Pro-Life and Pro-Choice

I set out to verify whether or not access to birth control reduces abortions because I suspected some people were being less than truthful in the claims they were making. The conclusion I've reached is that it all depends on how you define your terms. 

There is a difference, for instance, between birth control and effective birth control. Condoms are the least expensive and most widely available form of birth control. When used consistently and properly, they have a failure rate of about 2% in the course of a year for sexually active women. In real life situations, however, the failure rate is about 18% because of improper or inconsistent use. This means women who rely solely on condoms to prevent pregnancy are more likely than not to become pregnant over a three year period of sexually activity.

A few studies have even shown an increase in unplanned pregnancies and abortions for those who rely on ineffective means of birth control. This happens because sexual activity increases when people have a false sense of security about not becoming pregnant.

There are numerous studies showing what common sense tells us: access to effective means of birth control reduces abortions. Such a conclusion is not widely accepted, however, because many consider these effective means of birth control simply to be another form of abortion.

Everything hinges on the definition of when life begins. There are at least four possibilities:

1. Life begins as a newborn takes its first breath. This hearkens back to God breathing life into Adam, and is consistent with childbirth practices prior to the advent of modern medicine. 
2. Life begins at fetal viability. The conclusion of Roe v. Wade was that a woman had a "right of privacy" to end a pregnancy until fetal viability was reached, the point when a child could survive outside the womb. This was understood to come about the sixth month. 
3. Life begins at implantation. Only when a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterine wall does it have the possibility of becoming a person. 
4. Life begins at fertilization. Even before a fertilized egg is implanted, cellular development has started and life has thus begun.

The distinction between #3 and #4 is critical: if life begins at the point of fertilization, any birth control method which interferes with implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall is a form of abortion. Birth control pills, for instance, are primarily intended to prevent ovulation. However, they also lessen the chance of fertilization, and increase uterine resistance to accepting a fertilized egg. If life begins at fertilization, birth control pills are, at least in some cases, a form of abortion. 

Norplant and IUDs, frequently touted as some of the most effective forms of birth control, are specifically designed to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall.  

Given these irreconcilable understandings and definitions, it isn't surprising there is so little constructive dialogue between those who are pro-choice and pro-life.

My Commitment to Our New President

About 2,600 years ago, the surviving inhabitants of Jerusalem were forcibly removed to Babylon by their conquerors. The walls of Jerusalem were broken down and the Temple totally destroyed. The Jews were thus in exile from the Promised Land, with no king to lead them and no Temple in which to worship. All they had left was their religious heritage and their sacred writings.

In the most dire circumstances, the prophet Jeremiah brought them a startling message from God:

“Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." (Jeremiah 29:7, NIV)

This ancient message speaks to us still, as many in America are also experiencing a sense of exile. For some, the sense of losing their homeland came during the presidency of Barack Obama; for others, it has come through the election of Donald Trump. Our country is terribly divided: partisanship abounds; unity is nowhere to be found.

I believe the time has come to embrace the words of Jeremiah. To that end, I invite others to join me in making these commitments:

I will pray for the success of President Trump and will celebrate his victories.

The president has promised to create countless new jobs and bring about a revival in American manufacturing. He has promised to renew our inner cities, making them safer than they have ever been, with increased access to quality education for all. He has promised to secure our borders from those who would come to wreak havoc among us. He has promised to replace Obamacare with something better, eliminating mandates while lowering premiums and reducing deductibles. He has promised to make our country more secure in order for us to live without fear. He has promised a society free from discrimination with increased opportunities for women and minorities to thrive. In all these things I will pray for his success and celebrate his victories.

I will lament the failures of President Trump and will pray for his victims.

It is impossible for me to imagine anyone being able to fulfill all the promises our new president has made. Everyone fails from time to time, sometimes due to poor decisions being made and at other times because of events beyond our control. Even the most altruistic plans often have unintended consequences. President Trump will have his failures and I will lament them, not gloat over them.

