When Chemists Attack

What’s wrong with education in South Carolina? This article in The State sheds a little light on the subject:

A woman who teaches her children at home could be nominated to lead the state Education Board.

Kristin Maguire of Clemson said she has several commitments from other board members.

While the article makes it clear that it’s not likely that Maguire will actually be elected chair, you might be wondering:

1. Why would you want to make someone who’s given up on South Carolina schools to head a board that’s supposed to oversee those schools?
2. Who put such a person on this board in the first place?

I don’t have an answer for #1. It seems like sheer lunacy to me.

As for #2, Maguire is a gift to the educators of South Carolina from…

Maguire is Gov. Mark Sanford’s representative on the board and her term expires in December 2008.

… our governor – who’s not exactly what you’d call a friend of education.

So who’s Maguire? She’s involved with SC PIE, which I’ve mentioned on this blog before. In short, they’re a group that pushes for abstinence-only sex ed, creationism in the classroom, and vouchers. Such people should never be allowed anywhere near the management offices of a public education system.

As I understand it, one of the arguments that folks who are against the availability of legal abortion is that they value a “culture of life” – the idea that what they consider to be “human” life is sacred and should be protected by society. For example, here’s South Carolina Representative Gresham Barrett (emphasis mine):

Culture of life: Representative Barrett is a firm believer that life begins at conception, and that any attempt to harm or endanger the life of an innocent child, born or unborn, is wrong. He is a co-sponsor of several pieces of legislation supporting life and helped push for the passage of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban signed into law by President Bush.

Here’s a similar statement by one of South Carolina’s Senators – Jim DeMint: (Again, emphasis mine)

The role of government is to ensure that each life, whether young or old, born or unborn, independent or vulnerable, is valued and protected.

The right to life is not something that begins or ends at our time of choosing. Rather, this unalienable right begins at conception and ends at natural death.

You would expect senators and representatives who express the belief that it is the government’s job to ensure that life, as they define it, is valued and protected to vote their conscience. That would mean voting against legal access to abortion and some other birth control techniques.

You would also expect that these same senators and representatives would work very hard to ensure that children, once born, would have access to medical care. Supporting legislation like the expansion of SCHIP, a program to increase the availability of health care to lower-income children, would be a no-brainer for principled people who believes that human life is precious and must be protected. Such people, you would assume, would find it intolerable that our system allows even one child to go without medical care. Right?

Except that both Representative Barrett and Senator DeMint both voted against the SCHIP bill.

Can someone who is more acquainted with the “culture of life” than I am explain why the unborn must be protected, while children who are out of the womb should be allowed to go without health care? It doesn’t make much sense to me