Baby-killers that so-called "pro-life" chooses not to attack.

Across the USA, there's an ideologically-fuelled campaign to limit women's reproductive choices.  Under the disingenuous banner of "pro-life" these rabid religious fundamentalist, neo-con, misogynist crotch-sniffers pressure like-minded politicians to do their bidding.  These laws and measures exemplify the kind of oppressive backlash women and girls suffer as government takes control of their breeding capabilities.

As a result of anti-choice bullying and lobbying the number of health clinics and other healthcare providers that give women options ranging from birth control to pregnancy termination have decreased.

Meanwhile hundreds of voluntarily pregnant women in communities like Vernal, Utah are having miscarriages or giving birth to infants, damaged by a toxic environment and whose survival is precarious.

"Fracking moved the oil patch to people's backyards, significantly increasing the pollution they breathed in small towns," says Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Basically, it industrialized rural regions, and brought them many of the related health problems we were used to seeing in cities."

Workers found dead atop separator tanks from exposure to wastewater fumes. Cows birthing stillborn calves on ranches near well-pad clusters. Children with cancers — leukemia, lymphoma — in places with no known clusters. "For a while, all we had were anecdotal reports, which the industry bashed as 'bad science,' " says Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a senior health scientist for the NRDC. "But in the past few years, there's been a torrent of studies finding worrisome air pollution stemming from oil and gas sites. The impacts of this pollution are regional, not just local, meaning it can make you really sick from miles away," and that the people most susceptible to its toxic effects are the ones at either end of the life spectrum: "fetuses and the elderly."

Dr. Brian Moench. Moench, an anesthesiologist in Salt Lake City who co-founded Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, is a cross between Bill Nye and Bill McKibben, a science-geek activist and erudite spokesman for a growing clean-air coalition. With the roughly 350 doctors in Utah he's recruited to the cause, he and his colleagues gathered dozens of studies about pollution and its long- and short-term damage to the unborn. "What we know now," he says, "from several blue-ribbon studies, is that the chemicals Mom inhales in industrial zones are passed to her baby through the umbilical cord, exposing them to many complications. We also know these toxins like to live in fat cells — and the brain is the largest fat reservoir in a developing fetus."

In an easy-to-follow slide show about the air in the Basin and its calamitous level of pollution, Moench and his fellow doctors, two of them obstetricians, spent an hour and a half building a brick-by-brick indictment against the effect of those toxins on fetal neurons. "Think of them as bullets to developing brain cells," said Moench. "They either kill some of those cells, alter them or switch them off, blocking their connections to other cells." Citing a wave of new studies that link inhaled contaminants to everything from diabetes and obesity to ADD, he added that babies "are being born now pre-polluted. Lower IQs, less serotonin, less white-brain matter: We're literally changing who they are as human beings."

MASSIVE hypocrisy? That, plus greed, and undiluted patriarchal hatred for women and children unless they can be commodified and used to extract profits.

Juxtapose the gravity of these health issues - for women and children - with the deceitful, fraudulent anti-abortion propaganda stunt that 'murrican fetushists are current shrieking about and peddling.

Buy *prolife* propaganda or a doctor gets shot. In the head.

That is congruent with the violent ideology and vicious intolerance of organizations that have incited violence against healthcare professionals, as DJ! pointed out here.

But Holy Obfuscation Batman!

Jack Fonseca [...] a Campaign Life project manager and the author of the blog post in question, decided to wade into the comments section on his blog Tuesday afternoon to clear up any lingering confusion about the photo of a handgun pointed at a doctor.
His explanation? That's not a handgun pointed at the doctor; it's a proverbial handgun:
"In the graphic you referenced, the proverbial gun is clearly being held by the College of Physicians. The supporting graphic is a clear condemnation of the brute force that the CPSO is threatening to use against doctors. If a historical scholar were to publish an article in which he condemns the NAZI extermination of Jews, and includes in the article a photo of a mass grave filled with murdered Jews, it would be ludicrous to argue that he supports the killing of Jews. Clearly he's reinforcing the message that the Nazi actions were evil. Likewise, our blog post reinforces the message that the brute force being threatened by the CPSO against physicians (in the form of a policy of coercion) is evil."

