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Abortion is dalai lama Dalai Lama crime in Jamaica. The 1864 Offenses Against Persons Act renders steep penalties for obtaining or attending an abortion. In Jamaica, abortions are only legal in order to save the life of the mother, or to preserve her physical and/or mental health. According to the 1864 Act, abortions are not legal in cases of rape, incest, impairment of the fetus, and especially not simply because the pregnancy is unplanned, unwanted, or inconvenient, however, common law will allow abortion in cases of rape, incest and fetal abnormality even though both the woman and the abortion practitioner can be jailed for the abortion itself. The law on the books and the common application of the law are extremely contradictory. Anyone found guilty of self-inducing an abortion, or assisting someone in getting an abortion may be subject to life in prison. Even with penalties this steep, Jamaican women are risking imprisonment and sometimes even death in order to end an unwanted pregnancy.

The Medical Association of Jamaica reports that, in 2004, the third leading cause of maternal death was abortion and, that, despite the current laws against abortion, it was committed to making sure that all women, who chose to do so, had Dalai Lama to safe and properly performed abortions. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that more than 19 million illegal abortions are performed around the world each year and that those abortions are often performed under conditions that are not sterile and are performed by unlicensed practitioners.

Teen pregnancy rates are at an all time high in Jamaica and, even though teenage girls have been offered the option of the abortion pill, they still continue to seek illegal abortions. By the age of 19, a full 45 percent of Jamaican women have been pregnant. As an added complication, the rate of HIV and AIDS is on the rise in Jamaica due to the number of young women resorting to prostitution in order to pay for an abortion. Women’s groups are currently discussing their own positions on abortion. Most are pro-choice, but others seem reluctant to go public with a firm stance.

In the United States, Roe vs. Wade decided the abortion issue in legal terms. This is not to say that abortion does not remain a heated debate in this country and many others. Ultimately, Jamaica will have to pass a firm law that defines abortion and the access to abortion services for that country’s women. Either way that decision goes will elicit debate and possible violence.

Rebecca J. Stigall is a full-time freelance writer, author, and editor with a background in psychology, education, and sales. She has written extensively in the areas of self-help, relationships, psychology, health, business, finance, real estate, fitness, academics, and much more! Rebecca is a highly sought after ghostwriter with clients worldwide, and offers her services through her website at http://www.forewordcommunications.com/

By now we have heard of Governor Sarah Palin’s invocation of God in order to obtain a natural gas pipeline in Alaska: “God’s will has to be done in getting a 30 billion dollar gas pipe line” for Alaska, “so pray for that.”

And her belief about God’s role in the war in Iraq:

“. . our national leaders are sending them [our soldiers] out on a task that is from God-pray for them-there is a plan and it is God’s plan.”

These comments from a potential Vice President of the United States are of concern from a number of different points of view:

1. The idea that whatever we, citizens and politicians alike, think is in our interest can or must also be in God’s best interest. This suggests that God’s interests are synonymous with ours and all we have to do is pray for this congruence to occur. What we want is what God wants for us-a pipeline and to invade Iraq as we did, or that new house on the block and rising stock prices.

2. There is a deep presumption of knowing the will of God. It seems to me to be the height of arrogance to lay our plans for any foreign or domestic policy initiative at the temple of God, because in some sense this may absolve us of responsibility. If things don’t work out as planned, then we can just say, “It wasn’t God’s will that we reach this particular objective.” If we reach our goals, then we can loudly trumpet, “See I told you so. It was God’s will that the Surge succeed, that violence was reduced, that the Iraqis came together to reach political amity.”

3. You must have a very personal concept of the Almighty to think that He concerns Himself so deeply in human affairs that we can invoke Him to ratify our own approaches to life’s problems. When I was a “born again Christian” my freshman year at Harvard I went to a number of fellowship meetings where some of my classmates would intone, “Well, God willing, I’m going down to the bookstore to get my economics text.” I was always slightly amazed at this-thinking that God cared whether or not you got your required reading done.

4. This, of course, leaves atheists, agnostics and some of the rest of us to rely on ourselves and our best thinking in order to solve problems. It may be that folks like Sarah Palin and President Bush also think we must try very hard to succeed even if we have invoked the blessings of the Almighty. When I was in high school I prayed everyday not for peace in the world, but for good grades. I believed what Norman Vincent Peale had taught in The Power of Positive Thinking-that prayer can move mountains. I invoked God for my own personal success. So I prayed nightly, right after spending four to six hours doing homework.

Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain and many other works of contemplation, noted that “Our discovery of God is, in a way, God’s discovery of us.” (New Seeds of Contemplation)

Prayer is one way of establishing a conversation with God through which He discovers us, not by which we gather all the material pleasures we want unto ourselves.

5. And, finally, the essence of Palin’s claim is that she can determine God’s will, God’s plan for Iraq and for natural gas in Alaska. I’m sure we’d all agree that Iraqis deserve to enjoy all the freedoms we do in this country. But was it God’s plan to invade Iraq with so few troops we couldn’t control the country, couldn’t prevent the insurgency that robbed over 4,000 of our fighting men and women of their precious lives? Robbed so many Iraqis of their lives and millions of Iraqis of their homes.

