No Fetus can Beat Us

In “Denying Women the Right to Live Their own Life, Their way” Erika de los Santos brings up some of the major salient problems with HB 15 (Sonogram Bill). One of her strongest points is that the bill doesn’t actually do anything. “The only affect this would make on abortion is that it could possibly guilt a woman into having a baby they do not desire,” she says. This is one of the most disgusting things about the bill. Its an attempt to somehow save perceived lives by attempting to manipulated the emotions of women attempting to have abortions. Instead of solving a problem, it almost attempts to create a new one.

Her other point is that the bill is authored by a man about women’s issues. “In the end women carry 99% of the burden and thus should be able to make their own decision without being guilted into having an unwanted child.” This makes sense, and it’s a good attack from traditional feminism. The trouble is that it just doesn’t exactly work out that way. The most bitter anti-abortion individuals I know are women. The people that have been lobbing for the bill, going to various legislative offices, or making phone calls have generally been women. (An anecdotal survey at best.) This is why arguing this is just a women’s issue doesn’t work. Mostly women speak out against it as well.

The reason that many people believe that government has a right to step in and regulate what a woman does with her body is because (according to the Pro-Life movement) that isn’t her body. It’s somebody else’s body.

I’m not saying life begins at conception. That’s silly. But we have to recognize at some point between conception and birth there’s a grey and fuzzy line that, once crossed, would seem to suggest that Abortion has serious moral implications. Personally I think that the ground rules laid down by Roe v. Wade are pretty reasonable. Still, in order to argue against the Pro-Life movement we must try and point out that a fetus isn’t a human life, otherwise the argument “Our bodies” doesn't work.

The strongest argument here is the first. It’s that even if you agree that Abortion is wrong, this will do very little.

Something the Anti-Abortion movement should consider? A program to pay for the Child’s expenses throughout his/her life. Free College Tuition. Something. Forcing Sonograms on women just proves they care about as much about the unborn as they claim their opponents do.

Emerging Technology Fund

My Friend,

You might have heard about the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF or TETF) or you might not have. This is an example of a state government program that attempts to do a good thing, but has deep flaws implicit in its very structure.

From the Texas Wide Open for Business Website:

TETF grants are awarded in the following three areas:

• Research Superiority Acquisition -- funds for Texas higher education institutions to recruit the best research talent in the world.
• Commercialization Awards -- funds to help companies take ideas from concept to development to ready for the marketplace.
• Matching Awards -- funds create public-private partnerships which leverage the unique strengths of universities, federal government grant programs, and industry.

All of these goals are good things. We want higher education to recruit the best talent, we want companies to develop new ideas and we want synthesis of universities, the federal government and industry.

The problem comes down to the Commercialization Awards.

See lets first talk about Venture Capitalism. Venture Capitalism is based on the concept of high risk and high rewards. Should a corporation want to gamble with a new technology or an individual want to bring a product to market, they will need some sort of financing. The trouble with start up technologies and business ideas is that most tend to fail and only a few are actually going to succeed. So the ideas that the Commercialization Award supports are going to risky my their very nature.

The second thing we need to talk about is how the awards are granted to these innovating companies. The requests for awards are passed through a “Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization.” These Regional Centers operate as part of the process to review these ventures. In turn they provide the recommendations to the ETF Advisory Committee which makes the final judgment on the awards.

So individuals are determining how the state should finance venture capitalism. This presents 2 problems.
Either:

1. The individuals who are making these decisions don’t have enough experience or knowledge in this field to be making good judgments about the viability of these ideas.
2. The individuals who are making these decisions do know about the risk and rewards enough to put their own resources/someone else’s into these projects. They would stand to profit off these ventures.

The fear then is that the Commercialization Awards side of the Emerging Technology Fund provides a filter whereby the state finances the projects doomed to fail, and savvy individuals on the Committees snap up the viable projects.

There have been attempts to restructure the ETF.

The Emerging Technology Fund is an important idea. Important enough not to waste with this kind of problematic structure.

And… mind you… I haven’t even mentioned David Nance. You can look him up on your own time.