I will also pray for the innocent victims of President Trump’s failures. There will be immigrants denied the opportunity to seek peace and prosperity in this country through no fault of their own. There will be refugees turned away, not because of the threat they pose, but because of the fear we cannot overcome. There will be people discriminated against and brutalized because of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. There will be people who sink deeper into poverty because they lack access to education or healthcare. There will be many other innocent victims, and I will not only pray for them, but will join with others in doing what can be done to alleviate their suffering.

I will be persistent in seeking the truth as objectively as possible about President Trump’s successes and failures, his victories and victims.

In this era of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” I will not accept that we live in a “post-truth” era. I will do all I can to seek the truth from credible sources, choosing to consider both sides in every disagreement, never allowing one side to tell me what the other side thinks and why they are wrong. I will be informed, not gullible.

How Do We Know?

I don't want Speak Truth Show Grace to become another political rant, but I'm hoping a deeper grasp  of truth could lead to a more constructive political dialogue. 

I saw a post on Facebook and am passing it along for your reaction. I'm not asking whether you think the eight points below are good or bad, right or wrong. I have only one question for the purpose of our blog: ARE THEY TRUE? Perhaps more to the point of this blog, are they the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

I don't think these eight statements lend themselves to comments like, "They are true for me, but not for you," or "These are my truth, but they may not be your truth." These are factual statements: they are either true or false, or perhaps partially true and partially false.

This brings up another question: Can we actually KNOW whether or not these statements are true? It would probably be more true to say, "I believe these statements are true" or "I believe these statements are not true." If that is the case, and our view of these statements is a belief or an opinion, on what evidence is our belief or opinion based?

The politics of these statements will likely be the subject of many rants and arguments; I hope we can focus instead on the process of how we come to truth. 

Here are the eight statements, copied and posted by a friend of mine with no attribution to any media source:

Last week's federal government in review: 

1. Trump fires all Obama-appointed Ambassadors and Special Envoys, ordering them out by inauguration day. 

2. House brings back the Holman rule allowing them to reduce an individual civil service, SES positions, or political appointee's salary to $1, effectively firing them by amendment to any piece of legislation. We now know why they wanted names and positions of people in Energy and State. 

3. Senate schedules 6 simultaneous hearings on cabinet nominees and triple-books those hearings with Trump's first press conference in months and an ACA budget vote, effectively preventing any concentrated coverage or protest. 

4. House GOP expressly forbids the Congressional Budget Office from reporting or tracking ANY costs related to the repeal of the ACA. 

5. Trump continues to throw the intelligence community under the bus to protect Putin, despite the growing mountain of evidence that the Russians deliberately interfered in our election. 

6. Trump breaks a central campaign promise to make Mexico pay for the wall by asking Congress (in other words, us, the taxpayers) to pay for it. 

7. Trump threatens Toyota over a new plant that was never coming to the US nor will take jobs out of the US. 

8. House passes the REINS act, giving them veto power over any rules enacted by any federal agency or department--for example, FDA or EPA bans a drug or pesticide, Congress can overrule based on lobbyists not science. Don't like that endangered species designation, Congress kills it 

We - progressive, liberal, libertarian, and conservative - need to all wake up to what is actually happening to our beloved country.

I look forward to your comments. 

Discovering Truth

Truth exists because reality exists.

Consider a person who drives to town, goes into a coffee shop and says to his friends, “That’s quite a pothole north of town. I barely saw it, but I sure felt it!”

One of his friends replies, “I just came to town that same way. I didn’t see any pothole and I sure didn’t hit one. It was a smooth ride all the way for me.”

Did the pothole exist for one person and not for the other?

It’s hard to imagine anyone who would argue such a thing. More likely, there would be a discussion of whether one person imagined a pothole or the other person simply failed to see or hit it because of being on a slightly different track.

