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Right to Reproduce

Is having children a societal right or does it go beyond society and into the realm of sacrosanct individual choice that owes no explanation or responsibility to anyone else?
Do children belong to their parents or to society?

Should the severely mentally disabled be allowed to have children if they cannot afford to pay for their upbringing or even understand what it means to be a parent? Does sexual drive always triumph over intellect?
Should there be a means test before the abject poor are allowed to reproduce? Is it a selfish burden on all of society to bring a child into being if there are no established familial resources to support the child’s well-being?
Should the professionally diagnosed mentally ill be allowed to reproduce?

Or are the psychological problems of the parents only needlessly compounded within the offspring?
If a killer is found guilty of a court of law, should that murderer lose the freedom to reproduce because the irony taking a life only to give a life later is too bitter for society to bear?
Should there be an age limit on having children in order to better promise the unborn child a more responsible and vibrant parent? No one under 21 would be allowed to have children and no one over 40 would be allowed to have children, either.

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A Year Under the Gun

Yesterday, the Jersey Journal reported this in one article:

There were 50 homicides in Hudson County in 2005, the most since 1989. Thirty-nine of those homicides happened in Jersey City — the highest city total since 1982.

Continue reading → A Year Under the Gun

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A Killer Hiding in Plain Sight

My recent report on the Jersey City killing of a family turned yesterday when the alleged killer was arrested three miles away. He slit his wrists the day he murdered his sister and two of her children, and then checked himself into Cabrini Green Medical Center in New York City under an assumed name for a “suicide watch.”

A multi-state manhunt over the last month turned up nothing. I’ve claimed here before the criminal mind is a kind of genius that, if turned around, could inherit strength and goodness into the world but first we have to find a way to stop that mind from murdering through its genius.

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Killings by County

With less than three months before the end of the year, here is an update on killings in Hudson County in New Jersey compared with numbers from Essex County in New Jersey and New York County in New York. All homicide rates are per 100,000: 

Continue reading → Killings by County

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Where Babies Go to Die

The bottom of an air shaft in a West New York, New Jersey apartment building became a 31-foot deep tomb for one baby and nearly a death sentence for a second. Last week the sounds of a newborn crying echoed throughout the West New York apartment building until residents called 911 to get help in discovering the source of the muffled cries.

Continue reading → Where Babies Go to Die