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Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July!!!

Today is the United States of America’s 233 birthday! Many men and women have sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears to make this great ongoing experiment live on! America is not an accident that happened on a whim but rather a miracle!

Today take a moment to show gratitude to a veteran or active duty service member of the U.S. Armed Forces!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdInwZQ2eFA

You Can Get Pregnant Playing Video Games…SERIOUSLY!!!

A More Realistic SIMS, Please

If you’re at all familiar with the gaming world, you’ve undoubtedly at least heard of the SIMS, a role-playing game where you live the life of an on-screen character.  One of the goals of the SIMS’ developers is to make the game as realistic as possible – which is why the SIMS 2 (and the upcoming 3) characters can become pregnant and have babies (http://kotaku.com/5149307/knocked-up-a-look-at-pregnancy-in-video-games).

According to the Kotaku article, the SIMS characters become pregnant, are housebound, go into labor writing in pain, and then a baby is born.

Pregnancy Magazine Managing Editor Clary Alward doesn’t think that pregnancy in the SIMS is very realistic:  “It’s like Guitar Hero… You play Guitar Hero and it’s nothing like playing guitar.”

Some worry that misrepresenting pregnancy in video games could have a negative impact, especially for young mothers-to-be.  If pregnancy and child rearing are depicted as being easy, the gravity of responsibility could be lost.  Conversely, if pregnancy and child rearing are depicted as too painful, difficult or frightening, it could cause pregnant women to fear maternity and childbirth and cause undue anxiety.

While video game creators are free to depict pregnancy, or anything else, as they’d like, if the goal is to make a game as realistic as possible then pregnancies should be depicted with realism.

How about necessary prenatal care for a healthy child?  Or what about the inability to get insurance or to afford treatment, or being forced to compromise your dignity just to get care for your character and her unborn child?

If the SIMS was more realistic when it came to pregnancy, many women would struggle just to get the care they needed for their characters and digital babies to live healthy and prosper.  In fact, many players would get quite the opposite:  game over.

Advocate Aaron