Let me use small words. The company for which she worked fior is funded by state money. It describes itself as a child welfare agency, using state funds, federal funds and donations. In other words, it *is* "the state" in a practical sense.

And, as director of the preschool, not teacher, she would be less likely to be front and center with the kids on a daily or hourly basis. This is not an $8/hour babysitting "teacher" position. It is a high level administrative position. There is nothing in the article to suggest Ms Becerril wasn't qualified. Here is a job description for a position in one of the agency's other schools:

Site Director @ Children's Learning Center

Responsibilities:

*Manages day to day operations of learning center.

*Develop and implement a safe, nurturing program designed to enhance the educational, social, artistic, and physical needs of the school age children.

*Ensure that adequate curriculum materials and supplies are available for the daily program activities

Requirements:

*Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education. SAS.

*Two years experience as an administrator or supervisor in an educational or social service setting or three years experience in a social service or teaching capacity may be substituted for the administrative/supervisory experience

For me, the most important part of this story, is the agency's mission statement, and its complete disregard of it in response to their employee. Clearly, by firing Ms Becerril, they weren't concerned about the safety and welfare of her 4 children. They weren't concerned with supporting their family with community assistance. They weren't interested in helping her become self-sufficient. Instead, they left her more imperilled by denying her employment, and perhaps endangering her ability to get employment elsewhere (imagine how tough that job interview when you get to the question "Why did you leave your last job?"). It seems to me, you walk the walk when you have 200 years of talking the talk.

Graham-Windham may have had a good reason not to employ Ms Becerril, but she certainly has grounds for a law suit.

we already have a "dude sheet". It's the comments section of Broadsheet.

the loyal Bushies are accusing the oppoition of cherry-picking information, through semi-nefarious methods, to skew reality in their favor.

Of course, when you're criminally guilty, you often have paranoid fantasies where your enemy is victimizing you with the same crimes you committed.

Freud would have a field day, no?

As reported in "Christian Ethics Today":

"The August, 2000, issue of Archives of General Psychiatry carried the results of a clinical study of nearly 1200 women randomly chosen at three abortion clinics in New York. Over one-third obtained a first-trimester abortion and completed psychological assessments 1 hour before, and 1 hour, 1 month, and 2 years afterward. They were, for the most part, unwed teenagers and young adult women. There were few Hispanics in the group and this was a first abortion for most of them; for some, this was a second or third experience.

The significance of the study is what was found regarding the psychological aftermath of having an abortion. The findings provide research data and thus a firmer foundation for ethical argument than the anecdotal stories so often used as to whether an abortion is psychologically harmful. What the study found was that abortion was not psychologically injurious for the vast majority of women. The overall mental health of these women showed no decline after an abortion.

However, about one-fifth of the women experienced “substantial depression” within the two-year follow-up. Interestingly, the report goes on to note that this rate is comparable to what would be expected in the general population among women ages 15-35, even without having an abortion. Post-traumatic stress disorder, which often appears in victims of rape and sexual abuse, was reported in 1 percent of the women, a rate which is actually lower than that for women in the general population.

Another measure dealt with how the woman felt about her decision. Most women expressed satisfaction and reported no regrets. However, the group reporting dissatisfaction increased over time. After a two year interval, between 16 and 19 percent of women indicated some sense of regret and/or mild depression. Again, that is close to the percentage of women in that age group that would be expected to go through some degree of sadness or depression even without an abortion."

Standard faulty logic: if p is "I had an abortion" and q is "I feel depressed", pro-life activists are incorrectly equating "p and q" with "if p then q".

Good reading on the "Post Abortion Syndrome" activist front is the NY Times magazine article from January 27, 2007. Titled "Is there a Post-Abortion Syndrome?", the article views the topic from the lens of a woman who ges to women's prisons, telling them that all their problems are because they have unresolved (often unknown) guilt about having abortions. Rhonda Arias clearly believes in what she is doing, and this cult-like post-abortion revival may help *her* to heal from her very troubled past, but I think she's delusional, and unwittinhly doing great harm.

somehow, the phrase "Supporters of the amendment are using ..." before "...Standard faulty logic."

Whenever I get an unwanted song stuck in my head, I force myself to play the soundtrack fom "Fiddler on the Roof" in my head. I swear to God, it kicks out the other unwanted ditty before I get to "La Chiam". Perhaps it's a defense mechanism: my brain, not wanting to get a singing, dancing shtettel in my head, shuts down all musical tracks?

(My apologies to those who love the soundtrack. I have nothing against the musical, but I've been a little tramatized since I once heard a recording of the score played by - I kid you not! - a hand bell choir. I was in a restaurant and couldn't leave, an the service was soooo slow. I heard the thing twice through.)