This is a typical anti-choice sophism: If a credible academic writes a scholarly article, condemns the Shoah and uses verifiable photographs as documentation, then Campaign Life can claim with a disingenuous graphic that the CPSO might do the *same evil*.

(Never mind the decades of anti-abortion terrorism: clinics bombed, doctors and staff murdered or injured, women criminally harassed.) 

Who is this Jack Fonseca?  DJ! has posted articles about his tactics, here and here.

Fonseca's job is to organize rallies and spout the usual propaganda.  (This peer-reviewed article provides actual facts and scientific research about the cost of terminating a pregnancy.)

Besides being paid to campaign against women's reproductive rights, Fonseca has also mobilized the usual bigots against same-sex marriage, lobbied against a fundraising event in his home town because ... fundamental Catholicism, AND gotten quite testerical about Ontario's "Accepting Schools Act".

But enough about Fonseca the dissembler.  Juxtapose his slimy rhetoric with the actions of a real hero, Doctor Willie Parker.

Inspired by Gandhi's idea that the Gospel should appear to a hungry man in the form of bread, he went to work in a food pantry. But gradually, the steady stream of women with reproductive issues in his practice focused his mind. He thought about his mother and sisters and the grandmother who died in childbirth and began to read widely in the literature of civil rights and feminism. Eventually he came across the concept of "reproductive justice," developed by black feminists who argued that the best way to raise women out of poverty is to give them control of their reproductive decisions. Finally, he had his "come to Jesus" moment and the bell rang. This would be his civil-rights struggle. He would serve women in their darkest moment of need. "The protesters say they're opposed to abortion because they're Christian," Parker says. "It's hard for them to accept that I do abortions because I'm a Christian." He gave up obstetrics to become a full-time abortionist on the day, five years ago, that George Tiller was murdered in church.

[...]he grew up a few hours away in Birmingham, the second youngest son of a single mother who raised six children on food stamps and welfare, so poor that he taught himself to read by a kerosene lamp and went to the bathroom in an outhouse; that he was born again in his teenage years and did a stint as a boy preacher in Baptist churches; that he became the first black student-body president of a mostly white high school, went on to Harvard and a distinguished career as a college professor and obstetrician who delivered thousands of babies and refused to do abortions. They certainly don't know about the "come to Jesus" moment, as he pointedly describes it, when he decided to give up his fancy career to become an abortion provider. Or that, at fifty-one, having resigned a prestigious job as medical director of Planned Parenthood, he's preparing to move back south and take over a circuit roughly similar—for safety reasons, he won't be more specific—to the one traveled by Dr. David Gunn before an antiabortion fanatic assassinated him in 1993. Or that his name and home address have been published by an antiabortion Web site with the unmistakable intent of terrorizing doctors like him. Or that he receives threats that say, "You've been warned." Or that he refuses to wear a bulletproof vest, because he doesn't want to live in fear—"if I'm that anxious, they've already taken my life"[...]

He remembers what it's like to be terrorized. That fueled the search for social justice that led him, eventually, to theologians like Paul Tillich, Dr. King, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who wrestled with "Thou shalt not kill" before joining a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. "He said the kind of Christianity that does not radicalize you with regard to human suffering is inauthentic—cheap and easy grace."
His "come to Jesus" moment occurred in Hawaii. He was teaching at the university when a fundamentalist administrator began trying to ban abortions in the school clinic, throwing students with an unwanted pregnancy into a panic. One day, he was listening to a sermon by Dr. King on the theme of what made the Good Samaritan good. A member of his own community passed the injured traveler by, King said, because they asked, "What would happen to me if I stopped to help this guy?" The Good Samaritan was good because he reversed the question: "What would happen to this guy if I don't stop to help him?" So Parker looked in his soul and asked himself, "What happens to these women when abortion is not available?"

[Dr Willie Parker] knew the answer.

It's a long, informative article well worth the time spent reading it.

Choice in Canada vs. No Choice in Texas

In Canada, a brain-dead pregnant women is being kept on life support until her fetus, dubbed "Baby Iver", can be delivered.

In Texas, a brain-dead pregnant woman was similarly kept on life support to incubate her fetus.

Can you spot the difference? The Canadian partner and family believe that the mother would have wanted it this way and, indeed they want the process to continue if possible, notwithstanding potential damage to the eventual child.

In Texas, however, the parents, paramedics both, had discussed this sort of horrible possibility and had decided that life support should be withdrawn in such a case.

Writing in the Dallas Morning News, columnist Jacquielynn Floyd titled her piece "Marlise Muñoz case was about bureaucracy, politics -- and cruelty".

Marlise was no longer alive. She was not a patient. She was deceased. But someone at JPS [the hospital], which has issued few details beyond terse press statements, decided her corpse must be forced to go on incubating the fetus, despite her family’s uniform plea to let them put her to rest.

This did not happen until Sunday, when the hospital complied with a state district judge’s ruling last week ordering the woman disconnected from artificial support.

It’s a vicious irony that this family was better prepared for this tragedy than most. Marlise and Erick, as paramedics, had seen their share of trauma and death.

In Canada, the wishes -- the choice -- of the family were respected. In Texas, home of Tea Bagger "small government" proponents, politics and cruelty prevailed. Until the good sense of the court intervened.

I hope "Baby Iver" is healthy and the family can cope with whatever care is needed.

But this is what choice is about. And why the "War on Women" in the US is a very real thing.

The Next Frontier in Choice

Dying with dignity is the next big battle in choice and bodily autonomy. Who better to lead the way than we Boomers?

Kudos to Dr Donald Low, a courageous and public-spirited man to the very end.

Check out Dying with Dignity.


ADDED: CON MP Steven Fletcher backs dying with dignity. That'll get him spanked by PMSHithead who, on this topic, as on abortion, 'does not intend to reopen the debate'.



(Very busy. In the feast part of the Freelancer's Feast/Famine Cycle.)

Jules et Jim et Sarah

This evening I saw Sarah Polley's _Stories We Tell_.

It's cleverly crafted and passionate.  A lively, entertaining, intelligent film experience.

Don't read spoiler reviews of it, particularly any that would have stupid headlines like this one: "Toronto Film Critics Name Sarah Polley's Adultery Doc Best Canadian Movie".

Go see it totally unprepared. You may have to see it again. There are many people involved and many overlapping stories.

In the best of ways, it appears to have been inspired by _Rashômon_, _Jules et Jim_ and, possibly all of Norman Jewison's movies.

Highly dramatic though not tragic.  Slightly comedic in that sly, self-deprecating Canadian manner we allow ourselves to express.  Also a cinéphile's delight.

Here's my own spoiler about Polley's documentary.  There are NO branding irons bearing the letter A in the film. Not even one.

Truthiness

Last night I responded to Chris Selley's tweet promoting his opinion piece in the NatPo.

No acknowledgement. So I'll post what I cited in my tweets to him.

This jumped out and seemed scientifically incorrect to me; I found stats to challenge it.

“It’s a fraught issue, which stirs emotions on each side,” Ms. Newman wrote, in the Telegraph piece that touched off this controversy. “Is it right that we terminate pregnancies, which might, with the medical care now available, result in healthy babies?

That "healthy babies" claim sounded suspiciously like the glurging over that pro-liars do when they have no cogent argument to present, when they're presented with scientific facts, data and stats.

So I went looking and I found evidence about extreme neonates that refutes Newman's pretense.

In the UK, nine out of a hundred neonates born at 23 weeks of gestation will survive; only one of them will live a fully able-bodied life. 

What this means is that 91 of every hundred fetuses born at 23 weeks of gestation in the UK will die in the neonatal intensive care unit, eight others will be afflicted for the rest of their lives with grave handicaps or severe medical conditions while only one will be able to live a normal life. 

Only one percent.

Like Stephen Woodworth and his many fake claims that it's all about the science, it's not. It's about morality and punishing women by forcing them to remain pregnant, even when a fetus has stopped developing and is putrefying inside her uterus.

It's actually about the government interfering with the provision of a legal medical procedure that is available to pregnant women.

It's about criminalizing women, physicians and abortion.

It is christian Sharia.

Fetushists fear mongering?

fern hill found this creepy YouTube at "choicetvnetwork" here; it's the only entry.

It's also being promoted at all the usual fetus lobby sites, like SoConOrNutz, here.

It could be something produced by the antichoice yout' - it has that Faytene and 4mycanada vibe to it.

But the look and sounds of it are ominous and threatening ... like a sniper, or an explosion ... something that a domestic terrorist might send out to create fear, before unleashing a catastrophic event.

