Not to mention that childbirth can be deadly for either party involved on a good day. It's naive to think that every fetus is going to come into the world alive. I have personally known people who aborted a fetus that they desperately wanted because it was essentially non-viable, and not worth the risk to the mother. They later had several other healthy children, who would not have existed had that aborted birth been traumatic enough.

VOIP has more or less reduced phones to the status of email and other internet services. It's amazing that there weren't more trust provisions put in place for verifying phone numbers prior to the shift away from the old phone lines. The militarization of police is bad too, but it's amazing that there was a technology change that removed a point of trust from something as important as the phone system and 911 calls. It's a truly bizarre situation we find ourselves in, and frankly I'd rather we went back to the pre-VOIP days at this point.

The cop flagging racket is the textbook example of what I think of as the brand of corruption endemic to Massachusetts. It's not particularly distructive, but it's an egregious waste of money spent on something that could be better done almost any other way. On one hand, I'd love for it to stop, on the other hand, I'd rather this than what they have in Texas.