He’s just perfect, I can’t even describe him any other way… It’s like he’s always been a part of our lives.
~Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock, on her newly adopted infant son, Louis Bardo Bullock, as quoted by People.com, April 28
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
What a gorgeous baby! I wish them the best of luck!
Oh, good. I’m glad to see she finally gets some happiness. What a cutie pie little Louis is!
I feel so sorry for her for what her husband did to their family. Apparantly they were in the process of adopting when his affairs came to light. I can’t imgaine how devestating that must have been.
It’s nice to see that even after all her success in her career, the thing she is proudest of is her baby…
Little Louis is adorable!
Lauren, I agree. I feel so bad for her, as well as Jesse’s kids. Men who do this sort of thing obviously don’t think about the impact it will have on their entire families. He traded the joy of a peaceful and happy home full of love for… what, exactly?
Sandra is my favorite actress (has been for many years) and I think it’s great that she has this beautiful little guy to love and raise. I wish her the very best.
What a cutie pie!! Look at Momma’s face!! :)
As a person who believes that nobody has the right to tell someone with a terminal disease that he OR she MUST stick around because Aunt Millie is A Christian and she thinks you will go to hell for ending your own suffering, I am also someone who believes that if a woman wants to terminate a pregnancy for very personal reasons, OR for medical reasons that is her choice. I am a man afterall AND I wouldn’t know the first thing about what goes on inside of a woman, muchless woman carrying around a fetus in her belly that a rapist left her. There are so many humanely legitimate reasons for why a woman would choose to end a pregnancy that I wouldn’t know where to start.
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I stumbled across your website and read down the page to get feel for what was going on and feel to comment as well. There is a very ideological thread to what you are conveying but I really don’t see any of the tough issues being addressed here you go after all of the low hanging fruit like so many ideologues do.
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What about this; a poor woman in a rural town of 9,000 who has an I.Q. just a point or two above very challenged (what we used to refer to as retarded) who is 19 years and can be seen walking through town in the daytime, in the nighttime, just about anytime and a passer by finds her leaning up against mile marker 27 her faced all bloodied the temperature outside is 29ᐤ without a coat, expressionless.
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The Sheriff is notified and although saddened he is not surprised feeling that some harm would come to Darlene because of her wandering ways decides to get paramedics to get her cleaned up at County General, and to order a rape kit performed.
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Several months pass and Darlene gives birth to a low birth weight baby daughter with what appears to be a malformed head and is later determined to be a severely retarded child that the state will know be responsible for.
**
The above scenario is going to cost society literally 5 times as much to care for as a healthy child would through a complete life cycle of 70 years should the child grow up and live to age 30…//Something to consider is it not?
One other brief scenario, the woman again is raped (happens alot in this country of ours) and does not want the child because she will forever be reminded of her attacker–Shouldn’t she be allowed to choose to terminate the pregnancy?
What if know women are allowed to terminate her pregnancy, and poor uneducated woman are by some factor more likely to end up pregnant than a fortunate person like yourself, but now they are forced to keep these children, but without skills she will never be able to afford the cost of raising a child is forced to ask the state to pay for housing, food, & medical services. Are YOU going to be willing to come out of YOUR pocket to cover these expenses for 500,000 poor children And their mothers every year?
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Because, we both know that is the part of this debate that your side never wants to discuss. A woman who is poor and uneducated, but NOT stupid by any means knows she cannot afford a child, but can end a pregnancy and she opts quite often in our country today.
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Whose business is it what that woman does with her body? It is certainly not mine.
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A religious test cannot be applied to what you or I do with our bodies. I am certain that under some brand of Christianity even today where it is a mortal sin to tattoo ones body, or to hang piercings everywhere, BUT that only applies to the believer’s of those myth’s and superstitions.
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That is the religious test with abortion too. You people need to learn to leave others alone and allow them to do what they will with their bodies.
I hope YOU do not enjoy sex, because according to a certain reading of the Bible it is ONLY for the act of procreation, NEVER INTENDED TO BE FUN.. You may go to Hell for that!
Good Morning Rational!
