Anne-Marie Pleau's Open Salon Blog

The Reach Out Project

Mon, 6 May 2013 21:05:07 -0400

Death does strange things to a person.

My father passed away right before the 4th of July in 2009. We were never close, but we didn’t have a strained relationship either. Years prior, I realized what our relationship was, and I was fine with that. Yet his death changed me. It came at a time when I was growing apathetic to my faith. It also came at a time when all of the walls I put up around me over the years left me with few people in my life. I had no problem moving on and not keeping in touch; it was easy.

After he died, I went through what my husband Chris and I jokingly called “The Existential Crisis.” It was the first time in my life I really confronted the idea that when we die, That’s It. Prior to my father’s death, the thought would briefly enter my mind in the darkest part of night and I’d quickly push it out. Ain’t nobody got time for that shit. After he died, the idea consumed every “quiet” moment of my life. I’d lie in bed at night and look outside the window, nearly panicking at the prospect of ceasing to exist. I’d think about the science of it all; how my previous view of the afterlife made no sense, but I believed it like a kid believes in Santa Claus. If there was an afterlife, what would it be like, really? Would we just be this floating soul in the breeze, unable to touch velvet, hear Schumann, or watch the sun set ever again? Unable to interact with the world we’re trapped in? It all seemed so dismal to me, and it consumed me for months.

I wanted to fill my mind with other things, so I began doing little 30 day experimentations to challenge myself. One of them was as simple as watching no more than five hours of TV a week (basically, watching the Daily Show and Colbert, plus an hour for Sunday news shows). Another was using no electronics (TV, laptop, phone, etc) from 7:30pm until bedtime.

As I did these experiments, my previous decisions began to look different. I began to see the walls I put up around me as a faulty time capsule. Those imaginary walls were a way for me to act like I could preserve My World, protecting myself and everyone in it. Yeah, that doesn’t work. The walls now looked like a crutch and I began to desire to step out of that time capsule and enjoy the gifts of the Present. From this desire came the most important change in my life: The Reach Out Project.

Despite my social anxiety and natural tendency towards introversion, I decided that every day for 30 days, I was going to reach out to someone in my life. Whether it was emailing or calling an old friend, sending a meaningful message on Facebook to someone I didn’t normally chat with, asking a co-worker out to lunch, or inviting people over to the house, each day I had to do one thing to reach out to someone. See, part of what made those walls was my taking a passive approach to friendship. I assumed people didn’t ask me out to lunch, or didn’t email me because they didn’t like me or just didn’t have room in their life for me. Rather than my typical wallowing in self-pity/self-loathing, believing I was completely unlikeable, I instead gave a good, hearty, “oh what the fuck?”, threw caution to the wind and started reaching out to people.

I emailed, called and invited people to things and I accepted invitations to things – even things I didn’t want to do – with my heart open. Sure, I missed a couple days here and there, and sure, initially I still felt that nervousness and discomfort that accompanies my shyness and insecurity. But I persisted, and gradually I made new close friends and reconnected. I began to see that I had an incredible group of people around me. Inspiring, funny, quirky, caring…the people I allowed into my life lifted me out of my Existential Crisis (which is now in the current and likely permanent state of Existential Conundrum). Through them I realized that a lot of adults take a passive approach to friendship – we feel uncomfortable taking that initial step or we don’t allow ourselves to take the lead in setting things up with people. But someone’s got to do it – why not me? And why not you?

Fast forward a couple of years. This past March, a few of my friends put together a “Girls’ Night Sleepover” as a sendoff to me before I left for California. Girls’ Night was one of my later Reach Out ideas: once a month, invite the ladies in my life to a restaurant for a night of drinks, food and conversation. No boyfriends or husbands allowed (with the one-time exception of my friend Steven, who is the kind of friend you can count on when you need a chaperone and let’s face it – sometimes you do). For Girls’ Night Sleepover, my friend Jennie made a killer butternut squash risotto and we all brought wine and an insane amount of booze and snacks. Before we devoured the risotto, my friends toasted me. In summary, they thanked me for organizing things that brought people together – Girls’ night, Le Nom…and said Chris and I created quite the network of friends in our time in Arizona. I looked around the table and smiled at these wonderful people I was so grateful to have in my life. We proceeded to eat, drink and laugh so hard at each other’s stories our faces hurt. That’s what I live for.

