after suffering three miscarriages, minnesota couple alisha and peter arnold have not only found themselves pregnant again, but struggling with whether they are emotionally prepared to have a child. when faced with the decision to either move forward with the pregnancy or abort, they did what every normal couple does...they set up a website, birthornot.com, so america could help them decide! once on the site, visitors could not only vote, but monitor "wiggles'" progress (that's what they call him/her) and see ultrasound pictures. while voting was supposed to be open until dec. 7 (two days before the arnolds could still legally get an abortion in their state), it was abruptly closed yesterday. with the number of votes jumping from 250,000 to over one million in a 30 hour period (including a large swing in opinion shifting from from 81/19 in favor of "give birth" to 42/58 for "have an abortion") the arnolds suspected voter fraud. here are two excerpts from their posts:
"if you think by having a computer auto-vote for us, that it is going to discount the votes of the hundreds of thousands of legitimate votes from real people who actually care in helping us make a decision: you are wrong. rest assured, whatever your opinion on this topic, and whatever you have voted one way or another, your vote is being heard."
"with 2,008,039 votes, we have decided to close the vote. we will be sending them off to a third party report wizard to have them analyzed and have the fraud removed."
the results currently shown on the page are 73.63% for "have an abortion" and 22.37% for "give birth." according to alisha: “we are using [the vote] to help determine our decision, but we will still make the final decision." (at the time of this post, no announcement had been made.)
needless to say, this site has sent many news websites and bloggers into a tizzy. a debate has even begun on whether its premise is legit or, if it's really just a hoax to start a national discussion on abortion? according to the arnolds, "while some see this as a game, we most certainly do not."
my point, and i do have one is...are we really surprised this is what it has come too? everyone seems to not just want, but crave their 15 minutes of fame. in my opinion this has led to the over-sharing of people's lives on public forums like facebook and twitter. go ahead, look at your facebook page and see how many of your friends talk about their relationships, jobs and personal issues.
why do people feel the need to purge every single thought they have and action they take for the masses? i just don't get it. but even those of us, who may not over-share but still condone and encourage it, need to accept some responsibility. while others may have the problem, we are their enablers. which brings us back to our couple who has put the fate of their pregnancy to a national vote, just like on american idol or dancing with the stars.
in my opinion, whether or not to go to term with a pregnancy is a very personal and private matter. while the moral implications can be debated, at the end of the day i think one thing is clear...if this couple needs america to vote on whether they should be parents, children's protective services better be on hand if they have the baby! if not we, america, may be co-parenting this child via votes on their next website. (don't laugh, you know that's coming next.) what's your point?
