What Your $400 Can Buy You

Katha Pollit started a blog at The Nation and her first post is a corker!

Of Groceries, Abortions, and Nice, Classic Handbags

But a practical instance of what true poverty means was waiting for me in my inbox this morning, in the form of an email from Heather Robertson of the Equal Access Fund of Tennessee, which helps poor women pay for their abortions. Heather writes:
"I just received a very desperate plea from a local clinic for funding for a patient that I will be unable to help. Our fund has assisted 5 women this month and after giving this woman $200, we have depleted our funds without completely helping her at all.
…

$800 is also about what the Equal Access Fund has to give out each month to women in need-- money raised dollar by dollar through donations, eBay garage sales and fundraisers. Fortunately, as I've been writing this, Heather e mailed me to say that the $400 this woman still needs has been raised thanks to donations that came in through her e mail. But what about the next woman and the ones after that? $800 doesn't go very far -- it won't even let Gabby accessorize her outfit.

Mental note to self: I promised I would donate to the Equal Access Fund after payday. It’s a good clear example of how your dollars go directly to helping individuals in need.

Anyway in addition to wanting to pass along the gripping post by Katha, I’ve been kind of mixing it up in the comments section with another philosophical debate with anti-abortion people. There’s a small portion of posters who want to espouse the “life-is-life-is-life” belief. It’s all life after conception. I know because I read it in the King James bible crowd.

And I’ve been poking at them. No I can’t tell them their source material is doubtful (please, please, please anyone who wants to argue the Bible is the very word of God read Misquoting Jesus which is a basic primer on where the bible comes from. We all know the Bible wasn’t written in English, right? So whatever the origin, it’s been passed through men’s hands first, right? Which means it might not actually be divine, right? At least not every word. Not every passage.) because you can’t convince someone to change their beliefs from one thread discussion with a stranger. But if you want to argue that “the bible tells me so” then I’m still going to poke at that belief.