his ideas and techniques (but no saliva which Goldsworthy has been known to use!!!). I started by asking my mom to drive me to the Sea Coast New Hampshire Science center, which is by the sea. There, at low tide, I started to go to the high tide zone and searched for things that I could use in my energy saving-themed sculpture. There were a lot of things at the coast, but most of them weren’t that useful to put in a sculpture. For example, there was a lot of seaweed, but they were all stinky, wet, and tangled up. I wandered around for over half an hour, but my bag for materials was still empty. Then I was some dried up purple colored seaweed in the corner of a rock. It was really dried up and hard, but it looked really beautiful. And then, I had an idea. I went back to the smooth small-rocky beach, and I started to dig a trench to put the purple seaweed in to make a border of my sculpture’s shape. My idea was to make a vase-like 2-D picture with the purple seaweed as the border, and then put a circle of rock/ pebbles inside the vase, and in the center of that circle, put a big piece of flat rock and on top, a piece of once purple but turning grey seaweed on top. At the mouth of the vase, I put 4~5 pebbles as the vase-stopper but beyond the mouth of the vase, there was a big patch of straight seaweed that looked like things flowing out of the vase even though there were the vase-stoppers. My sculpture’s meaning is like this: The vase is the vase of energy on earth. The center purple turning grey seaweed meant the half-drained energy that there is. (Grey means gone and purple means still in existence). Then there were the vase-stoppers and the stuff flowing out of the vase, which is indicating that although we are trying not to waste the energy that we have, there is still a large amount of energy being used and wasted. But if you look closely, the vase-stopper didn’t cover the whole mouth of the vase, and there was still space in between. And that meant that there is still room for people to stand up, help the environment, and prevent energy overuse and waste. I think that this is a really great project because it really got us to think of a theme that we like and then create something using nature and express our opinion and feeling on that theme. So I really enjoyed it. Not only did the final look of the sculpture, but also the process and the feeling inside it.
W ATCHING Y OU ...
Lilly Ding, Gina Suepiantham, Amreese Tour, and James Demopoulos, Summer Times Contributing Writers If you would like the government to continually monitor your internet searches and phone records, then just move to the United States. Isn’t it ironic how America is the land of freedom, but yet they invade their citizens’ privacy by spying on their phones? And by ‘they’ I mean the NSA, the National Security Agency. Last Friday, John Napier Tye, a former State Department official, shared with the public that the NSA is using Executive Order 12333 as an excuse to spy on the public. It states that, “The United States intelligence effort shall provide the President, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council with the necessary information on which to base decisions concerning the development and conduct of foreign, defense, economic policies, and the protection of United States national interests from foreign security threats. All departments and agencies shall cooperate fully to fulfill this goal.” Unless you are in the NSA, or a journalist who covers it, Executive Order 12333 is probably news to you. You might be wondering what Executive Order
12333 is. It was created by President Ronald Reagan to extend the responsibilities of the United States, meaning that the United States will be able to give any information away that was requested by the CIA about their citizens’ personal lives. This is a regular excuse made by the NSA, even though it violates the Fourth Amendment. It states that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect the people from unnecessary spying by the government, which is again ironic because the United States claims to live by the Constitution, yet continuously breaks its rules. Why would it do that? The NSA claims that monitoring Internet activity and phone records will help prevent terrorism and other threats to the nation, but we have not come across a single scenario where this
invasion of privacy has benefitted anyone. According to Edward Snowden the NSA, “targets the communications, filters them, analyzes them and stores them.” But John Napier Tye is not the only surveillance whistleblower. Before him was Edward Snowden, who is most well-known for leaking information along with William Binney, Kirk Wieb -- and those are only the top three on a growing list. Tye said: “When I started at the State Department, I took an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States. I don’t believe that there is any valid interpretation of the Fourth Amendment that could permit the government to collect and store a large portion of U.S. citizens’s online communications, without any court or congressional oversight, and without any suspicion of wrongdoing.” Even if there was a valid interpretation of the Fourth Amendment that would give the government a reason to spy on their citizens when they have done nothing wrong, would it still be considered an invasion of privacy? The answer is simple - yes. I mean, once you break one law what’s going to stop you from breaking more?
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