Dead women don't, and can't give life.

What a morbid thought, correct?

In Canada, 26 years ago today the Supreme Court decision R. v. Morgentaler  removed legal obstacles preventing women from accessing abortion - a medical procedure under the purview of professionals who administer the public health care system.

But in Texas where the rights of corporations, guns and fetus are promoted by Bible-thumpers who claim they represent the will of God the Father, the laws of the state can desecrate and violate the rights of ordinary living breathing people.

If there are profits to be made, weapons to be cherished and a zygote, embryo or fetus to be deployed as a weapon in the War On Women, you can bet that rightwing religious fundamentalist Republican legislators will be there to shrieeekingly defend those rights.

This happened.

Marlise, a 33-year old paramedic, got up the night of Nov. 26 to fix a bottle for her toddler son.

Her husband Erick, also a paramedic and a firefighter, woke up and realized she had not returned to bed.

He found Marlise collapsed on the floor, not breathing and with no pulse. It’s believed she suffered a blood clot to the lung that deprived her of oxygen for more than an hour.

Erick frantically performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation and called an ambulance. Marlise was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth and connected to a ventilator to artificially simulate breathing.

It was too late. Marlise was gone. According to court filings, doctors knew this within two days, after tests registered a complete absence of brain function. This was not a “coma” or “vegetative state.” It is the legal and medical definition of dead.

Marlise Muñoz was an emergency medical technician, a paramedic familiar with end-of-life issues who had told her husband that she would not want to be kept "alive" by machines.

Her family hired a lawyer; a rational, sane judge heard their arguments and ordered the hospital to stop preserving the decaying body of their beloved in a technologically-assisted embalmed state.  Marlise had been declared medically and legally dead; in trying to protect the rights of the fetus as it believed Texas law instructed it to do, the hospital (or fetushists on staff) turned her into a "cadaverous incubator". More medical information here, from Dr Jen Gunter.

THIS is the nightmare that CPC MPs Vellacott and Woodworth would inflict upon Canadian women and their families.

Knight of Columbus Stephen Woodworth claims how "savage and inhumane it is to have a law on the Canadian books which falsely condemns as non-human people who are human" - quite a whopper of a word-salad obfuscation. Women have tried to instruct this obdurate Vatican Taliban foot-soldier on how women experience pregnancy — wanted or not — but he won't listen.  In his mind, he is a grandiloquent medieval cavalier, "saving" fetus everywhere and forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

"Savage and inhumane" is exactly the treatment that women would suffer if *fetus rights* forced hospitals to use women like meat incubators to placate anti-choice zealots' ideologically-dictated demands.  Would gestating women who smoke, who drink alcohol, who eat the "wrong" food, who are addicted to legal or illegal drugs and who have sex while pregnant, get strapped down and supervised to prevent actions that could imperil their fetus?

Not in my Canada.  

I applaud the recent commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal as well as those who are urging Health Canada to approve mifepristone as a physician-facilitated medical abortion. Also known as RU486, it is administered very early in the pregnancy instead of surgery. It induces a miscarriage, similar to spontaneous abortions that occur frequently during the first trimester.

In support of Canadian women's ongoing push-back against the reactionary individuals and groups who would deprive them of basic reproductive rights, I will continue writing and tweeting on these issues.

Catholic Church: Facts matter when money is involved.

This was in the news yesterday.  As you can imagine, it has been the topic of pro-choice discussions since, as we've written many, many times at DJ!, the US Catholic Church has been one of the best-financed and insistent organization to lobby politicians, in its opposition to abortion and birth control.  All of it involves indirect actions and proxy groups of course, as the Vatican Taliban doesn't want to imperil the tax-exempt status its churches enjoy.

The Catholic Church is on record stating that life begins at conception That is the basis of their opposition to abortion in all circumstances. It’s the basis on which they argue that Obamacare violates their (and their followers) religious freedoms (which of course trump any rights or freedoms anyone else may have.)

[...]Sometimes, actions tells us just how deep a religious conviction in the sanctity of life really is. It turns out that at least for one Catholic healthcare provider, that deeply held religious belief suddenly becomes less important when a few dollars are at stake.

This story began on New Years Day in 2006. Lori Stodghill was 31-years-old and seven months pregnant with twins. She went to St. Thomas More Hospital, suffering from nausea and shortness of breath. Her obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, was on call that night – but never answered his pager. Stodghill’s main artery to the lungs was clogged, resulting in a heart attack. She died within an hour of arriving at the hospital, as did the twins – some time later. Stodghill’s husband, Jeremy filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of the couples then 2-year-old daughter, Elizabeth and himself. Their lawyers argued that Stodges should have made it to the hospital or at least ordered the emergency room to perform an emergency c-section.

From here.

[...]when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on their head. Catholic organizations have for decades fought to change federal and state laws that fail to protect “unborn persons,” and Catholic Health’s lawyers in this case had the chance to set precedent bolstering anti-abortion legal arguments. Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights.

As Jason Langley, an attorney with Denver-based Kennedy Childs, argued in one of the briefs he filed for the defense, the court “should not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’ as is used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born alive. Colorado state courts define ‘person’ under the Act to include only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on two unborn fetuses.”

