Bill of Rights is Like a Christmas Gift from the Founding Fathers

   Bill of Rights Day, marking the anniversary of those precious first 10 amendments to our Constitution, comes each Dec. 15. How appropriate that it should be right in the middle of the month of Christmas, the month of giving, for the Bill of Rights can be viewed as a gift from the Founding Fathers to the citizens.

Should We Make Giving a Child a Drink a Matter of Child Abuse?

   Blame the parent for this one. Blame the parent for the child turning to the bottle. Oh, it is not always the parent who brings the child up to drink. Not at all. But I fear too often it is the case.
   I opened my Deseret News to read, "More than a quarter of Utah children who drank alcohol in the past year say they go it at home with their parents' permission." (Deseret News story titled "Utah campaigns to curb underage drinking" by Dennis Romboy, Friday, December 13, 2013)
   That is a lot. You might worry about the influences bad friends can have, but what of this, the parent is the bad influence? One in four children turn to drinking at their parents behest?
   I turned two pages and found a story of an uncle who got his 10- and 12-year-old nephews so drunk they had to be taken to the hospital.
   It occurs to me, a person who drinks, if that person does not think drinking wrong, is surely going to introduce their children to drink. They may not let their children drink when young, but there comes a day they will introduce their offspring to alcohol. I'm not aware of the laws, but would not be surprised if it is illegal to give children and teenagers alcohol. Is it this, though: Is it considered child abuse? I tend to think it should be. And, with that would come the normal obligations for reporting child abuse when we hear of it. We, the neighbors, would be required to report it.
   I would think the liability of getting caught for introducing your children to alcohol would be a deterrent against doing so. Although I have not had time to give the idea much thought, off the top, it seems like a practical thing to do.

Bring Medical Equipment to the Gym

   Say, let's move some of our medical equipment from the hospital to the gym. I'm a thinking, it will help reform health care. We are still trying to reform health care, aren't we?
   Go to the gym, and get your blood sugar measured. Go to the gym, and get a stress test done on your heart. Go to the gym, and find out what the reading is for the oxygen in your blood.
   They do call it cardio, a lot of that exercising. If you are trying to improve your cardiovascular system, why not monitor it? Whatever equipment can be handled without medical technicians, bring it to the gym. Costs for it will go down, and we will end up more closely monitoring our health.

Marionovich's Conviction Supersedes Roe vs. Wade

   With the Lennox Marionovich conviction, all debate on abortion should have been brought to an end. The prosecution presented such a straight forward argument, it was hard to argue against it.
   It was a short case, didn't last more than two hours. The prosecution first established that Dr. Marionovich had conducted the abortion. That took all of a couple of minutes, as the doctor readily admitted it. What with the laws saying abortion was quite all right, he thought he had no cause to fear.
   The prosecution then did some admitting of its own, admitting that U.S. Supreme Court did, indeed, make abortion legal, what with that Roe vs. Wade decision back in 1973. Then, as the saying goes, things got interesting.
   "Mister Marionovich, Judge Raikeman, and members of the jury: While abortion has been legalized, the taking of a person's life has not. Mister Marionovich, you have not been brought here on charges of abortion, but on a charge of manslaughter, and we have already established that you took the life, if, indeed, there was a life hanging in the balance. In fact, that remains the only question: whether a life was taken. Please remain on the stand, Mister Marionovich. We should like you to serve as our expert witness.
   "Mister Marionovich, are you a medical doctor?"
   "I am."
   "One who is certified by the state to practice medicine?"
   "Yes, I am."
   "And, is it true that early in your career, you were an EMT?"
   "Yes, that I was."
   "Now, Dr. Marionovich, have you ever been present at the moment a patient passed away?"
   "Many, many times."
   "And, Dr. Marionovich, how did you determine the patient was dead?
   The doctor paused a moment, then replied, "He had no heartbeat, and he had quit breathing."
   "Simple as that, then Dr. Marionovich? No heartbeat, and no breathing?"
   "Yes. Those two factors are all it takes to determine the death of a patient."
   "And, if he has a heartbeat and is breathing?
   "Then he is alive."
   "And, the baby?"
   "Excuse me?"
   "The baby, Dr. Marionovich, before it was born, at the time of the abortion."
   "Yes?"
   "Was it breathing? Did it have a heartbeat?
   "It was taking in all the oxygen it needed through the mother. Although that isn't the same process of breathing that we have outside the womb, its purpose is the same. And, yes, the baby had a heartbeat."
   "Well, then, Dr. Marionovich, I think we can rest our case. The rules for what is life have been around quite some time, haven't they? And, they've not changed, have they? If it takes in oxygen, and if it has a heartbeat, well, then, it is alive. The location of the person does not matter. By that, I mean, it doesn't matter if it is inside a womb, or outside.
   "So, then, Dr. Marionovich, a heartbeat, and a breathing-type process, that is all, then? And in all the many times you determined death, did you ever use any other standard?
   The doctor was hanging his head by now. He brought his hands up, cupping them over his face. He did not answer that last question. at first, so the prosecution repeated it.
   "No," came the whispered answer. "No, never. I see now how we must use the same standard. I am sorry I have not seen this clearly before. I'm very sorry for what I have done. I know not what the court would decide. But, if I may, your honor, I would like to change my plea. I would like to plea guilty as charged, guilty of manslaughter."
   The judge honored his request, bringing the first such conviction in the Twenty-first Century. Others quickly followed.
   (Note posted 12/13/13: This blog will probably be rewritten. For the moment, just a note to say it is fiction, per chance anyone might think otherwise. The point made, though, is not fiction. We have always determined life by whether the person breathed and had a heartbeat.)


