Texas Sonogram Law: The Road to Unnecessary Heartache

The Texas sonogram law, four words with a huge impact. Although the law is up for appeal right now, should it go through, it could change and effect hundreds of lives. For those of you who don’t yet know about this new law, it states that every woman going in for an abortion must submit to a sonogram before she goes through with it. According to Ricky Perry, "This important bill will ensure that every Texas woman seeking an abortion has all the facts about the life she is carrying and understands the devastating impact of such a life-changing decision."

             What Rick Perry doesn’t talk about is the emotional impact it will have on the woman. For a lot of woman getting an abortion is already a very hard decision and forcing them to hear the heartbeat and see the fetus can be very traumatic. What the lawmakers don’t take into consideration are some of the reasons women get abortions; like rape, incest, teenage pregnancy, disease, and financial hardships. According to the Center for Disease Control in 2007 around 10,500 abortions were performed on teenagers between the ages of  15 and 19, 57% of the abortions were for women who had never had an abortion before, and 80% of the abortions were for unmarried women.

             I’m not one to condone abortion as a form of birth control, because I think if you can bring a baby into this world you should. Yet if you can’t take care of the baby, you were raped, have AIDS, or have a child who tested positive for a life altering disease you should be able to make that VERY personal and hard decision on your own without the government forcing their way into that decision.

            Everyone will tell you there are other options, one major one being adoption. Here’s what you have to consider: In Austin, Texas as of May 2011 there were 1,822 children in foster care (source:TxDFPS), in 2010 statewide there was a total of 29,072 children in foster care with nearly 4,000 of them between the ages of 0 and 2 years old (source:TxDFPS), and in September of 2010 the United States had a total of 408, 425 children in foster care (source:DH&HS, ACF division). So yes, let’s bring more children into this world who can grow up without families, without love, without dependability. That’s a wonderful idea. There are enough children out there that need families that at this point adoption is not necessarily the most viable option.

This sonogram law that they are trying to put into effect is, in my opinion, the governments way of interfering in a woman’s decision to get an abortion. We all know that Texas is mainly a pro-life state and they will do whatever it takes to convince/threaten/scare this women into not getting an abortion. It’s wrong and it’s harmful. Like I said before getting an abortion for most women is already one of the most hardest and traumatic decisions they will ever make, is it really necessary to make it worse?

Classroom Ratios

In the San Antonio Express News Editorial Boards’ article Texas Classroom Ratios Are a Sham, the author writes their opinion on the new school budgets’ effect on classroom sizes. The author seems to be directing the article at the Legislature with the intent of trying to write to them about their mistakes. The author writes about how the politicians involved in the budget making decisions should “recognize that starving the public education system of a growing state is pennywise and pound foolish.” The author also seems to be writing to the parents of children in public school, who might be slightly clueless as to how large the classes have gotten. I feel that one of the intentions of this article is to try and educate parents to the fact that classroom sizes are in fact getting larger. I’m assuming since this article was written by the Editorial Board, that their credibility is legit. The author does reference a colleague and The Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott in their attempt to get through to the audience. He (I say he, to prevent you from reading ‘the author’ every other sentence) writes that school districts in Texas are requesting waivers for larger classroom sizes because of the budget cuts, and The Texas Education Agency is more than happy to grant these waivers because of what they call “financial hardships.” He states that the classroom sizes are growing from a 22-1 ratio to a ratio of 28-1 and that some school districts such as Northside ISD “will have to seek waivers for about one quarter of its classrooms.” Although his article is short and to the point, I do feel that he gets his point across to the audience.

This is one of those articles I agree and disagree with. Yes, I think the budget cuts were stupid (for lack of a better word). I feel that education is the most important thing for anyone to experience. Yet, the Legislature is cutting billions of dollars from Texas’ education system. I believe those cuts could have been made elsewhere. I also believe there is no harm in larger class sizes. When I say larger I mean less than 35, and I believe that teachers should get paid more for teaching these larger classes. I went to a large high school in an fast paced growing town. I would have on average in my core classes (Math, History, English, etc.) 28 other students. Keep in mind that’s the average. There were classes with 30 or more students in them. Yet, I still got a good education and my teachers never failed to teach me something every class period. Would I have had a better education if I had smaller classes? Maybe, but my education didn’t lack because of it.