So based on your examples/logic you’re basically saying, that its okay to kill your own child when life gets too tough to handle.
Lets say for example that I suddenly lose my job and my current situation is no longer ideal to raise my 1 year old. Should I just killed my kid then? Oh wait, he is out of my body, so choice does not apply right?
My kid is as much as my kid when he was in my womb and outside.
And you addressed the issue of rape…
Rape is terrible and anyone who commits this crime should be punished to the full extent of the law. A woman should not be reminded of the horrible things the man who impregnated her did. So based on your logic, when a woman who is being abused by her spouse/partner, she should just kill their born children because even if she flees that situation, her children’s faces will forever remind her of her abusive situation.
I invite you to go to Rebecca Kiessling.com.
Rebecca Kiessling was conceived in Rape…Yet she’s alive today.
Abortion is killing an innocent human being.
Killing an innocent human being is wrong.
Good Day to you!
Christin Gilbert had Down Syndrome was raped and conceived as a result of that rape. Her parents took her to Tiller. He not only killed her baby but she died as well. Happily Ever After.
1% of ALL abortions are the result of rape. But always throw out the TOUGH scenarios mmmmkay, Raional?
OH and Rational? Here is a book you might want to read about those that choose life after conceiving their child in rape. Excellent resource. Knowledge is power.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10042807.html
Rational, you said: “I hope YOU do not enjoy sex, because according to a certain reading of the Bible it is ONLY for the act of procreation, NEVER INTENDED TO BE FUN.. You may go to Hell for that!”
Ever read the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament? God created (invented!) sex for our enjoyment and for procreation. Your comments are ignorant of Scripture and suggest you’ve developed such opinions from hearsay, rather than from actually having studied the Bible.
Rational – you speak of abortion for cases of rape as though the majority of abortions were taking place for this reason. It is very rare for pregnancy to result from rape and when it does, it accounts for 1 percent of all abortions. That means 99% of abortions are taking place for an entirely different reason, one reason we found in Italy, where a 22-wk old baby boy was aborted because of a CLEFT LIP. He survived his attempted murder but died two days later.
But let’s talk about rape:
Should we punish children for the crimes of their father? Is a man subject to capitol punishment when he is convicted of rape? No. So, why should a fetus be put to death when he/she is completely innocent? We must also remember that the baby is biologically half the mother’s; it is her child, too.
Abortion in the case of rape or incest is not an act of kindness or mercy – it is a second act of violence. It doesn’t undue the rape and trauma that the woman endured; all it does is end the life of an innocent human being.
Consider: If you were abducted and knocked unconscious only to awake hours later missing one of your kidneys, should you have the legal right to hunt down the person it was donated to (think black market), take a knife, and cut it out of them, killing them? After all, you didn’t consent to donating your kidney to them. Now, compare this to pregnancy by rape: Yes, a woman is pregnant without consent, but the deed has already been done. The only way to get her uterus back is to kill the fetus who is now growing within her. The analogy stops here because unlike a kidney donation that is permanent (you can’t lend your kidney), a woman is only pregnant for nine months. Then she gets her uterus back and the innocent baby remains alive. It is temporary. And a woman is not obligated to raise a child conceived in rape either. She is free to place her baby with a loving, adoptive family.
Rational: Why should abortion be legal for any reason other than rape or incest?
Secondly, we don’t go around killing off the disabled of any other age group (although, Hitler sure did), so why is it okay to kill a disabled fetus?
What does this have to do with Sandra Bullock’s adopted baby?
BTW ‘Rational’…a woman is never going to forget that she was raped. She can give the baby up for adoption.
And..if you were actually ‘Rational’ you would know that a pre-born baby is NOT ‘a woman’s body’. It’s IN a woman’s body.
Lastly, you really shouldn’t talk about The Bible before you actually READ it.
I agree, what does this have to do with Sandra Bullock and baby Louie?
Anyway, I’m glad to see that no one said “why is she adopting a black baby,” and other racially insensitive comments. I’ve read some awful stuff on the web — someone said, “oh, she adopted Gary Coleman,” and that’s pretty mild. I rejoice when I see a child adopted into a loving home. Good luck, Sandy!
Oh Rational, if opposition to abortion is just a religious viewpoint, why are there prolife atheists and agnostics?
phillymiss,
We have many families in our mostly white church family that have adopted Chinese, African-American, Indian and Guatemalan children.
One family has two of the most adorable African-American girls. My son once asked me, “Which ones are adopted again?” :)
To be ‘pro life’ and also ‘pro circumcision’ is to be a walking talking contradiction. How can one believe that an unborn baby can feel pain, yet circumcision is ‘okay’? Does feeling pain become ‘okay’ after leaving the womb?
Your hypocrisy is showing, Jill. May I give you four quotes to meditate on:
~ Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Blaise Pascal
~ “Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
~ The faults of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive. – Bhagavad Gita
~ We have not lost faith,but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession. ~ George Bernard Shaw
To be ‘pro life’ and also ‘pro circumcision’ is to be a walking talking contradiction. How can one believe that an unborn baby can feel pain, yet circumcision is ‘okay’? Does feeling pain become ‘okay’ after leaving the womb?
Your hypocrisy is showing, Jill.
Posted by: Mary Noll at April 30, 2010 1:43 PM
Just checking, Mary Noll, where and what did you find about circumsision? I thought we were supposed to be commenting on Sandra’s Bullock adopted baby….. Have you got lost?
Sandra is quoted in people magazine as saying
“A friend of ours helped arrange for a bris [Jewish genital cutting ceremony] at our house, because we couldn’t go [to a hospital for surgery]. The mohel came to us. You have never seen adults more panicked about what was about to happen to their son, but the celebration and the amount of love we felt and the pride in the little man whom we love so, so much became the greatest moment I have ever had in my life.”
the quote Jill Stanek is featuring today is,
“He’s just perfect, I can’t even describe him any other way… It’s like he’s always been a part of our lives.”
If he’s perfect, why Sandra did you choose to mutiliate his genitals? I’m dissapointed that you didn’t protect his body better.
Anna, please don’t start on the anti-circumcision crusade. Suffice it to say that it is an issue where reasonable people can disagree. There are pros and cons to the procedure and it is up to the parents to make an informed decision.
Vita–Marry Noll is referring to the fact that despite not being Jewish, Sandra had a bris performed on her son, because the hospital refused to perform the unnecessary procedure on him.
It’s great that she loves her new son. It’s not great that she welcomed him to her family by taking away the choice of how his own genitals look in a painful ceremony where, at best, he was given wine to help with the most excruciating pain he’s probably ever felt in his life or ever will again.
But on the above comments, I wanted to thank you guys for the statistic on rape-abortion and the comparison to killing a child because life got too hard.
I was supposed to be aborted. I lived that life that “no child should have to live”. It was MY life and I get so angry that so many people don’t feel I should have had it. What about the beautiful, happy, beloved, wanted and PLANNED children I’ve had? What about the half dozen lives I’ve directly saved? Should they not exist, because I shouldn’t have existed? (I was not the product of rape, but to a mother who wanted no children and was supposed to be infertile and who was abusive as a result, grew up unwanted by anyone, told I was better off dead, etc.)
I’m glad someone told my mother it would be wrong to abort me. I had an IQ of 138 by age 9, so I’m not developmentally disabled, either.
Hooray for Sandra’s love of her new baby. However, I can’t support that the “best part” of her life was the worst part of her son’s. I find that horrifying that watching his penis be cut up made her so happy.
“A friend of ours helped arrange for a bris [Jewish genital cutting ceremony] at our house, because we couldn’t go [to a hospital for surgery]. The mohel came to us. You have never seen adults more panicked about what was about to happen to their son, but the celebration and the amount of love we felt and the pride in the little man whom we love so, so much became the greatest moment I have ever had in my life.”
I do not agree with circumcision (male or female) at all, but I am still happy that this precious little boy has a good home!
I’m even a bit jealous!
To be ‘pro life’ and also ‘pro circumcision’ is to be a walking talking contradiction.
***********************************
Yeah, right, because as we all know, circumcision robs little boys of their very lives.