 

Medical Testing Should be Much Less Expensive, Much More Available

   What if I a heart patient wanted to take a stress test every day, or an EKG? A little too much, you say. Don't they require you to either have something going on -- something bad -- or to wait a given period of time for the check up?
   Yes, they do. Insurance requires it.
   What if you didn't even have heart problem, but just wanted to see how exercising affected your heart. Wouldn't it be great to just drive over to the doctor's office, plug in the machine, and monitor how exercise was affecting you?
   Maybe a guy wants to know how alcohol affect his heart. So, he monitors the stress test and EKG results for three months, then quits drinking, and maintains the same diet and exercise routine for another six months.
   My thought is, once the doctor has purchased the equipment, the expense of using it over and over shouldn't be prohibitive to using it often. Just like with a dishwasher, of course it is going to break down someday, but you don't tell the children they can use it only every other day.
   I say, as long as the patient is willing to pay for the technician's time, and do so without expecting insurance to kick in, he should be allowed to. That's probably already the case. It's just that it is not affordable.
   It should be. I can't see why it shouldn't.
   The technicians could monitor more than one person doing a stress test at a time, cutting the cost of staffing. The EKG? They can be quick enough, that the expense of personnel should not be too great. Call me crazy, but I wonder if we couldn't even allow the people to administer the EKG on themselves.
   Who knows, with patients doing millions of self studies, how much we would learn about what helps and hurts the heart.
   We speak of ways to improve our health system. This too is a way, not just for the studies that could be achieved, but also just to be serving the customer, the patient, better.

The Unborn Satisfies all the Criteria for Being Alive

  Is being alive to be determined by location -- as in, inside the womb or out of it? Is it to be determined by how much clarity of thought we suppose the being possesses? Is it to be determined by whether one is dependent upon another for its life? (In other words, do we say if it cannot live outside the womb, it is not alive?)
   These things do not determine being alive, but rather, those question determine just what they ask for: whether the being is inside the womb or outside of it, whether we think the being has clarity of thought or doesn't, and whether the unborn is reliant for survival by being within the mother's womb. 
   If we are to determine whether the precious little package is alive, we must put it to the tests and standard we do with any other life. Does it have a heartbeat? Does it think any at all? Does it take in oxygen? 
    We know it has a heartbeat, and we know it has brainwaves. That leaves but one question, then. Does it take in oxygen? The answer is, Yes, it does, through the mother. 
   If the unborn satisfies the criteria for being alive, why would we say that it isn't?

What if We Gave Gifts Like This?

  So, what would happen if we gave gifts of love instead of (or along with) material gifts? A beautiful little video on the Mormon Channel got me to wondering this. What if we pledged to do acts of goodness, kindness, and wrote them down on slips of paper and wrapped them up, same as the other presents? When brother Sam opened the little box, the note would say, "This year for Christmas, Sam, I give you the gift of not arguing so much with you anymore. The note for sister Lisa would say, "This year for Christmas, Lisa, I give the gift of cleaning your room every third Saturday."
    Watch the video. You'll love it.
   Gifts of love and service can mean more than monetary gifts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd6d9Qq9Wmk