Worth reporting to CSIS? Or just let nature run its course and watch as zygote zealots laughably and predictably shoot themselves in the foot on May 22nd?

This is the future that antichoice CPC politicians want

When a government criminalizes abortion, forcing women to carry fetus that have stopped growing and to maintain toxic pregnancies that endanger their lives, the next step is to declare "unwed mothers" unfit to be parents and to facilitate unconsented adoption schemes such as these.

Since the National Post launched an investigation earlier this month into coerced adoptions between the 1940s and 1980s, dozens of mothers have said they were forced by social workers, medical staff and churches into surrendering their child because they were young and unmarried.

But some of these women say they never surrendered their child at all: They say they were told their child was stillborn or died shortly after birth [...]

A Canadian named Tina Kelly filed a UN report a decade ago alleging that, as an unmarried woman in 1970, she was falsely told her baby died overnight because of heart trouble. She claims she was not allowed to see her son, whose adoption she alleges was arranged by a doctor who took a bribe.

The Australian Parliament says the so-called dead baby scam happened there, and a nun in Spain was charged last weekend with allegedly committing this very crime over the course of the 1950s to the 1980s. During those decades in Canada, abortion was illegal or difficult to access, birth control was not readily available and unmarried mothers were seen as loose women too feeble-minded to parent.

An Australian Senate committee investigating that country’s historic adoption practices recently reported that especially swift transfers had a formal title, rapid adoption.

“This generally referred to the process whereby a married woman whose child had been stillborn was offered a child for adoption in its place,” says the committee’s explosive February report, which urged the government to apologize for forced adoptions.

One Australian woman named Valerie Linlow testified she was heavily drugged during labour and that medical staff told her she gave birth to a stillborn. Three decades later, she said a man knocked on her door saying he was her son.

From here.

Grand merci to Julie Lalonde, via her tweet.

Emma the Embryo is back.

Emma is the potential everyhuman being.

She is prochoice because gestation is a procreative process.

She's a pragmatist because pregnancy is not *motherhood*.

She believes that every child should be wanted and welcomed, and every mother willing and supported.

Added: deBeauxOs is co-author on this post.

Added by fern hill: Please steal and post farnwide.

Con Jobs are planning to criminalize abortion - again.

Yesterday, picking up on the posts here at DJ! about Contempt Party MP Stephen Woodworth, DrDawg produced an important overview of the Con Jobs' ongoing attempts to re-criminalize abortion.

It's interesting that the reformaTory tacticians did not choose to include the first shot across that bow in their new Hard-On Crime omnibus bill C-10. After all, they could have bludgeoned yet again Parliamentary tradition to pass it without debate.

Ah, but you see, the Contempt Party's overweening arrogance requires a game plan that reframes reality. In accordance with their ideological premise, it's called "re-opening the abortion debate".

As Beijing York points out:

They are also repackaging/rebranding broad cuts to services, pensions and social safety nets as "austerity measures".

And let's not forget the rebranding of "preemptive war" to "humanitarian intervention".

You know that they must be grooming one of their few female caucus members to run with whatever they come up with. That's one of their favourite tactics regarding any legislation that directly impacts women.

To which I responded:

That is a brilliant flash of insight into the Con tactics cesspool.

Let's try to deduce who that'll be. Likely Rona Ambrose unless it's Leona Aglukkak if they approach it as a *medical and scientific problem* - at least that's what it appears to be from the 3 talking points Stevie's Politburo has provided to Woodworth.

You're right. The Contempt Party will hang that political albatross around the neck of one of their female ministers.

Earlier posts about the Con game plan and Woodworth's role: here and here.

Gem from National Pustule

Canada's ersatz competition to the Globbin'Male emits a sniffy & unsigned little opinion piece about the annual pro-abortion-criminalizing march in Ottawa.

It's the usual Rightwing Nutjob promo for The Fetus©™ fetishists, complete with wildly exaggerated stats about participation:

[...] the National March for Life rally on Parliament Hill, which attracts approximately 20,000 abortion opponents annually.

20,000? I live in Ottawa and I've never seen crowds reach that number. Somebody is MASSIVELY lying.

Then there's this declaration:

What rubbish. If a woman must be protected from opposing points of view in order to choose abortion, then perhaps her decision was ill-considered in the first place.

in response to the WTF? local pro-choice folks expressed when they learned the city had issued an official "respect for life" proclamation.

