IMMACULATE DECEPTION

In 2007 I wrote and posted a modest little piece at a pro-choice blog site called _Birth Pangs_. Sadly, its brilliant content was not archived when its originator abandoned it.

However. Fernhill and I developed our blogging chops there, and when we launched DAMMIT JANET! we did a copy-paste of selected BP posts. We then continued onward and upward. Fernhill built her blogging reputation on solidly researched prochoice pieces that untangled and exposed political ideology under all the foofaw.

The Virgin, The Angel and Choice is one of my gems, if I may say so with genuine humility.

#ImmaculateConception is trending right now on Twitter.

It's a timely reminder that oppressive, fundamentalist Christian doctrine is based on a deliberately patriarchal interpretation of that scripture, obfuscating the implication of God's formal request via a messenger, for Mary's CONSENT. 

Though it absolutely, fabulously acknowledges Mary's agency, that biblical text has been malevolently used to justify marital rape, the sexual abuse of women and girls, forced impregnation and the criminalization of medical procedures that facilitate women's right to choose.

To that we say: NO. 

We will continue to denounce how religious ideology is weaponized to justify patriarchs' crass need to put words in their God's mouth, only to *normalize* their pathologies, their demands and their fetishes.

Women and girls are not men's servants or handmaids.