You are beyond ridiculous.
I’m just wondering if Jill was aware of Sandra’s decision to have a circumcision performed when she decided to praise her? what made Jill feel that Sandra’s quote was significant? Jill, does this affect your opinion of Sandra’s quote?
I’m not here to bash on Sandra, just pointing out that her choice is dissapointing, to me. In much the same way I was dissapointed when my nephew was cut… I just wish people would educate themselves about the issue instead of citing reasons such as “looking like Daddy”. Break the cycle, leave their genitals alone!
About circumcision at the hospital:
My little guy was circumcised in the hospital I gave birth in. It was done 2 days after he was born. He was given anesthesia. I know in the old days, they don’t give any numbing medication. But nowadays they do.
Anna, you’re assuming that she didn’t look at the issues and make an informed decision. There are pros and cons to the procedure, but it is by no means a cut and dry answer.
Anna, please don’t start on the anti-circumcision crusade. Suffice it to say that it is an issue where reasonable people can disagree. There are pros and cons to the procedure and it is up to the parents to make an informed decision. – Lauren
Sure, Lauren. “Reasonable” people who believe that submitting a helpless newborn to excruciating pain is A-OK.
It might not be on-par with murder, but I would definitely classify it as heinous assault and mutiliation. But I guess it’s legal to be “Pro-Choice” concerning circumcision.
I see, well I wasn’t aware of the whole story.
However, “for many years routine circumcision has been a medically and socially accepten convention in the US. Almost all newborn baby boys were circumcised before they left the hospital. In 1975 the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that there is no absolute medical indication for routine circumcision, however in 1991 alone, 1.25 million newborn males were still circumcised in the US.” (Barbara Harper, Gentle Birth Choices 1994).
I personally don’t think the circucision is neccessary and wouldn’t do that to my baby (apart from health reasons, like very tight foreskin and stuff), but if you grow up with a conviction that all baby boys must be circumcised because of hygienic/infection reasons, and you don’t check your facts before you make a decision, it’s possible that someone would simply make an uninformed choice.
“Sure, Lauren. “Reasonable” people who believe that submitting a helpless newborn to excruciating pain is A-OK. ”
If that excruciating pain will be beneficial to them in the long run, then yes. Also, infants are now given pain medicine during the procedure.
My daughter had a short frenulum that made nursing very difficult. I had the option to either allow her to have an admittedly painful procedure that would allow her to receive all the benefits of nursing, or forgo the procedure and switch to the bottle.
We choose the procedure. She cried for all of 2 seconds, and nursed in the office. She was able to nurse for a full 18 months with no problems. I consider the health benefits of the nursing to be worth the risks and pain of the procedure.
My son had a hypospadias. Theoretically we could have done nothing, but he would have never been able to have children or have a normal male urinary tract. We choose the surgery. It ended up taking 3 surgeries to completely fix his problem, as it was rather severe. Yes, there’s a point when you say things are good enough and it’s not worth further pain, but the benefits of the surgery definitely outweighed the risks. He was in considerable pain, but he has no memory of his procedures and is now able to function like any other boy.
While circumcision does not have near the affect on a person’s life as a non-repaired hypospadias would, there are definite medical benefits to the procedure. I do not fault anyone from deciding that those medical benefits outweigh the risks.
What sort of health benefits are those, Lauren? My son isn’t circumcised and I’d like to know what sort of risks I’m taking with his health by not mutilating his penis.
Shame on Sandra for having her son’s genitals mutilated. I thought she would have been smarter than that.
“If that excruciating pain will be beneficial to them in the long run, then yes.”
The stats do not support the routine practice of cutting healthy genital skin from infants.
“Also, infants are now given pain medicine during the procedure.”
Not true. Many/most infants are NOT given pain medication. And even if they were, it still doesn’t make their genital mutilation any less wrong.
“My daughter had a short frenulum that made nursing very difficult. I had the option to either allow her to have an admittedly painful procedure that would allow her to receive all the benefits of nursing, or forgo the procedure and switch to the bottle.
We choose the procedure.”