I can point to the moment my Existential Crisis lifted. It was in a dream: I looked outside my bedroom window at night, watching helicopters flying overhead, shining spotlights on the ground in search of a Dangerous Man. I looked over to my pool and my heart stopped – the Dangerous Man was lying on one of my lounge chairs. Rather than retreat, I knew I had to talk to him. I walked through the wall and approached him. As I got closer, I saw that the Dangerous Man was an old man. He looked at me as if he knew what I was going to ask. I asked anyway.

“What happens when we die?”

“I know the answer, but I can’t tell you.”

“They’re looking for you…” I pointed to the helicopters.

“I know.”

We talked about death and the importance of living for the moment. I wasn’t afraid of the Dangerous Man. He got up and looked at the back wall of my property. “It’s time for me to go now.” As he walked towards the wall, I remembered the most important thing I wanted to know.

“Wait! I don’t know if there is a god or not. If I live my life the way I know in my heart I should live it, and it turns out there really is a god, does it matter if I have doubt?”

The man turned around and he was a beautiful young Spanish woman with long dark hair. She laughed as if my question had an obvious answer. “He won’t care.”

She hopped the wall, and I woke up. No, I don’t think it was God speaking to me. That doesn’t matter – what matters is the common sense presented in the dream: be the person you know you should be, surround yourself with goodness, and experience love wherever you can. Nothing else matters beyond that, does it?

Image courtesy of twobee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Depression-Anxiety Club

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 09:07:05 -0400

Welcome to the Depression-Anxiety Club. Here we celebrate the cycle of self-defeating behavior exhibited by all of our members. I know Depression-Anxiety sounds like an oxymoron, but these two problems actually go hand-in-hand. It’s kind of like Professor Xavier and Magneto are having a chess match in your head, except it’s far less awesome. Here is how Depression-Anxiety works:

Step One: Be too depressed to get out of bed.

Step Two: Realize that during extended bed time, you didn’t do That Thing You Were Supposed To Do.

Step Three: Experience extreme stress and shame.

Step Four: Pathetically try to fulfill said duty in a belated, half-assed manner.

Step Five: Feel like an asshole.

Step Six: Go to bed.

Step Seven: Repeat steps one through seven, ad nauseum.

While I am in a much better place in life now, back in the day I was the Grand Poobah of the Depression-Anxiety Club. If we were more productive members of society, we would have designed special fezzes and a secret handshake, but instead, we all stayed in bed and wept. It’s kind of a crappy club in that respect, but at least we kick the freemasons’ asses in membership. Plus? We are open to all genders, races, religions, sexual orientations, and political leanings. The more I talk to people, the more I realize how many members have joined the club at one point or another.

How do we even get to that point? That is way too long for the short attention span of a blog posting. Often, you don’t even really know you’re heading down that road. Life starts to feel a little less enjoyable each day. A couple of bad things might happen – you might go through an ugly break up, you might have a health scare, and you might experience difficulty in an area you are used to breezing through. You might find that you’re disrespecting yourself because the few anchors you counted on are floating away when you need them the most. Sometimes, it’s a chemical imbalance that decides to sprout at the most inopportune of times.

Sometimes, the depression kind of “works” for you. As someone who is an emotionally-driven songwriter, there is this creative “sweet spot” where I’m slightly depressed but not completely depressed. I have extreme difficulty writing music when I’m happy. When I’m in this “sweet spot,” I write decent music and hands-down my best lyrics. I feel like I can make the world rhyme and tell you amazing stories in perfect meter. If I fall too far into the depression, I lose it all, and the keyboard looks like a stranger to me. That caused a 6 years-long writer’s block towards the end of school, and pretty much destroyed me on a music level. So in short, if I tell you, “hey guys, I just wrote a song! :D” It is perfectly acceptable if you respond with, “yay…I guess? : /”

Depression is a very seductive beast – when it starts to tug you down, it feels easier to succumb to it than to fight it. Once you give in, it is difficult to dig your way out. Then the anxiety starts. In a strange way, the anxiety almost saves you – between the constant pushing and pulling between these two forces, you get to a point where you can’t stand yourself. I know what you are wondering – how exactly is that a good thing? For me, the depression was a cozy little do-nothing blanket that made me dead to the world. By itself, it made me slip further and further away from caring about anything. Anxiety made me hate that feeling. Each time I dove into the Depression-Anxiety Club, it was the anxiety that drove me to seek help. I could deal with my heart flat-lining; I couldn’t deal with it racing – how screwed up is that?

