Funday

Can there ever be too many videos about inter-species frolicking: critters having fun and playing together?

We've seen a lot of crazy stuff but we've never seen anything like this
Posted by The Pet Collective on dimanche 4 janvier 2015

No.

Back to Life, Back from Cambodia?

Canada, a staunchly prochoice country, nonetheless has its equally staunch fetus freaks.

Their cause is hopeless but they keep stomping their little feet and SHRIEEEEKING.

Case in point: the Parental Consent campaign, a co-masturbation between Saskatchewan ProLife and Dominionist ARPA.

They've been told repeatedly that it ain't gonna happen, yet they persist.

One might find this pathetic or even quixotically amusing.

Except.

The campaign continues to disseminate harmful LIES.

Yesterday, it tweeted this statement: "Abortion has a profound impact on adolescent girls," accompanied by this graphic.

There it is again: Parental Consent wants pregnant teens to give up their autonomy to provide someone with a baybeeee.

But they're lying in the process, as I pointed out by replying with this link to a study from 2012.

Getting a legal abortion is much safer than giving birth, suggests a new U.S. study published Monday.

Researchers found that women were about 14 times more likely to die during or after giving birth to a live baby than to die from complications of an abortion.

Experts say the findings, though not unexpected, contradict some state laws that suggest abortions are high-risk procedures.

Explicitly contrary to what Parental Consent would have teens believe -- staying pregnant is 14 times more lethal than choosing abortion.

But what is that website at the bottom of the graphic? I'd never heard of Back to Life Canada.

It's a website created in November 2012 to promote celebrate a bunch of women who walked from here to there to protest abortion.

A little more digging revealed that our old pal Faytene Variable Last Name, most recently Grasseschi, is a prime mover.

Weird group, weird activities.

The website contains the requisite Risks of Abortion page, on which the usual bogus and nauseatingly often debunked claims are made.

Then there's The Walkers, a group of 25 women, first names only, most with pictures, and, oddly, ethnic identities. For example, Chinese Canadian, Anglo Canadian, Metis Canadian, French Canadian, and Barbadian Canadian are listed, but two women who look black are identified as Anglo Canadian, which may describe their language but huh?

(Faytene herself does not appear.)

And they have a Big Field Trip! A project called Back to Life Cambodia.

Back to Life Cambodia is a 2-week event that will focus on prayer, prophetic decrees, seminars, and outreaches to establish value for the life within the minds and hearts of the Cambodian people.

The trip was set for May 17-31, 2015, at a cost of only $500 which does not include accommodation, meals, airfare, travel insurance or Cambodian visa but does include .... ?

The page contains a video report from its inaugural 2014 field trip, but contains nothing from 2015.

I looked and found ... more nothing.

Did they not go? Did they get lost? Did the good people of Cambodia tell them to get stuffed and go home?

Inquiring minds. . .

Tough on Crime. Oh. Wait. Not "That" Crime

The Conservative Party of Canada, aka The Party That Never Met a Victim of Crime It Wouldn't Bust a Gut to Stand Beside for a Photo-Op, must be gnashing its teeth.

It has brought forward a Victims' Bill of Rights raising the role of victims to USian levels of consideration in the justice system, but is missing out on a HUGE opportunity.

Sadly, pregnant women are often targets of violence.

Does it happen in pregnancy?
Tragically, yes. Domestic violence during pregnancy sometimes puts both the mom-to-be and her baby’s life at risk. Here's some of the evidence:
• Statistics Canada reports that 40 per cent of the Canadian women who were abused during pregnancy reported that the abuse began during pregnancy.
• Women abused during pregnancy were four times as likely as other abused women to report having experienced very serious violence, including being beaten up, choked,
• Of the women who were abused during pregnancy, approximately 18% reported that they had suffered a miscarriage or other internal injuries as a result of the abuse.

And there's been a recent, particularly horrible case that resulted in the deaths of both woman and fetus.