The HUGE difference between your situation and routine infant male circumcision is that THE FORESKIN IS NOT A BIRTH DEFECT. It is completely NORMAL, healthy, functional tissue that is butchered for what amounts to nothing MORE than cosmetic surgery on their genitals.
Additionally, the risks/complications associated with cutting are more than TWICE any sort of possible problem that MIGHT arise from remaining intact.
Plus, circumcision can kill. And it kills about as many babies as SIDS. In fact, many SIDS babies are ones who have been cut.
“While circumcision does not have near the affect on a person’s life as a non-repaired hypospadias would, there are definite medical benefits to the procedure. ”
So then, why are female babies discriminated against? After all, if there are such DEFINITE medical benefits to the procedure (not), then why deprive baby girls of this wonderful gift of mutilation? How sexist of our laws that forbid any sort of genital cutting on female infants. It shouldn’t be illegal for them to have such an awesome thing done to them! I’m not talking about removal of the clitoris or anything drastic like that, just, you know, removal of excess skin that can and does harbor all sorts of nasty, unclean stuff – and vulvar cancer, you know – that’s even more prevalent than penile cancer! We should protect these girls! After all, it’s just useless flaps of skin.
Circumcision can rob babies of there lives…babies have and still do die from it not to mention all the other horrible things that can go wrong!!! It is a contradiction, how can someone be worried about what happens to a baby in the womb: their life, their pain and then when there born say its ok to hurt me now cause I am alive and well, that is a big contradiction!!!!
NO they do not use any anesthetic to numb the babies and they are taken away from their parents, then straped down only to cut off a part of their most sensitive, private area’s of the body….pretty sick!!!! How many parents would actually go through with it if they were made to be there in the room during the circumcision and watch their baby suffer…not many?!?!
How would you all feel if she had circumcised her baby daughter?? Babies boys should have the same rights as baby girls…..basic human rights to their own bodies!!!
Adoption is amazing, circumsion is an abusive act, on a helpless baby that has no voice!!! Just because its considered ok and the norm in society, and does not shock most case it has been so common…doesnt make it ok, doesnt make it right!!! Also, just because we are the childs parents doesnt mean we own them or their bodies. Just like we have no right to take a babies life just because they are in our body, we have no right to cut off a piece of our babies forskin or whatever body part it may be!!! God doesnt make mistakes, if babies were not meant to have forskins they would be born without them!!!
Ppl usually only know as much about circumcision as what ppl have told them, or what the doc has said, or their mothers did etc…but If you do the research and become informed I have no doubt in my mind that you will understand just how wrong and cruel and senseless routine infant circumcision is……….I would hope that NO loving parent would want to intentionatly hurt their child!!!
Yeah, I must say that being “pro-life” and “pro-circumcision” is complete double-think.
So you respect a child’s “right to life” but not his right to his own body?
“God made him perfect,” except for…?
I’m sorry, but I for one am not going to celebrate Sandra and her so-called adoption.
What exactly should she be congratulated for? Not having aborted a child? That credit belongs to the person who didn’t abort the boy.
Adoption is supposed to be a thing of beauty; you take a child into your care and you’re supposed to PROTECT him from it, not deliberately CAUSE it.
Sandra isn’t even Jewish, and neither is that child. The child wasn’t even sick; he had no problems, and the hospital wouldn’t even do it because he was to old; he’d remember the pain. And yet Sandra had the nerve to take this child to a mohel. This should be an insult to Jews everywhere that their particular covenant was cheapened. And all for what?
What bothers me the most here, is that it doesn’t even seem like Sandra did this out of the usual “misguided medical” reasons. She did it to dispel bad publicity. She had a Jewish ceremony performed on a non-Jewish child just to prove her husband wasn’t a neo-nazi. Whether she thought it was best for the child or not seems to be a secondary consideration. Children are NOT accessories.
I’ll say it again; what complete hypocrisy to be both “pro-life” and in support of circumcision. It’s not OK to kill a child within his mother’s womb. “He feels pain,” some of you argue. He feels pain outside of the womb too. Not even if they anesthecised the fetus would any of you agree to killing it inside its mother’s body. Even when anaesthesia is applied he’d have to endure the healing process, which involves enduring urine on a fresh wound.