That arrogant, authoritarian piece was likely written by notorious anti-feminist Babs Kay. Ironic, since she's probably okay with US states that now legally subject pregnant women requesting this medical intervention to an unwanted ultra-sound and sermon from anti-abortion health care staff.

How about this, Babs?

If a woman must be pressured, humiliated, harassed, threatened, and forced by law to carry a pregnancy to term then perhaps her decision wasn't freely determined in the first place.

Raymond Gravel & BBW

Who would have guessed that SUZYALLCAPS was into schadenfreude?

Here's the difference between Father Raymond Gravel & Blob Blogging Wingnut. SHE gloats, scolds and whines. Were the situation reversed and SHE had initiated a civil suit against an ideologically-bound, fundamentalist religious online publication, Father Gravel would not be writing that it was HER fault, that SHE deserved to be calumnized.

From here:

Fr. Rosica of Salt + Light TV felt the fury of LifeSiteNews in 2009 when he spoke out in defence of the Church’s decision to celebrate a funeral mass for Edward Kennedy, despite the senator’s record of supporting abortion rights. [...]

“At best, the activity of LifeSite is a form of unthinking activism akin to a shooting gallery. Now and then they hit a target,” he said. “More often, however, they leave a vast trail of collateral damage, character assassination and destruction of reputations of good people, including Cardinals, Bishops, priests, religious and community leaders.”

Fr. Rosica said he is no fan of Fr. Gravel and disagrees strongly with his political activism and activity. But he still seriously questions LifeSite’s treatment of the priest. “No matter how ambiguous, deplorable, scandalous and improper Fr. Raymond Gravel’s behavior is purported to have been in Quebec and in Canada, he remains a human being, and a Roman Catholic priest who has helped many people with their personal difficulties and crises. He has brought people to Christ,” he said [...]

It's evident in everything Fr. Gravel says and does that he follows the teachings of Jesus, that he does not stand in for God and jury and that he doesn't shove judgemental crap down people's throat as SHE does.

Raymond Gravel believes in rights, justice and dignity - and he extends that support to many members of society, as shown in the video posted below. He even expressed empathy towards catholic bishops who chose Canon law, ecclesiastical imperatives and the Vatican's interests over the lives of girls and boys sexually violated by pedophile priests.

Blob Blogging Wingnut believes in religious authoritarian orthodoxy.

In a nutshell, Stevie's maternal health initiative.

One of our great readers provided a link to this graphic; the moment to display it has arrived. The text says

"Abortions cost Canada millions per year. The Conservatives will do it for less!

Our women's maternal health policies ensure murderous mothers get abortions the way God intended: in back alleys and garages by car mechanics, veterinarians and other beasts of the underworld.

In African conflicts, rape is an effective weapon for genocide, so long as we don't fund abortions.

A woman's life is second to an unborn child. Let God solve complications, not medical professionals.

What choice do you need? a message from the [Harper] government of Canada."

Maternal Health - for mothers.

CBC question of the day:

Should access to safe abortions be part of a maternal health plan?

Go vote.

Another Side of Choice.

As you may recall from this previous post, I have an ambivalent view of headlines. So when this one caught my attention, I heard the siren's song. Or the muse's muttering.

A US woman who was implanted with the wrong embryo in a fertility treatment mix-up has given birth to a boy.

Carolyn Savage and her husband Sean said in a statement that the baby was delivered at St Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio. Mrs Savage, who had been told about the mix-up in February, said the family was "going through a very difficult time".

The Savages have decided to give the baby to his biological parents, Shannon and Paul Morell from Michigan. The Savages, who have three children, offered their "heartfelt congratulations" to the Morells.

Carolyn Savage chose to carry to term an embryo that had no genetic connection to her. She did it for her own personal reasons, it was difficult but nobody forced her to do it. Does anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together out there believe that Blob Blogging Wingnut understands the difference between Carolyn Savage's choice and punishing rape victims by obliging them to carry a pregnancy to term? No, I don't think SHE would get it either.

As for Carolyn Savage, she appears to have more real compassion than BBW will ever understand.

Sometimes you find allies in the darndest places.

Allies are individuals or organizations that may not share the same vision or raison d'être yet choose to join forces to further a cause or to advocate for specific rights.

