Oklahoma Nesties
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: UO Thursday
I have been staying out of this whole thread because I have no energy to get into it today, but I just have to say - I
you, Wendy.
For serious.
I want to know why People magazine wants me to feel bad for this piece of trash. Because, um... I don't.
Lol. I think this speaks for itself.
I'm always pro choice (though not always pro-choice for myself), always anti death penalty. I know that no ones minds are ever actually changed in conversations like this but it was interesting to read, this thread, though! Thanks Wendy and Okla and Pretty for saying pretty much what I would have said in terms of the logical part of the arguments. Of course, differential sentencing rates for minorities (especially those who kill whites and ESPECIALLY for black men who kill white women) are absolutely still a social fact in 2011 just they were in 1944. They just are.
But, here, I'm trying to parse some of my emotions out. And, yes, I know---they're not necessarily logically consistent. That's why they're emotional.
Maybe a small part of being anti-death penalty comes down to who I want to be. I feel like I'd lose some of who I want to see myself as if I lobbied for killing another human being (be they Charles Manson or my DH's relative who murdered his wife and child.) To a lesser extent, it gives me the same kind of yucky feeling I get when I see people cheering on a street fight or whohooing because "we" killed a bunch of "them" in whatever war we're involved in, or getting SOOO into a sporting event that they're yelling "Kill him, Kill him!" and are only half exaggerating. We have a culture of violence that I don't want to add to.
The second emotional element for me is that, yes, I believe that some people are "born bad." That is, for whatever reason, their brains lack the ability to feel any empathy. Lock them up for life, sure, but kill them for something out of their control? Nope. Can't do it. Others are "made bad" by whatever shitty circumstances they've endured. Still others are good people who commit crimes of passion as their first violent act ever (yet, interestingly, these people who "know better" are often least likely to get the death penalty.) In my line of work, I've had the opportunity to see a lot of people who made a lot of truly horrible choices find a way to turn their lives around and contribute some good to the world---even if that means from safely inside a prison cell for the rest of their lives. I'm sure that's colored my viewpoints as well.
Ha! Look above--I just edited.
I actually WOULD argue strongly for gay marriage because I have been able to change minds on that. The abortion and death penalty conversations always seem much less productive.
I don't get why they wouldn't just give it up for adoption. You had the baby.....turn it over to DHS. It's not that hard.
I don't think any of us are in a position to speculate how hard or not hard it is to give up a child for adoption after carrying it for 9 months and giving birth (and again, those same societal pressures to keep the baby exist). Are you 100% sure it's not that hard?
Never mind---I misunderstood your comment.
I disagree. Someone who could do that to a baby sounds entirely too selfish to think about anybody but herself, whereas adoption is about putting the welfare of the child first instead of her own. Going through the adoption process would be too much work for her, between the first thinking of the idea, then meeting with agency officials, and signing paperwork.
I agree with you entirely, except substitute "mentally ill" for "selfish."
I guess this is my UO, because there are options other than abortion...like putting your child up for adoption, or if you don't want kids in the first place, getting your tubes tied. In Oklahoma, Medicaid will even PAY for you to get your tubes tied. The heartbeat is there 18 days after conception, and I'm pretty sure a majority of abortions are executed after that point. I don't think the baby should've been "washing machined to death" but she could've given her baby up at the hospital or in the 10 days that followed.
I think that DHS failed. Nine complaints were made against her, and DHS left the baby with her b/c mental illness & drug abuse combined were not a good enough reason to remove the baby.
And there's my UO for the day...