The more practical question is the extent to which we can actually know the truth, or to ask it somewhat differently, is our understanding of the truth true?

We process reality through our senses: sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing. If we had none of these senses, we would be absolutely cut off from the world around us, unaware of even our own existence. As long as we have at least one of them, however, and a functioning brain, we can process reality through the filter of our experience.

Our capacity to know the truth is shaped by our willingness to engage in critical thinking and by the way in which our experience has conditioned us.

In the same way, our capacity to be deceived is shaped by our unwillingness to engage in critical thinking and by the way in which our experience has conditioned us.

Discovering the truth about a pothole is relatively simple: we can go and see for ourselves, trusting our sense of sight and touch to confirm whether or not it is there. If you live in Michigan, you have lots of experience to guide you in this!

Discovering other truth is more complex. For instance, has Obamacare been a success or a disaster? Determining the truth of this would require a considerable amount of reliance on trusted sources. This raises a bigger question: who can you trust to be truthful?

Discovering religious truth is perhaps the most important – and the most complex – of all. There will be more said on this in later blogs after we have looked into the nature of critical thinking and the way in which experience conditions us.

Please note: any discussions on Obamacare resulting from this blog will be deleted. I will be interested in discussing it in the future, but not until much more groundwork has been laid and we can give it the attention a complicated matter deserves.

Eagles and Wind Turbines

I love bald eagles and my heart soars whenever I am privileged to see one. I believe they are one of God’s most majestic creatures, and am not surprised they have come to be a symbol of our country.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says about 40 years ago eagles were near extinction due to habitat destruction, illegal shooting, and contamination of their food source by the pesticide DDT. Habitat protection afforded by the Endangered Species Act, the federal government’s banning of DDT, and conservation actions taken by the American public have helped bald eagles make a remarkable recovery.

The Altamont Pass Wind Farms were established about 35 years ago. They are still one of the largest, densest collections of wind turbines in the world, though their number has decreased from 7,900 to 4,000 even as their productivity has increased due to improved technology. The old turbines were much smaller, spaced more closely together, and rotated at a much higher speed than the new ones. New turbines produce 23 times as much electricity as the old ones.

Unfortunately, Altamont Pass Wind Farms has represented the worst of the colliding worlds of eagles and wind turbines. An eagle flying 75-100 mph in pursuit of prey pays little attention to turbine blades. Although these blades appear to turn very slowly, the midpoint of the blade is often turning at 45 mph and the tip at 180 mph. Collisions happen and they are often deadly.

Exactly how many eagles are killed by wind turbines is uncertain. Reliable numbers are difficult to obtain because turbines are generally located in remote areas, searches are usually limited to within 200 feet of the turbine, and predators often carry away the remains in the 30-90 day intervals between counts.

Save the Eagles International quotes ornithologist Shawn Smallwood as saying in a 2004 report that an estimated average of 116 golden eagles were killed at Altamont in the previous four years. A government study by the Altameda County Community Development Agency, however, documented an average of 15 golden eagle deaths at Altamont in a nine-year period from 2005-2013.

A study by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published in the September 2013 Journal of Raptor Research listed 85 total eagle deaths from wind turbines in areas other than Altamont between 1997 and 2012. The breakdown by states for this 15-year period is as follows: Wyoming (29), California (27), Oregon (6), Washington (5), Colorado (5), and New Mexico (5).

Eagles have been protected since the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act became law in 1940. This law prohibits the “taking” of eagles through any means, but allows for permits to be issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service where “non-purposeful” or “incidental” taking of eagles is involved. This would include wind turbines as well as highways, buildings, power lines, airports, ski lifts and other developments in eagle habitat areas.

These protections (and the banning of DDT) under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have led to a remarkable recovery for eagles from near extinction in the 1970s to an estimated population today of 143,000 bald eagles and 40,000 golden eagles. In 2007 bald and golden eagles were removed from the list of threatened and endangered species.