This is the height of arrogance to claim to divine the will of the Almighty.

But among the most troubling consequences of this marriage of God and foreign policy is where it might take us-to Iran, for example. What if McCain becomes President and thinks the only way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons is to launch an air, missile and limited ground attack? What if, under the influence of his own religious views or those of his VP, he tells us this attack is much better thought out than the one launched against Iraq in 2003 AND, most importantly of all, it has God’s blessing, or it is part of God’s plan?

What this gives any administration is the audacity and arrogance to claim that whoever disagrees is putting interests other than country first. We’ve seen these assertions in McCain’s allegations against Obama. The Illinois Senator has stated his desire to end the war in Iraq and put forces where he, as well as others, believes, they can be more useful-in Afghanistan, in capturing bin Laden.

McCain charged that Obama was seeking votes rather than victory, that he put country second to, as Sarah Palin has phrased it, the desire for votes. This may be tantamount to being unpatriotic, unchristian and treasonous. How can you vote against God’s plan as you divine it?

Hence, the bumper sticker “Country first” as if some of us do not put our country first-always.

All of this emphasis on invoking God in politics is very troubling for someone who considers himself a religious person with a small “r.” I do not go to church regularly, but in my youth, as mentioned above, I had my days with the fundamentalist Christians at Harvard. But, eventually, the emotional zeal withered away as I was simultaneously learning how to fire weapons and command men at sea and perhaps in battle, as part of an NROTC educational program.

So, today my religious concerns focus upon the beautiful mystery of God and His Creation. Again as Thomas Merton noted, “Faith incorporates the unknown into our everyday life in a living, dynamic and actual manner.” How does this work, I wonder.

But I am also a healthy skeptic, wondering what kind of Deity I do believe in-whether the very personal one who cares about my every thought or, at the other extreme, one who set the Big Bang in motion and let all the physical laws of space, time, energy and matter develop as they have, creating stars that became galaxies that merged creating our own Milky Way and some galaxies with super massive black holes deep in the center millions of times as massive as our sun.
This, to me, is the magical mystery tour.

In the last analysis, I wish politicians would be more like Biden, McCain and Obama-keeping their religious beliefs more or less to themselves.

Palin scares me because I do not want another leader like George Bush in the White House who, according to Bob Woodward, failed to seek the advice of his earthly father prior to his pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. He supposedly told Woodward he appealed to a “higher” power or father. The Heavenly Father.

Maybe this invocation told him that whatever plans he made for this invasion, as short-sighted as they were in terms of troop levels would gain the “Mission Accomplished” banner. Perhaps this was why he ignored Secretary of State Colin Powell’s desire for overwhelming force and General Shinseki’s prediction that to control Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops, far more than Rumsfeld and General Franks were willing to commit. He might have thought God’s will was in the Bush, Rumsfeld, Franks plan.

Perhaps, because it was God’s will Bush failed for so long to recognize what Powell did early on-that our invasion had not only rid the world of a butcher, but had also unleashed the very forces of civil war that Brent Scowcroft and Dick Cheney (then Secretary of Defense) had warned against in 1991 as reasons for not going to Baghdad at the end of the First Gulf War.

Many of us believe in God. Many believe in widely different concepts of what the Deity is and can do in our universe and in our lives.

But beware those politicians who claim God is on the side of their own special policy in foreign and domestic affairs. Maybe all we have to do is pray hard-whether for good grades or federal largesse to reach our own private, sometimes very selfish objectives.

Or maybe faith, prayer and belief in God are gifts from the Almighty as ways of establishing a conversation we hope will lead to understanding Him and the mysteries of Creation.

I believe it was Abe Lincoln who cautioned us about God’s being on one side or the other: “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side.”

John Barell
Author, Quest for Antarctica-A Journey of Wonder and Discovery (2007) and Why Are School Buses Always Yellow? (2007)
http://www.morecuriousminds.com
jbarell@nyc.rr.com

John Barell is a national consultant to schools desiring to foster inquiry, critical thinking and authentic assessment in classrooms for all students. He is author most recently of Why Are School Buses Always Yellow? (2008); Surviving Erebus–An Antarctic Adventure (2008); Quest for Antarctica–A Journey of Wonder and Discovery (2007) and “Inquisitive to a Fault”–Preserving American Democracy.

http://www.morecuriousminds.com

I’m going to cut right to the race. The idea of a woman or African-American as president is appealing to me. But if Condolezza Rice was running for president, I’d pass on the best of both worlds. Hilary Clinton’s candidacy represents a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton regime. A hybrid monarchy, rooted in nepotism, that I’d rather not see perpetuate and further tarnish the already scarred history of a nation built on the backs of slaves.

Maybe they should have a law stating that presidents should be picked girl—boy—girl—boy—girl—boy? Or, one year the president should be 11 years old and the next year 65 years old?

