Epic Battle of Dangerously Deluded Patriarchs

Sometimes the tsunami of rightwingnutter religious zealotry and insanity gets overwhelming, even for those dedicated to observing its surges.

Fortunately, we can always count upon our splendid blogging colleagues to rise to the challenge.

Marion Pat Robertson and Pope Maledict made headlines this week for the usual reasons. As expected, they cranked up the religious rightwingnutz quotient.

From Nunc Scio:

Yesterday, on his daily television show, Robertson suggested that Haiti is “cursed” because it made a pact with the devil to secure its freedom from France in 1804. You can watch the video here, because I don’t want such vile material on my blog. You’ll recall that Rev. Robertson, a prominent religious conservative, also thinks that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for America’s sinful ways. [...]

This is an excellent example of what I like to call the “Onion of Insanity”. [...] In this case, the Onion of Insanity has three layers:

1) Incredible indifference to human suffering. Thousands upon thousands of people were killed in Haitian earthquake, and many million more are struggling through the aftermath. To suggest that this cataclysm is somehow the fault of the Haitian people is monstrous. It is especially disgusting to suggest that this punishment is the result of an alleged event that can only be described as superstitious nonsense.

Read the whole thing. You'll learn a new evaluative tool for discerning the levels of batshit-crazy whenever you encounter the religiously deranged.

From Slap Upside the Head: Pope Maledict ...

speaking to several diplomats in Vatican City last week, called gay men and women—and the laws that protect their human rights—a threat to no less than all of humankind.

“Creatures differ from one another,” he began, “and can be protected or endangered in different ways, as we know from daily experience. One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between sexes. I am thinking,” he continued, “of certain countries in Europe or North and South America.” [...]

OK, the pope’s argument isn’t well veiled. It’s also a tired one. It basically says that since gay couples can’t biologically reproduce with each other, enough gay people will spell the death of all humankind. Except that, you know, it wouldn’t.

In response to this - "Yet freedom cannot be absolute, since man is not himself God, but the image of God, God’s creation. For man, the path to be taken cannot be determined by caprice or willfulness, but must rather correspond to the structure willed by the Creator", may I remind our readers that Mother Nature and/or God terminates thousands of pregnancies in the first trimester, and thus for women to make such choices with the assistance of medical care would seem to "correspond to the structure willed by the Creator".

Marion and Maledict - two peas in a gynophobic pod.

Zygote Zealots in New Zealand.

New Zealand Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign researcher Alison McCulloch wants the abortion-criminalizing organization that is currently attempting to secure a court ruling to award full human rights to fertilized eggs to disclose who is funding its legal battle.

“It’s not just about abortion. It never is,” Ms. McCulloch said. “It’s about a minority morals agenda that opposes sex education, contraception, civil unions and gay marriage. Embryos have human rights, gays and women don’t.”

Meanwhile, the Abortion Law Reform Association is lobbying members of its Parliament to publicly support the Abortion Supervisory Committee.

"The Crown lawyers defending the ASC, and in turn the reproductive rights of New Zealand women, need to be given the full backing of legislators in the face of a
case that is aimed at ending access to safe abortions," Alranz president Margaret Sparrow says in a statement.

In New Zealand, most abortions are allowed by physicians on mental health ground. Women and their health care practitioners are bound by laws regulating the termination of pregnancy. Dr Sparrow suggests New Zealand could do what the Australian state of Victoria did - decriminalize abortion. However, until that happens, legislators should defend the status quo.

Life, Choice, Options

As we reported back here, the name 'crisis pregnancy center/centre', aka fake pregnancy clinic, has acquired such a stink that anti-choicers eschewed the name in favour of the more forthright 'anti-abortion clinic'.

This caught my eye today: Mike Huckabee doing some fundraising for the fundies.

Huckabee was the featured speaker for the $50-a-plate fundraiser for Life Centers, formerly the Central Indiana Crisis Pregnancy Center, a group that provided free counseling, pregnancy tests, ultrasounds and other services to 21,889 pregnant women last year.

So I googled 'crisis pregnancy center formerly' and got a ton of hits. Rebranding among the fetus fetishists is running amok.

Many, like that Indiana gang, are going for 'Life Center' (ya know, as opposed to Kulture of Death Center): here, here and here.