This is not to say eagle populations face no threats. The number of requests for Incidental Take Permits has increased due primarily to interest in establishing more wind turbine farms. (The reasons and justifications for this increase are multiple and open to debate.) This proposed expansion led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its policies and determine at what point eagle deaths would threaten the stability of the population.

Their study, completed in 2013, used computer modeling to evaluate likely outcomes. Relying on median data indicated up to 6,300 deaths of bald eagles and 2,100 golden eagles would not diminish the population. Using a 20^th quantile data set gave a more conservative estimate of up to 4,200 deaths of bald eagles and 2,000 golden eagles per year without diminishing eagle populations. They opted for the more conservative projections.

These numbers are based on eagle deaths from all causes, not simply from wind turbines. Other causes of death include: collision with power lines; poisoning from eating animals that have been poisoned; lead poisoning from ingesting lead shot; and collisions with vehicles while eating roadkill.

The American Bird Conservancy filed suit to block the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from implementing new guidelines based on this study. They particularly opposed the extension of permits issued to wind turbine farms from five-year periods to thirty-year periods, arguing it would be disastrous to be locked into something which proved unsustainable.

A federal court found in favor of the American Bird Conservancy and ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to research the issue further. This was done and the Wildlife Service issued final regulations on December 14, 2016.

The announcement of these final regulations led to inflammatory headlines by Breitbart, USFANZONE and the Conservative Tribune, with only slightly more responsible reporting by NBC, ABC, CBS and other mainstream media. Some reports were intentionally misleading; others were simply poorly researched. This is a complicated subject not easily captured in a 20-second sound bite.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has responded on its website to frequently asked questions. Their responses can be summarized as follows:

1.      Many activities that incidentally take eagles due to ongoing operations have lifetimes that far exceed five years. Longer-term permits will be extended to 30 years, but will require renewal every five years contingent on satisfactory performance. Each permittee will work with the Service to implement avoidance and minimization mechanisms to reduce the chance of harm to eagles. If the permittee fails to do so and permitted take is exceeded, the entity would be in violation of the Eagle Act. Any additional take over the allowed level would be considered unlawful, and the permittee could be prosecuted.

2.      Thirty years is a maximum permit length, not the automatic permit length. Permits of shorter duration may be granted where appropriate, e.g., for road construction. Long-term permits require the permittee to consult with the Service every five years to ensure expected take levels are not being exceeded. Additional requirements developed as part of the permit’s adaptive management plan may be placed on the permittee at those five-year reviews, and if the permittee is found not to be complying with avoidance, mitigation or compensation requirements, the permit can be revoked.

3.      Longer-term permits now require that monitoring be conducted by qualified, independent third parties that report directly to the Service. The data they submit will be available to the public.

4.      The Service expects to issue just a few dozen permits annually, most for nest disturbance, some for mortality from wind power projects and other sources, such as power lines. A significant portion of the permits issued will be to existing operations already taking eagles without authorization. The total number of eagle deaths expected to be authorized annually from new sources may eventually be in the hundreds, not thousands. The Service believes actual eagle loss will be significantly lower.

Eagles – and indeed all of nature – will always be at risk from human activity. It is fitting and appropriate to hold the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service accountable to their stated objectives:

1.  Assist in the development and application of an environmental stewardship ethic for our society, based on ecological principles, scientific knowledge of fish and wildlife, and a sense of moral responsibility.
2. Guide the conservation, development, and management of the Nation's fish and wildlife resources.
3. Administer a national program to provide the public opportunities to understand, appreciate, and wisely use fish and wildlife resources.

It is neither fitting nor appropriate to print inflammatory headlines designed to provoke outrage and articles comprised of partial truths and outright lies about actions of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, yet this is what Breitbart, USFANZONE and Conservative Tribune have done. I believe NBC, ABC, CBS, New York Times, and Washington Post have fallen short on their journalistic duties here as well.