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.

Fetal personhood used to deny women who chose pregnancy their rights.

It gives us no pleasure to say we told you, but here it is. From Salon:

We all know that establishing the "personhood" of microscopic Americans is a means of characterizing abortion -- legally, and even culturally -- as murder. Though the Supreme Court decision making abortion legal turns largely on the right to privacy, it also notes -- in an aside that has become anything but -- that if fetuses were "people," they would be entitled to protection under the 14th Amendment, ergo entitled to "life." The Center for Women Policy Studies has stated that "legislative efforts to establish fetal patienthood, victimhood and, therefore, personhood represent the primary threat to Roe v. Wade." But as the National Advocates for Pregnant Women point out in a brand-new video, they also represent a threat to pregnant women -- all pregnant women, including those who plan to carry to term.

One woman featured in the video became critically ill at 25 weeks pregnant. Her doctor's hospital board filed for an emergency hearing to determine the rights of the fetus. The court supported the hospital's contention that an emergency C-section should be done without the pregnant woman's consent. Her doctor objected, stating the surgery could kill her. The operation was performed; neither woman nor fetus survived.

Thus Lifeshite and their posse of fetus fetishizing goons continue to bully legislators in their willingness to sacrifice the female vessel (aka pregnant woman) to achieve their political goal: the recriminalization of abortion.

Bravo for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women for their activism!

Un grand merci to Pareta.

Does Kay remember the fear of getting pustules on his willy?

There doesn't really seem to be any other rational explanation for Jonathan's bizarre foray into self-righteous moralizing.

Did he suffer great personal trauma in high school when his phys. ed. teacher showed the boys a slide show of photographs of male genitalia that displayed symptoms of advanced sexually transmitted diseases? Did it permanently affect his sex life? Is he now bitter and therefore advocating for a similar approach as a way to justify and enforce female abstinence?

One of the lamentable results of the culture wars is that women have been taught to regard abortion -- a medically profound event that either kills, or pre-empts, a unique, genetically determinate human being -- as if it were merely an act of feminist self-empowerment. Showing a mother an image of her "soon-to-be-dead fetus" will disabuse her of that myth."

uh-oh. It sounds like Jonathan was fed anti-feminist ideology in his mama's milk. That might be the explanation for his holier-than-thou, punitive approach to controlling women's access to medical services.

Be thankful that Kay is only a pissant opinion columnist.

Why yes, I will have a splash of wine with dinner ….

or a micro-brewed beer from the local ale crafters, said the pregnant woman.

All of you busybodies out there, you can choke back your ill-advised counsel to her. According to this recent study, the occasional glass of wine or pint of beer will not damage her fetus.

The University College London team asked mothers about how much alcohol they had drunk during pregnancy when their babies were nine months old. Light drinking was classed as ranging from one drink every so often to two drinks per week, while moderate drinking was between three and six units per week or three to five per one occasion. Heavy drinking was regarded as seven or more units per week or at least six per occasion. …

The researchers then went back when the children were three to ask about their behaviour and understanding. The study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, found boys born to light drinkers were 40% less likely to have conduct problems and 30% less likely to be hyperactive than those whose mothers had abstained. They also scored more highly on vocabulary tests and on identifying colours, shapes, letters and numbers. Girls born to light drinkers were 30% less likely to have emotional problems than those born to abstainers, although the researchers say this could be due to family and social backgrounds. ....

Dr Yvonne Kelly, the epidemiologist who led the study, said: “Our research has found that light drinking by pregnant mothers does not increase the risk of behavioural problems and cognitive defects. “The reasons behind these findings might in part be because light drinkers tend to be more socially advantaged than abstainers, rather than being due to the physical benefits of low level alcohol consumption seen, for example, in heart disease.” …

Dr Kelly added: “Our study’s findings do raise questions as to whether the current push for policy to recommend complete abstinence during pregnancy is merited and suggest that further research needs to be done.”

Most of us who were pregnant and had babies before this current hysteria around alcohol consumption during gestation always knew that.

Originally published at Birth Pangs.

Shhhhhh

OK, we admit it. Sometimes we at Birth Pangs make shit up. But we didn't make this up.

Back in March we started calling Bill C-484 The Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill after a prominent fetus fetishist called it that on his blog.

So, despite the fact that an anonymous commenter there helpfully pointed out that the post had just made a liar out of Ken Epp, today the same blogger posted Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill - The Sequel. (The Freak Dominionists are also discussing it.)

He links to a LifeShite story about Courtney Love refusing to have a abortion despite her heroin use. This is of course celebrated (though we doubt very much else about Ms Love's life would be celebrated by the fetus fetishists). Then the article maunders on about proposed legislation in the US somewhere about banning 'coerced' abortions. This is par for the course for fetus fetishists. They believe that most abortions -- except those for Culture of Death Feminazis -- are coerced, mainly by the menfolk in these women's lives, and of course by Culture of Death Feminazis. They figger if they can outlaw 'coerced' abortions -- presto change-o! -- abortion would just about disappear -- except for those of the Culture of Death Feminazis of course. He wants such legislation here.

Here, we'll let him tell you:

With C-484 and then this as a follow-up? Holy smokes, Batman, talk about having the devil on the run.

Can you imagine how much this kind of legislation is going to cut down on abortion in Canada when we truck it up here? It will show just how fraudulent the whole “choice” of abortion really is.

But, please, nobody go over there and tell him he's just made a liar out of Ken Epp and his minions. Again.

(First published at Birth Pangs.)

One Woman a Minute

Pregnancy kills one woman per minute. Unsafe abortion kills one woman every eight minutes. Reproductive Health Reality Check says:

. . .every minute, a woman still dies as a result of pregnancy or childbirth. Ninety-nine percent of these deaths occur in developing countries (primarily in Africa and Asia), and the vast majority of them are preventable. . . .

One in eight of those women dying every minute as a result of pregnancy and childbirth are women dying from unsafe abortions, after all--totaling 68,000 women every year, a figure that hasn't changed in nearly two decades. Nearly half of these deaths occur in Africa, where abortion is largely illegal, and rarely available even under circumstances where it is legal.

We decided to have a look at current news stories from Africa.

First, there's this from Uganda.

Over 1,000 Ugandan women die every year as a result of unsafe abortions and an additional 68,000 suffer serious health complications, according to a recently released report from the Ministry of Health.

"As many as 1,200 unsafe abortions result in death each year. Nearly a quarter (23%) of all abortions result in serious complications," says the report Road map for accelerating the reduction of maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity in Uganda. . . .

Because abortion is illegal in Uganda, and because of the widespread social stigma attached to the practice, many women who experience complications are not seeking or receiving any help. "Roughly one in five of the estimated 297,000 women who have an abortion each year - a total of 65,000 women - suffer complications that require medical care but do not get treatment in a medical facility," says the report.

Now, let's have a look at Nigeria: