Abortion, drugs, and the meaning of life.

For a long time my position of abortion was that of a pro-lifer. I've changed a bit from that now, I suppose I've become less rigid in judging others. I consider myself personally pro-life; I doubt I'll ever have an abortion. But, I've come to realize that if we make abortions illegal, that doesn't do away with the demand. There will be women who want abortions, and doctors (and if it becomes illegal, pseudo-doctors, I'm sure) who are willing to perform them. What happens is that there's no legal recourse if a woman's abortion is botched. Medical tourism to countries who do allow abortion would almost certainly rise. On the flip side, if you don't like abortion and it's legal (as it is now), no one is forcing you to have one. You have a perfect right to call it immoral, protest it, and write negatively about it, but no matter how much you protest or write, there will never be a consensus.

For a long time, my stance about drugs was simple: they were bad. I've changed a bit from that now. For instance, marijuana isn't toxic enough for someone to smoke weed to death, unlike the possibility of smoking cigarettes to death or drinking oneself to death. The substances in it have proven to ease pain and increase appetite, and have been used in painkillers, some specifically prescribed to chemotherapy patients. Is smoking weed directly worse? I'd think not.

I've never smoked, I've never gotten drunk, and I've rarely been in the mere presence of weed. This does not mean I'm somehow morally superior to those that do choose to do so, and I think that if someone wants to go get stoned, they should be able to do so safely and legally. (Well, as long as they're not in the armed forces, but that's covered by an additional code of laws). I think that we should legalize all illegal drugs, regulate the hell out of them, then tax them like we do for cigarettes. We'll give the money to the armed forces. Build an aircraft carrier from that tax money and call it the "Mary Jane." People can have bumper stickers that say "Support our troops, smoke a joint." (I'm easily amused, heh.)

No, we'd never be so outright with where the tax money would be going. I'm sure some people would go out of their way to grow their own in order to not support the troops. And those that would get the really illegal weed, because their moral qualms over wars and the industrial-military complex (whatever the hell that is) would prompt them to specifically not buy the legal and regulated kind, and then we'd have the problem of discerning legal weed from illegal weed.

And the meaning of life? I used to think that if everyone thought and talked like me, only then we could have world peace. I now think that we'd loose so much diversity, it'd be a pretty boring place. I think part of the meaning of life is allowing room for other's opinions, and diversity.