Carly Hamilton Blog Post 5

1. In this story, a man named Gordon Parks was sent to Brazil as a reporter to find a story on an impoverished father and his family. Gordon ended up doing his story on a young boy named Flavio he came across while exploring Catacumba. He was invited into Flavio's home and witnessed how horrible his lifestyle was and how he was basically in charge of taking care of the family, including his many brothers and sisters. Flavio was severely malnourished and overworked and was becoming quite sick because of it. His father was a strict traditional man who expected a lot from Flavio, and Flavio feared him. Gordon and his partner were introduced to these impoverished peoples horrible living conditions and watched hopelessly knowing there was little they could do to help. however, they managed to get Flavio to a doctor after they noticed his extreme coughing attacks happen frequently. The doctor had nothing but bad news for Flavio and his condition but Gordon kept it from him, knowing he was not going to live much longer.

This essay brings out a lot of emotion for me. It's hard to imagine that people actually live this way everyday in some parts of the world, when I'm living in such luxury without even realizing and appreciating it. Gordon kept mentioning how Flavio managed to keep a constant smile on his face no matter how much he was suffering and how bad his condition was. I find it hard to be happy sometimes even with all the things I am blessed with. It seems that those living modestly are always more appreciative of the things they have and even seem to be happier than most rich people. However, I think it's very sad that even after all the hard work Flavio put in to take care of his family, he was still going to die within a year and there's nothing anyone can do to help.

2. To be honest, I think this proposed method of paying women to take birth control is simply unrealistic. The government does not have the money to waste on women who cannot control themselves sexually and are so careless with their own and their children's future. I read an article where State Representative John LaBruzzo proposed an idea to pay poor women $1,000 to have their tubes tied. He stated that women living on welfare and food stamps are more likely to reproduce than women who are financially stable and so he wants to reduce the number of births by poor women. This seems completely unrealistic to me because not many women would even agree to this and where would we get the money? It just seems like an overall bad idea to me. I found an interesting statistic that convinced me that paying women to get their tubes tied is completely unrealistic was the fact that 52% of all abortion in the U.S were committed by women under 25. This proves that having your tubes tied will not solve anything because not many women under 25 are ready to get their tubes tied, they are most likely planning on having kids in the future once they're older and ready to be a parent.

http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html

Waller, Mark. "LaBruzzo considering Plan to Pay Poor Women $1,000 to Have Tubes Tied | - NOLA.com." Nola.com. The Times Picayune, 23 Sept. 2008. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. .