I am in a better place now because the anxiety drove me to seek help. I spent years in therapy, although I refused to go on medication because I incorrectly felt like that was a cop out. Don’t make my mistake – if your therapist feels it would help you, consider giving it a shot. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be on pills all your life – in fact, many people are only on them for a short period of time until the worst of the illness has passed. The other piece of the puzzle is you. No one can pull you out of this except for you – you need to make a commitment to yourself and force yourself through it, no matter how hard it may seem. This means you need to recognize the seduction of depression and fight it with everything you have. How do you fight it? When you hear that little voice that says, “I don’t want to hang out with my friends tonight” – call a friend and go out. Yeah, you’ll feel like you’re going through the motions, but it beats isolating yourself, trust me. And you know what? There are people who love you. They really, really love you, and they would be honored if you picked up the phone and confided in them.

And don’t forget, you’ve got the Club. No matter where we are in life, this is a lifetime membership, and no matter who you are or where you are, we are all right here with you.

Beautiful America: A Road Trip for Independence Day

Mon, 2 Jul 2012 13:07:34 -0400

On this fourth of July week, I look out at a blue sky with cotton-like cumulus clouds floating over the Rockies - the majestic range of purple mountains we sing about this time of year in praise of the beautiful country we live in. We arrived here after taking a road trip up from Phoenix to the Vail Valley. I can’t think of a better way to spend this holiday than by experiencing 800 miles of the American Southwest by car.

We left the sweltering heat of Phoenix and headed up the I-17, a route familiar to many Phoenicians who escape the heat by traveling to the cooler, smaller town of Flagstaff, Arizona. As anyone in the southwest will tell you, the government’s definition of “forest” is a loose one when you see the national forest signs and nothing but two foot tall brush as far as the eye can see. On this trip between the two cities, you experience the change of climates and see the forests truly develop - the brush become bushes, the bushes become six foot tall trees, and the trees become enormous pine trees, greeting you as you enter the mountain community of Flagstaff.

We headed east on the I-40 to pick up the US-89, driving past dormant and extinct volcanos that make up much of northern Arizona. One of the areas we drove past is a favorite destination of ours - Sunset Crater National Park. At Sunset Crater, you still see the black lava from an eruption that took place less than 1000 years ago, along with the forest life that found a way to grow beyond its ashes. Next to Sunset Crater, you also have Wupatki National Monument - ruins of a civilization who thrived after the eruption, thanks to fertile soil created from volcanic ash. When my parents saw this area a few years ago, my father commented that it goes to show that specific things die and species become extinct, but Mother Nature always has a greater plan, and there’s nothing we can do that will get in her way.

Past Flagstaff and just past the easternmost part of Grand Canyon National Park, we hopped onto the US-160, which takes you into deep into the Navajo Nation. In a few days we will celebrate our freedom and independence, yet the history of this land serves as a reminder of how easily it can be to move from the oppressed to the oppressor. By the mid-to-late 1800s, the U.S. Government and the Navajos had ongoing problems with raids, violence and violated treaties. The U.S. rounded up the Navajos and placed them in an internment camp with other tribes - 10,000 people living in an inhospitable area that was only 10 square miles. Food was in short supply, the water wasn’t clean, and disease ravaged the camp. Eventually, the U.S. established a larger boundary for reservation land, giving the Navajos back a lot of the land they were taken from, and those who survived were allowed to return home.

