I'm allergic to bandaids. Or more accurately I'm allergic to the adhesive in bandaids. For a long time I thought it was a latex allergy. You hear about those and there are a ton of latex free products out there so you think this is the common thing it must be this. But it's not. It's the adhesive. If I use a bandaid or medical tape on my skin I get an itchy, oozy, raw, wound in the shape of the bandaid.
Basically I make the original problem bigger and much worse.
So anytime I get a cut that needs covered it's a complicated process to protect it. For instance when I grated my knuckle a few weeks ago I had to wrap the finger in gauze, not just place a square of it on the wound but wrap the whole finger tip then wrap that with the cling tape to hold it in place then wrap all of that with medical tape once I had the four or so layers of gauze and cling to protect my skin and I had to make sure that the tape did not go to the edge of the gauze, there has to be a protective edge so the adhesive from the tape doesn't touch my finger even a little bit or yep, itchy, oozy, raw, wound. A medical tech called it a bandage sleeve once. And that's what it is. A bandage sleeve.
It would be much easier to just pull a bandaid from a box and slap it on there. And cheaper. And less of a process afterwards to make sure I have all of the supplies I will need for next time. Gauze, gauze pads, cling wrap, sensitive skin tape, tape. For awhile I could use NewSkin. Which burns like a mother fucker but works really well. Then my Borg allergies were like...oh no...we got this too. And now that's out.
So I'm careful. Or as careful as someone as easily distracted and less than graceful as I am can be. I have Kevlar gloves that I generally wear when cutting things, especially butternut squash. Seriously butternut squash is TOUGH to cut without nicking yourself. And by nicking I mean slicing your fingers to shreds. Thank goodness for Kevlar gloves. And I'm careful because I know that a bandaid isn't really a solution. Even a bandage sleeve. If I can lessen the chances of a cut I lessen the hassle of treating it.
Did you know when we (using the USA we here) last hardened our borders our government knew what they were doing was a bad idea? They understood that adding fencing to certain areas where crossing was easier was not going to stop the crossings it was going to funnel people to the more inhospitable areas of the border. There were studies and reports done showing that people would die in the desert and they still went ahead with the fencing and the hardening of the easy areas because SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE! So it got to be harder to cross the border which led to 1. People just staying in the US instead of crossing back and forth because 2. You were much more likely to die on the trip.
People still came. They just stayed. Or they died trying. It didn't fix the problem. It just made it worse.
The new proposed wall will do the same. It won't stop people from coming. We have armed guards who do not view those crossing as actual human people deserving a baseline respect of human life (see recent news stories) at the border right now and people are still coming. We have horrible facilities where those that are allowed over are jammed in to and people are still coming. We are forcing some of them to stay in tents in Mexico and People. Are. Still. Coming.
Clearly there are bigger issues here. I've talked about it before, we need to figure out why they are coming (hint, the violence and poverty in their countries) and we need to try and stop that flow. Why us? Well because we are responsible for a large part of it. The drugs they are growing and manufacturing is leading to the violence. The drugs that are being shipped north to us. Our demand. We also played around in the politics in Central America for years. We've not helped. Now we need to. We need to see what can be done to make them not want to flee their own countries. Because honestly you know they would want to stay there if it was safe and they could find jobs. Right? Who would walk the thousands of miles, risk their health or life, to come to a country that vocally wants them to leave?
But the Trump administration wants a wall. A BIG BEAUTIFUL WALL. So much so that the president hung a plaque commemorating the first section of HIS wall on a section of repaired fencing authorized by Obama. You can't even make this shit up. And while fighting for his wall he also cut funding to programs in Central America that were designed to help keep people there. The reasoning being that people were still coming. So if the people we are helping aren't enough we won't help anyone That's the message.
Fixing the border issue is complicated. We have a huge backlog of people waiting to have their immigration hearings. Which the Trump administration is changing the rules about who gets in so people who have been waiting for YEARS can now find themselves shuffled to the back of the line, or out of the line all together. It's a mess. But there isn't a quick fix. We need to find the root cause and start there, then we need to clear up the peripheral damage that has been done over years and years of issues. Trump didn't start it, but he is actively making it worse.
Did you know that the best way to prevent abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancy? Seriously. Why are there unwanted pregnancies? Well there is lack of education about birth control. A lot of people don't understand their options. And there is lack of access to birth control. If you have good birth control you have fewer unplanned pregnancies.
Another reason a pregnancy might be unwanted is money. It's expensive to have a child let alone raise one. Better health insurance can help. Also better wages. Lifting people out of poverty would help a lot.
So how can we limit abortions? Well, go back and read those things again. Better education, better access and better wages. Is it easy to get all of those pieces moving? No, not at all. It's not a simple fix. But we can work toward that goal without making the problem bigger than it originally was. Teach our kids about options that are not just abstinence based. If you want to teach your own child that abstinence is your religion, then go ahead, but let the schools teach the full spectrum. And honestly you should as well. You can frame it around "when you are married" if that's your choice, but tell them what they will need to do to prevent a pregnancy.
Insurance coverage for birth control. We had that. Then the religious groups said no, we don't approve of that so you can't have that. Which is what they are doing with abortion as well. We don't approve of abortion and also we don't approve of giving you access to a way of preventing it before you ever would need one. You know, by not getting pregnant in the first place.
Living wages. Raising people out of poverty. Having an unexpected pregnancy when you can afford to add another child to your family is a life change, having one when you can barely afford what you are already dealing with is a potential catastrophe. If you have kids right now that you are already raising and you are on the fine edge of poverty an additional mouth to feed can tip you over. Which means the children you already have are now facing a whole added layer of problems. And the mantra of "don't have kids if you can't afford to feed them" should make you glare at that pro-life poser. Because if they are in that camp they don't care about the lives of these kids, they only care right up until they are born. That is pro-pregnancy, not pro-life.
And making abortion illegal doesn't actually stop abortion. There will be unsafe methods of terminating a pregnancy that will come back around. The home methods, poisons, "accidental" falls, untested internet drugs. The wealthy will be able to afford the fees that doctors here willing to take the risk will charge or just fly to someplace else where it's legal and have it done. So rich women will be fine, poor women will be faced with taking a risk with their health or having a child they don't want and can't get help supporting after it's born. It will just make the problem worse. Not better.
Now there will always be some cases where a pregnancy will be terminated. For a multitude of reasons that aren't any of our business. But one of the saddest things ever is when a parent has to end a very much wanted pregnancy. Making it illegal to do so won't make that better. Forcing a family to continue a pregnancy that is not going to result in a living child? That's just cruel beyond measure in my opinion.
Big problems have complicated solutions and ignoring what the root cause is doesn't help. And putting a patchwork of quick fixes that actually make it worse? That's crazy.
If we want to fix the problem at the border we need to fix the problem before it ever reaches the border.
If we want to reduce the number of abortions we need to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
I'm allergic to bandaids.
We should all be allergic to bandaids.
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