Abortion debate rages on in Ariz.

Plan would hold doctors accountable, protect women and the unborn

Remember when the abortion industry grieved the deaths of women performing their own abortions in back alleys?

It was a battle cry for legal abortion throughout the country that eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade.

Today, those same voices cry for doit-yourself abortions through the mail. The hanger replaced by a pill, and the argument flipped on its head.

The abortion industry has found a lucrative alternative to surgical abortions, and suddenly, leaving women to fend for themselves doesn’t seem so bad.

But it is bad. Mackenzie Buss was just 21 when she took the abortion pills. She testified at a state Senate committee hearing late last month that she ended up bleeding and in pain, curled up in a bathtub after taking the pills. She said she lay there thinking she was dying.

During her follow-up doctor visit, she learned the pills were not completely effective. She needed medical attention right away to remove the remaining tissue. Mackenzie suffered seven infections from the ordeal. If those abortion pills were sent to her through the mail without a doctor’s visit, the result could have been life threatening.

Regretful, and determined to use her voice, Mackenzie finds healing in warning others of the shame and silent suffering of chemical abortion.

According to a report in the Journal of Physicians and Surgeons, women who take the abortion pill are four times more likely to suffer complications than those who get surgical abortions.

A doctor’s visit both before and after are crucial to rule out high-risk circumstances.

For example, if a woman with an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy takes the abortion pill, she is in danger of serious complications, including death. If she misjudges the gestational age of the unborn child beyond 10 weeks, she could end up in surgery.

An Oxford Academic study found more than 38% of second trimester chemical abortions resulted in surgery, compared to about 8% in the first trimester.

And, as Mackenzie testified, an incomplete abortion can lead to infection, and untreated, could prove fatal.

I sponsored Senate Bill 1457 to ensure the abortion pill is not sent through the mail, leaving women scared and alone with a dangerous DIY abortion.

The bill not only protects women, it protects the unborn from discrimination, and holds the abortion doctor accountable. It prohibits abortion based on genetic abnormalities, like Down syndrome. These kinds of abortions reduce a child to a single aspect, and judges them on that alone.

Denmark and Iceland abort almost all unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome.

In the U.S., the number is about 67%. What a tragedy.

Kristen Plamondon recently testified of the unexpected joys of raising her 12-year-old son who has Down syndrome, “I crave each day with Carter, he shows me so much that I wish you all could know. He has taught me a fighting love, a voice for his future, how to look into the eyes of disability and approach it with calm and ease. He has motivated me to wrestle with my own pride, with what the world had ingrained in me to think is best, and he has brought me to my knees humbled time and time again.”

Arizona should stand up for those like Carter, joining other states that have passed similar prohibitions against blatant discrimination of those with disabilities. Passing SB 1457 acknowledges our fellow Arizonans with disabilities are equally as worthy of life as any of us.

SB 1457 ensures Arizona laws are interpreted in the context of valuing all human life, because women deserve commonsense safety precautions, and those with disabilities deserve a chance to live.

It is widely held that the 2016 presidential election was won by the candidate who stirred up the emotions of the day. He tapped it. She didn’t. Folks turned out for him in certain states.

Folks didn’t turn out for her.

He then stirred the pot, and stoked those emotions for four years. So, what’s the big surprise when the cauldron boiled over and folks, 81 million of them, including voters in key states, turned out to vote for the other guy in 2020? If you play with fire, you might get burned, right?

Scott Nelson, Phoenix

QUESTION: How can hackers try millions of passwords at a time when I will get locked out after three failed attempts?

ANSWER: Passwords continue to be the primary target of cybercriminals because they represent the “keys to your kingdom,” especially when it comes to your email account.

Online security tools such as Gibson Research’s Haystack tool (https:// bit.ly/3qYdhuk) show you just how quickly any short password can be cracked, but it’s based on billions and trillions of guesses per second.

Tools like this are showing how fast a “brute force” attack can break shorter passwords, which typically will occur offline.

Offline password cracking

Your question is a common one because most people assume that password hacking is done through the same interface as we all use to log into our accounts, but that’s not the typical approach.

All of the websites that require you to enter a password store those passwords using some form of what’s known as “hashing.” This means that your password is converted into a random string of characters that looks nothing like your actual password before it gets stored on their servers.

As an example, the common password “monkey” in MD5 Hashing will always be stored as “d0763edaa9d9 bd2a9516280e9044d885,” which is child’s play for a computer to convert back to the original word.

Most offline cracking activity begins after a breach has occurred and the database of “hashed” passwords are stolen and saved elsewhere to be worked on.

Think of it as a bank robber stealing the vault and cracking it somewhere else vs. trying to crack open the vault at the bank itself.

Brute force attacks are essentially a guessing game that pits computing power against the length of your password, which is why creating a longer password is always better.

It’s simple math as every combination of letters, numbers and special characters can be tried in milliseconds if there is enough computing power available.

In the Haystack tool, you will see that any eight-character password can be broken in just over one minute.

As you add additional characters, the time to crack them goes up be

cause each additional character exponentially increases the number of guesses required.

Given enough time, all passwords can be cracked, so what you want to do is create long enough passwords that aren’t worth the time to crack.

Other password hacking techniques

Brute force is just one of many methods hackers use to crack passwords, which is why it’s so important to use a different long password for each of your online accounts.

There are “dictionary attacks,” which use every word and any combination of those words that can be found in a dictionary.

“Rainbow table attacks” use a form of known password databases because they’ve pre-computed all of the possible password combinations for all of the most common hashing techniques in one big table. This greatly reduces the time it takes to crack a password because it becomes a simple lookup exercise.

Although these attacks have been around since the beginning, sophisticated phishing and social engineering schemes are a faster way to get real passwords that can be exploited, which is why they continue to grow and evolve.