Above from here; text below from previously quoted.

The thing that smells in this case is the hypocrisy. On one hand, the “sanctity of life” matters when it comes to denying a woman access to reproductive health. The women’s life is secondary to that of a zygot or a fetus in the name of religious freedom. A woman’s dignity is secondary to that same religious freedom. But, when a few dollars are at stake, suddenly these deeply held religious beliefs don’t matter.

One might think that the gospel, and all those deeply held religious values really are only wallet deep.

SHRIEEEEEEEEEK!!! It's what you'd expect from the likes of SUZYALLCAPS at Blob Blogging Wingnut, right?

Curiously, no. All is silent over there, except for a short riff on a piece of glurge about the bishop of Denver SHE posted on January 22nd, the day before the damning news story above was published.  Coincidence?

We provide no click-links to BBW because if we do, SHE will re-direct all traffic to pictures of human anatomical detritus, aka fetal p0rn.

In case you think that we exaggerate when we say so-called "prolife" is pro-lies, note that in HER blogpost, SUZY states that the bishop of Denver studied medicine.  

Wrong, incorrect, false.

The man himself says that he worked as an orderly in a hospital.

Prevaricate much, SUZY?

Today's BBW blogpost demonstrates how SHE deigns to hold up a woman's exemplary choice to carry a pregnancy to term because that particular choice fits HER object lesson of the day.  Although this woman is a lesbian, SHE conveniently decides not to address that ideological inconsistency - HER Catholic homophobia has been on display in many previous posts - because shut up.


ADDED by fh on January 25: From Daily Kos

Now, lest you think that an attorney representing a Catholic organization that manages a Catholic hospital does not actually speak for the Church, and therefore, the arguments in legal documents do not represent the Church itself, au contraire, smarty pants. Let's go below the fold to review the Taco Bell rule, shall we?

The Taco Bell rule was first offered by Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, when the bishops were hissy-fitting themselves over insurance coverage of birth control. Under this rule, there is no distinction between the Catholic Church, Catholic-affiliated organizations, or privately owned companies that appear to have no religious affiliation, but that are owned or managed by someone who claims to be Catholic. Like, say, someone who opens a Taco Bell franchise. Under this rule, it's all the Catholic Church, according to the Catholic Church, and should all be afforded the exact same legal protections as the Church itself.

A trio of bishops are going to 'review' the argument.

But what's that saying about closing a barn door after the horse has left? The defendants already made the argument—and won. So what's the plan? The bishops are going to decide the legal argument is invalid and the widower is owed a payout for the wrongful death of his wife and twins? If there's one thing we know for certain it's that the Catholic Church will go to very extreme lengths to avoid legal or financial accountability, including, but not limited to, obstructing criminal investigations.

So regardless of what the bishops determine with their review, they lost this fight. It's over. A fetus is not a person and should have no rights or protections under the law, and that's how it should stay. Amen.

As they say: awkward.

Like a broken clock, Blob Blogging Wingnut is sometimes correct.

SUZANNE SAID: "The vast majority of feminists do not care what happens to the fetus."

Shorter Blob Blogging Wingnut: How do you like MY anti-feminist generalization? I got a MILLION of them!

SHE is right. Abortion-criminalizing, zygote zealots are the ones who obsess about "the fetus" - and nothing but "the fetus".

While feminists care about women.

There's a lot of posturing and blathering in rightwing neocon and in anti-feminist fundamentalist religious groups about individuals taking responsibility for their own actions, and how the government interferes too much with the lives of private citizens. So let women be responsible for decisions regarding their own fetus.

Feminists care when women become pregnant - with or without intent - we care whether they have access to the medical care they need. If women choose to give life, to carry their pregnancies to term and to give birth, feminists care that they're able to do so in the best conditions possible.

Feminist advocacy for women's reproductive health includes all aspects from menarche to menopause. And health care providers need to get it.

One of the themes of the annual meeting of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada is to consider how inducting labour rather than letting it proceed as it does normally has negative outcomes.

For most expectant mothers, labour begins spontaneously, at about 40 weeks into the pregnancy.Induction of labour occurs when medications such as prostaglandin and oxytocin are used when a woman is past her due date to ripen the cervix and get the uterus contracting.

Says Dr. Andre Lalonde, “The message to doctors, nurses and midwives is, be patient and do not consider inductions before the end of the 41st week,” said Lalonde. “If you wait that extra week to 10 days, you will find that most women — a large percentage — will go into spontaneous labour.” He says “the number one risk” of induction is that it leads to earlier decisions about a C-section, which now stand at an all-time high in Canada. Nearly 28 per cent of babies were born surgically in Canada in 2007-08, according to a national report released last week. That’s up from five per cent in 1969.

Induction can lead to longer, more painful labour and continuous electronic monitoring of the baby’s heart rate, which itself increases the risk of C-sections, because it generates “a lot of information. In fact, too much information,” says Dr. William Ehman, a family doctor in Nanaimo, B.C. who will be leading a session on normal birth at this week’s meeting of pregnancy doctors and gynecologists. “So you are trying to sort out the important things versus what’s not important.”