I know this time of year we don’t want to talk about our country’s historic failures such as this, but I think we need to - what makes America great is that it is in the hands of the people. No matter how badly Texas lawmakers don't want you to think critically, it is human nature to do so, and the success of this country lies in our ability to think for ourselves and to take a stand when we see oppression. If you are on the left or the right, that previous sentence has got you thinking of two completely different things. That’s fine, I suppose, but as we watch the fireworks, as we sing “Yankee Doodle,” let us remind ourselves of the founding fathers and the revolutionaries who died not for our complacency, but for our activism. They fought for the belief in a government for the people and by the people. Not for and by the 1%, corporations or lobbyists, and not so we can passively elect political party caricatures to represent the signer of their largest campaign check. As I drove through land that tells a tale of a darker American history, I’m reminded we cannot afford to sit idly by when a government supports fear mongering and inhumanity. As all of history has shown, one thing always leads to another, and complacency will ultimately lead to an inhumanity comparable to the Long Walk of the Navajo.

History is a combination of triumph and loss, hope and despair. This road trip through history is no exception, as evidenced by the wonderful national parks we encounter.

Author Wallace Stegner once wrote, “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” Following this road trip from Phoenix to Colorado, you encounter some of the most exceptional national parks in the country. In addition to Sunset Crater and Wapatki, you’re reasonably close to the eastern end of the Grand Canyon, and aren’t too far of a drive from the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. After driving through Navajo Nation and onto the 191, you end up in Moab - a quintessentially charming Utah town once famous for its uranium mining back in the Cold War days. Moab serves as a gateway to two other great national parks, Canyonlands and Arches. These parks represent the love and respect we have for our land. As we drove past deep red rock formations and copper-rich green mountains, I felt grateful for living in a country with such a variety of beauty within its borders. Our geology is as diverse as our people, and we are inherently lucky for both.

The Colorado wildfires remained on our minds through the trip. We took a brief detour around the Four Corners to go into southern Colorado, and the hazy air and smoke plumes were heartbreaking to see - it really seemed as if the entire state was on fire. As Arizonans, we are all too familiar with the danger and devastation of wildfires - to date, Arizona has lost land greater than the size of Connecticut to wildfires. Even considering that, what is happening in Colorado is like nothing we have ever seen. Our hearts go out to the communities affected by these fires, and we hope for fast containment as well as the safety of the firefighters.

Driving past Grand Junction on the I-70 gave us a remarkable view of the Pine Ridge Fire, a fire believed to be caused by a discarded cigarette. As we drove east on the 70, we saw white and black plumes fill the sky. Freeway signs warned that the fire was nearby, but we were not in danger by any means. As we headed into De Beque Canyon, we were surprised to see exactly how close we were to the outer edge of the fire - you could clearly see the flames from the freeway, small pockets of them, gradually cascading down the steep slopes of the mountain. We spotted two helicopters doing remarkable work to fight this fire. The pilots would lower the chopper down to the Colorado River, which separates the mountain from the freeway, to the point the chopper would be level with the cars on the freeway. They would scoop up water from the river, then carry it over to the fire line, piloting perilously close to the edge of the mountain to attempt to aim the giant bucket of water to fight the flames. These choppers were doing this over and over, for who knows how long. Just imagine - these pilots are putting their lives at risk because someone mindlessly threw a cigarette out of a car. This is a typical story for wildfires - it seems when they are not caused by arson, they are caused by self-centeredness; a discarded cigarette, a campfire improperly extinguished... the beautiful America we sing about is taken for granted far too often.

Now that we are at our destination for our fourth of July, I am glad we decided to trek through the hauntings of our history and our present to get here. Like all history, the history in this region is one of beauty and ugliness, greatness and shame. We must accept it all and embrace the spirit of those before us who took a stand for better life and better government. We must continue to show commitment to preserve the beauty of our land, live consciously rather than mindlessly, and speak loudly when the voices of others have been muted.

In other words, as we celebrate this fourth of July, let’s all be great Americans.

The Fine Line Between Self-Defense and Manslaughter

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:04:38 -0400

A little more than three months prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, police in Scottsdale, Arizona faced their own challenge with their state’s “Stand Your Ground” law.

On the evening of November 10, 2011, criminal defense attorney David Appleton headed home after having dinner with friends at a restaurant. As he approached the intersection where he would turn left, he noticed the hard arrow was about to change so he sped up to try and make the light. A Honda Ridgeline was in the way, preventing him from doing so.

Upset, Appleton and the driver of the Ridgeline, Tom Pearson, yelled at each other while their light remained red. When the light changed, Pearson pursued Appleton for about a mile. Appleton opted to not call 911 - something he had done in all four of his prior road rage incidents documented with police. Instead, for reasons known only to him, he pulled into an unlit parking lot behind a CVS. Pearson pulled up 28 feet behind Appleton’s FJ Cruiser and approached his vehicle. Pearson carried only a cell phone which he held to his ear as he approached the vehicle, speaking to a cousin of his from his home state of Wyoming. He told his cousin that a driver who tried to run a red light was angry with him, and he was approaching the vehicle. The cousin heard the two men shout at each other, heard Pearson shout “Don’t shoot that gun!” but heard nothing else. The line went silent.

Shortly after that moment, 911 dispatch received a call from an agitated Appleton. With a shaky voice, he stated “I’ve been attacked. I had to use my weapon, please get here fast...hurry, hurry, hurry!” He told the dispatcher a person choked him and he shot him in the chest. After being instructed to put pressure on Pearson’s wound while waiting for the paramedics, Appleton breathed rapidly into the phone and asked, “why’d you do this? God damn it!” Police and paramedics arrived to find Pearson lying partially on the curb near Appleton’s car. Tom Pearson, husband and father of 3 teenage daughters, was pronounced dead at 8:01 p.m. that night. The crime scene specialist noted that Appleton had a broken nail on his pinky, red marks on his neck, but showed no other evidence of being attacked.

These are the only facts that have been corroborated thus far in the case.

In questioning, Appleton stated Pearson reached into the FJ Cruiser and grabbed Appleton’s wrist. Appleton broke free, and stated Pearson began to choke him to the point he almost lost consciousness. Appleton brandished his gun, and Pearson told him to not shoot while still choking him. Appleton then said he shot him. When asked why he didn’t drive away when he had the chance, or why he didn’t call 911 prior to the incident, as he had done with his other encounters, Appleton had no answer.

The police charged Appleton with second-degree murder, only to release him 10 days later at the instruction of the Maricopa County Attorney’s office. Appleton could be charged with the crime at a later time, but the police needed to build a better case to be able to do so.

Unless the police can gather adequate evidence, David Appleton is protected under Arizona’s “Castle Doctrine,” another term for the “Stand Your Ground” law. Signed into law in 2006 by then-governor Janet Napolitano, the law states that a person “is justified in using physical force or deadly physical force against another person” if they believe they are in imminent peril, and the incident takes place in the person’s residence or motor vehicle. Based on the information laid out above, it is clear that Pearson instigated or at least exacerbated the incident by approaching a vehicle, but at what point is an act no longer considered self-defense? And should the shooter’s prior history be taken into consideration when assessing the incident? These two questions are not clearly defined in the law, yet are two major questions in this particular case.

It is with little doubt if someone is strangling you and you shoot them, it is self-defense; but what if you had the following options prior to this moment: drive into a well-lit and populated area, or call the police? And what if you took neither of those options and elected to drive behind a closed store in an unlit parking lot where no one could witness what was happening? And when you remained in your car and had the option to drive away as he approached the vehicle or at any point thereafter, you elected to not drive away and shoot the person? Does this law mean you aren’t held accountable for ignoring any of the alternate choices presented to you?

In regards to history, should Appleton’s past be considered when looking at this case? Prior to the shooting, he was involved in 4 other road rage incidents where police were contacted. Two of those incidents were in 2011 and police determined that he was the aggressor in both. In one of the cases, he told a 911 dispatcher that he was going to display his weapon to the other driver after the driver blocked him in a construction zone. The dispatcher instructed him not to, and any altercation was avoided. He also has a history of traffic violations on his record - including numerous speeding violations, driving without insurance, and driving in the HOV lane illegally.

