A spanking new building with a neat triangular garden, security intercom (yes, there are zealots in Seattle),...and a most important social/humanitarian function: the prevention of unwanted births.
In this age of George W. Bush and the Religious Right, and still so many unwanted pregnancies which wreak havoc on so many women and their families, I can't think of a more important non-profit organization around.
(One of the first things GWB did a day after he took office was to withhold the U.S. contribution ($35 million annually since 2001) to an international family planning agency because it provided information--NOT advocacy of--on abortion
To see clearly how hypocritical and dishonest GWB is, see, on a related issue, stem cell-research and "the right to life,"
http://www.time.com/ti...).
My mother, in the old days, had two miscarriages between my older brother and myself. After the near-birth of my younger sister in a taxi, my mother put her foot down and said "no more children" and got a hysterectomy (as my father was too afraid of having a vasectomy).
At the time, Providence Hospital in the 50s, being Catholic-run, had refused to give my mother an abortion, and she kept on having all these babies...and had a major nervous breakdown in the process.
Needles to say, there was NO family planning back in those days. And our family was WAY over-stretched financially AND emotionally.
No family ANYWHERE in the world, and certainly in the U.S., should NOT have to suffer in this way in the 21st century. A conservative estimate is that one-third of the pregnancies in the U.S. are unwanted or unplanned ones. Women in the Third World have far too many mouths to feed and no control over the number of births they have once they marry. And an overwhelming number live in abject poverty.
Planning one's family is a basic, inalienable human right. Children should be born out of LOVE (read: choice), not out of biological necessity or religious dictate.
This is true family values: Having the children you want to, and not bringing into the world children you didn't or never wanted-- for THEIR sake as well as your family's.
Considering how much destruction has been wrought by our species, homo sapiens, on the natural world, we owe it to ourselves to be concerned about our ever burgeoning numbers.
"La Chute de l'elephant celeste," on TV-5 (French-language cable) stated how 100 years ago, the population of Thailand was 5.5 million, the number of elephants--once held in reverence by the Thais--is 100,000. Today the population of homo sapiens there is 60 million, and the number of elephants is 2,500 and in decline, with the natural habitat destroyed and the remaining population used as bait for tourists and often get struck and killed by trucks in the cities.
In this age of George W. Bush and the Religious Right, and still so many unwanted pregnancies which wreak havoc on so many women and their families, I can't think of a more important non-profit organization around.
(One of the first things GWB did a day after he took office was to withhold the U.S. contribution ($35 million annually since 2001) to an international family planning agency because it provided information--NOT advocacy of--on abortion
To see clearly how hypocritical and dishonest GWB is, see, on a related issue, stem cell-research and "the right to life,"
http://www.time.com/ti...).
My mother, in the old days, had two miscarriages between my older brother and myself. After the near-birth of my younger sister in a taxi, my mother put her foot down and said "no more children" and got a hysterectomy (as my father was too afraid of having a vasectomy).
At the time, Providence Hospital in the 50s, being Catholic-run, had refused to give my mother an abortion, and she kept on having all these babies...and had a major nervous breakdown in the process.
Needles to say, there was NO family planning back in those days. And our family was WAY over-stretched financially AND emotionally.
No family ANYWHERE in the world, and certainly in the U.S., should NOT have to suffer in this way in the 21st century. A conservative estimate is that one-third of the pregnancies in the U.S. are unwanted or unplanned ones. Women in the Third World have far too many mouths to feed and no control over the number of births they have once they marry. And an overwhelming number live in abject poverty.
Planning one's family is a basic, inalienable human right. Children should be born out of LOVE (read: choice), not out of biological necessity or religious dictate.
This is true family values: Having the children you want to, and not bringing into the world children you didn't or never wanted-- for THEIR sake as well as your family's.
Considering how much destruction has been wrought by our species, homo sapiens, on the natural world, we owe it to ourselves to be concerned about our ever burgeoning numbers.
"La Chute de l'elephant celeste," on TV-5 (French-language cable) stated how 100 years ago, the population of Thailand was 5.5 million, the number of elephants--once held in reverence by the Thais--is 100,000. Today the population of homo sapiens there is 60 million, and the number of elephants is 2,500 and in decline, with the natural habitat destroyed and the remaining population used as bait for tourists and often get struck and killed by trucks in the cities.
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