Research shows that, in healthy pregnancies, checking the baby’s heart rate after contractions by listening, or using a hand-held device, reduces the risk of interventions.

Healthy pregnancies for women. Because pregnancies have consequences.

The photo was taken from Birthing without fear.

The advantages of abortion: the Cons and C-484

On August 25th - shortly before calling this election - Stephen Harper shoved his low-profile Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson into the media spotlight:

to introduce a government-sanitized version of that bill to protect “pregnant
women” and not dwell on references to “unborn children”.

It was

Stevie and the Harpocrites’ way of removing the albatross that Ken Epp inadvertently hung around his party’s neck. No way the Cons were heading into a fall election, with freshly declared opposition to C-484 still breaking in the news.

One could call this tactic a political abortion; though C-484 had cleared its first and second reading, it was never allowed a complete gestation period. Yes folks, Stephen Harper aborted Bill C-484 in its symbolic ‘third trimester’ because it was politically expedient to do so.

Call them culture-killers, crime-fighters or mediabashers and they would happily cop a guilty plea, but being tagged as anti-abortion is the last label the Conservatives want plastered on their re-election resume. … While he described the need for the bill as “urgent”, Mr. Nicholson ducked repeated questions to produce statistics on the number of fetal assaults in Canada.

And if there was any doubt this move was election driven and not a legislative priority, he could not produce a text of the proposed bill, background documentation to explain the legislation or provide a date when, if ever, it would be introduced in the Commons. “We’re bringing forward a bill that makes a very clear statement on where this government stands,” was all he would say. Translation:
Nowhere near abortion.

MASSIVE public demonstrations against C-484 continue (5000 in Montréal); the aborted Bill has become a symbol for the secretive, prevaricating, manipulative and optics-controlling maneuvers of the Conservatives. Read more.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

No-choice/No-brainer divide at Con Convention

It may come as a surprise to those unfamiliar with the history of Québec, but within the ranks of the Conservative Party of Canada, there is steadfast support for choice from that province’s party members. And it may lead to a confrontation in November at the CPC convention, if the delegates representing the old Reform party constituency, aka Western fundamentalist interests, present a motion in favour of changing the legal status of a fetus.
Sovereignty en Anglais wrote about this:

Some party members from the West have inserted a proposition to integrate Bill C-484 into the Conservative platform. C-484 is a law that would recognise the fetus in a case where a pregnant mother is murdered. In such a case, the murderer would be charged with two murders instead of one. This is, in fact and despite what the bill itself says, a backdoor way to outlaw abortion because it
recognises the fetus as a legal person. It isn’t a far step to go from that to claiming the termination of the fetus in an abortion to be murder as well. And this isn’t just an over-reaction, similar laws in the United States have led to the outlawing of abortion in certain jurisdictions.

This is the first national CPC convention since March 2005. Over 3000 party members are expected to attend. A meeting of Québec Conservative party members - MPs, senators and riding presidents - was held in Sherbrooke in June. According to Le Devoir’s source, the 300 participants voted against any resolution that would change the legal status of a fetus, as it currently stands in Canada. Some even bluntly stated that Bill C-484 was “insensé”, which in other words, means it goes against common sense.

Remember, 3 Québec Conservative MPs voted against C-484: Josée Verner, Lawrence Cannon (both ministers) and Sylvie Boucher. Also, there are a great number of professional, political, educational, labour and women’s organizations in Québec that are opposed to C-484.

Antonia Zerbisias at Broadsides also comments on Le Devoir’s news item, and takes the opportunity to mention that two polls (one in The Toronto Star and the other in The National Post) demonstrate that most Canadians approve of Morgentaler being awarded the Order of Canada.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

Jesus Speaks!

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Could Jesus be speaking about … those who dictate and interpret what he said, with a view to advancing and aggrandizing themselves? And could followers of false prophets be among those lobbying the Secretary of State for Arkansas to put up a memorial monument that may or may not feature a statue of Jesus, or of someone who looks like Jesus and who could be Jesus, in the Capitol?

The leader of the group, armed with the preserved remains of a fetus that was miscarried in 1993, met with the Secretary of State. She described the monument that her group wants to install; a man holding a baby while talking to a woman. The robe-clad male figure wears sandals.

Now what would Jesus say about a group of fetus-fetishizing lobbyists who want to exploit his avowed love of children and those who are child-like? How about: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned.”? Or perhaps: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.”?

But Jesus could be angry, as he was with the merchants using the temple space for their own profit. He might say: “Listen up. You’ve got to stop putting words in my mouth. When I said: Allow the little children, and don’t forbid them to come to me, I didn’t mean embryos and fetuses. Remember that my Father is called a Creator, not an Impregnator. It takes time to create a human being. If a woman does not choose to give life, the decision is hers to make. My own mother was given that choice. Gestation, like creation, is a process. Only God has the right to judge and condemn. And stop with the glurge already!”

This news item was brilliantly blogged here, by GottaLaff. A big thanks to Red Jenny for bringing this to our attention!
Originally posted at Birth Pangs.