The only thing that is 100% clear in this case is two drivers made a series of bad decisions that lead to the death of a husband, father and friend. Regardless of Appleton’s history, he did not make Pearson follow him into the parking lot, nor did he make Pearson approach his vehicle. Does that justify Pearson’s death in any way? Not at all. Two people argued over missing a traffic light, one of them was armed, and every decision made after the arrow turned red led to a senseless, avoidable death in an unlit parking lot. This is what can happen when two people feel they are in their right to stand their ground.

Sources:

http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/2012/04/28/20120428self-defense-fatal-shooting-case.html

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/11/david_appleton_--_scottsdale_d.php

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_northeast_valley/scottsdale/friends-say-scottsdale-father-wrongly-killed-in-road-rage-incident

http://www.azcentral.com/video/1602291284001

http://www.azleg.gov//FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/47leg/2r/bills/sb1145h.htm&Session_ID=83

Image: vichie81 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

AZ HB2036: When Republican isn’t Conservative

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:04:34 -0400

As part of evangelical politics’ extinction burst, we are witnessing a bizarre war on women in this country. My home state of Arizona, in an attempt to retain its Heavyweight Champion Belt in Yosemite Sam-ism, recently took the lead in this war by introducing overreaching, extremist legislation that would make Barry Goldwater turn in his grave. I’m assuming that a few of the elected cockroaches in the state capitol building realized that their lives were still incredibly shitty after driving out all the “illegal Mexicans”, and decided to make women number two on their Shit List. It couldn’t possibly be because they are horrible people who make horrible decisions, could it? Never! It’s got to be the Mexicans and the bitches.

While I gave Governor Jan Brewer a polite golf-clap for suggesting Debbie Lesko’s anti-birth control bill appeared to be a gross invasion of privacy, I take back any and all praise when she signed the other oppressive, anti-woman bill, HB 2036 into law. While sites like Mother Jones have done a decent job of covering the part of the bill making abortions after 20 weeks illegal, there are a number of disturbing points within the law's 27 pages of requirements that aren’t getting a whole lot of attention. For example:

- A provider must provide the patient with the gestational age of the fetus and list the risks associated with abortions. Sounds simple enough if not a bit redundant, right? The state takes it 900 steps too far by overriding actual medical science and requiring a doctor to use their definition of gestational age and disregard the true age of the fetus when it can be more accurately determined. A provider cannot list the risks of the procedure based off of fact-based science. No, the state tells the provider specifically what to tell the patient, because some representative read a couple of articles, and surely that gives them more knowledge than the person who spent years and years of schooling and continuing education on the matter.

- The provider must tell the patient in person that “medical assistance benefits may be available for prenatal care, child birth and neonatal care,” the father of the child is liable to assist in child support, and there are public and private agencies to help the woman if she chooses to not have an abortion. Because discussing what the state might do for you is the responsibility of a doctor. Oh, and these state “benefits” aren’t exactly “available.” More on that later.

- The state requires the provider must offer to describe the state-mandated ultrasound in detail to the patient, and mandates what physical features the provider is required to describe to the patient on the ultrasound.

- The patient must have a 24-hour “reflection period” between seeing the abortion provider and going back for the abortion, because the state is assuming you horrible ladies are incapable of considering the ramifications of this procedure and need to be put in a time out. Since many abortion providers were driven out of the state on prior laws, this 24 hour period is also designed to create another hurdle for disadvantaged women in rural areas, since they'll have to travel quite a distance for the procedure, pay for a hotel room they can't afford, and take time off from a job they can't lose.

- Non-pregnant taxpayer/voter? You think you’re off the hook? No, the state is using your taxpayer dollars to maintain a website that “describes the unborn child” to the woman. This description must show and describe fetal development, and must include all of the same items the doctor is required to tell the patient. Despite the fact that this information is already one easy Google click or library visit away, we are putting a few people on our cash-strapped government payroll to do this. Oh, and the web site must be “objective, nonjudgmental and designed to convey only accurate information about the unborn child at the various gestational ages.” Remember, the doctor has to use a state-defined version of “gestational age,” not the objective, non-judgmental accurate version. Because you're using two different definitions, doesn’t that cause a misrepresentation of fetal development by 2-3 weeks? I see what you did there, Arizona. Clever, clever...