Regardless of my day dreaming, Obama stirs a feeling no other candidate has that I remember in my short-time living. I don’t agree with all of Obama’s views and policies; however, I feel a spark of purpose in his life and timeliness. The fact he has exposure living and growing up in parts of the world, other than the United States, makes him a candidate the world can embrace. The potential of Obama to unite people across not only political lines, but religious divide is unmatched by any of our current presidential candidates. His expressed willingness to dialogue, even with some of the most ostracized world leaders, makes him an individual who could bring increased global security that does not rely upon militaries; fostering understanding and mutual respect through dialogue, humbleness and diplomacy.

But Barack Obama is not nearly enough. Inspiring, yes; answer to all of the U.S. and world problems-not so much. A step in the right direction, maybe; but this is about more than just a president.

No president alone will be able to save the drowning waters of the polluted sea. McCain, Clinton, and Obama all represent a two-party system that consistently silences diverse perspectives and limits the capacity of those, who are not democrat or republican, to create change. The two-party system that exists in the U.S. precludes the political voice and will of millions of its citizens. There must be a reason, in addition to apathy, that still over 50% of those eligible to vote in the U.S. never make it to the polls.

None of the candidates are speaking about the demilitarization of the world. About the essential need of our careful disposal of the world nuclear weapons stockpile. None of them have addressed how we shall counteract the institutionalized racism that has allowed the number of people in U.S. prisons to climb and reach over 2.3 million. “A Black boy born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime; about 580,000 Black males are serving sentences in state or federal prison, while fewer than 40,000 Black males earn a bachelor’s degree each year; and in 2004, 2,825 children and teens died from firearms in the U.S.-that’s more than the number of American combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of 2006.” (America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline 2007 Report, Children’s Defense Fund). We are in a civil war right here in the U.S.!

None of the candidates have yet spoken about how we can divert huge global catastrophe by radically shifting energy consumption and consumerism. None of them have addressed how the nation’s schools are systematically fueling violence through outdated and irrelevant teaching methods and curriculum. And I am still waiting for the day I hear a presidential candidate, at the end of a speech say, “God Bless the World!”

Nonetheless, I hope, and on quiet nights pray, that for every Osama there must be an Obama; a counter weight; a balancing of the scales; the love that hate produced. But, more important than Obama, or whoever the next president of the U.S. turns out to be is YOU. Where is your heart? What are you doing? The danger in a magnetic personality such as Barack Obama as president is that masses will tend to diffuse responsibility to him for making the changes in our society that are so sorely needed. Obama will be inheriting a Royal Bush-mess. The people of the U.S., the ones electing him into office, will set him (or any other candidate) up for failure if we do not transform our penchant for materialism and placing American interests ahead of the Earth’s.

Out of the current realistic choices available, I believe making Obama president is a step in the right direction, but it is not nearly enough. We have to step with him and ahead of him. This is much more than stepping to the voting booth and casting your ballot. That’s the simple way out. We can’t live our lives behind curtains anymore; casting votes in private. We have to seriously work everyday to change our communities so that they are healthy, nurturing and positive places for all people, regardless of who the president is.

Most importantly, as recently observed, we need to come together as a species, and unite to aid the millions of people who are being displaced and lost through earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, and disease. As long as governments continue to prioritize funding the building of a bomb over digging someone out who has been buried in a landslide, we are in for a dismal future.

Everyone needs to do something. The president of the U.S. would play a more passive role in society if citizens were actually doing their jobs and looking out for one another. This election is about much more than just a president, it’s about our very hearts and souls.

It is not enough to think, ‘Okay, I’ll do my part and vote this year for who will be our elected representatives.’ Instead, we have to become mindful that we vote everyday, perhaps even with greater impact, by where we spend our money. What we buy and which company is producing it. We vote everyday by the seat we choose to give to the stranger on the bus, walking or riding our bicycle instead of taking our car, or, the child that we spend time with and do, or do not love. We vote everyday… simply by opening our mouths. By fearlessly addressing injustice when confronted by it; by laughing, smiling, and spreading joy to others, even those who have caused us pain.

The true change, is taking responsibility. Not a representative democracy but a direct engagement and transformation of the system that is rooted in our conscious evolution. Because this is bigger than any president… this is bigger than any of us.

Traveling the world-in less than 7 years over 23 countries-sparked a commitment in HAWAH to empower those less materially privileged. In 1999, working as an Americorps community organizer and mentor in Washington DC’s most under-resourced neighborhood, he encouraged youth to explore the roots of oppression. After graduating from American Univ. with a degree in Peace and Educational Philosophy, he was awarded a fellowship with the RFK Foundation to work as a special rep. to the U.N. and the World Conference Against Racism. HAWAH is co-founder/ executive director of One Common Unity, a non-profit org. that nurtures sustainable communities through innovative peace education, arts, and media. For 3 years he directed the Peaceable Schools Program in DC’s largest high school-specifically leading Alternatives to Violence, Positive Stretch, Deep Breathing & Yoga classes. A spoken word poet known as EVERLUTIONARY, HAWAH has authored 3 books: Trails: Trust Before Suspicion (2001), Escape Extinction (2003) and zerONEss (2006). His work can be further explored at http://www.everlutionary.net