today’s snowfall suggests i was wrong. yay wabbits!

(in an amazing twist of logic, thomas wrote,

“Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments,” he said. “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.”

which might make some sense if redding actually had concealed anything in her underwear… but she hadn’t. thomas thinks it’s okay to abuse children because of what they might do. nice.)

although it isn’t clear to the layperson (read: me) which procedure was banned, the wp describes this:

Although the Virginia law permits women to choose various abortion procedures, it specifically makes it a crime for doctors to perform a rare midterm abortion that involves partially delivering the fetus before crushing its skull to ease removal.

i haven’t yet had a chance to read the opinion myself, but the post’s coverage indicates that the majority’s opinion essentially reasoned that doctors’ criminal liability for performing this type of procedure is so unlikely that the fact of the criminal liability isn’t enough to invalidate the law.

the entire purpose of the law is to criminalize that abortion procedure. if it’s exceedingly unlikely to fulfill its purpose, the law is unnecessary legal accretion and has no reason to be cluttering up the books. taking the majority’s assertion (as interpreted by the post; as i mentioned, i haven’t yet read the opinion) at face value, if doctors are unlikely to actually face criminal prosecution for performing the procedure, and yet there’s substantial pressure to retain the law, there must be some other reason driving the decision.

hmmm. i wonder what it could be.

abortion opponents are apparently very willing to criminalize doctors’ therapeutic decisions. they seem to ignore the fact that if the doctor is committing a crime, then the woman is an accessory to the crime, and guilty of conspiracy as well. abortion opponents should be honest about their intent, and attempt to hold the woman criminally responsible as well. let’s see how far legislative efforts would go then.

the warning says that

pregnant women, women of childbearing age, nursing women and children under 6 should not eat rockfish or bluefish caught in the Atlantic by amateur fishermen. People not in those groups may eat one meal of rockfish, also called striped bass, from the Atlantic every month, and one meal of bluefish every other month.

note that it only applies to fish caught by amateur fishermen. not to commercially-caught rockfish or blues from the same area. why? well, it’s not because commercially-caught fish are safer. it’s because commercially-caught fish fall under federal jurisdiction.

when i have a spare moment, i’m going to check the feds to see if they’re also warning against eating those fish. it’s not like PCBs discriminate by type of fisherman.

update: a quick search on the fish & wildlife service website yields nothing; the FDA is equally useless. USDA?

first, there are the definitional questions. what did the searcher mean by “worth it”? and – don’t laugh – what did he or she mean by “be”? is this a cost-benefit analysis? a worldview question? is my existence defined by my advanced academic degrees? (the short answer to that one is a resounding “no,” by the way.)

i grew up in a public health household, and the most fulfilling work i’ve ever done has been in that field. i decided to earn an mph for entirely economic reasons, though – the added income from the degree. there was very little offered in the coursework that i either hadn’t already studied, or hadn’t learned at the dinner table or in the field. (obviously this wouldn’t be the case for most people, but i remember looking at maps of central american countries with my father when i was in 7th grade, as he determined the catchment areas of rural health posts. the broad street pump was practically a bedtime story. in fifth grade, i made a presentation to my class on contraceptive methods, much to my language arts teacher’s dismay. imagine explaining vaginal suppositories to your teacher when you’re ten years old…)

the mph was “worth it” in the sense that i completed my coursework while working full time, and saw a satisfying bump in my income. but it didn’t do much to change the way i looked at the world, or analyzed problems. it was really just academic and professional recognition of something i already knew.

the jd on the other hand – now that is a completely different story.

i went to law school – several years after earning my mph – simply because i could. i scored well on the LSATs; international trade law and health law issues were directly pertinent to my work, and unlike public health, it was not something i could learn from my parents or on the job. i never had any interest in practicing law in the courtroom or for a firm. i just wanted the additional analytical tools. and from that perspective, earning the jd was definitely “worth it.” i loved law school. i didn’t have much exposure to the socratic method, but it was thrilling in the classes where the professor used it. hypos were essentially big puzzles to which case law, statutes, and regulations could be applied – fitting the pieces together to determine possible answers. i learned more about the u.s. government than i had before (growing up overseas and having a narrow academic interest in college can stunt one’s civics education), and my appreciation and respect for the rights and responsibilities of individuals grew enormously, challenging my generally-unquestioned collectivist public health mindset. my public health positions have been somewhat altered by my legal education, both reinforcing some beliefs and leading me to question and reject others. i think these are all good things.

i “am” an mph jd in the sense that those letters come after my name on my business cards. i currently work for an organization whose primary focus is the law, and in an issue area that happens to be health (but not public health as its usually construed). when i read the newspaper, i naturally gravitate toward health and law reporting in areas that interest me, and i think i’m more likely to question assumptions i come across than i was before my degrees. but the mph/jd doesn’t define all of me. a quick search through this blog gives a much better picture of who i “am” than five letters on cardstock, or the diplomas gathering dust at the back of my closet.

i’ve found many benefits to having an mph/jd, and given the opportunity, i would likely do it again. one drawback, though, is that i’ve educated myself out of the type of jobs (and beyond the expected income level) that i like – at least for the moment. i’m an analyst at heart. show me a forest, and i’ll start cataloguing the trees and wildlife, and developing theories about pretty much anything i’m asked about. the big picture – the policy decisions, the strategic planning, the long-term outlook – these are things in which i have no particular interest. if i agree with them, i’ll happily work to support them, but i’d rather leave the development to someone else.

so there you go. a more introspective post than i’ve written in some time. and it probably won’t help the person who originally posed the question one bit. because what “worth it” and “be” mean to me may be entirely different than what they mean to him or her.

last spring, i scattered a wildflower mixture that was mostly columbine, with some viola and hollyhock mixed in. none of it did much last year. this year, we have a mini-field of columbine surrounding a newly-acquired fig tree (thanks, mom!). it wasn’t until recently that i realized exactly how odd columbine flowers are.

(i’m not crazy about wordpress’ native gallery maker – many of my photos don’t center on the center of the image – but for the moment highslide doesn’t play nice with the current wp build. and so i suffer. and my meager readership suffers.)

next week’s topic is “protect(ion)”. how can i not put up photos of condoms? (although i doubt i’d be able to come up with anything nearly as good as the photos in hugh rigby’s hardwear: the art of prevention. not that giving you a link does any good – apparently none of the online sellers have a screen shot of the cover.)