Maddening Headlines

So today’s news is full of maddening headlines.

1. Court Takes Birth Control Case: Another challenge to the Affordable Health Care Act. When the Supreme Court takes up a birth control case, it can’t be good, considering the current make-up of the court. In this one, non-profits challenge a requirement that they provide health insurance coverage for contraception. I’m dreading this.
2. Mormons Bar Gay Couples: The Mormon church stiffens its stance against gay people. It will consider them apostates and prevent children of gay couples from joining the church until they’re 18. Wow. Apart from the basic horribleness, what's with the bar against the children? They’re tainted with ‘gayness’? So weird.
3. Governor-Elect Pledges to Take Clerks’ Names Off Kentucky Licenses: The new governor of Kentucky made this a priority. Because that will really help the people of Kentucky. Furthering Kim Davis’ bizarro position that she can use her government job to further her religious views. Worse, he’s pledged to end Kentucky’s health insurance exchange and phase out the expansion of Medicaid coverage. Because it’s a good thing for people to not have health insurance?? I don’t get it. Why should Republicans’ belief that less regulation is a good thing make people sick? He’s playing with people’s lives.

Update

I haven't posted much of anything to this blog in a few years but I'd like to revive it. If you come across this blog, just know that I'm in the process of updating the info in the sidebars, such as blogs I'm following, etc. As of today it's all outdated.

The Horrors of China's One-Child policy

According to the Washington Post:

In 2012, 6.7 million women in China were forced to have abortions under the one-child policy, according to official statistics. Rates in previous decades often topped 10 million a year. As a result, experts say, suicide rates among women in China are significantly higher than among men, in contrast to global norms.

Unimaginable numbers of girls are secretly aborted or killed in infancy every year by parents seeking boys, skewing the sex ratio dramatically.

In the past four decades, hundreds of millions of men and women have been forcibly sterilized or had intrauterine devices inserted, per Chinese family-planning policies.

The vast majority of people are still scared to speak out, but many, including some of the cadres involved in enforcing the policy, say they feel bitter to this day.

Source

This is absolutely horrifying on so many levels. I really wish China could be punished for its innumerable human rights violations instead of, for example, being awarded the Olympics.