The humorous graphic above is from a clickable link I found on a Blogging Tory's site. I suspect that I wouldn't agree with many of Ranting Owl's opinions, but I was delighted to see the above.

From a March 18 2009 media release at Catholics4life:

Pope Not Infallible on Condoms

The Vatican has yet again been forced to revise statements made by Pope Benedict XVI as he embarked on a foreign trip. En route to Cameroon on March 17, the pope claimed that condom use would "aggravate the problem" of HIV. A transcript of the pope's comments on the Vatican's Web site altered the comment to suggest that condoms "risked" aggravating the problem.

Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, welcomed the change as a sign that the pope is not infallible on this issue and is willing to acknowledge his mistakes. "The pope has admitted that he is unsure whether condoms can help alleviate the spread of HIV. Where there is doubt there is freedom and Catholics can make up their own minds whether they use condoms or not. Indeed, the vast majority of Catholics has already made this call and use condoms to protect themselves and their partners against STIs, including HIV.

"We call on the pope to revisit the teaching on condoms with a view to lifting the ban at the earliest possible moment. In his review, he should include experts who are unequivocal that condoms can help prevent the spread of HIV, like UNAIDS, the World Health Organization and HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations around the world."

"It took the church hierarchy 359 years to stop continuing the line taken by their predecessors on Galileo. We hope that this error does not take so long to change."

Yes. Still relevant today as it was last March.

Oh, and .... SHRIEEEK!!!

This is how a smackdown is done.

There's a slew of comments in response to Dr Dawg's posting of a video "Pro-life" savagery, produced with footage from the Forced Pregnancy Parade.

In our humble opinion however, this one from sleazebear - who should be blogging, not just leaving comments - is superb.

jimmy durante writes: "At what point do non-sentient embryos become sentient and thus, per your definition, human?"

Sentience is necessary, but not sufficient, to be considered human. Not that I'm a philosopher or anything. But that's what I'd say. As for when it happens, from what I understand (see below), medical experts say sentience isn't achieved until late in the second trimester.

But let's leave that aside. What I've always wondered, but have been too lazy to check out, is how many "late term" abortions actually happen in Canada. So, I decided to check out the statistics on this. According to my limited research (just about 10 minutes on the web), no pregnancies are viable before 20 weeks, and almost all are viable after 27 weeks.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2003, 0.7% of abortion procedures for which detailed records were available were performed after 20 weeks of gestation. (89.4% were in the first trimester when it's generally considered by medical experts that fetuses do not have a sufficiently developed to be considered sentient -- and once again, it's arguable as to whether sentience is sufficient to declare a fetus "human".) If we do a little calculation, we can make a rough estimate that probably 725 abortions that year were performed after the 20 week mark before which hardly any fetuses are viable.

So each year, only 725 abortions past 20 weeks in Canada out of more than 100,000. 0.7%. Also of interest: there are very few providers of late term abortions in Canada. They are not easy to get. According to statistics I found on a pro-life site -- a pro-life site -- there were only 49 abortions in Canada performed past the 24-week "sentience" point. That's roughly 0.04%.

Please note that the Canadian Medical Association does not endorse "elective" abortions past the 20 week mark. That means that those 725 abortions are undoubtedly almost all due to serious fetal illness or serious threats to the health of the mother. (Many severe fetal defects that result in miscarriage or death soon after birth are undetectable before 24 weeks.)

From the information that I could find, abortions past 20 weeks aren't even particularly easy to find in Canada. No doctor in Quebec performs them, for example, even in the case of fetal illness or threats to the mother.) So I'm left to wonder how many of these mythical 8-month abortions happen in Canada? From what I can tell in my admittedly quick bit of Google research, the number is probably zero. And based on the policy of the CMA, I'd be surprised to find a doctor Canada that would perform an abortion on a viable, healthy, late-term fetus when there's no threat to the health of the mother. In other words, it really is about controlling women's bodies.

Indeed. It is ALL about controlling women, and their bodies too.

Spain slowly moves away from medieval age.

Although some countries remain resolute in maintaining laws that endanger women's reproductive health and deny their rights and choices, the Spanish government has advanced a plan to decriminalize abortion, facilitating pregnancy terminations in the first trimester.

