Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
You know, I get tired of these kinds of arguments. "She didn't have any chance!" "It's not his fault that drugs are his only way out!" "They never got a break!"

I honestly don't care! It's not my fault they're in the situation they are in. I didn't force their parents to breed like rabbits when they didn't have two nickles to rub together. I don't trash the schools they attend, or the apartments they're living in. So why should I have to pay for their problems? I have my own problems to deal with.
After my mother passed away, I at age 16 was forced to care for my sisters, both younger than I, and my elderly grandmother, very sick with cancer. I couldn't go and get a job, because I needed to go to school - to better myself, to eventually get a university education and be able to support my family properly in the future. Thank god for Australia's bungled medicare system, which paid for my grandma's cancer treatments and the treatment my mother recieved before she died. Our PBS system ensured, through $5 for 3 months of birth control, that there would be no additions to our already struggling family.

If I had lived in the grand ole US of A, I wouldn't be at uni right now. My grandma would have been dead 12 years ago, the first time she was diagnosed with cancer. My mother, who had been chronically ill for the last 8 years of her life, would also have passed away much earlier. I would never be able to afford healthcare because to pay for what I needed at the time to support my family, I would have needed to leave school and find a job. So I would have found menial work, which never would have given me any opportunity for any actual advancement, leaving me forever stuck at the bottom rungs of the society.

Americas healthcare and welfare system systematically destroy lives. Through the denial of fundamental human needs like healthcare or adequate welfare for those in need, America pushes people further down when they need help the most.

My life would be fucked if what had happened here had happened in America... To me, it would not be worth living.