First Post, purpose of blog

Hey Friends,

I've finally decided to bite the bullet, make a blog, and start writing! The topics will be on life in general, but particularly as it relates to DC politics and especially bioethics/life issues as those fascinate me and there's a lot of information and misinformation thrown around on these issues all the time!
I hope to be helpful and also to hear back from ya'll with commentary of your own, questions, clarifications, or...?

Ok, so my first post on bioethics/life issues and a commentary on politics in general - people lie. Flat out. Blatantly. Regularly. Maybe I am just naive, but I tend to cling tightly to the idea that when people are giving me statistics or arguments for their position that they're generally trying to actually logically convince me of their way of thinking. I may disagree and we can dialogue, but the idea that someone would intentionally tell me (and lots of others) something intentionally deceptive and misrpresenting is new to me.

For instance - Ron Fitzsimmons, the director of The National Coalition of Abortion Providers publicly admitted that he "lied through (his) teeth" when he told a TV interviewer that partial-birth abortion was "used rarely and only on women whose lifes were in danger or whose fetuses were damaged." He later explained that the truth was that the majority of partial-birth abortions are performed on healthy fetuses, 20 weeks or more along, with healthy mothers. (See Congressman Chris Smith's speech in the Congressional Record for Feb. 8, 2006 available online through the GPO at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/06crpgs.html )

A former Planned Parenthood worker, Judith Fetrow, verifies this when she said, "It is extremely difficult to watch doctors lie, clinic workers cover up, and hear terrifying stories of women dragged out of clinics to die in cars on the way to the hospital without beginning to question the party line. I began to wonder if we were really caring for these women, or if we were just working for another corporation whose only interest was the bottom line." (Besides being subsidized by American taxpayers - technically for anything that's specifically not-abortion, but which allows them to save money on lighting, training, etc. and put their own money towards abortions - they generally receive between $350-650 per "medical abortion." Not a bad business proposition I guess, particularly if you're performing 255,015 abortions a year (2004 numbers). )

Abortion clinics commonly tell women that they will feel relief after their abortion, that this is an extremely safe procedure with little to no side-affects, calling post-abortion depression as well as side affects of the surgical procedure itself lies from "so-called 'crisis pregnancy centers'" trying to scare women (see Planned Parenthood's website). Yet, even abortionist Warren Hern says, "In medical practice, there are few surgical procedures given given so little attention ans so underrated in its potential hazards as abortion. It is a commonly held view that complications are inevitable." (emphasis mine).

Anyway, you get the point and I don't want to belabor it just now. I was just surprised at all the fudging of numbers, data, claims...I don't know, it's a strange world where 'truth' is merely considered for its usefulness and is maleable to fit your own pre-existing views.