The new proposal, which would allow women to seek a termination within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy without having to give a reason, has set the Socialist government on a collision course with Spain's Catholic Church. The bill, which needs ratifying by parliament, eases strict abortion laws that have been in place since 1985 and is the latest in a series of social reforms by the Spanish prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero. The proposal tackles one of the traditionally Roman Catholic nation's final taboos and will bring the abortion law in line with most other European countries.

Under the current law abortions are only offered under restricted circumstances and rarely in a public hospital. Terminations are only allowed until the 12th week of pregnancy in cases of rape or until the 22nd week in cases of severe fetal
malformation.

Women who get an abortion outside the terms set by the legislation are committing a crime, at least on paper, although arrests are extremely rare. The new law would erase abortion from the penal code altogether.

The zygote zealots are already spinning the usual disinformation and prevarications.

The Catholic Church has launched a massive [there's that favourite qualifier again] campaign against the plan and the Bishops' Conference said unborn children already have their rights protected less than law pertaining to flowers and trees.

Mmm. Is that all they can use as examples? Our own religious fanatics are so much more imaginative, comparing the loss of an embryo to the theft of a parrot in a cage or a wide-screen TV.

Reproductive Rights and the Obama Transition

I was going to write something snarky about fetus fetishists being given their marching orders when I saw this headline, 'Pro-Abortion Groups Issue 55-Page Marching Orders for Barack Obama Admin', at Life Shite.

But the story is much more interesting, encompassing government transparency, agenda-setting, and public policy debate.

A pro-choice coalition submitted a reproductive rights wish-list to the Obama transition team. Apparently, they weren't expecting it to be made public, but it has been at Obama's transition website.

You can download the document and comment on it here.

The LifeShite piece had a link to it, obviously expecting the flying monkeys to get busy frothing and shrieeeking there in the comments. Thus, 'marching orders' in its own title was a tad, um, you know, the usual for the lying liars.

There are now over 125 comments, and mirabile dictu, not many of them are from frothers.

And there is an interesting piece about the release of the wish-list and the benefits (or not) of public consultation like this at RH Reality Check.

Government transparency. Public consultation. Wow. We need to get ourselves some of that up here.

UPDATE: That link to the Reproductive Rights page at change.gov now seems to be to an older version. And trying the link at RH Reality Check gives an error message. Hmmmm. I'll check back later.

UPDATE 2: I think the link is correct now.

A tale of two grandmothers of note.

Matriarchs are not often mentioned in our posts because many of our blogs are inspired by current news items regarding women’s reproductive health and choices. So we are pleased to feature today two grandmothers who have made choices in support of their own daughters’ choices.

First up: Jaci Dalenberg of Ohio decided that she would be a surrogate mother and carry her daughter’s fetus to term. Kim already had two children was unable to become pregnant because of a hysterectomy.

A 56-year-old woman who gave birth to her triplet granddaughters a month ago is recovering from a Caesarean section and hopeful that one of the girls will be home from the hospital by Saturday. … Dalenberg said she wasn’t frightened to be pregnant at her age.

“I’ve always been really healthy. I did get medical clearance, including psychological testing,” Dalenberg told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “When we found out it was triplets, I did get really nervous for about four days, but that passed real soon.” …

Dalenberg, who has four daughters, ages 31 to 36, said she would have preferred to try natural
childbirth, but her doctor told her that was out of the question. “I’m fine. I feel great,” Dalenberg said. “Knowing the outcome, I would do it over again, but … I’m not going to do it again,” she said with a chuckle. “We wouldn’t do that to her again,” her daughter said, smiling.

And then, Marian Robinson who may become the most famous granny in the US.

When the Obamas do finally move into the White House in January, they will be determined to take their normal family life with them – and that includes Michelle Obama’s mother, who has reluctantly agreed to leave her home on Chicago’s South Side and move to Washington. The nation’s new First Granny is Marian Robinson, 71, who regularly looked after Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven, while their parents were campaigning. …

It is the first time in living memory that three generations of a presidential family have all moved to
Washington, although Mrs Robinson has not yet decided whether to take rooms in the White House or live nearby. Mrs Obama “begged” her mother to come with them. “The girls are going to need her, as part of their sense of stability,” she told Newsweek. “And what is true for my mom is that she does anything for us and her grandkids.

First posted at Birth Pangs.