Friends and family of Cassandra Kaake are outraged that the accused will not face a separate charge of murder for the death of the fetus. They are clamouring for the return of "unborn victims" legislation, complete with petition, website, and heart-tugging moniker, "Molly Matters."

While the good people behind this effort seem not to understand the hornet's nest such legislation would kick open, opportunists from Big Fetus® like the Dominionist astroturf gang, We Need a Law Like a Hole in the Head, certainly do, and are exploiting the hell out of the family's grief.

All sad.

Except. . .

The Boys in Short Pants who must be tearing their hair that they are under an interdict from Herr Harper NOT to reopen the abortion debate.

Which any governmental backing of "unborn victims" legislation would certainly accomplish.

So, there's that.

Backlash Bites

I know I said I was done with the sick puppies running the fetal gore porn campaign, No2Trudeau, but this is too delicious.

Terence Young, CPC MP for Oakville, said he wrote a letter to the Fetal Gore Gang.

Here it is. (Click to enlarge.)

Last paragraph: "Rather than changing the hearts of minds of people on abortion, these flyers will ensure most people will never listen to anything you have to say."

That's harsh enough, but consider the source. Campaign Lie gives Young cautious approval. (It seems he said abortion should be allowed for "rape, incest or disabled," displaying an unacceptable level of compassion.)

When even your usual allies are disgusted -- or getting so many outraged complaints from constituents that they feel they must say Something -- you might want to rethink your tactics.

Ha. Not this deranged gang. Watch. They'll double down.

Previous posts on No2Trudeau.

No 2 Trudeau: Sick Puppies

The No 2 Trudeau campaign has been annoying and disgusting a lot of people lately.

These good folks, who absurdly expect to look through their junk mail without encountering fetal gore porn, have complained to cops, politicians, and Advertising Standards Canada (ASC). ASC, which has no power to actually do anything but tut-tut, has looked at this sort of thing before and shrugged it off as beyond its purview, being deemed "political." (So I guess the CPC gets a pass for using ISIS snuff-film footage too.)

Well, the FetalGoreGang has so annoyed people that ASC decided to have another look.

Several Canadian residents have complained to Advertising Standards Canada.

Under their code, "Advertising that is directed to children must not exploit their credulity, lack of experience or their sense of loyalty, and must not present information or illustrations that might result in their physical, emotional or moral harm."

However, last month, residents were told that because it's a political campaign, it's exempt from the voluntary Advertising Standards code.

However, due in part to the number of complaints, ad standards took another look at their definition of political advertising and came back with the following response which has been posted to Facebook.

"ASC has concluded that, notwithstanding that aspects of the No2Trudeau advertising are political in nature, the political elements may be separated from the images of aborted fetuses featured in this advertising. Based on a 2014 decision by ASC's Standards Council, which upheld consumer complaints about the use of the very same graphic images in advertising by a different advertiser, ASC has now asked the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform to withdraw and no longer distribute this advertising in its current form in which the aborted fetuses have been highlighted."

Jonathon Van Maren, communications director with the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform, said ASC has made these types of requests before and the response remains the same.

"We have polling that shows this is the most effective way to show people that abortion violently victimizes a pre-born human being, and we're going to continue doing it," he said. "They have no legal authority to ask us to cease and desist. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms trumps their request."

Isn't that adorable? This gang, and fetus freaks in general, usually excoriate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, born of evil Justin Trudeau's eviler dad, Pierre, of course. This same Charter has been used by rabid activist judges to support a woman's right to autonomy and privacy that the fetus freaks stomp their little feet over deny. Here for example is the Fetal Gore Gang's take on it.

But now they're hiding behind it.

And find zip zero nada irony in their position.

So, there's that.

As the campaign goes on, other questions are being raised again. From the beginning, there were speculations about what possible political party might be behind a gory, misleading smear campaign against Justin Trudeau.

In the face of mounting disgust in their communities, various politicians are now peddling furiously away.

Oakville MP Terence Young said he was disgusted by the flyers and emphasized they have nothing to do with the Conservative Party or himself.