If the provider doesn’t do everything as strictly defined in this law, he or she can lose their license and be sued by a host of people. So let me get this straight, Arizona Republican Legislature:

- Your party’s platform is supposed to be for tort and malpractice reform, but you just wrote a law making it easier for an OB-GYN to get sued. This causes malpractice insurance to go up in our state, and will drive specialized care out of Arizona - a state that is already desperate for specialized care in rural areas. Good job.

- Another aspect of your party's "limited government" platform is to not create redundant laws. While many of the provisions of this law are being touted as protecting a women's health, every aspect that protects the woman's health in this bill (the quality of the clinic, informing the patient of medical risks, etc.) is already covered in other laws as well as in medical licensing standards.

- You strip taxpayer dollars from services that can actually help Arizonans (again, more on that later), but you just mandated that the state pay for some stupid web site that provides information that can be found elsewhere without costing taxpayers a dime.

- Your party claims they don’t want to legislate people’s lives, and well...here we are, yet again.

Way to be a conservative. So let’s talk about the word “Pro-Life.” What does that word mean to you? Because I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

As I mentioned above, the new law wants healthcare providers to talk about the services the state “may offer” to moms. The key word in there is “may,” because here’s the colossal fail that that resides in “may”:

- In 2011 Arizona cut services for children with developmental delays and froze health insurance for the poor. Because of these cuts, 85,000 children were on the waiting list for KidsCare.

- Thanks to our poorly funded health programs, Arizona is currently ranked 47th out of 51 in the country for children who are insured, 44th for parents who are insured, 40th for children who have had a preventative medical visit in the past year, 45th for children with preventative dental visits, dead last for children with special health care needs in need of referrals, and 40th for children who are at a moderate to high risk for developmental or behavioral delays.

So we’ve established that Arizona pretty much sucks at providing adequate health care to these babies they want to save. How else does Arizona protect its children? Haha, good one. Yet again, needed services were cut from the state’s budget because we're so goshdurn conservative, and yet again, CPS remained grossly underfunded. We expect master’s level counselors with a mountain of student loan debt to accept a nearly unlivable wage, be responsible for more kids in one month than most people will know in their lifetime, fight the red tape war every day, only to get persecuted by state politicians when a kid dies. Sign me up! Representatives actually have the gall to go on our local news and state that they “don’t want to throw money at the problem.” You say throwing money at a problem; I call it FUNDING A NEEDED SERVICE. To-may-to, To-mah-to, I guess? A recent report showed the fruits of our non-labor, non-money-throwing actions and the results were damning:

- CPS currently has a backlog of 8400 cases, with cases dating back to last summer that still have not been investigated

- We have 11,535 children in state custody

- There is a 20% increase in neglect reports

- There is a 10% increase in the number of kids entering foster care, yet the number of foster homes continue to decline, meaning there are children waiting longer in group homes and crisis shelters.

We’ve got kids suffering and dying thanks to the state’s lack of funding and care, yet these same people are claiming they want to save a few fetuses...for what, exactly? So you can let these fetuses become babies and give them the chance to experience the joys of behavioral and developmental problems, or for you to kill them slowly through your profound apathy and class warfare against the poor? So you can stand behind their mother in the supermarket line - the mother you coerced into having a child - and judge her when she uses her food stamp card? So you can then cut food stamps funding to put your shaming on paper? So you can feel better about yourself in your Paradise Valley McMansion, because you showed that woman - God blessed you and damned her. How dare she expect the state to help her after the state promised there’d be services available? How dare she take a penny from you to try and feed that child or take her baby to the doctor for a checkup. Doesn’t she know you have valets to tip?

She should have been abstinent. Oh that’s right, we’ve learned that doesn’t really work. She should have just practiced safe sex. That’s what someone said in sex ed. Oh, that’s right, you made Arizona's abstinence-focused sex ed optional. You also have laws pending preventing her right to receive birth control. She should put her child up for adoption…and let those kids in foster care, group homes and crisis shelters wait even longer for a place to go? And for you to slut-shame her when you find out she's *gasp* an unmarried woman? Or *confused gasp* is married and doesn't want to keep her child? Well, she could just go and get an abor...

Oh. Oops...