Which state is the best state in the union? For me, it comes down to Florida and Tennessee. Florida has a great legislature, and the best governor in the USA. Tennessee has a great legislature, and an above average governor. If you’re a taxpayer in one of these states, you’ve chosen wisely. You’re getting good value for your taxes. Let’s take a look at the latest win from the great state of Tennessee.

Life Site News reports: (H/T Sandra)

On Tuesday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed the ‘Baby Olivia Act’ into law, requiring public schools to show school children a “high-quality, computer-generated animation or high-definition ultrasound” of unborn babies developing in the womb.

The law cites Live Action’s computer-animated “Baby Olivia” video depicting fertilization and fetal development from conception as an example of an animation that would meet the law’s requirements, which include the depiction of “the development of the brain, heart, and other vital organs in early fetal development.”

[…]Live Action has verified that the video accurately depicts fetal development, citing the review and certification of “leading OBGYNs and medical professionals” including Dr. David Bolender, who has a PhD in Cell Biology, Neurobiology & Anatomy, and Michelle Cretella, MD, Executive Director of the American College of Pediatricians. The information in the video was derived from the Endowment for Human Development, a bioethics nonprofit.

There are 1 million students in Tennessee public schools, and now, they’ll be making decisions about sex based on evidence.

The bill’s sponsor is Gino Bulso, a Republican who represents Brentwood, a wealthy and prestigious area of Tennessee.

He said:

“It is a scientific fact that human life begins at conception,” said Republican state Rep. Gino Bulso, the bill’s lead sponsor, in March. “At fertilization, you’ve got all 46 chromosomes, you have the entire genetic makeup of the child, and from that point on, it’s simply a matter of growth and development. So if you’ve got something that’s growing from the moment of conception on, I have no idea how anybody could say that you did not have life. You obviously, you’ve got life, because something is growing.”

Other states have passed or are considering similar legislation:

LifeSiteNews has previously reported that similar legislation is also being advanced in Iowa and West Virginia; Live Action notes it has also been introduced in Kentucky, Missouri, and Virginia, and enacted in North Dakota.

Is the video accurate? Well, we have first class scientists who have collected the relevant information about this question for us, like Dr. Maureen Condic. Dr. Condic an Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Utah School of Medicine, and recently served on the National Science Board. She earned her Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, and has published papers in peer-reviewed journals.

One of her publications (PDF) explains what science tells us about the unborn. The title is “When Does Human Life Begin? The Scientific Evidence and Terminology Revisited”. A good paper to have available, especially if your opponent has nothing but purple hair, tattoos and nose piercings. But if you want something easy, you can just use quotations from a variety of embryology textbooks (PDF).

Like this one:

“Human development begins at fertilization, when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, the zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell (capable of giving rise to any cell type) marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”

Source: Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 10th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2016. p. 11

If you don’t live in a state where public schools teach these facts, then maybe it’s time to think about moving? Why pay taxes in a state that doesn’t take science seriously.

I’ve noticed that young women are quite frightened of men, because they are taught that men are dangerous. I’m concerned that these beliefs will deter women from choosing men wisely, and marrying them. One way to counter these fears about “domestic violence” is to take a look at the studies, and see who is really doing the violence. Is it always men, or is there a balance?

The study was published in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma.

Here’s the abstract:

Recent debates surrounding intimate partner violence (IPV) have focused on its gender symmetry and gender-oriented nature. These debates center on findings from various data sources, like victimization or self-reported surveys and police-based reports. Data by Statistics Canada, from 1999 to 2014, has shown that the prevalence of IPV is similar for male and female victims, except for sexual assaults. However, there has been a paucity of studies on the severity and risk factors of IPV against men by female partners. Thus, this paper examines the severity of and risk factors for physical IPV against heterosexual men in Canada using the General Social Survey (Victimization) data of 2014. This study revealed that there is a symmetry in the experiences of physical violence between male and female victims. This study also revealed that male victims experience more severe violence than female victims. Using binary logistic regression analysis, years of dwelling together, the victim’s age, childhood victimization, and marijuana use were found to predict physical IPV against heterosexual men. This paper concludes with suggestions about how these predicting factors can be used to identify male victims and the need for a more inclusive approach toward addressing IPV, which should include male victims.

The key points for us:

• scholars typically ignore violence against men committed by women: “However, there has been a paucity of studies on the severity and risk factors of IPV against men by female partners.”
• men and women commit domestic violence at roughly equal rates: “This study revealed that there is a symmetry in the experiences of physical violence between male and female victims.”
• Men are the victims of more severe violence than women: “This study also revealed that male victims experience more severe violence than female victims.”

This confirms data from a blog post I wrote a long time ago (2011) about this issue.

I found that:

Data from Home Office statistical bulletins and the British Crime Survey show that men made up about 40% of domestic violence victims each year between 2004-05 and 2008-09, the last year for which figures are available. In 2006-07 men made up 43.4% of all those who had suffered partner abuse in the previous year, which rose to 45.5% in 2007-08 but fell to 37.7% in 2008-09.

That’s the UK.

And:

An estimated 7% of women and 6% of men in a current or previous spousal relationship encountered spousal violence during the five years up to and including 2004, according to a comprehensive new report on family violence.

That’s Canada.

It’s interesting to note that the police and the courts do not acknowledge that women commit domestic violence. Whenever there is a report of domestic violence, the man is ALWAYS assumed to be the attacker, and ALWAYS arrested and removed from his home. That is the way that domestic violence works, according to the famous “Duluth model”. The Duluth model actually discourages men from getting into relationships that lead to marriage. Men don’t want to be attacked by women, and then treated as the aggressors by police.

Another factor also deters men from relationships and marriage: courts that are biased against men. When there is domestic violence, women are treated far more leniently than men. I blogged about a study about this recently, and found:

The estimated gender disparities are strikingly large, conditional on observables. Most notably, treatment as male is associated with a 63% average increase in sentence length, with substantial unexplained gaps throughout the sentence distribution.

I see stories all the time where women are violent, and get no jail time. Here is one story from January 2024 and here is another from March 2024.

Men do look at these studies, and they decide on their life goals accordingly. Don’t blame men for aligning their goals and decisions with the way that the world really is. If women want men to engage the way that men used to, they should stop being so defensive and fix the problems that are deterring men from relationships.