Young also sent the architects of the No2Trudeau Campaign a cease-and-desist letter.

“I am writing to ask you to cease and desist your campaign of placing graphic and appalling flyers entitled No2Trudeau in the mailboxes and doorways of my constituents in Oakville and elsewhere,” wrote Young in his correspondence, a copy of which was forwarded to the Oakville Beaver.

“They are quite understandably causing distress and anger, particularly as they are exposed to children who react with confusion and fear. This is unconscionable. Rather than changing the hearts and minds of people on abortion, these flyers will ensure most people will never listen to anything you have to say.”

Even other clergy are getting into the act.

Rev. Mike Marsden, Lead Minister of Knox Presbyterian Church, also takes issue with the flyers, which he condemned as exploitative.

“I am disgusted and disturbed, not just by the images, but that any organization purporting to uphold the rights and dignity of an unborn child would actually devalue the worth of such a child by striving for shock value,” said Marsden in an email to Campaign Life Coalition, which was also sent to the Oakville Beaver.

“The use your organization has made of such images is, in my opinion, the ultimate degradation…The children represented did not choose to be conceived, nor did they choose to be aborted, but neither did they choose to be exploited by your organization in death.”

Funny, but that's sorta what the Catholic Herald had to say in 2012.
It called use of such images "profoundly counterproductive."

So, if not just ordinary people but politicians and clergy are unhappy with the campaign, who's getting anything out of it?

Canadian Cynic has a notion.

Given how quickly CPC shut down "HarperPAC", if the CPC didn't condone Trudeau-linked abortion flyers, they wouldn't be happening. Period.

— CC (@canadiancynic) July 16, 2015

And I've been thinking about it too.

My conclusion: these people are simply sick. They have the same fascination with gore and torture and blood that snuff-film aficionados like Luka Magnotta have.

When the Gosnell case was in the news, these sick puppies were creaming themselves over descriptions of body parts kept in specimen bottles, blood on the floor, and other fun stuff.

And now, the bogus story of Planned Parenthood selling fetal body parts has them again gloating over itty-bitty gory guts.

There are not too many careers in which one can indulge in one's psychopathic obsession, get lauded as a martyr, and get paid, are there?

So. I'm done with them. At least for this sad campaign. (I reserve the right to snark at them on Twitter if the mood strikes.)

May they find some capable psychological help.

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.

This Should End the Debate. . . Aw, Fuck, Who Are We Trying to Kid?

The thing about the repro rights beat is that nothing is ever settled.

Well, it is, but the fetus freaks don't accept facts, evidence, studies, and so on and just keep stomping their feet and SHRIEEEEKING.

It's been said many times: post-abortion syndrome is a myth, a myth whose origin is possible to date even (it was coined by Vincent Rue in 1981).

And apparently I'm not the only one getting tired of covering this stuff. A headline at ThinkProgress today is "This Study Should End The Debate About Whether Women Regret Having Abortions."

Here's the link.

According to a new study that tracked hundreds of women who had abortions, more than 95 percent of participants reported that ending a pregnancy was the right decision for them. Feelings of relief outweighed any negative emotions, even three years after the procedure.

Researchers examined both women who had first-trimester abortions and women who had procedures after that point (which are often characterized as “late-term abortions”). When it came to women’s emotions following the abortion, or their opinions about whether or not it was the right choice, they didn’t find any meaningful difference between the two groups.

Seems pretty clear. Ninety-five percent of women were satisfied they did the right thing.

Of course, women and the circumstances in which they find themselves needing abortion vary widely and the study noted the variances.

Gee, look what they found.

External factors can influence the emotions that women experience after an abortion, according to the ANSIRH researchers. They found that women who ended a pregnancy that was planned — which typically occurs after they discover serious fetal health defects — reported more negative emotions, as did women who perceived more abortion stigma in their community. Women with more social support, meanwhile, reported fewer negative emotions.