Variants on the 'life' theme include
New Life Solutions (note lying plural -- there is only one solution to fetus fetishists), and LifeCare Pregnancy Center (care for life? Yeah, right.)

More care is offered by Care Net Pregnancy Center.

Then, of course, there's the otherwise anathema 'choice'. We've got LifeChoices in Colorado and Real Choices (ooooh, choices made by REAL women?) in Saskatoon.

'Crisis Pregnancy Centers' as a term is toast. 'Choice' is being usurped pretty thoroughly. (Think of last year's Canadian Blog Awards, Feminist Category.)

I predict that the next word to go down the road to Damascus will be 'options'. Planned Parenthood uses it.

SHE keeps distorting our words.

Canadian Cynic: You keep using that word. Go read LuLu's post about Blob Blogging Wingnut.

Many of us have had to deal with the ongoing intellectual dishonesty and the meretricious posts and comments of Blob Blogging Wingnut as SHE twists the words of prochoice women to say whatever suits HER abortion-criminalizing agenda.

Some, like Gigi, stubbornly keep commenting in an effort to maintain a voice of reason and logic over in that batshit, rightwingnutty place. Others, like brebis noire, are ready to give up talking sense in the presence of insanity and abuse.

My own thoughts about Blob Blogging Wingnut is that HER rage is sublimated into the creation of a perfect façade of hearth-loving earth-mother who complies with the dictates of the Catholic Church because it provides safety and shelter from a confusing world. Disobedience and rebellion would mean that SHE'd be on the street, with no visible means of support for her and her three daughters.

HER fear and HER self-hatred run so deep that SHE toadies to the loathsome misogyny of commenter "ken" at her blog and SoCon Or Bust.

SHE is a sad, fearful and angry person.

Update: As much as I know that people like to rubberneck and gawk when quarrels erupt between women, DAMMIT JANET! is not going to make disputes with Blob Blogging Wingnut a staple of our blogging menu. Rumbles of that ongoing shrieeekfest unfortunately has reached our ears.

A few words about the accusations regarding ad hominem attacks. Many weeks ago, I spoke candidly about the circumstances my mother faced back in the 1950s when, in spite of (or perhaps because of) my parents using the Vatican Roulette birth control method, she became pregnant. I wrote about her ambivalence - she spoke to me about that, years later - regarding that event and I contrasted it my joyful and whole-hearted decision to carry my own daughter to term. I ventured the opinion that this ill-timed pregnancy for my mom might have been aborted, if such medical interventions had been legal and available back then. I expressed my support for my mother and reiterated that this choice would have been hers to make.

Blob Blogging Wingnut saw that as a opportunity to proclaim that this was evidence that I did not value my own life as a fetus. Project much, BBW?

C-484: Is the Fat Lady Warming up Her Pipes?

We at Birth Pangs have not yet been terribly impressed with Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's commitment to women's rights.

But if he stands by the promise he made today at a press conference, we'll change our tune.

Stephane Dion vowed today that Liberals will block passage of a Tory bill that some fear might re-open the dormant abortion debate.

"I want to give my word to all the women of Canada that the Liberal Party of Canada is against to reopen woman's right to decide as a debate," the Liberal leader pledged.

. . .

Although the bill specifically exempts abortion, pro-choice advocates fear it would give legal status to the fetus and would, thus, be a step towards recriminalizing abortion.

Dion indicated that he shares the view that the bill would reopen the abortion debate and vowed: "We will not allow that to happen."

He is, of course, referring to Ken Epp's private member's bill, C-484, aka The Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill.

We would like to think that M. Dion is taking this stand for the right reasons. But, given the Liberal penchant for power, we wonder if he read the story about how UK MP Harriet (Hardwoman) Harman whipped the recent vote there to block moves to lower the time limit for abortion.

According to one account, women Labour MPs formed a ‘human corridor’ to channel their colleagues into the ‘No’ lobby. One Labour MP claimed to have heard one of Ms Harman’s team shout: ‘Vote against us and the sisterhood will never let you forget it.’

Rest assured, M. Dion, the Canadian sisterhood will never let you forget it either.

h/t to choice joyce at BnR

(First published at Birth Pangs.)