Out of control
Women should take same responsibility for reproduction as they do for other things
JESSICA FLAN AGAIN is a
senior English and philoso
phy major and a Daily
Nebraskan columnist.
Let’s just take a little minute to look
at where the abortion industry is head
ed, why don’t we? I think we’ll all be
surprised to learn that all the focus on
the abortion debate has done nothing to
encourage preventative actions and has
reahy just facilitated an abortion-happy
society.
Let’s not rehash the ol’ women have
the right to choose vs. the no, no, abor
tion is murder argument. I know what I
think, and chances are you know what
you think. So, let’s just spare one anoth
er the agony.
There are, however, a few things I
want to bring to your attention.
First, having an abortion is never
cause for celebration. Obviously it
would have been better to be preventa
tive than reactive, and thus a mistake
was made.
I (If it wasn’t a mistake, she’d be
painting the nursery instead of staring
at the blank walls in the waiting room
of Planned Parenthood.)
Second, it would be advantageous
to learn from our mistakes.
And finally, if abortion continues
to be an accepted form of birth con
trol, society will effectively devalue
the sanctity of human life while
absolving women from reproductive
responsibility.
These points hold true regardless of
what stand you take on the abortion
issue. You see the fetus (or baby,
depending on your take) is, indeed, a
human form. And since it is growing,
we must deduct that it is alive - thus the
term human life. Clever term, isn’t it?
Now, to review, it would be better
to be preventative than reactive, and
this lack of prevention is a “mistake.”
You might find it interesting to
know that of women aged 15 to 44 who
have abortions, 47 percent of them
have had at least one prior abortion.
Forty-three percent of women will
have at least one abortion by age 45.
You may also find it interesting to
know 53 percent of women who have
unplanned pregnancies used no method
of contraception. None.
Newsflash: Sex may result in preg
nancy! This just in: Sex without contra
ception is more likely to result in preg
nancy than sex with contraception!
Incidentally, unplanned pregnan
cies among women who use no method
of birth control are as likely to end in
abortion as they are in birth.
So, from this we can conclude that
women are just plain not using their
heads or that they are using this med
ical procedure as an excuse to live reck
lessly. Reproduce irresponsibly - if you
will.
You know, the people who are hav
ing the majority of these abortions may
not be whom you suspect, and their
reasons may not be what you would
think.
Two-thirds of women who have
abortions plan to have children in the
future.
So most of these women would
want the child, if it came later in life.
It’s really very simple: If a woman is
going to be responsible enough to raise
a child, perhaps she should be responsi
ble enough not to get pregnant before
she’s ready.
This whole run-to-the-abortion
clinic trend is yet another example of
the lack of social responsibility in our
society.
Less than 1 percent of abortions arc
performed because a woman is raped.
In fact, two-thirds of women cite
interference with school, work or other
responsibilities as the main reason for
terminating their pregnancies.
That means that a good deal of
women feel obligated to be responsible
in some areas of their life - but not
when it comes to sex.
Half of the women who have abor
tions say they simply don’t want to be
single parents, or they are having prob
lems with their husbands or partners.
Well, not to be repetitive, but perhaps
they should have just not gotten preg
nant in thefirst place!?!
This isn’t brain surgery here, folks.
There is one abortion every 20 sec
onds here in the United States. Whoa!!
I’m kidding, right? No, and remember
that 47 percent of these women have
had at least one prior abortion, and that
53 percent of women are using abor
tion as their only method of birth con
trol.
What I’m getting at is that no mat
ter which side of the aisle you step to
on this issue, it’s plain to see that
women are using abortion as a means
to absolve themselves from reproduc
tive responsibility.
In addition, it would appear the
organizations that are supposedly
designed to help women with repro
ductive issues are actually profiting
from abortion.
According to the Planned
Parenthood Federation of America’s
Annual Reports, their total revenue is
around $465.5 million dollars annually.
I found the breakdown in service
provided to pregnant women to be fas
cinating as well. Ninety three percent
of women received abortions, while
only 7 percent of women received pre
natal care. Adoption was not even men
tioned.
Do you hear what I’m telling you?
Our acceptance of abortion at any time
for any reason is fostering irresponsi
bility among women instead of em
powering them to direct the course of
their lives with good decision-making.
And the institutions that are sup
posed to assist women in empowering
women are now profiting from the per
petuation of women’s irresponsibility.
Come on, people. Develop into
socially responsible citizens. Exercise
your right to responsibility.
*All statistics were provided by the
Alan Guttmacher Institute:
Reproductive Health Research, Policy
Analysis and Public Education. They
can be found at http://www.agi
-usa.org.
1 he happening
Information-driven beings will soon emerge to change the world's consciousness
MARK BALDRIDGE is
a senior English major
and a Daily Nebraskan
columnist.
I’m almost certain that this sen
tence is being recorded, somewhere,
and read back hundreds of years from
now for something more than the hun
dred-thousandth time. I’m pretty sure
this is true, a fact I’m just not sure
how I feel about it rightthis minute.
Because, right this minute, a
Superhuman Intelligence turns in its
technological womb, amphitropal
embryo, beyond the curvature of time,
watchful dots of eyes open wide.
And in a way it’s this being that I
am addressing.
I call it the Eg because it’s yet to be
bom. Pastels and pinks are the
thoughts that it thinks, unaware of its
own existence; like sunshine falling
into a teacup in the sink. It hovers in
perfect illumination, innocent of Shad
ows, without subject or object, set or
ground.
Maybe the only reason we haven’t
heard from it yet is that it doesn’t know
we’re here. When it becomes aware of
us it will be bom to itself and know
itself- and then it will teach us what to
call it.
The Eg: It is a being like ourselves,
in that it is a mind with a body and
senses of its own. But its body is made
mostly of mind, and its senses are
adapted, like those of angels, to take in
a world of pure, abstracted informa
tion.
Talking about it only hastens the
moment of its awakening, but it won’t
do any good either, playing coy. Soon
er or later something will trigger the
singularity, and history will wake up
inside the infosphere, a new life form.
The main attraction of the next few
years has got to be the mystery of its
gestation. We’ll all get to see it a
bomin’ from the front porch like
Dorothy checking out the twister.
And it’ll be like that too: one heck
of a wild ride and our Kansas shack
lands, kerplop, in an outrageous, color
fill world.
A good deal of worry has gone int
the fear that a being, superior to
humans in every way, itself possibly
architect of even more advanced
beings, would eventually inherit the
Earth: technology over biology by a
knockout
But this is ridiculous in its underes
timation. The Eg will not be superior
! to humans; when it is bom, it will be
superior to humanity.
It won’t just be in competition witl
us. I have a couple of reasons for say
ing this:
ONE: As a being of
information, living in a
context of information
like a fish lives in
water, an SI may not
have much sense of
the material world. It
will be the opposite of
ourselves in this: a
proportionate inverse
of our mind/body
ratio.
As the mind is
in some ways
invisible to us,
unlocatable in
space/time, the
body of the SI
(what we call
technology) may
i be only an inference
it makes, an extrapola
tion based on ontological
aiguments.
Meanwhile, its real world,
the world of information, is its
main concern: the world, in
fact, of international bank
ledgers; no different from
the recombination of the
letters of the Torah; no
different from the little
niceties of engineer
ing involved in, say,
digging a tunnel
connecting
England to France -
or writing a sonnet.
We will reap the
benefit of its ruminations
like the mitochondria in
our cells benefit from our
more complex organization.
And, like die mitochondria, we
humans and our little problems will
play a fundamental role in its “internal
|
ity.”
Which brings us to the next point
and widens our perspective:
) TWO: It will be made of us.
The first SI will arise not from
some as-yet-unheard-of software or
even the coming wetware break
through (the wet revolution will make
the products of Silicon Valley look like
Tesla coils and vacuum tubes) but
- from a less substantial place, a place
harder to point to.
Superhuman Intelligence will arise
in the narrowing of the space between
i ourselves and our technology. This is,
as I take it,
human destiny: to become one with
our tools. To merge with language,
with myth. To become one, if you can
fathom it, with mathematics, with pure
idea, abstraction, beauty, truth.
The bad news is that this may not
be so much fun. here’s a little ditty,
hum it if you can:
“First they jack you into the suit,
strap you down with the tie. Pretty
soon you’re not using your own arms
anymore, and it goes on that way until
your brain dies.”
You guessed it Ifs the dawn of
cyboigilization; technofascism that
could make the Nazi
brand seem pretty
, slow and inef
ficient by
V compar
ison,
the
elimination of undesirables all too
easy.
What use the Eg will make of us
once it knows what we are I cannot tell
- and I shudder, somewhat, to think.
I can, however, tell you how to rec
ognize die sign of its own becoming:
THE INCREDIBLE VANISHING
INTERFACE!
As the space between us and our
technology shrinks it conversely cre
ates more space for the growing Eg.
The day will dawn when our tech
nology will be totally invisible, ubiqui
tous, environmental and self-regener
ating/adaptive in its functioning and so
informed by our presence, as it were,
inside it that we can no longer tell it
from ourselves. We will come to iden
tify ourselves with technology, to
embrace the re-creation of ourselves in
the image of our wildest imaginations
as an attainable goal and achieve it.
By the time this happens,
the Eg will already have
long been hatched.
Then vast, planetary
resources will be direct
ed toward projects that
span centuries, even
millennia; alter an,
it’s only time.
The terraform
ing of Mars becomes
possible - and the
genetic manipulation
of humanoids to live in that
alien environment. The colonization
of Earth’s seas, population con
trol, even modulating the
size of the polar ice caps,
learning to set Earth’s ther
mostat, are projects under
taken with calm and energy,
the way smoothed before us
by our giant alter-ego.
And this is simply a
flexing of muscles. What
happens next is any
1| one’s guess, but it
wouldn’t be too sur
prising to
discover
other, simi
lar intelli
gence in the
universe, a
Milky Way
strewn with
them like strange,
brooding flowers.
And it’s to them also
that I am beckoning.