I’m against abortion. I too believe that nothing can ever justify killing a child, not even if it is done in its mother’s womb. I also strongly believe that nothing can ever justify mutilating a perfectly healthy child.
“He’s just perfect.”
He WAS, perfect…
One last note:
“My daughter had a short frenulum that made nursing very difficult.”
“My son had a hypospadias.”
I’d say it’s quite a desparate stretch to be comparing the presence of the foreskin to say, a short frenulum or an actual birth defect like a cleft.
The foreskin is not a birth defect. The foreskin is not “extra skin.” The foreskin is basic, standard human anatomy found in every male at birth. In very rare cases, boys are born without a foreskin; but you see, it is lacking a foreskin that is the birth defect.
I’ll have to agree, that when a child has a birth defect, like a cleft or hypospadias, then, and only then, a parent has a “decision” to make.
But when it comes to healthy children, if there is no medical condition present, if there is no birth defect, how is it that doctors can even be performing circumcisions, let alone pretend like it’s this “choice” parents can make? Just what other operations can parents request on a whim, and doctors must oblige?
What “choice” did Sandra have, actually?
And that comes down to the crux of the pro-life movement; you spurn women that support abortion and chant the “my body, my choice” slogan. You rightfully say that that baby has absolutely no choice.
The bottom line is though, that it is a hypocrisy for either pro-lifers or pro-abortionists to be in support of circumcision.
For pro-abortionists; it is a hypocrisy to be claiming “my body, my choice,” while that doesn’t apply to men as newborns.
For pro-lifers; it is hypocrisy to be arguing for a child’s “right to life,” while not respecting his right to his body. FURTHERMORE, if you’re religious, it is hypocrisy to be saying that “babies are born perfect,” and yet think that the foreskin is this birth defect that must be fixed.
“Sorry god, you missed a spot.”
Sandra will be lucky if that boy doesn’t grow up to hate her guts.
Again, I’m curious if Jill Stanek has anything to say about this issue of circumcision… or if she simply chose this image of Sandra and this quote in order to “cash in” on the media frenzy surrounding the news of the adoption? What made this quote new’s worthy? And what does she think of our claim that someone who feels strongly about abortion (pro-life) should also feel strongly about circumcision? Is she reading these comments? Or simply filling space on her site… and moving on?
Jill were you aware that the circumcision took place, before you posted this quote of the day? What do you think?
Oh my stars…..didn’t know this was going to turn into to circumcize or not to circumsize debate.
All of my 3 boys are. And their dad. Little late to chat about that right now. Kinda moot.
I am prochoice when it comes to circumcision.
Anna,
Jill Stanek isn’t always the one who picks the QOTD.
She doesn’t have to answer to anyone about what she posts or doesn’t post. It’s her prolife blog.
“After all, if there are such DEFINITE medical benefits to the procedure (not), then why deprive baby girls of this wonderful gift of mutilation”
First of all, there are definite medical benefits, especially as related to transmission of STD’s. Those benefits don’t exist from female circumcision.
“Sandra will be lucky if that boy doesn’t grow up to hate her guts.”
You have got to be kidding me. Every man I know is circumcised and none of them hate their parents.
Lauren,
Just out of curiosity, would you have give your daughter the HPV vaccine? Because it seems you would have your son circumcised for the very reason one would vaccinated against HPV.
I agree. He WAS perfect! Why did she not leave him the wy nature intended? Seriously. How SAD.
I should add that I am the proud mother of intact boys. If I had a girl, she would be intact too! Why not give our sons the same protection as we give our daughters? Genital mutilation is wrong….nd in this case, even worse because she had it done AFTER THE HOSPITAL EVEN REFUSED TO DO IT! WORSE, SHE INS NOT EVEN FREAKIN’ JEWISH! WHAT IS YOUR EXCUSE, SANDRA BULLOCK?
I hope all of you are as passionate and adamant for the unborn as you are for genitalia. Sheesh.