The study was led by ANSIRH.

Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health—ANSIRH—works to ensure that reproductive health care and policy are grounded in evidence. ANSIRH’s multi-disciplinary team includes clinicians, researchers and scholars in the fields of sociology, demography, anthropology, medicine, nursing, public health, and law.

ANSIRH is the mover behind the huge Turnaway study, following up on women who could not get abortions.

ThinkProgress tweeted a link to today's story and look at the response.

@thinkprogress lefties love to "end the arguement" with bullshit stats and surveys is. climate change, Obamacare or any liberal scheme

— Carlos Danger (@cobrayrpb) July 13, 2015

Demonstrating rather well, don't you think, the anti-choice/prolife attitude to facts, evidence, and science?

Sigh.


Past DJ! posts on post-abortion syndrome.

Link to the abstract of the study for them's as like to see for themselves. No, not you, prolifers.

Abortion Access in the Maritimes

Here at DAMMIT JANET! we have blogged extensively (compulsively?) on abortion access, especially in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick.

Now, VICE has produced a 33-minute documentary on abortion access in the Maritimes.

Abortion has been a legal medical procedure in Canada for more than 25 years, but in spite of that, access varies widely across the country. Urban residents are far likelier to have easy access to the procedure, while rural people may face extra costs and time requirements like travel and figuring out where to go.

In this edition of VICE Canada Reports, Sarah Ratchford investigates abortion access in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, two provinces with restricted access to abortions and conservative political climates that make access a difficult issue even to discuss. She attends a pro-life rally crashed by pro-choice activists, goes undercover into a pregnancy crisis center, and talks to an activist helping people access under-the-counter abortions in Prince Edward Island (PEI).

Much work yet to do.

Busted Arm Blogging

Because Twitter is ephemeral and because this is my blog on which I can write whatever I want, here's what's been happening to me.

On Saturday night, I broke my left forearm. Went to Emerg, got it splinted, and got appt with Fracture Clinic 4 days later.

Which was yesterday. Here's my series of tweets about it. (I wrote them out first. Apologies for lack of caps, but one-handed inputting.)

well, that was more of an ordeal than expected. in short, emerg fucked up. bone should have been straightened out before splinting

would that explain BIG pain since? i asked. side-eye between doc and tech. (lotta side-eye throughout) answer: repressively, yes.

straightening process involved what they called chinese finger cages, in use since medieval times (my supposition). like that woven trick tube you put fingers in

more you pull, tighter it gets. all 5 fingers put in metal versions of tube. suspended. weight put on upper arm.

you are left for 10 minutes to weep, scream, gnash teeth, your choice, as break gets reopened. i gnashed.

then 3 techs arrive. 1 to pull on injured arm, leaning away, no shit. 1 to pull on other side to counter pulling, and, best part

1 to "model" broken bit, i.e. push and shove and wrangle bone into alignment, much apologizing included.

here, i chose to gasp and gnash, while plaster strips applied as alignment proceeds.

next, xray to see how all that went. here, one prays to whatever deity that it went well and doesn't need redo

yay! doc comes back to look at xray. no redo. i'm good. i asked for drugs. scrip written for MANY T3s, higher dose, more frequently allowed

next appt 1 week

upshot: freer fingers, no light cast, worse break than i was led to believe by emerg goof

work upshot: i'm going to forgo one gig and hope i'm good enough for the one soon after that

Further update: not surprisingly, arm feels much better with bone properly aligned in stiff cast. Still hurts like hell of course.

But new cast had a hard pointy bit poking into inside elbow. I thought what the heck and went back to the clinic this morning to see if they would fix it.

Butt barely grazed chair after being told to take a seat when nice tech came and got me and removed pointy bit. She also told me that I had been a heckuva trooper yesterday and that clinic doc was MASSIVELY pissed with emerg doc and that there would be repercussions.

GOOD.

I looked hard for a photo of "Chinese finger cages," using all kinds of search terms. No luck. You'll have to use your imaginations.