First, Do No Harm

You may have heard that a woman in Ireland died after being refused an abortion.

That sentence alone should be enough for some teeth gritting, but the woman did want the baby, she only gave up on it when it became clear that it wasn’t going to come out alive. The fact that the woman was neither Irish nor Catholic didn’t seem to matter to the staff attending to her who claimed that because ‘[Ireland] is a Catholic country’, they could do nothing to help her while the heart of the foetus was still beating.

Four words: First, do no harm.

There is someone there, asking for your help, someone who is alive, and you can’t do anything because a baby you’re almost certain won’t live is clinging to life in a temporary environment? This is beyond a simple abortion issue, this is choosing death over life because of a conviction that shouldn’t apply to this situation.

When the options are: everyone dies, or someone lives; the answer should be pretty damn obvious, and I spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying about the fact that there are people who would refuse to save a life in that situation, based on laws that were written long before this particular facet of that issue could even be specualated about.

Even some of the most stubborn critics of abortion make exceptions in the case of danger to the mother, and no one should be hired in a position where they can make life or death decisions when they cannot choose life due to ideological constraints. Switch them out with someone else if need be, but don’t let them choose whether someone should live or die because they can’t bring themselves to let her live.

Good News/Bad News: Both Sexes to Live Long and Prosper… also One Direction suck

Welcome to this week’s… sorry, I mean last week’s good news/bad news, where I find news stories that both make me grin like a blissful idiot and make me want to shove my face into a wood chipper until my scowl emerges from the other end, bloody, covered in wood chippings and flung into a million little, fleshy pieces.

First, we’ve got some good news, news which may mean that equality is coming in a completely different way than we usually think of it when we talk like that. Unfortunately this doesn’t mean that women are going to be paid the same as men, it doesn’t mean that gays can now marry anywhere and everywhere and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t still policemen out to capture young, black people.

No, as much as all of those things would be nice we’ve got a different flavour of good news and that is that by 2030, thanks to advantages in medicine and healthcare, men may statistically come to live as long as women.

Yeah, that’s right ladies, now we are one step closer to gaining immortality!

Take a long look people of the republic of internet, because this could be awesome.

One of the proposed reasons for where the graph of life expectancy is heading is a drop in the number of male smokers, something which for some of us may be apparent from the people we know, young and old, and for some a source of confusion, as smoking is still the official activity of the young and tenacious.

The bad news here is incredibly different, and while I apologise wholeheartedly for the disparity, the utter unrelatedness, the nonconnecteditude of these two items…

I really hate One Direction, and apparently I should be a little cynical about some of their fans too.

Take a look here and see what I mean.

So as much as I despise gossip stories, I’m reporting this for the sheer extremity of 1D fans’ reactions to some lady on twitter, who just happened to be lip buddies with the ugliest member of the band.

I suppose if nothing else comes of this, at least after the things she’s been called she might no longer know what makes her beautiful anymore, and as we all know, that is the key to attractiveness in the eyes of the musical monstrosity that is One Direction.

Anyway, for some reason, even though the guy’s still under concerns about possibly having a sexually transmitted disease, fans called the woman a ‘fucking bitch’ and a ‘prostitute’.

Perhaps they should calm down and realise that if they threw a brick at their boyfriends’ faces; they’d probably look like Harry from One Direction as well.

Independence < Profit?

Firstly, I know that everyone knows that disney likes to enforce gender roles on its audience and not only am I not the first but I am certain I won’t be the last person to criticise this corporate giant for doing so.

You see at my place of work there are several small disney princess books that describe what your favourite princess likes to do and what makes her life worth living.

Now I’m far from a rampant feminist, in fact in my experience sexism is a card pulled out much too often and I have seen it used in very tenuous circumstances, however, surely kids need to be taught things that will actually help them out in their lives?

As far as I could tell, these books were reminding little girls to get a husband who’s rich and have some cool friends.

Now shouldn’t there be something in there about aspirations and dreams?

Do the futures of children mean nothing to Disney?

Well that’s the whole point really isn’t it, because it had a vested interest in women settling down early so that there are more children to continue the cycle, I’m sure I’m going a little overboard here but it is a little sickening.

And I sort of feel the same way about the toys and accessories aimed at little girls as well, shouldn’t there be free reign to decide what you want to play with?

‘Hey girls, put make up on this glittery horse because otherwise you’re WRONG’

that’s the message and it sucks.

So as much as I would say sexism has lessened in recent years Disney still have a way to go, but I guess at least they’re not anti-semitic anymore.

This image below is not mine and I am not necessarily on the same lines as the message but the interpretation really does drive home something about Disney and their attitudes over the years.